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Article snippet: MOSCOW — An extraordinary wave of antigovernment protests swept across Russia on Monday, as thousands of demonstrators gathered in more than 100 cities to denounce corruption and political stagnation despite official attempts to stifle the expression of outrage. Riot police officers in large cities and small detained hundreds of participants, with more than 700 apprehended in Moscow and 300 in St. Petersburg, according to OVD-Info, an independent organization that tracks arrests. There were reports of about 100 detentions elsewhere across Russia. In Moscow, the police arrested the Kremlin foe and anticorruption crusader Aleksei A. Navalny, the main architect of the protests on Monday and similar ones in March, as he left his apartment to attend the demonstration downtown. A Moscow court quickly sentenced him to 30 days in jail for organizing an unauthorized protest. The recent outpourings of popular discontent, spurred on by Mr. Navalny, have been the biggest antigovernment demonstrations in Russia in years. After witnessing the geographic sweep of the protests on Monday and the enthusiastic resolve of the mostly young participants in the face of a harsh police presence, some analysts came away saying that Russian politics was being reborn. “I think we are seeing the beginning of a youth protest movement,” said Anatoly Golubovsky, a Russian historian surveying the crowd at one corner of Moscow’s Pushkin Square, which erupted in vigorous jeers of “Shame” whenever ... Link to the full article to read more