Protests about the way the government is handling the crisis in France, protests in Britain by workers who have not yet taken in the concept of the free movement of labour and cannot understand why Italian workers have been employed in Britain by an Italian firm; par for the course in Europe. It has all happened before and it will occur again before the first decade of the third millennium comes to an end.

Less often seen, however, are protests in Russia against the management of the economy by the country's Prime Minister, Vladimir Putin. Yet, there he was, in Davos, a few days ago, the first time a Russian leader attended, lecturing his listeners on how to get out of the dreary business of being unable to do business. There, too, was the Chinese leader (later, somebody chucked a shoe at him, too, in Cambridge University, of all places) acknowledging the crisis and back home some 20 million migrant workers were out of a job.

The recession respects no political system. But, whereas in most democratic countries governments are experienced in handling protests if not the crisis itself, those in countries like Russia and China must regard spreading social unrest with especial misgiving. In Russia, this risks being translated into forms of repression if Mr Putin construes the crisis as a threat to his position.

For all his gung-ho approach in Davos, where he more or less berated the American dollar and questioned what he called its "reliability", Mr Putin is aware as the next man that Russia may find it far more difficult to control events at home than western leaders, for all the fragility over which they currently preside.

But, irritatingly for him, or so it must seem, what he described in Davos as "the perfect storm" is gathering strength in his country, its force complicated by a rift between him and the President he set up, Dmitry Medvedev. Worse, the man he assumed would be a temporary figurehead before he (Mr Putin) ran for President again - this time for a period of 12 years - has been exhibiting signs that he is not, after all, as pliant as the world had judged him to be and as Mr Putin assumed he would be.

Orders the Prime Minister gave to disperse anti-government protests that started last December in Vladivostock were not obeyed by the man in charge. This is not the sort of thing Mr Putin tolerates. His reaction to sack the head of internal affairs in the region around Vladivostok met with an obstinate reaction from the man himself. His champion, it is being claimed was... President Medvedev.

If this is correct, it is clear that a power struggle has started in the Kremlin, where corruption is rife and loyalties up for sale. What is very unclear is who will emerge the winner. That the question is asked at all is a measure of how volatile the situation has become in a country unused to volatility. Suddenly, however, Mr Putin's future is not as secure as it was when he championed South Ossetia against the Georgian government - and won.

But this battle will be fought out in Moscow, not in a far eastern region; and it will be in Moscow that Mr Medvedev will either assert himself as the President of Russia or become once more what Mr Putin had in mind for him to be: a figurehead.