A LITTLE past four o’clock in the afternoon, Yevgenia Chirikova
piled into the back of a dusty Mitsubishi sport-utility vehicle
with her campaign staff for the day: Nikolai Lyaskin, her 30
year-old campaign manager, and two pensioners who had
volunteered to pass out fliers. She headed toward Oak Park in
the city of Khimki. Ms Chirikova, who is 35 years-old with a
bright, round face and a short tussle of blond hair, is running
for mayor of Khimki, a town of 200,000 people 20km north of
Moscow.  In Soviet times, Khimki was a closed city full of
factories producing military avionics. As Moscow has mushroomed
in the last two decades, it has grown into a commuting suburb
full of educated professionals who work in the capital. In
recent years it has also become an epicenter of civic protest,
as a movement–led by Ms Chirikova—to save a local forest from
destruction to make way for a new, 43-kilometre toll road gained
national attention. In 2010, it inspired one of Moscow’s largest
demonstrations before those that br