Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia has called for dialogue between the government and society.
"One should learn to express one's disagreement without yielding to provocations or destroying the country. We have exhausted the limit of division... The government should adjust its course through dialogue and through listening to society, and then everything will be all right," His Holiness said in a Christmas interview broadcast on Rossiya 1 TV channel on Saturday.
Every citizen in a free society should have a right to express his opinion or disagreement about government policies, the Patriarch said.
"If people are deprived of this right, it is perceived as the restriction of freedom, this is very painful... Yet, certain wisdom is necessary".
"If demonstrations ahead of the 1917 revolution had ended in the expression of peaceful protests and had not led to a bloody revolution and a fratricidal war, Russia would have had a more than 300 million population and would have challenged or maybe even surpassed the United States from the point of view economic development," the Patriarch said.
"Back then, we failed to preserve the balance and wisdom. We destroyed our country. Why did it happen? Because people's protests, often fair, are very skillfully exploited by power-seeking political forces".
His Holiness mentioned calls by the democrats at the end of Soviet era for destroying the nomenclature and ousting all those who move around in black Volga cars.
Their calls "brought thousands out to the streets... So what happened? They seized power and replaced black Volgas with black Mercedes cars, installed flashing lights and divided the country's resources," the Patriarch said.
It's an example of "how easily people can be tempted", he added.
"The same thing happened during the 1917 revolution... Steal the stolen. And people took the call and broke into apartments, destroyed estates and set the country ablaze. And where is the stolen? The new elite got something, but did life become any better for the people?"
A present-day task is that "correctly expressed protests should cause the political course to be adjusted", the Patriarch said. "That's the main thing. If the government remains insensitive to protests, it's a very bad sign".