The fall of Europe’s last Communist regime in Moldova may have been a triumph of the ballot box but it also represents another success for the pretty-girl theory of revolution.

This theory, which I first heard from a friend in Armenia, holds that popular upheavals only stand a chance of success if a country’s most beautiful young women come out on to the streets.

The idea being that even the most politically indifferent young men want to be where the pretty girls are and that this creates a critical mass at demonstrations that causes a regime to lose confidence in its ability to prevail. To paraphrase Marx, the young men feel they have nothing to lose but their virginity.

The idea has its attractions in an age of rolling live television news. Faced with the usual authoritarian array of paunchy, prematurely aged apparatchiks, who wouldn’t choose to side with firebrand babes advocating a beautiful democratic tomorrow? Revolution is sexy, reaction is for dads.

The election in Moldova was a re-run of the poll in April that prompted an outcry over ballot-rigging and brought 10,000 protesters on to the streets against the ruling Communists. Organisers of the first day’s peaceful protest included Natalia Morar, who spread the word on social-networking websites to urge a stand for democracy.

Natalia is young and undeniably attractive, but she also exposes the limitations of the theory. Beauty alone is not enough — it takes brains, commitment and courage. Natalia took personal risks to defy the regime and was under constant surveillance by the authorities, who have threatened to prosecute her for riots that erupted the next day outside Parliament, even though she was not there and condemned the violence.

The pretty girls turned out in Moldova’s capital Chisinau, however, and the scale and passion of the street protests emboldened the opposition to boycott parliament. This forced a dissolution that triggered last month’s election.

The theory also holds elsewhere in the former Soviet Union. Recall Ukraine’s Orange Revolution, where the grimy miners of Donetsk summoned to Kiev to support the old regime were no match for the students backing the glamorous Yuliya Tymoshenko. And what is the rose, the symbol of Georgia’s pro-Western revolution, if not a display of romantic devotion to beauty?

It may be hard to credit in London, but it is the allure of Brussels that inspires young democrats in many former Soviet republics. The European Union tantalises them with the prospect of a more fulfilling life, which explains why the Kremlin will ultimately lose out in the political beauty contest.

Although communism has given way to a cult of beauty as Russia’s dominant ideology, the country seems immune to democratic upheaval as long as its legions of pretty women remain indifferent to politics. But Dostoyevsky declared that beauty would save the world so the stiletto march of history may be on their side.

Their appetite for fashionable clothes, expensive perfumes, smart restaurants and exotic holidays makes these women instinctive market capitalists. Political theorists insist that democracy is the best means to defend these freedoms, so it follows that sooner or later they will raise their immaculately manicured fists in protest.

The pretty girls were out in force again in Chisinau after Moldova’s election, but they were back to doing what they do best — strolling languidly in revealing fashions along its tree-lined boulevards in the summer sunshine. Their work was done.

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