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MOSCOW (Reuters) - It was like the bad old days of Soviet TV for Vladimir Pozner, a Russian broadcaster who began his career under Communism, when he found editors had cut parts of a pre-election talk show where he mentioned critics of the Kremlin.

But this is 2012. With censorship grown patchy and half the country online, the uncut program had been uploaded to the web - thanks to viewers in Russia's far east who had caught the show live, before the edited version was broadcast in Moscow later.

"I think it's just a Soviet reflex: 'How can you criticize power?'," said Pozner, who has watched Russian leaders, from Brezhnev to Gorbachev, Yeltsin to Putin, blow hot and cold on political censorship of the media for the past 30 years.

"It's called a hangover in English. Eventually, it passes."

That sentiment echoes many who believe the genie of media freedom is, slowly, pushing its way out of the bottle in Russia, notably since street protests began against the expected return of Vladimir Putin to the presidency at an election on Sunday.

A public who tasted post-Soviet liberties in the anarchic 1990s, combined with new technology, will, many believe, not let the Kremlin force it back in again - despite years of tightening state control under former KGB man Putin, and despite a backlash against small, liberal media since protests began in December.

Ranked 142nd out of 179 countries worldwide on the Reporters Without Borders press freedom index, Russia has seen journalists intimidated, even murdered, for exposing endemic crime and corruption, while privately owned and critical media have been much diminished since Putin first took over the Kremlin in 2000.

Having retained power during his four-year stint as prime minister to his protege, the outgoing president Dmitry Medvedev, Putin has seen control of the media as a vital tool through which he has maintained his widespread popularity.

Yet in the Internet age even the state-controlled networks on which most Russian voters rely have had to offer at least some account of grassroots protests since liberal anger erupted over the handling of the parliamentary election in December.

Some cautious critics see that as little more than a sop to public opinion, in their view as much a stage-managed piece of political machination as the electoral process itself. Yet others believe the shifts of the past few months are real.

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Russian media genie pushing at the bottle