The campaign was so low-key that Kremlin-controlled television networks hardly mentioned it, and the turnout in Moscow barely reached 15 percent. The Kremlin knew the United Russia party, the ruling pro-Putin behemoth, would predictably win most of the 1,500 council seats. 
The United Russia candidates lost all 12 seats in the district, a leafy neighbourhood of historic buildings dominated by the statue of first cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin on top of a 40-metre high titanium spire. Opposition candidates fielded by Yabloko, Russia's oldest liberal democratic party, won here by a landslide.
Yulia Kuchumova, an IT expert and mother of three, was one of the 12 winners whose United Russia rivals included an 81-year-old film star, the mother of two famous circus performers, and top education and healthcare officials. 
Throughout Moscow, more than 250 anti-Kremlin candidates, most of them affiliated with Yabloko, got one-seventh of council seats coming second in the vote after United Russia despite official pressure, bureaucratic hurdles, and vote-rigging, according to Golos, Russia's last remaining independent election monitor.
Their coalition led by opposition leader Dmitry Gudkov outran three political parties with a presence in the State Duma, Russia's lower house of parliament, including the Communists with their traditionally active elderly voters.
"We are a number two political force to be reckoned with," Gudkov, who was kicked out of the Duma for his criticism of Moscow's 2014 annexation of Crimea and support for separatists in eastern Ukraine, told a news conference in Moscow on Monday. "Even at such elections one can win, and we proved it."
Their victory may seem miniscule and insignificant - similar elections throughout Russia on Sunday made United Russia an almost total winner. But their gains in Moscow are an unexpected thorn in Kremlin's side and Russia's marginalised, fractured and besieged opposition could use their seats as a springboard in the 2018 Moscow mayoral election. 
"The political preference of Muscovites are changing," Valentin Gorbunov, head of the Moscow Election Committee, told Russian media.
Gudkov's coalition used a groundbreaking online platform that resembled a Lego toy or a simple video game. 
The platform helped more than 1,000 candidates - most of them inexperienced, first-time politicians - file registration documents and financial reports, and design and print out campaign leaflets. It helped them transparently collect donations, build teams, post updates online, and even plan door-to-door campaigning. 
"We created a new technology of running election campaigns, we call it 'political Uber', and this Uber opened up political doors to newcomers," Gudkov said.
The platform's creators wanted to eliminate the elitism of politics with obligatory and expensive campaign headquarters, lawyers, press services and consultants, as well as reliance on television commercials and connections in the halls of power.
"We decided to change this paradigm in politics and make it accessible to the people," Vitali Shkliarov, who led a team effort to create the platform.
"That's why we have the first political incubator, political Uber that lets average people without party [affiliations], without big money to participate." 
Before joining Gudkov, Shkliarov worked in various capacities on election campaigns of former US president Barack Obama and Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders. The experience, however, could not just be transplanted to Russian political soil because of fundamental legal and cultural differences, he said. 
Another major factor that contributed to the success of the anti-Putin candidates was the Kremlin's own tactics of neglecting the campaign's importance.
"The elections were not seen as that significant to make the presidential administration run it, they let it slide, and Gudkov used the chance and promoted his candidates by using a low turnout and mobilising a minority" of voters, Denis Volkov, a sociologist with the Moscow-based independent pollster Levada Center.
Levada's polls show only about 15 percent of Muscovites are ready to vote for liberal democrats, Volkov said.
Their image has been tarnished by hysterical and perennial campaigns on Kremlin-controlled television networks that accuse them of accepting money from the US State Department and plotting to dismember Russia at Washington's behest.