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1 Introduction
Russian civil society in flux
Russian political activism has gone through a turbulent few years, from the seemingly sudden anti-regime mass mobilization of 2011–12 to the strengthening state control over civic activities and to deepening divisions between the opposition and the supporters of the government. These hostile divisions were terribly actualized in the murder of a known opposition leader, Boris Nemtsov, in February 2015.
In December 2011, the Russian opposition got a boost of strength when tens of thousands of people gathered on the streets of Moscow to protest against the recent parliamentary elections that they saw as falsified in favour of the United Russia Party. These anti-government protests were the largest since the perestroika era, and many commenters interpreted the electoral protests of late 2011 as a sudden awakening of Russian civil society (e.g. Alexandrova 2011; Whitmore 2011). People’s anger started to grow after the Prime Minister at the time, Vladimir Putin, and President Dmitry Medvedev announced in September 2011 that they would ‘swap places’. This kind of announcement, three months before the elections, was interpreted as the country leaders being too arrogant, and the opposition seized the opportunity to mobilize people’s dissatisfaction. The real trigger for people to take their disappointment to the streets was the parliamentary elections in December 2011, which were reported as falsified in many ways.
The year 2012 disrupted Russian politics when continuing demonstrations forced the government to recognize the protesters on the streets. In the summer of 2012, newscasts (even more so in the West than in Russia) were focused on the anti-Kremlin performance of the Pussy Riot punk collective and their sentencing to time in jail. Many public figures, artists, journalists and celebrities joined the protests and voiced their opposition to Putin. Journalists and scholars talked about breaking the Putin-era social contract that had guaranteed the citizens’ economic stability, personal economic freedom, and a feeling of security in exchange for their political loyalty (Babaeva 2012; Oxford Analytica 2012). This contract has been interpreted to mean that people could act freely in their private lives and manage their business relatively freely, as long as they had not voiced their grievances or criticism towards the state in public discussion.
However, after the turbulence of 2012, Russians’ enthusiasm to protest sank. The state leadership has taken a more aggressive stand in both domestic and foreign policies. It has further elaborated the idea of Russia’s state sovereignty and its great power status and strengthened the idea of ‘managed’ democracy, in which society and civic activism are put under the state control. After the mass mobilizations in 2011, 2012 brought many political changes and restrictions on civic and political activism as President Putin took presidency again – with a possibility of ruling for 12 more years. By the end of 2012, the opposition’s rallies started calming down, partly because of the state’s grip strengthening with the demonstration laws and over the foreign funding of non-governmental organizations (NGOs), as well as with regular arrests and criminal cases against the protest leaders and participants. The biggest of these criminal cases is the so-called ‘Bolotnaya 6 case’, which included arrests, investigations and trials of hundreds of protesters who participated in rallies against Putin’s inauguration on Bolotnaia Square on 6 May 2012. The Bolotnaia 6 case has become known for its massive investigation that is said to involve numerous violations of Russian law and the rights of the prosecuted (see e.g. Lally 2013.) Also the European court of Human Rights has requested information from the Russian state about the conditions of the detained (Interfax 2013).
In January 2014, the government dropped investigations of some of the accused of the Bolotnaia 6 case as a part of the its larger campaign on amnestying convicted activists, such as the Pussy Riot members and the former oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky. However, many commentators saw this campaign as a ‘PR stunt’ to polish Russia’s leaders’ image before the Sochi Olympic Games rather than a sign of a freer civil society (e.g. Euronews 2013). During the Sochi Olympic Games in February 2014, the government took a strong stand against dissent in the Olympic city and elsewhere in Russia. During the Games, the first Bolotnaia 6 case prisoners were sentenced in Moscow and hundreds of protesters were arrested outside the courtroom for staging an unsanctioned protest in support of the Bolotnaia prisoners. The sentences and arrests are seen as a sign that the government does not allow dissent in Russia under Putin’s new rule (Gessen 2014).
The opposition has struggled to find recognition in the political environment where criticism towards the government is portrayed as western-paid hooliganism aimed at weakening Russia’s stability and security. Only a small number of people are engaged in opposition activism and protests and their activities are seen as dangerous because of the strong police suppression of protest events. Critical journalists and activists have faced violent attacks and even murders. The latest in this series is the killing of a well-known opposition politician, Boris Nemtsov, in February 2015 near the Kremlin in Moscow. The murder deepened the divisions between the political opposition and the supporters of the Kremlin and raised a great deal of speculation from both sides. Two men from the Caucasus region were arrested for the murder, but the gossip about who really was behind the murder is still going on. The political opposition activists claim that the assassination was organized by the Kremlin or its close associates because Nemtsov was about to release his report on the Russian government’s actions in Ukraine and the pro-government forces have tried to portray the murder as the allegedly western-paid opposition’s attempt to defame and discredit the Putin administration and create chaos in the country.
Finding reliable information about this political struggle is difficult for many Russians. The state has managed to isolate the political opposition from the public debate with its strong control over the mass media. The state and businessmen closely related to the power holders have taken over most of the TV stations and newspapers in the country. The Internet is still fairly unregulated but the web has started to look like a forum for political power struggles and propaganda. The government has also initiated new laws in controlling the online discussions. The political opposition has to put a lot of energy into trying to get its voice heard under the harshening political climate of Russia, which is increasingly being defined by the state propagated suspicion towards the West and western ideals of liberal democracy and human rights.
Besides the government’s strengthening grip over the political opposition, the inner fragmentation of the opposition and its lack of a coherent and unifying political programme also hinder large-scale and sustained mobilization. The opposition has managed to agree on one thing – it is against Putin – but there is no agreement on what to do next. The opposition has not been able to formulate a concrete, alternative vision of a future ‘without Putin’, or a convincing alternative as the future leader who would overthrow the Putin government. As the news blogger Brian Whitmore wrote about the turmoil of the year 2012: ‘It was the year everything changed. It was the year nothing changed’ (Whitmore 2012). After a more successful protest period of 2011–12, the opposition was struggling with its inner conflicts. The coalition of western-minded liberals, imperialists, nationalists, anarchists and communists was too difficult to keep together when the only thing they could agree on was their opposition to Putin. Clashes escalated in February 2013, when one of the leaders of the ‘For Free Elections’ demonstrations, Sergey Udal’tsov, got into a fist-fight with other opposition activists from the oppositional coalition known as the ‘Other Russia’ in a memorial service for their fellow protester who had fled to the Netherlands to escape criminal charges and ended up committing suicide after a negative response to his application for political asylum (Moscow Times 2013).
Why does it seem impossible for the Russian opposition to find a common voice and to sustain contentious action? This research engages with this conundrum by analysing Russia’s civil society and protest culture from the point of view of youth activists participating in an opposition movement. According to Jasper (1997, xi), ‘[p]rotest movements are a good place to look for collective moral visions, with the good and the bad they entail’. He claims that in modern society, social movements are ‘one of the few places where we can see people working new moral, emotional and cognitive sensibilities’. I argue that understanding these moral visions is significant for understanding and analysing the political culture and democratic practices of a society. I approach these questions by analysing how activists’ personal and collective identities are negotiated and performed in the restrictive political environment of Russia and how successful the activists are in mobilizing people in support of their cause. I engage in the debates surrounding Russia’s civil society development, political culture and political participation through a case study of the Russian youth group Oborona (Rossiskoe molodezhnoe dvizhenie Oborona, ‘Defence’). Oborona activists have participated in oppositional activities from 2006 to 2011. This opens up an opportunity to see the political dynamics in the country from the perspective of the politically marginalized – the young, active, oppositional youth in post-Soviet Russia. I suggest that examining this activist group offers a fresh perspective on Russian political culture by showing who is able and willing to engage in civic activism in Russia, and how. Furthermore, Oborona activists have actively taken part in the previous waves of demonstrations, which built the basis for the wider protest movement that started in December 2011 (see Robertson 2012; Volkov 2012). Therefore, by examining the activities, opportunities and challenges of this group, which shares the general goals of the wider ‘non-systemic’ democratic opposition in Russia, my findings contribute to the analysis of the challenges that the political opposition is faced with in today’s Russia.
My research contributes to the discussion on Russian civil society and democratization, by demonstrating how political opportunities and restrictions in today’s Russia affect the activities of the opposition activists, as well as illustrating the specifics of Russian civic activism at the grassroots level. My research demonstrates how the Russian political opposition, and especially its young activists, has been actively protesting against the government in the previous years. Recent research has shown that the 2011–12 protests were not a sudden awakening of civil society in Russia, but that society has been slowly but steadily changing in the 2000s, when the organizational and cultural apparatus for protests was also developing (Robertson 2012; Volkov 2012). This already existing apparatus was put in to action after the electoral fraud in December 2011. According to Robertson (2012, 2–3), various oppositional groups who had organized several protest waves, such as the anti-government ‘Dissenters’ Marchers’ (Marsh Nesoglasnykh) and the Strategy-31 (Strategiia-31) demonstrations demanding the state respect citizens’ constitutional rights, were heavily involved in organizing the post-electoral rallies as well. I show that among these organizers and protesters there were also many young people organized in various oppositional groups from different spectrums of the political credo, who had been actively participating in the street demonstrations but also, and perhaps even more importantly, had been innovative users of the Internet and various social media sites, which was very important in mobilizing people during the recent electoral protests (Lonkila 2012).
My research engages with the wealth of scholarly writing on Russian civil society and the democratization process in the country. The key themes of these studies are state–civil society relations (Evans et al. 2006; Chebankova 2013; Howard 2003; Kulmala 2013; Richter 2009a; Richter 2009b; S. White 2008), western funding of Russian civil society initiatives (Henderson 2003; McIntosh Sundstrom 2006), women’s NGOs and the role of gender in democratization (Kay 2000; Hemment 2007; Salmenniemi 2008), and recently, how the Internet and new technologies shape activism (Lonkila 2008, 2012). However, even though youth have played an important role in many political struggles, for instance in the ‘Colour Revolutions’ in Central Europe and in the former Soviet Union countries (Kuzio 2006; Laverty 2008a), youth political activism in Russia has attracted little attention until very recently (but see Omel’chenko 2005; Omel’chenko and Pilkington 2006). The existing studies on youth political activism in Russia have mainly dealt with the pro-Kremlin youth movements, such as the Nashi (Atwal 2009; Lassila 2007, 2011a; Lassila 2007; Blum 2006; Hemment 2009), while youth opposition activism has been studied less thoroughly (but see Gromov 2009a; Loskutova 2008; Horvath 2011; Robertson 2009; Sperling 2012; Lyytikäinen 2011, 2013). My research contributes to this discussion by showing how youth are also actively organizing against the current government and how Russian oppositional youth activist practices are diverse and constantly evolving.
In many studies, Russian civil society has been characterized as weak because of the low levels of participation of citizens in NGOs, the persistence of personal support networks as alternatives to civil society organizations, citizens’ distrust in public institutions and civil society organizations, as well as civil society organizations’ dependence on foreign funding. Furthermore, Russian NGOs are described as having little or no influence on political processes and decision-making (Crotty 2009; Evans 2002, 2006a; Howard 2003; Knox et al. 2006; McFaul et al. 2004). Russians have often been described as politically apathetic and Russian civil society as almost non-existent due to the nature of ‘managed’ democracy that is seen as suppressing independent civic activism in general, and criticism of the Kremlin in particular (see e.g. Rimskii 2008; Petukhov 2008; Howard 2003). Several commentators have seen passivity and apathy as emblematic of Russian society as a whole (Rimskii 2008, 14–15; Petukhov 2008) and Russian youth has often been portrayed as apathetic and cynical (Blum 2006; Horowitz et al. 2003; McFaul 2003).
This research, by contrast, contributes to the scholarship studying the actually existing grassroots activism and activists’ experiences. The book contributes to our understanding of Russian civil society by showing how and why activists engage with oppositional politics, which questions they choose to politicize or not, and how these choices are related to the Russian political culture. Furthermore, I draw on social performance studies to show how the discursive frameworks of the opposition are reflected in the protest events, and how they become an important space for activists to perform their identities, and analyse how effective these performances are in disseminating their message and reaching the Russian audiences.
This introductory chapter lays out the theoretical and methodological design of the research. In Chapter 2, I move on to examine the socio-historical context of youth politics and civic activism in Russia by examining the history of youth organizations in the Soviet Union and Russia, and the opportunities and restrictions of civic activism in contemporary Russia, as well as introducing the research case study: the youth group Oborona. In Chapter 3, I examine how activist identity is constructed in Oborona. In this chapter I suggest, first, that the activist self-understanding is constructed through identification with the Russian intelligentsia and cultural model of dissidents, and with cosmopolitanism. Furthermore, the activist identity is gendered and embodied in the right activist ‘look’, which is defined by masculinity. This self-understanding of an activist is further reflected in the collective dimensions of activist identity. I argue that instead of political ideologies, friendship, communication, and being together (obshchenie) become the most important base for constructing Oborona’s collective identity. Chapter 4 analyses the Oborona activists’ interpretation and understanding of democracy and civil society. The aim of the chapter is to show how Oborona tries to find its own way between the western ‘imported’ understanding of democracy and civil society and the dominant symbolic order of ‘sovereign democracy’. I show how both the state’s official view on democracy and Oborona’s liberal-democratically oriented interpretation are tied to the political symbols of nationalism and the strong state and its unifying leader, which can be seen as a continuation of the centralized power relationships and the personification of power of the Soviet state. I argue that both of these understandings of democracy are entanglements (Fournier 2010) of Soviet continuities and liberal ideas.
Chapter 5 presents an analysis of how Oborona’s repertoire of action brings together the ideals and norms of the activist identity and discursive frameworks of the movement. In this chapter, I analyse Oborona’s forms of action, mass-demonstrations, direct action, street performances and the movement’s educational activities as social performances (Alexander 2006). I argue that the performance and its actors remain distant from the audiences and this reflects the wider problems of the political opposition and especially the liberals in Russia. In Chapter 6, I conclude my theoretical and empirical findings and link them to the contemporary discussion on Russian political culture, civil society development, and the recent waves of protests and the restrictions on political activism in Russia. I suggest that Oborona as a case study reflects Russian political culture as an entanglement of western and eastern traditions of thought, which become reconstituted in post-Soviet reality and difficult to distinguish (see Fournier 2010). I claim that the recent electoral protest movement suffers from the same problems that eventually led Oborona to dissolve in 2011, on the eve of the larger protest mobilization; the personification of power, difficulties in accommodating all various political views of its participants, engaging with the foreign and somewhat contradictory discursive regime of liberalist and statist views of civil society and democracy, as well as distancing themselves from and ‘othering’ the ‘ordinary’ Russians and their everyday problems.
This research draws on sociological theories on identities, performance and politicization as well as class, gender and generation studies, which also structure the book; every chapter analyses youth activism from a different theoretical perspective. This approach allows me to scrutinize youth political activism from different conceptual perspectives and thus create a many-sided representation of it. In the following section, I introduce the theoretical ‘toolbox’ of the study, which will be further elaborated and deepened in the subsequent chapters.
Identities, social movements and social performances
New social movement theory
In the 1970s and 1980s social movement studies were largely dominated by resource mobilization and political process theories. These approaches shifted attention away from earlier studies that drew on social psychology and collective behaviour theories towards structural, political and organizational analyses. According to Polletta and Jasper (2001, 283–4), the mobilization and political process theorists studying social movements1 focused too much on structural shifts instead of individual interests, motivations, strategic choices and cultural effects of social movement activists, issues which Polletta and Jasper propose as important for a better understanding of social movements. They were based on rational choice of the actors and insisted on the importance of the ‘strategic-instrumental rationality’ in collective action (Cohen 1985, 688). Taylor (2013) sees limitations of resource mobilization and political process approaches mainly in the way they treat status (class, race, gender, nationality) or structurally based interests as the basis of collective grievances (Taylor 2013, 39). Political process theory has been criticized by recent scholars for its state-centeredness; it sees the state as a target of change for social movements. By this definition, the state becomes included in the definition of social movement and ‘political’: to be political, any action needs to target the formal governance of a state (Armstrong and Bernstein 2008, 77).
However, in the mid-1980s researchers turned back to social psychology approaches to social movement studies and a group of ‘new social movement’ theorists (Cohen 1985; Klandermans 1985; Melucci 1985; Touraine 1985) proposed the concept of collective identity as a way to understand people’s motivation for collective action (Taylor 2013, 37; Bernstein 2005). This reawakened interest in socia...
