In Today’s Russia, Dissent Means Keeping Hope Alive

Maria Chiara Franceschelli

After harsh police repression during the first weeks after the full-scale invasion, protests shifted from mass street demonstrations to more dispersed and individual action. From a social-movement theory perspective, what we see is the increase of so-called “performative” activism and the politics of small deeds. For instance, graffiti, notes left around the city, or private political conversations in one’s individual sphere. Many Telegram channels were created to provide alternative sources of information about the war, to fight state propaganda.

This happens when dissent doesn’t find a space to thrive in the public sphere and cannot be channeled into organized mass mobilization due to the lack of the necessary infrastructure. Still, we have also seen another kind of opposition: cases of violence like Molotov cocktails thrown at army recruitment stations.

The kind of protests we’ve seen hardly lead to policy change, let alone the removal of the current government. But they are useful to keep dissent alive.

The re-signification of public rituals was also an important way to express dissent. For example, ahead of the [March 2024] presidential elections, hundreds of thousands of people signed in support of Boris Nadezhdin’s candidacy. The immediate stop to the “special military operation” in Ukraine was the first point in his program.

Supporting his candidacy was an extremely risky and tiring process. People had to stand in line for hours, with temperatures dropping as low as minus 20 degrees Celsius. They were often filmed, and their data was registered and collected by the state authorities — like a list of people who officially don’t support Putin’s presidency. All of this, in a country where electoral fraud is the norm.

Nadezhdin’s candidacy was eventually rejected by the Central Electoral Committee…