Introduction

Abstract

Alexander Etkind situates the successes and volumes of the protest movement against the endemic problems of the post-Soviet petrostate. In the modern world, resource-dependent states make their population economically and politically irrelevant for the purposes of the 'elites' that run these states. Many thousands of women and men marched through the Russian capital in the winter of 2011-12, protesting against election fraud, fearing the police, and surviving the frost. Nobody knew what would happen to their country during the next five years: the wars launched in Ukraine and Syria, massive recession, corruption scandals, and more election fraud. Russia's decline had started well before the electoral crisis of 2011, but it was masked by exorbitant oil prices that were believed to be an organic, endless feature of the modern economy. Sociologists have depicted the protesters as young educated urbanites- the Moscow middle class, 'the advanced minority', the 'creative class'.