Russian Civil Societies: Conventional and "Virtual"

Abstract

Recent developments in Russian politics present a challenge to the traditional understanding of civil society. In hybrid regimes like Russia, conventional civil society is often weak. But as recent events in Russia demonstrate, with the rise of the Internet, ”virtual” civil society-fostered through dense networks of online interaction-may function as a substitute, providing the basis for civic activism even in the presence of an anemic conventional civil society. This mixture of weak conventional civil society and robust ”virtual” civil society imparts a particular dynamic to state-society relations within hybrid regimes in the Internet age. As this essay demonstrates, ”virtual” civil society breeds weak political organization and a false sense of representativeness within political oppositions, at the same time as injecting a greater degree of volatility into politics and presenting incumbent regimes with particular challenges for repression.