The Defending “Defenders”

Петр Вячеславович Бизюков – ассоциированный научный сотрудник, Институт социологии РАН; Социологический институт РАН – филиал Федерального научно-исследовательского социологического центра Российской академии наук. Адрес: 190005, Санкт-Петербург, ул. 7-я Красноармейская, д. 25/14. E-mail: petersk@yandex.ru
 Цитирование: Бизюков П.В. (2019) Трудовые протесты в России: территориальная и отраслевая локализация в 2008–2016 гг. // Мир России. Т. 28. № 1. С. 75–100. DOI: 10.17323/1811-038X-2019-28-1-75-100
 Статья посвящена распространению трудовых протестов в географическом и экономическом пространствах. В ее основе лежат данные Мониторинга трудовых протестов, начатого в Центре социально-трудовых прав в 2008 г. В статье описывается методика Мониторинга, в соответствии с которой трудовые протесты – это публичные конфликты, используемые работниками для защиты своих интересов. В тексте перечисляются основные показатели, которые фиксируются по каждой акции. Количество трудовых протестов за 108 месяцев наблюдений (с января 2008 г. до декабря 2016 г.) увеличилось более чем в три раза. Всего в базу данных Мониторинга включена информация о 2516 протестах. В начале рассматривается динамика изменения количества протестов по годам, нарастающая на протяжении всего периода наблюдений. Для того чтобы дать количественную оценку числа протестных акций в России, производится сравнение с двумя странами – Грузией и Кыргызстаном, где с 2016 г. ведется сбор данных по методике Мониторинга.
 Главный фокус статьи – это распределение протестов по регионам и отраслям. На основании данных о числе акций по регионам делается вывод о том, что их распространенность близка к возможному максимуму, а среднее количество протестов, приходящееся на один регион, постоянно увеличивается. Отраслевая структура акций значительно изменилась: за последние годы выступления работников стали чаще происходить в отраслях, где превалирует неформальная занятость, где нет профсоюзов, т.е. там, где отсутствуют или слабо развиты институциональные механизмы регулирования трудовых отношений. И наоборот, доля протестов в промышленности, на крупных предприятиях уменьшилась, и данные Мониторинга показывают, что в промышленном секторе экономики в регулировании трудовых отношений, а значит, и конфликтов, активное участие принимают профсоюзы. Снижение числа протестов в промышленных отраслях приводит к сокращению включенности профсоюзов в протесты. При этом нарастает число стихийных акций в отраслях, где профсоюзов нет или они слабы (бюджетные отрасли). Это позволяет сделать вывод о том, что профсоюзы, опираясь на право и механизмы социального партнерства, т.е. на институциональные регуляторы, смогли снизить уровень напряженности, а там, где их нет, уровень конфликтности повысился.

The Way Home, or the Way to Prison? Gender Legacies and Anti-War Protest in Russia

Single picketing, in which an individual stands in public holding a sign, emerged as a new form of protest in Russia in recent years under the context of increased political repression, and is the last form of protest that does not require prior authorization from authorities. In this article, I develop an understanding of single pickets by examining the evolving dynamics between the state and protestors. I argue that the current practice of single pickets developed as the result of increasingly harsh legal restrictions on public gatherings, and while the Russian state seeks to manage public political action through legal means, protesters continuously find ways to work around or exploit loopholes in the law, in turn shaping new forms of legality in daily life. My analysis is based on tracing the evolution of the laws governing single pickets and online ethnography I conducted during 2020–2021.

The authors offer an original dataset of 4,909 protests across Russia in 2018–2021. The study shows that political and pro-democratic protests do not constitute the majority of protests in Russia, their agenda being mainly concentrated on social and economic issues at the local level. Second, the agenda, not geographic proximity, determines the spread of protests, and a political agenda results in faster dissemination. Third, the main organizer of protests is the Communist Party and not non-systemic parties. Fourth, Moscow and Saint Petersburg lag behind at least three other Russian regions in terms of the strength of local protest activity.

The article presents the results of applied political research. Its purpose is the determination of the scale and nature of the impact of social and media representation of prolonged political protests in the Russian Federation and in the Republic of Belarus in the summer-autumn of 2020 on the Russian national Internet audience, namely, its reference to the crisis events related to the processes of delegitimisation in the Khabarovsk territory and the member state of the Union State. The cybermetric analysis of information flows in social media implemented in the study made it possible to identify gender, age, media location, and geolocation features of the cases’ online representation under consideration. By applying the case-study method, we identified common features, connections and dependencies, and differences between prolonged political protests in the Khabarovsk territory of the Russian Federation and the Republic of Belarus. The event analysis carried out in the course of the study made it possible to record the key growth peaks in user activity dynamics around the protests. On this basis, it was possible to identify triggers that increased the intensity of protests and increased interest to them on social media. Among them, we can distinguish the following: elections, unpopular political decisions, violence by law enforcement agencies, victimhood, participation in protests by women and pensioners.

The right to strike is recognized in the Constitution and the Labor Code of the Russian Federation as a means to resolve collective labor disputes. However, in Russia labor protests come up for discussion much more frequently than strikes. In recent years the number of labor protests in Russia, including various forms of work stoppage, has increased significantly compared to previous years, but the number of legally constituted collective labor disputes and strikes has remained very low. The legislation on resolution of collective labor disputes and mounting strikes is quite restrictive in Russia, and its enforcement also encourages employees to seek alternative ways to settle collective labor conflicts. There is little empirical research on the judicial implementation of these norms and its influence on the enforcement of legislation. Therefore, this paper analyses the reasoning of courts in cases on the legality of strikes, their interpretations of the law, and the impact these decisions have on the enforcement of the legislation on resolution of collective labor disputes and strikes. Our conclusion is that the courts act as another restrictive influence on the resolution of collective labor disputes and the exercise of the right to strike in Russia.

The article presents the results of applied political research, which is to determine the triggers, technologies, and infrastructure of mass political protests in Russia from 2020 to 2021. The implemented event analysis allowed us to establish that the protest mobilisation is carried out in two stages: the primary — based on actions around the protest symbol, the secondary — based on dissatisfaction with the existing political regime, the socio-economic situation, and the actions of law enforcement agencies. Cognitive mapping allowed us to establish that the active use of affective methods of forming discourses enables us to ensure users’ emotional involvement in protest information flows, which affects their attitude to them. Cybermetric analysis has demonstrated that the features of Telegram as a protest platform allow for effective mobilisation and moderation of protest activity.

This article is based on the results of field studies of members of Protestant religious organizations operating in the Southern, Middle and Polar Urals. Ukrainians represent the largest ethnic group among the Protestants of the studied regions, having a "foreign" origin; studies have revealed that the largest ethnic group that is the bearer of Protestantism in the Urals are Russians. The purpose of this work is to determine the value orientations of Ukrainians-members of the Protestant communities of the Ural region, the results of processing field materials are presented in comparison with data on Russian Protestants. Research evidence shows that more than half of both groups are not prosperous theologians. However, there are more potential “heroes of faith” who are ready to endure various difficulties and who do not consider achieving success in life an indispensable attribute of Christian life among Ukrainian respondents. In our opinion, this fact is explained by the fact that Protestantism historically has more rooted traditions in Ukraine than in Russia - members of the Protestant formations of the Ural regions who were born and lived for some time in Ukraine, having arrived in the Russian Federation, could bring with them more evangelically oriented values.

This paper analyzes the mechanisms of creating a symbolic connection between several generations of protesters in the late USSR and in Putin’s Russia. Based on an analysis of the periodical press, data on human-rights violations during public protests, and published sources on the history of Soviet dissidents, the article traces how and for what purposes protesters in the 2000s and 2010s used the symbolic and practical legacy of Soviet dissidents, what additional meanings of protest were actualized with these linkages, and how references to specific spaces of protest actions transformed the content and form of public protests. Using Charles Tilly’s concept of “repertoires of contention,” I argue that references to the dissidents’ legacy were not limited to the discursive level of repeating slogans but included various public actions that memorialized and/or reconsidered the Soviet dissidents’ tradition of contesting the state monopoly over public space.

Red Square is a symbolic place for the Moscow dissidence protests. Russian artists, writers and dissidents have frequently used the history of the square’s memory as a crucial and fundamental issue within the framework of their strategy. Haunting images associated with Red Square’s past, permanently returning in the history of the Russian activism, always refer both to universal narratives of the politics of protest and to the specific contexts producing entirely new meanings. Each time, through their public actions artists create new meanings for the Red Square’s space – they expose the existing limits of the power apparatus and call for the right to legitimize it, therefore contesting the links between the theatre of legitimacy and the public space. From this perspective, the space of protest becomes a fundamental instrument of political action, and the square - ordinarily used in the established order to manifest the government’s symbolic authority - this time becomes a kind of technique as well as a material body support in the politics of resistance.

The 7th of November (October 25 in the Old Style/Julian calendar)—the day of the Great October Socialist Revolution—was celebrated as a National Day in the Soviet Russia/USSR from 1918 till 1991. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the revolutionary background of this date has consistently been watered down by Russia’s succeeding governments with other connotations being intensively invoked and activated at the official level. Since 1992, the National Day has been celebrated on June 12, timed to the date in 1990 when the ‘Declaration of State Sovereignty of the Russian Federation’ was adopted. The status of the 7th of November has thus changed: in 1995, it was named the ‘Day of Military Glory’ in commemoration of the historical parade held in Moscow at the Red Square on November 7, 1941. In 1996–2004, it had an official status of the ‘Day of Accord and Reconciliation’. In 2005, the date ceased to be a public holiday because November 4 was introduced as the ‘National Unity Day/Consolidation Day’ in order to divert attention from the controversies of the Revolution Day still celebrated by quite a number of Russian citizens. Considering the significance of the 7th of November in peoples’ memory and the importance of promoting patriotic feelings for nation-building, Russia’s authorities pay homage to the 7th of November as the day of 1941 parade, which boosted the morale of the Soviet troops and greatly contributed to their success in the subsequent World War II battles. Drawing on the memory politics theory, the chapter discusses the evolution of November 7 celebrations in post-Soviet Russia and the way this date is currently perceived by people of different age groups.

The study analyzes the visual dimensions of computer-mediated political irony in Russia. Based on material published between 2011 and 2014 concerning significant events in Russian history, such as the re-election of Vladimir Putin, the rise of the Russian protest movement, the Crimean crises, and so on, the article discusses ironical pictures published on weblogs and social networks, together with 56 interviews of creators and distributors of the content. The results of the study show that in contemporary Russia, novel forms of political dialogue have become widespread in new media, initiated by people who use irony and visual images to express their feelings about political events, everyday routines, and politicians’ activities. Reflection, context, and visual representation offer original vocabularies for organizing public dialogue on the Internet. The findings show a fundamental subject of visual political irony as a routine, rather than eventfulness. The creation and consumption of the content includes elements of slacktivism and to a lesser extent activism.

The paper considers the problem of empirical search for models of online mobilization of the youth protest movement in the modern Russian metropolis. In the political practice of many countries, young people have become one of the most important objects of influence of various political actors, both internal and external. Also, in Russian political protest, young people are traditionally the driving force. In the last decade, the online environment has become the most effective and operational communication field for the construction of the political process. The greatest political impact was achieved by the online organization of protest actions, the key element of the strategy of which was the mobilization of the masses. The objectives of the study are to use multidimensional methods of analysis to identify the features that influence the formation of online mobilization models, and to give a descriptive description of each of the models. To study the problem, an online survey of representatives of the younger generation in all megacities of the Russian Federation was conducted, during which latent factors of political action in the online environment, online mechanisms for attracting the attention of users of social networks to political problems that play the role of a protest trigger, and types of political participation were identified. With the help of classification methods, the obtained factors were obtained four models of online mobilization of the political prosthesis of the youth of modern Russia.

This article examines Russian citizens’ support for and participation in civic activism today, nearly three decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Specifically, we consider how activism has evolved over time in two key issue sectors—environmentalism and women’s rights. We draw on a recent nationally representative survey that challenges existing stereotypes of Russians as apathetic and/or fearful of participating in civic activism, showing, to the contrary, that Russians are willing and interested in engaging in public activities. Data from field interviews with environmental and feminist activists, along with the authors’ past twenty-five years of research in these areas of Russian civic activism, allow us to identify an ongoing shift from professionalization and formalization of NGOs in the 1990s and early 2000s, to informal organizing, often assisted by social media platforms, today. We argue that the three major social and political drivers of this change in Russian civic activism are the contraction of political freedoms, the decline in foreign funding, and the availability of web-based communication and fundraising technologies.

This article presents the results of a comprehensive analysis of 61 dissertations in theology (10 doctoral and 51 candidate) defended in Russia between 2017 and 2024. The study employs a mixed-methods approach, combining quantitative and qualitative analysis. For the first time, numerical parameters of the dissertations (length, structure, publication activity) have been collected and systematized, establishing average standards for such works. Using the first dissertation by Archpriest P.V. Khondzinsky as a case study, the key methodological challenges faced by the discipline at its inception are identified. A qualitative analysis of the methodological sections reveals three stable methodological strategies in contemporary theological research: historical-scientific, philological-hermeneutical, and the strategy of theological correlation. It is concluded concludes that Russian theology has completed its institutional formation and is now in a phase of active methodological reflection. The findings are of practical value for graduate students, applicants, and scientific supervisors.