Dissident Groups Research Articles

Emotional attitude and motives of dislike as predictors of discriminatory attitudes

The emotional attitude towards outgroup representatives may differ depending on the target of discrimination. Establishing the role of emotional relationships and the motivation of dislike in adherence to certain combined types of discriminatory attitudes will contribute to the development of measures to counteract them. The aim of the study is to establish emotional attitudes towards representatives of outgroups and the motives of dislike, which are predictors of discriminatory attitudes. The study involved 190 people of both sexes (men — 36.6%), aged 20–40 years. The survey methods of direct and indirect assessment of discriminatory attitudes, affective reactions towards representatives of discriminated groups, motives of dislike, methods of mathematical data processing (descriptive statistics, correlation and regression analyses, modeling method) were used. The combination of forms of emotional attitude and motivation in the prediction of types of discriminatory attitudes, as well as direct and indirect effects of emotional relationships on generalized forms of discriminatory attitudes, has been revealed. Anger and anxiety act as emotional attitudes towards representatives of outgroups, causing a general discriminatory attitude, while interest and disgust contribute to its reduction. The predictors of discriminatory attitudes towards socially vulnerable groups are fear (positive), interest and pity (negative); dissident groups — anger and fear; outsider groups — anger and disgust; social status groups — irritation and aggression (positive), disgust and interest (negative). The strongest motivational predictors of discriminatory attitudes are the motivation of competition in the labor market in the case of dissident, socially-status and even socially unprotected groups, as well as hostility based on an emotional attitude in the case of dissident and socially-outsider groups. Various emotional attitudes and motivations of rejection towards outgroup representatives explain a significant part of the dispersion of generalized forms of discriminatory attitudes. Generalized discriminatory attitudes are characterized by heterogeneous emotional conditioning and polymotivation.

From liberation to freedom: Governing the “ghetto” in post-war Hungary

This article investigates the relationship between race and property in Hungary by examining the shifting discourse of the “ghetto” in post-war Hungary. I unpack the relationship between norms of propriety, or logics of use, associated with colonial epistemologies of land and the various racial projects deployed by the Hungarian state between socialist and liberal-capitalist governments. To operationalize this project, I put into conversation Brenna Bhandar’s racial regimes of ownership with David Theo Goldberg’s racial governmentality to understand the shifting logics and tactics of racial management toward Roma in Hungary. I show that the concept of the ghetto was crucial in the deployment of the racial project “The Elimination of Settlements with Unacceptable Social Conditions,” where the project was understood by officials as a palliative to the damage done by capitalist social relations. On the heels of this project, a group of liberal dissidents led by sociologist and demographer Istvan Kemeny forged a new problematic that centered state interventions on the Roma family. I show how this problematic was used to deny Roma tenure claims in the majority Roma Eighth District during the transition to liberal capitalism.

Regime Type of Foreign Supporters of Resistance Movements and its Impact on State Repression

ABSTRACT Does the regime type of a foreign state supporter of a resistance movement influence violent repression by domestic states facing resistance? Studies on resistance movements have recently begun to explore the effects of third-party support on the behaviors and successes of the movements themselves and the governments they oppose. While this literature has unearthed important findings on the impact of external interventions on behalf of resistance groups, one area of research that remains unexplored is how the political features of third-party actors shape the behavior of governments that face resistance movements. This study investigates how the domestic political characteristics of foreign supporters of resistance movements affect the repressive behaviors of domestic states facing resistance. Looking specifically at the regime type of foreign state supporters of opposition groups, we argue that resistance movements that receive assistance from democratic foreign states deter domestic governments facing resistance from using violent repression. Such governments recognize the selection effects associated with democratic intervention and the reputational costs associated with human rights practices and thus, they are less likely to commit physical violence against dissidents. Our findings for resistance campaigns during the period of 1981–2013 support our expectations that external support from democratic states for resistance movements reduces the likelihood of domestic governments facing resistance using violent repression against dissident groups.

Youth responses to state-manufactured diaspora mobilization: Turkey’s diaspora governance and the politics of selective engagement

ABSTRACT Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) has implemented transnational policies to strengthen ties among diaspora youth in Europe with Turkey. However, these policies have been highly selective and geared towards regime-loyal groups in the diaspora. This article focuses on the group-level dynamics of AKP’s transnational youth outreach and examines the responses of dissident youth in the diaspora to these policies. We argue that there is significant variation in how AKP’s youth outreach strategies are received by diaspora youth and that the AKP’s state-sponsored intervention in diasporic spaces not only transforms loyalist diaspora organizations, but also affects the identification and mobilization dynamics of dissident groups.

Ensembles maquiniques en fugue: féminismes et performativité dans deux groupes de musique andine d'Argentine

ABSTRACT In this article we describe and comparatively analyze the performances of two community Andean music ensembles that represent two regions of Argentina with contrasting characteristics, and that constitute the two most important referents of groups of women and dissidents in Argentina. In this opportunity, we will focus on the performative practices of the women's Band from Tilcara Nuestra Señora de Fátima, Jujuy, and the Mama Quilla Community, from the Buenos Aires Metropolitan Area. The objective is to understand the relationship between the experience-in-the-world understood as a projection oriented towards a cosmogony with Andean roots and the aesthetic-political qualities that reinstate the question of the scope of dissident feminism to produce other modes of action and political consciousness.

Ազգային միացյալ կուսակցության հիմնադրումը և նրա դերն ու նշանակությունը Խորհրդային Հայաստանում 1960-80-ական թթ․ ընթացող այլախոհական շարժման ընթացքում / The Establishment of the National United Party and its Function And Importance in Armenian Society during the 1960s–1980s Dissent Movement

Dissident groups started to emerge in the USSR in the 1960s and later extended to Soviet Armenia. There, dissidents expressed their opinions in three main ways. But the fight for Armenia's independence to be restored was at the heart of the dissident movement. Following the completion of the concepts debated in Armenian patriotic circles, the National United Party was created in 1966 and assumed leadership of the campaign for the liberation of Armenia and the restoration of statehood. It was of extraordinary international importance across the USSR, not only in Soviet Armenia.

Tensions in how sexual and gender dissidents live in the public space of the urban center of Concepción

Using urbanism with a gender perspective, the article presents some results from a study that aimed to characterize the forms and tensions sexogeneric dissidents live in the urban center of Concepción and the elements of spatial design that affect them. A qualitative research approach was used to respond to this goal. Collective mapping was carried out with the communities under study to establish significant places in the public space, followed by a series of semi-structured interviews as data collection techniques. After their transcription, a thematic analysis was made, identifying the shared experiences of those who took part. The findings show that the different activities and practices of dissident groups in the public space take place within a constant state of alertness, modulated, to a large extent, by the perception of insecurity in a place. It was also possible to define the tensions perceived in the public spaces of the urban center. The perceptions, practices, and ways of living dissidence, alongside the tensions produced in these processes, express the need to address the gender and diversity approach in planning and urban design processes to move toward more inclusive and equitable cities for all.

Multimodal online dissident culture in Instagram: A critique of the Turkish economy

Ever-present mass surveillance has blocked the flourishing of a traditional dissident culture in Turkey. Focusing on popular ‘just for fun’ Instagram accounts during the lira's freefall that began in the autumn of 2021, this study seeks to identify the creative strategies for digital social resistance embedded in multimodal content sharing of posts, which are composed of visuals, text, and sound. For this, we employed a multimodal-type analysis of Instagram posts regarding Turkey's economic crisis, followed by an interpretative content analysis aiming to (1) identify, categorize, and compile a typology of the main countersurveillance strategies inherent in multimodal posts, such as memes, edited videos, and animations, Photoshop-crafted still images, and (2) explore the contextual traits of the connected dissident culture. We discuss how these multimodal-type posts support connected dissident group formation while maintaining confidentiality while criticizing governmental conduct of economic policy making in Turkey.

Dampak paparan radiasi sinar x lingkungan terhadap leukosit dari petugas radiologi

White blood cells are part of the hematopoetic system that is radiosensitive and are markers for determining the effects and intensity of ionizing radiation. This quantitative study aims to see the effect of ionizing radiation (x-rays) from x-ray services on the white blood cells of radiology officers at advanced health facilities in Pare District, Kediri Regency between September 2022, and January 2023. Using the slovin formula, a total of 60 participants were determined, 30 radiology nurses and 30 comparison groups of administrative officers. When viewed as a whole, the relative number of white blood cells there was no significant difference between the radiology officer group and the administrative officer, but the administrative officer group tended to have a a little higher white blood cell count. Significant differences occurred in the relative number of neutrophils with a significance of 0.0001 (0.05) Neutrophils of radiology officer tended to be smaller than the dissident group. The number of lymphocytes of radiology officer is different from administrative officer and tends to have higher count. Based on the findings it can be indicated if x-ray exposure affects the white blood cell count.

The political discourse of Comunes regarding FARC-EP dissidents in Colombia

ABSTRACT The following paper aims to explore the political discourse of the party heir to the FARC-EP, now known as Comunes, in relation to the phenomenon of dissident groups that see themselves as continuing the legacy of the defunct guerrilla, and which have proliferated after the signing of the Peace Agreement in late 2016. Based on nine in-depth interviews with political figures who have occupied or occupy relevant positions in the current political party, we explore the issues that enable us to understand how this phenomenon has taken place. The aim is to give a voice both to the official party line and to the critical sector, which have formed a kind of political divide since January 2021. Both sides have a shared understanding of the structural and institutional aspects that have led to the emergence of these armed groups, although they differ on other aspects, in particular, regarding their position towards the armed group led by alias ‘Gentil Duarte’ and, above all, the group known as ‘Segunda Marquetalia’. Since August 2019, the latter group of dissidents has been led by alias ‘Iván Márquez’, previously the head of the FARC-EP’s negotiating delegation during the peace process.

The Castrates, the Specter of Pugachev, and Religious Policy under Nicholas I

The Castrates, the Specter of Pugachev, and Religious Policy under Nicholas I Maureen Perrie (bio) The tenure of L. A. Perovskii in the Ministry of the Interior (1841–52) witnessed a growing interest by the tsarist government in the collection of information about the Old Believers, the traditionalist Orthodox Christians who rejected the church reforms introduced under Patriarch Nikon in the 17th century. Perovskii's policies have been well described by Thomas Marsden in his book on religious toleration in 19th-century Russia. Marsden sees Perovskii's approach as marking a new stage in government policy toward the Schism. By stressing its political significance and depicting it as a potential threat to the security of the state, Perovskii laid the basis for the policies of his successor, D. G. Bibikov, who in 1853–55 embarked on a campaign of harsh repression of Old Belief.1 Marsden identifies three main areas in which Old Belief was found to be a political threat in the mid-19th century. First, in 1846 the priested Old Believers (popovtsy) established an episcopate in Austrian Belaia Krinitsa which could ordain priests for their community in Russia, thereby evading the restrictions on their acquisition of priests that had been imposed by the government of Nicholas I. Second, the community of priestless Old Believers (bezpopovtsy) based in the Preobrazhenskii Cemetery in Moscow was claimed to harbor antistatist elements who refused to pray for the tsar, while some of them even regarded the monarch as the Antichrist. And finally, in 1850 one of the fact-finding expeditions that Perovskii sent to the localities to collect information "discovered" in Iaroslavl´ Province the sect of beguny (Runaways) or stranniki (Wanderers), whose identification of the tsar as Antichrist had led them to avoid all engagement with the state and its institutions, thereby committing acts that officialdom understandably [End Page 299] considered to be criminal, such as nonpayment of taxes and refusal to register for the census or provide recruits for the armed forces.2 Although Marsden provides a detailed and thoroughly researched account of Perovskii's policies toward the Old Believers, his decision to focus on the schismatics, rather than the non-Orthodox sects, means that he only briefly mentions Perovskii's interest in the Castrates (skoptsy), which first drew the government's attention to the political aspects of religious dissidence as early as 1843.3 In this article I examine the government's investigations into the skoptsy in 1843–45 to demonstrate that they regarded them as a threat not only because, as Marsden states, they identified Kondratii Selivanov, the founder of their sect, with Tsar Peter III (who had reigned briefly in 1762), but also because Perovskii's officials suspected that they regarded Selivanov as a potential Pugachev, the Don cossack claiming to be Peter III who had led a mass popular uprising against the government of Catherine II ("the Great") in 1774–75.4 Since the skoptsy also believed that Selivanov (who had died in 1832) was still alive, the prospect of a new insurrection led by a pretender-tsar (samozvanets) was still—the government feared—an immediate one. Such an insurrection could involve not only large numbers of Old Believers, as the Pugachev uprising in the 18th century had done, but also discontented members of the lower classes more generally. Moreover, because of their belief that Peter III was still alive, the skoptsy rejected the legitimacy of his successors, including the reigning tsar, Nicholas I. In this respect—Perovskii's advisers suggested—they resembled other religious dissidents, especially the more radical Old Believer priestless sects who viewed the tsar as the Antichrist. Thus in spite of the relatively small numbers of skoptsy, it was argued that they had much in common with other more numerous dissident groups who shared their hatred of the existing order. The reports on the skoptsy compiled by Perovskii's advisers—I [End Page 300] argue—paved the way for a broader mood of suspicion within government of the potentially politically subversive nature of religious dissent that would eventually lead to the extreme repression of the "Bibikov system" of 1853–55. The article therefore makes a contribution to our understanding of government policy not...

From doctrine to detonation: Ideology, competition, and terrorism in campaigns of mass resistance

This study proposes an organizational mechanism that links ideology to the use of terrorism in mass dissident campaigns. Ideology affects the level of competition among factions within mass dissident campaigns by shaping whether actors see their interactions as a positive- or zero-sum game. We identify ideological diversity within a campaign and the degree to which ideologies embrace the principle of pluralism as key factors affecting the intensity of factional competition and, consequently, the occurrence of terrorism. We introduce new data on the ideologies of campaigns from the Nonviolent and Violent Campaigns and Outcomes 2.0 dataset and use causal mediation analysis to test our proposed mechanism. We find that greater ideological diversity within a campaign increases the likelihood of terrorism by increasing factional competition. We also find that the presence of a pluralist ideology is associated with a lower likelihood of terrorism by the lowering of factional competition. By shedding light on the mechanisms that link ideology to terrorism, this study helps advance our understanding of why dissident groups might decide to use terrorism tactics within the context of a campaign of mass resistance.

Strategies of discrediting: attacks on feminist activists in Turkey

ABSTRACT The Istanbul Feminist Night March has been organised since 2003, and it has the distinction of being the most participatory feminist protest organised in Turkey. As the space for civil society in Turkey shrinks, feminists are the only dissident group that continue to take to the streets. However, the Feminist Night March has been banned by either the governor or the police under the pretext of ‘non-permitted places for protests’ in recent years. Despite the ban, hundreds of women gathered each year, but the intensity of the police violence escalated, and several cases have been taken to court against protestors since 2021. These attacks on feminist activists and the Feminist Night March take place against the backdrop of multiple attacks on women’s rights and gender equality in Turkey, which is symbolised in Turkey’s withdrawal from the Istanbul Convention. In this article, the attacks on the March and activists will be discussed within the framework of how the Turkish government attempts to discredit feminists and feminist protest to achieve their anti-gender and family-oriented agenda.

The repression of the communist regime in Yugoslavia against political opponents in the Socialist Republic of Croatia in the 1970s

The paper analyzes the arrest and trial of a group of opponents of the communist regime in Yugoslavia in the mid-1970s in the Socialist Republic of Croatia, who were convicted of founding a terrorist organization that collaborated with Croatian anti-Yugoslav émigrés in the West. The verdict is compared with the investigative documents of the Yugoslav intelligence service, but also with the authorized record of the conversation that the author of this paper had with the first defendant Tomislav Držić in 2019. It is argued that this was a group of regime dissidents whose activity consisted of anti-regime conversations, writing anti-regime texts that were not disseminated, reading Croatian émigrés' propaganda materials and Držić's occasional contacts with émigré in Canada Stjepan Dubičanac, rather than a terrorist organization that could seriously shake the regime.

Audiovisual Tactics of Resistance of the Polish Anti-Communist Opposition in the 1980s as Illustrated by Tomasz Łabędź’s Kalendarz Wojny (War Calendar)

This study is an interdisciplinary presentation of the changing media paradigm of the Polish anti-communists opposition in the 1980s. The article, in particular, emphasizes the first production of the Polish émigré media institution Video Kontakt, titled War Calendar, directed by Tomasz Łabędź. Interpreted as an example of audiovisual tactics of resistance, his work employed subversion and counterpoint to expose the discursive hypocrisy of the communist regime in Poland. The article also discusses the support that Polish dissident groups received from the Western trade unions and government agencies leading to the ‘paralel society’ with its own communication potential.

Dynamics of peace or legacy of rebel governance? Patterns of cooperation between FARC-ex-combatants and conflict-affected communities in Colombia

ABSTRACT In the academic literature, it is widely accepted that one of the most difficult steps in a peace process is the reincorporation of former combatants. Colombia is a case in point. After the peace agreement with the former rebel group FARC-EP in 2016, the reintegration process of more than 13.000 ex-combatants has been marred with difficulties, be it half-hearted implementation of the stipulations of the accord from the side of the government or the re-armament of some dissident groups. However, the dynamics of the peace process differ considerably between the national and the local level, offering a wide range of pathways from even more violent confrontation up to successful reincorporation projects. In order to explain this variety, we integrate DDR and rebel governance studies and assume that socio-political orders need to be re-configurated when rebel groups have established strong forms of rebel governance, as was the case with the FARC-EP. We argue that patterns of interaction between local conflict-affected communities and ex-combatants are the key explanatory variables for the dynamics of peace processes at local level. We differentiate between clustered and entrenched post-war orders and demonstrate our argument with two case studies based on comprehensive field research.

Unfaithful: Love, Adultery, and Marriage Reform in Nineteenth-century America

Unfaithful: Love, Adultery, and Marriage Reform in Nineteenth-century America

On the "Dark Side"

This study examines the use of online humour in a subversive local community Facebook group set up in 2017 by disgruntled members banned from a similar group “in opposition to [the original group’s] arbitrarily-applied rules, [its] enforced happiness, and [its] suppression of any post that isn't about giving away lemons or asking to borrow small appliances”. The dissatisfaction with the guidelines and the administration of the original Facebook group provides rich material for humorous posts in the new group, many with varying degrees of aggression directed at the founder and certain members of the “Dark Side”, as the original group is frequently referred to. This article will demonstrate how the use of humour in this new rival Facebook group is used for the purposes of inclusion and exclusion, and how it contributes to a sense of belonging in this online community of practice (Lave & Wenger 1991) created by a small group of self-declared dissidents. It will be shown how the humour shapes the identity of the group through the members’ shared ideologies and beliefs (Tanskanen 2018), and how the humorous messages intended to denigrate and belittle the “Dark Side” reinforce unity among the group members, since the feeling of superiority over those being ridiculed coexists with a feeling of belonging (Billig 2005). Fifteen single comments or multi-post threads were chosen for analysis. These appeared during the first twenty months of this rival group’s existence, and included primarily affiliative and/or aggressive humour (Meyer 2015) directed at the original group. The analysis was carried out using elements of computer-mediated discourse analysis (Herring 2004), and an insider participant-observer online ethnographic approach. The examples chosen illustrate how the humour is used to unite the members of this subversive group by dividing them from the original one, to create the joking culture (Fine and de Soucey 2005) of the new group, and in so doing, creates and sustains the members’ shared identity as irreverent breakaway troublemakers.

Ideological orientations and generalized prejudice in Turkey: Adapting the dual process motivational model

The mutually exclusive authoritarianisms (i.e., nationalist, secular, and elitist vs. religious-Islamist) in West Asia (Middle East) do not correspond to the political structures in Euro-American settings (i.e., one traditional/conservative authority). This distinction suggests that the relationships of RWA and SDO with political ideologies and generalized prejudice might differ from the predictions of the dual-process motivational model of ideology and generalized prejudice (DPM). To investigate this idea, we used the DPM’s structure with culture-sensitive hypotheses in the light of the socio-cultural work on ideologies and social dynamics in Turkey. In Study 1 (N = 259), belief in a competitive jungle positively predicted SDO, and belief in a dangerous world did not predict RWA. RWA negatively predicted left-wing and positively predicted right-wing ideology. SDO negatively predicted left-wing ideology but did not predict right-wing ideology. In Study 2 (N = 312), the relations between worldviews and attitudinal orientations replicated. Further, we developed a context-specific (i.e., Turkey) generalized prejudice measure to test the hypotheses associated with intergroup prejudice, which had a factor structure compatible with the DPM. SDO predicted prejudice toward derogated groups positively and dangerous groups negatively, and it was not relevant to the attitudes toward dissident groups in Turkey. RWA predicted prejudice toward dissident and dangerous groups positively, and derogated groups negatively. These two studies showed the importance of analyzing political ideology and intergroup prejudice from a cultural-ecological perspective by revealing the contextual characteristics constructing social relations.

A Ransomed Dissident: A Life in Art under the Soviets

The persecuted Soviet author and, eventually, Parisian émigré Andrey Sinyavsky (who used the pen name Abram Tertz) once pronounced that his quarrel with the Soviet state concerned aesthetics rather than politics. His longtime friend Igor Golomstock (1929–2017) concurred with Sinyavsky's position, as he announces at several moments in this account of a remarkable life that extends from early experiences as the child of non-prisoner civilians working in the Kolyma Gulag, to the social upheavals of Moscow during the Thaw of the 1960s, to a life in Great Britain from 1972 on. A specialist in Western European and, eventually, totalitarian art, Golomstock founded his resistance to the Soviet regime on rejection of its ugliness and falsity, rather than on any ideological commitment.His stance of principled nonpartisan resistance enabled Golomstock to circulate among many and varied circles of Soviet social life in the decades of de-Stalinization under Khrushchev, succeeded by the return to social discipline and conservatism under Brezhnev. Golomstock's friendships and contacts are a who's who of the nonconformist Soviet intelligentsia, including Sinyavsky and his wife (the art historian Maria Rozanova), the idiosyncratic “methodologist” Georgy Shchedrovitsky, the philosopher Alexander Piatigorsky, the guitar poet Alexander Galich, and the artist Boris Sveshnikov, known for his Gulag drawings. Golomstock's life experiences are a chronicle of highpoints in the social history of the Moscow intelligentsia: he held a position in the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, hub of unofficial Soviet cultural activity; worked as a guide at the art pavilions of the 1956 Moscow International Youth Festival, where Soviets could for the first time see twentieth-century Western art; and later obtained a post in the Scientific Institute for Technical Aesthetics, a “Noah's Ark” for nonconformist thought as the Thaw turned frosty. Finally, Golomstock enjoyed a front-row seat, as unwilling witness for the prosecution, at the trial of Sinyavsky and Yuli Daniel for “anti-Soviet agitation”—which is to say, the smuggling of phantasmagorical fiction to the West for publication. This episode was a crucial stimulus for the rise and organization of Soviet dissident groups, which Golomstock frequented but never “joined.” He himself was prosecuted for refusal to testify, leading to official ostracization, loss of work, and eventual emigration.In the West, Golomstock's path took him, once again, through key sites of activity: work as a writer and broadcaster for Radio Liberty and the BBC Russian Service, along with critical and editorial activity around the influential émigré journals Sintaksis (edited by Sinyavsky) and Kontinent. Here the reluctance of Sinyavsky, and Golomstock along with him, to march under ideological banners led to clashes with the self-appointed leaders of Soviet émigré society and anti-Soviet activism—most importantly, Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Golomstock's account of life in emigration, which takes up the last quarter of the book, presents a mirror image of his stories of conflict with Soviet dogmatism, but now it was his former dissident allies who played the role of ideological purists.In sum, Golomstock's life is an encyclopedic account of the ironies of Soviet and Cold War culture and politics. He ends with a note (“The Benefits of Pessimism”) on his lack of faith in political programs (especially in Russia), but thanks to his sharp wit; ear for anecdote; and evocative tales of art, books, and tables of food, drink, and conversation, Golomstock delivers a dose of optimistic joie de vivre.