Andrei Semenov

Grassroots activism constitutes the backbone of civil society across political regimes. While many studies explored the role of social media and digital platforms in social movements, we focus on the ways local activists use these social media platforms to organize collectively against unwanted urban development. Localized (place-based) contention differs from large-scale social movements: it is less endowed with resources and it is directly related to physical space. We analyze 26 urban conflicts in six Russian cities based on 185 interviews with activists and experts to show how the residents leverage digital platforms’ affordances and argue that the former extensively rely on the latter for coordination, communication, and recruitment purposes. Yet, the nature of place-based conflicts makes blending online and offline organizational activities inevitable. We also demonstrate that despite their benefits, digital platforms also bring organizational challenges. The authoritarian state imposes further constraints, requiring activists to take into account state surveillance and repression in their engagement with social media. Our study contributes to the scholarship on digitally mediated actions, urging a reevaluation of social media’s role in local collective actions.

Environmental protests have been a major strand of contention in Russia, yet the cross-regional variation in ecoprotests has not been systematically studied. In this paper, combining several protest event datasets we analyze the patterns of environmental activism across time and regions. The data cover more than 1000 protest events with an environmental agenda in the period 2007–2021. Based on these data, we develop a typology of Russian regions with the intensity and consistency of environmental mobilization as key dimensions. In the next step, we explore the covariates of ecoprotests in Russian regions and show that the overall level of mobilization, inequality, and governors’ tenure and links to the coercive apparatus are consistent predictors of ecoactivism. We also document the interaction between inequality and the strength of governor-siloviki ties indicating that in regions with high inequality, the negative effect of the latter is more pronounced. This paper contributes to the studies of environmental and subnational politics in Russia and demonstrates the need to account for spatial heterogeneity even against the backdrop of the consolidated autocratic regime.

The environmental movement in Russia has been a most institutionalized form of collective action. Originating from the Soviet period and gaining momentum in late 1980s, it survived the 1990s’ dramatic transformations as well as the changes in political opportunity structure in the 2000–2010s. Extant scholarship on environmental activism in Russia has been largely focused on case-studies of regional mass-mobilization, such as environmental campaigns at Shiyes station in Archangelsk. The paper represents the first systematic study of cross-regional variance in environmental collective action in Russia. Drawing on three datasets, we trace the general evolution of environmental protests in the period from 2007 to 2021 and provide a typology of Russian regions. The latter allows us to classify Russian regions by intensity and sustainability of eco-mobilisation. We demonstrate that, despite narrowing opportunities, the intensity of environmental protests during the last decade has been on the rise. The typology allows us to describe the existing variance and suggest new questions on the nature and factors of environmental protest activity in Russian regions.

Climate change will shape the future of Russia, and vice versa, regardless of who rules in the Kremlin. The world's largest country is warming faster than Earth as a whole, occupies more than half the Arctic Ocean coastline, and is waging a carbon‐intensive war while increasingly isolated from the international community and its efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Officially, the Russian government argues that, as a major exporter of hydrocarbons, Russia benefits from maintaining global reliance on fossil fuels and from climate change itself, because warming may increase the extent and quality of its arable land, open a new year‐round Arctic sea route, and make its harsh climate more livable. Drawing on the collective expertise of a large group of Russia‐focused social scientists and a comprehensive literature review, we challenge this narrative. We find that Russia suffers from a variety of impacts due to climate change and is poorly prepared to adapt to these impacts. The literature review reveals that the fates of Russia's hydrocarbon‐dependent economy, centralized political system, and climate‐impacted population are intertwined and that research is needed on this evolving interrelationship, as global temperatures rise and the international economy decarbonizes in response.This article is categorized under: Policy and Governance > National Climate Change Policy Trans‐disciplinary Perspectives > National Reviews Trans‐disciplinary Perspectives > Regional Reviews

Im Zuge der sich entfaltenden Debatte über autoritären Urbanismus und den Widerstand dagegen wurde es bislang weitgehend versäumt, konzeptionell zu klären, worum es bei diesem Phänomen genau geht. Mein Argument in diesem Kommentar ist, dass wir unter autoritärem Urbanismus Praktiken und Instrumente zur Steuerung des urbanen Raums verstehen sollten, welche zur Aufrechterhaltung autoritärer Ordnung beitragen. Anhand von Befunden aus Russland prüfe ich, ob urbane Konflikte dort in die Kategorie „Widerstand gegen autoritären Urbanismus“ fallen, und behaupte, dass sie in der Mitte zwischen offenen Forderungen nach einem grundlegenden Wandel der städtischen Politik und Infrapolitik zu verorten sind.

In this paper, we investigate the endorsement strategies of municipal council members in Russia. Since 2012, the candidates for chief executive office are required to collect the signatures at the local level. Filtering had been an important political toll before the return of direct gubernatorial elections, however, for the latter there are specific requirements in terms of territorial quotas and coverage that can be used against the independent candidates. We theorize that partisanship, gender, and employment sector on individual level and political competition, population size, and budget autonomy on the municipality level are important in shaping the councilmembers’ decision. We test this theory against the data on 2020 Perm krai gubernatorial elections and find out that while the general pattern is largely in line with our expectations, there are nuances when it comes to supporting particular opposition candidates. This study contributes to the literature on electoral authoritarianism and subnational elections in Russia and to the general scholarship on the means of authoritarian control.

Статья посвящена методологии многоуровневого анализа городских конфликтов. Предлагаемый подход составляет альтернативу доминирующему в городских исследованиях макровзгляду на городские изменения через призму теорий неолиберализма. Отталкиваясь от методологии стратегического интеракционизма, мы предполагаем, что мобилизация по поводу трансформации городской среды связана в первую очередь с перспективами и целями участников, а также их взаимодействиями между собой на “аренах” (ограниченных физически и институционально локаций), которые вписаны в темпоральную рамку “событий”, выделяющих наборы взаимодействий из фоновой рутины. Арены и события образуют концептуальный каркас для изучения микрооснований городских конфликтов. Преимущество микрооснований заключается в том, что они непосредственно наблюдаемы и могут быть зафиксированы множеством способов, доступных исследователю. Мы также полагаем, что перспективы, цели и взаимодействия встроены в более широкие пространственные и темпоральные структуры — “поля” и “эпизоды” конфликтов. Сами по себе конфликтные взаимодействия уникальны с точки зрения конкретных арен и событий, но в более широком плане они складываются в регулярности, которые можно обнаружить аналитически, что открывает возможности для сравнения и генерализации. Наша методология, таким образом, позволяет связать непосредственно наблюдаемые микрооснования с аналитически характеризуемым мезоуровнем: несмотря на то, что поля и эпизоды являются результатом аналитической работы и не существуют “физически”, тем не менее их выделение помогает лучше понять стратегический характер взаимодействий участников, а также связать множество целей и действий в последовательность с идентифицируемым исходом. Также это дает возможность связать “промежуточные исходы” взаимодействий на определенных аренах с итогом конфликта. Одновременное внимание к микро- и мезоуровню позволяет идентифицировать как структурные (дисбаланс ресурсов, социально-политические и экономические иерархии), так и агентные (целеполагание, стратегические дилеммы, инновации, эмоции) основания городских конфликтов. На примере собственных исследований мы показываем, каким образом представляемый концептуальный аппарат может быть переведен на методический язык конкретных аналитических процедур. Благодарность. Исследование выполнено за счет гранта Российского научного фонда (проект РНФ № 18-78-10054-П) «Механизмы согласования интересов в процессах развития городских территорий».

Laboratorium - Russian Review of Social Research. Лабораториум - журнал социальных исследований.

How did Vladimir Putin manage to turn the vociferous political opposition of the 1990s in Russia into a mere statist? I argue that among the wide array of instruments mastered by Putin’s regime, the control over the organisational environment stands apart. By regulating the formation and maintenance of the political organisations, the regime was able to divide the opposition into its ‘systemic’ and ‘non-systemic’ components. The restrictions on the organisational development set limits to the societal outreach of the opposition. Finally, by manipulating the rules of access to the institutional arenas and resource flows, the regime fostered differential stimuli for the opposition groups that made the coordination among them unlikely. This article suggests that not less than being informational or coercive, the autocracies like Russia under Vladimir Putin have to control the organisational environment in order to keep the opposition at bay.