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Managing Society: Protest, Civil Society, and Regime in Putin's Russia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Graeme B. Robertson
Graeme B. Robertson*
Affiliation:
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
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Abstract

Postcommunist Russia has become a paradigmatic case of contemporary authoritarianism in which elections coexist with autocratic rule. In this paper, Graeme B. Robertson argues that it is vital for the stability of such hybrid regimes for incumbents to maintain an image of political invincibility. This means intensively managing challenges both during elections and in the streets. To do this, Vladimir Putin's regime has built on the Soviet repertoire of channeling and inhibiting protest, creating a new system for licensing civil society and crafting ersatz social movements that rally support for the state. This contemporary style of repression has become a model for authoritarian regimes in the post-Soviet space and elsewhere.

Type
Managing Political Society in Russia
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 68 , Issue 3 , Fall 2009 , pp. 528 - 547
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 2009

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References

1. This account of the events of 25 and 26 November 2007 is drawn from participant observation; Ol'ga Kurnosova, interview, St. Petersburg, 26 November 2007; and Kommersant”, no. 217 (26 November 2007).

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15. Ibid. Druzhininskii estimated the crowd at 5,000-10,000. Mikhail Druzhininskii, interview, St. Petersburg, 29 June 2005.

16. Novyi Piterburg 713, no. 2 (20 January 2005).

17. Kommersant”, no. 6 (18 January 2005).

18. Ol'ga Kurnosova, interview, St. Petersburg, 5 July 2005.

19. Notably, neither the KPRF in St. Petersburg nor labor unions in the Federation of Independent Trade Unions (Federatsiia nezavisimykh profsoiuzov Rossiia, FNPR) were involved. The KPRF in St. Petersburg maintains largely cordial relations with St. Petersburg governor Valentina Matvienko, who was a former Komsomol leader in the city. Former official labor unions in the FNPR also keep their distance from the PGS. According to Maksim Reznik, chair of the St. Petersburg branch of Iabloko and coordinator of the PGS, the unions will not participate in PGS events and are nervous about any outside participation in their events. The unions limit themselves to coordinating protests with the elites and the police as necessary to extract money.

20. Andrei Dmitr'ev, leader of the St. Petersburg NBP, interview, St. Petersburg, 4 July 2005. The NBP are infamous for a number of slogans, but perhaps most notorious is their chant, “Stalin, Beriia, gulag!” Whatever the reality of the NBP's conversion, liberal civil society activists in St. Petersburg noted that they had at least stopped chanting xenophobic slogans within earshot.

21. According to the NBP, eight activists are currently serving terms of two to four years for their involvement in the occupation of the Presidential Administration visitors' room, and five are serving similar terms as a result of their occupation of the Health Ministry. In all, the NBP lists 151 of its activists as currently being “political prisoners.” A list of activists and the reasons for their arrest is constantly updated on the NBP Web site, at www.nazbol.ru (last accessed 15 May 2009).

22. Flash mobbing involves a large group of people appearing at a predetermined location, performing some specific action, and then disappearing. The tactic is believed to have first been used in New York in 2003 and has been widely emulated around the world. Participants communicate by Internet and cell phone to coordinate time, place, and actions. For more information see the Social Issues Research Council (SIRC) at www.sirc.org/articles/flash_mob.shtml (last accessed 15 May 2009). Flash mobbing appears to have originated from surrealist rather than political inspiration, and originally participants would simultaneously carry out quite meaningless actions. The SIRC Web site quotes Savage as saying, “If anyone tells you they know what the point is, they either don't know what they're talking about or they're lying.” Nevertheless, the NBP and other youth groups in Russia have used it as a potent political tool.

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25. The governor's Mercedes crashed into a tree, killing the governor, his bodyguard, and his driver.

26. Both protests were reported by RFE/RL, 7 March 2006. For a detailed analysis of Freedom of Choice and other protest groups in the Putin era, see Samuel A. Greene, “Making Democracy Matter: Addressing State-Society Engagement in Post-Communist Transition” (paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, 30 August - 2 September 2007).

27. Author's calculations from reports on demonstrations listed (and frequently updated) at www.ikd.ru (last accessed 15 May 2009). As with all data on protests, the numbers should be treated with some caution. In particular, although data on the number of events is likely to be somewhat understated, activists tend to overstate the number of participants.

28. Greene, “Making Democracy Matter.“

29. Mark R. Beissinger, Nationalist Mobilization and the Collapse of the Soviet State (Cambridge, Eng., 2002), 331. Beissinger reports a samizdat publication by Ludmilla Alexeva and Valery Chiladze, “Mass Unrest in the USSR,” Report No. 19, Office of Net Assessment of the Department of Defense (August 1985) citing eight occasions in which live ammunition was used under Khrushchev, while Kozlov, V. A., Mass Uprisings in the USSR- Protest and Rebellion in the Post-Stalin Years (Armonk, N.Y, 2002)Google Scholar, describes major “mass uprisings” from Russia to Kazakhstan.

30. For articles depicting the summit as the return of Russia to a position of importance and strength on the world stage, see, among others, Helen Womack, New Statesman, 17July 2006; Kupchan, Clifford A., Los Angeles Times, 14 July 2006 Google Scholar; The Economist, 5-21 July 2006; Der Spiegel, 10 July 2006; Chivers, C.J., New York Times, 16 July 2006 Google Scholar.

31. Anna G. Arutunyan, an editor of The Moscow Times, writing in TheNation on 19 July 2006, estimated that some 200 activists were arrested on their way to St. Petersburg.

32. “Russia: Attempts to Stifle Dissent before Summit. G8 Meeting Should Focus on Human Rights,” 12 July 2006, at www.hrw.org/en/news/2006/07/12/russia-attemptsstifle-dissent-summit (last accessed 15 May 2009).

33. This and the following two stories were provided by Libertarnii Informatsionno- Novostnoi Kollektiv LINK (Libertarian Information-News Collective) at www.rpk.len.ru/docs/2006/jul 11005.html (last accessed 15 May 2009).

34. The seven were: Daniil Vanchaev, Dmitrii Dorosheko, Rita Kavtorina, Dmitrii Treshchanin, Georgii Kvantrishvili, Elena Kuznetsova, and Mikhail Gangan.

35. On 23 February 2006, these seven individuals had participated in a street protest involving a dramatization depicting masked men from the “Ministry of Defense” and the “Supreme High Command.” After this event, the prosecutor's office opened a criminal investigation in connection with “disrespect of the President,” though the investigation was quickly closed due to the lack of evidence that a crime had been committed.

36. Those who did manage to make it to St. Petersburg were, as is often also the case in long-standing democracies, kept far, far away from die main conference (which was taking place in the town of Strelna, about one hour from St. Petersburg by bus). Instead they were shepherded into the Kirov sports stadium on Krestovskii Island. The stadium also had the advantage of being easy for police to isolate from the rest of the city, as around 100 activists found out when they unsuccessfully tried to leave the stadium on 15 July, only to find their way blocked by police.

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38. Still, the state does retain some levers of economic control. See McMann, Kelly M., Economic Autonomy and Democracy: Hybrid Regimes in Russia and Kyrgyzstan (Cambridge, Eng., 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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40. My analysis of the provisions of Federal Law No. 18-FZ is based on “Analysis of Law #18-FZ,” International Center for Not-for-Profit Law, at www.icnl.org/KNOWLEDGE/news/2006/01-19_Russia_NGO_Law_Analysis.pdf (last accessed 15 May 2009).

41. Members of the Federal Public Chamber are appointed according to a formula that allows the Kremlin to control its composition: 42 members are appointed directly by the president, these 42 in turn appoint a further 42, and the 84 appoint a final additional 42 based on nominations from regional groups.

42. In its first year or so of operation, the Public Chamber has shown signs of making a positive contribution to national life, proposing amendments to eighteen draft bills, including bills on NGOs, charities, the armed forces, and education. Federal Law No. 131 “On the General Organizational Principles of Local Self-Government in the Russian Federation,“ did not fully come into effect until 1 January 2009.

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45. Buchacek, Doug, “Nasha Pravda, Nashe Delo: The Mobilization of the Nashi Generation in Contemporary Russia” (M.A. thesis, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, 2006), 18 Google Scholar. Vladislav Surkov, the Putin administration's chief ideologist, is seen as the father and sponsor of Nashi. For a detailed analysis of the relationship between Surkov and Nashi, see ibid., 58-60.

46. For a detailed analysis of Nashi's ideological positions, see ibid., 21-31.

47. Currently, Nashi lists thirty cities in which it claims significant representation. See www.nashi.su (last accessed 15 May 2009).

48. Buchacek, , “Nasha Pravda, Nashe Delo,” 57–61 Google Scholar.

49. As cited ibid., 62.

50. Igor Romanov and Aleksandr Samarin, “Do Not Oversleep the Country: Young People Stand Up against the Rotten West,” Nezavisimaia gazeta, 26 March 2007. Videos of Nashi's “Do Not Oversleep the Country” can be seen on YouTube at www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipFMMT-rWHA (last accessed 15 May 2009).

51. “Ten’ sokrushitel'noi pobedy,” 30 November 2007, at www.gazeta.ru/politics/elections2007/articles/2366780.shtml (last accessed 15 May 2009).

52. Ekspert 6l7, no. 28 (14 July 2008).

53. “'Nashi'poshlipoputi'Nesoglasnykh,'“9January2008,at www.gazeta.ru/politics/2008/01/09_a_2531442.shtml (last accessed 15 May 2009).

54. “'Nashi'zanashschet,“ 1 November2008, at www.gazeta.ru/polidcs/2008/ll/01_a_2870871.shtml (last accessed 15 May 2009). Nashi had received 6 million rubles in the same competition the previous year.

55. “Komissary deneg ishchut,” 28 October 2008, at www.gazeta.ru/politics/2008/10/28_a_2867577.shtml (last accessed 15 May 2009).

56. Oberschall, Social Conflict and Social Movements.

57. Gershenson, Dmitriy and Grossman, Herschel I., “Cooption and Repression in the Soviet Union,” Economics and Politics 13, no 1 (March 2001): 31–47 CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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59. Censorship and self-censorship certainly exist in the Russian media. Rumors of lists of forbidden topics distributed by the Kremlin are common, though the extent to which they are used is unclear. I am grateful to Samuel Greene for pointing this out.

60. In both political science and sociology, the literature on repression is considerable. For a sampling on physical coercion, see Zimmermann, Ekkart, Soziobgie derpolitischen Gewalt: Darst. u. Kritik vergleichender Aggregatdatenanalysen aus d. USA (Stuttgart, 1977)Google Scholar; on formal versus informal repression, see White, Robert W. and White, Terry Falkenberg, “Repression and the Liberal State: The Case of Northern Ireland, 1969-1972,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 39, no. 2 (June 1995): 330-52CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and on structural versus behavioral repression, see Muller, Edward N. and Weede, Erich, “Cross-National Variation in Political Violence,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 34, no. 4 (December 1990): 624-51CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

61. On authoritarians learning from one another, see Silitski, Vitali, “Contagion Deterred: Preemptive Authoritarianism in the Former Soviet Union,” in Bunce, Valerie, McFaul, Michael A., and Stoner-Weiss, Kathryn, eds., Democracy and Authoritarianism in the Post-Communist World (Cambridge, Eng., forthcoming)Google Scholar. On faking democracy in the post- Soviet space, see Wilson, Andrew, Virtual Politics: Faking Democracy in the Post-Soviet World (New Haven, 2005)Google Scholar.