Varieties of Russian Activism: State-Society Contestation in Everyday Life

By: Katie L. Stewart and Madeline McCann and Carola Neugebauer and Irina Shevtsova and Daniela Zupan and Irina Meyer-Olimpieva and Katherine Hitchcock and John P. Burgess and Anna Zhelnina and Anna A. Dekalchuk and Ivan S. Grigoriev and Eleonora Minaeva and Jan Matti Dollbaum and Guzel Yusupova and Elena Sirotkina and Jeremy Morris and Andrei Semenov and Regina Smyth

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Synopsis: Despite decades under Putin's rule, it is too simplistic to assert that authoritarianism in Russia has eliminated activism, especially in relation to everyday life. Instead, we must build an awareness of diverse efforts to mobilize citizens to better understand how activism is shaped by and, in turn, shapes the regime. Varieties of Russian Activism focuses on a broad range of collective actions addressing issues from labor organizing to housing renovation, religion, electoral politics, minority language rights, and urban planning. Contributors draw attention to significant forms of grassroots politics that have not received sufficient attention in scholarship or that deserve fresh examination. The volume shows that Russians find novel ways to redress everyday problems and demand new services. Together, these essays interrogate what kinds of practices can be defined as activism in a fast-changing, politically volatile society. An engaging collection, Varieties of Russian Activism unites leading scholars in the common aim of approaching the embeddedness of civic activism in the conditions of everyday life, connectedness, and rising society-state expectations.