Varieties of Russian Activism
Varieties of Russian Activism

Author: Jeremy Morris

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 2023

Total Pages: 314

ISBN-13: 025306547X

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"Despite decades of Putin, it is too simplistic to assert that authoritarianism has eliminated Russian 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, from labor unions 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"--

Varieties of Russian Activism
Varieties of Russian Activism

Author: Jeremy Morris

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 2023-04-04

Total Pages: 302

ISBN-13: 0253065488

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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.

Empowering Women in Russia
Empowering Women in Russia

Author: Julie Hemment

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 2007-03-12

Total Pages: 210

ISBN-13: 0253002567

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Julie Hemment's engrossing study traces the development encounter through interactions between international foundations and Russian women's groups during a decade of national collapse. Prohibited from organizing independently under state socialism, women's groups became a focus of attention in the mid-1990s for foundations eager to promote participatory democracy, but the version of civil society that has emerged (the "third sector") is far from what Russian activists envisioned and what donor agencies promised. Drawing on ethnographic methods and Participatory Action Research, Hemment tells the story of her introduction to and growing collaboration with members of the group Zhenskii Svet (Women's Light) in the provincial city of Tver'.

Moscow in Movement
Moscow in Movement

Author: Samuel A. Greene

Publisher: Stanford University Press

Published: 2014-08-20

Total Pages: 291

ISBN-13: 0804792445

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Moscow in Movement is the first exhaustive study of social movements, protest, and the state-society relationship in Vladimir Putin's Russia. Beginning in 2005 and running through the summer of 2013, the book traces the evolution of the relationship between citizens and their state through a series of in-depth case studies, explaining how Russians mobilized to defend human and civil rights, the environment, and individual and group interests: a process that culminated in the dramatic election protests of 2011–2012 and their aftermath. To understand where this surprising mobilization came from, and what it might mean for Russia's political future, the author looks beyond blanket arguments about the impact of low levels of trust, the weight of the Soviet legacy, or authoritarian repression, and finds an active and boisterous citizenry that nevertheless struggles to gain traction against a ruling elite that would prefer to ignore them. On a broader level, the core argument of this volume is that political elites, by structuring the political arena, exert a decisive influence on the patterns of collective behavior that make up civil society—and the author seeks to test this theory by applying it to observable facts in historical and comparative perspective. Moscow in Movement will be of interest to anyone looking for a bottom-up, citizens' eye view of recent Russian history, and especially to scholars and students of contemporary Russian politics and society, comparative politics, and sociology.

Red to Green
Red to Green

Author: Laura A. Henry

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2011-03-15

Total Pages: 297

ISBN-13: 0801457505

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Environmental activism in contemporary Russia exemplifies both the promise and the challenge facing grassroots politics in the post-Soviet period. In the late Soviet period, Russia's environmental movement was one of the country's most dynamic and effective forms of social activism, and it appeared well positioned to influence the direction and practice of post-Soviet politics. At present, however, activists scattered across Russia face severe obstacles to promoting green issues that range from wildlife protection and nuclear safety to environmental education. Based on fifteen months of fieldwork in five regions of Russia, from the European west to Siberia and the Far East, Red to Green goes beyond familiar debates about the strength and weakness of civil society in Russia to identify the contradictory trends that determine the political influence of grassroots movements. In an organizational analysis of popular mobilization that addresses the continuing role of the Soviet legacy, the influence of transnational actors, and the relevance of social mobilization theory to the Russian case, Laura Henry details what grassroots organizations in Russia actually do, how they use the limited economic and political opportunities that are available to them, and when they are able to influence policy and political practice. Drawing on her in-depth interviews with activists, Henry illustrates how green organizations have pursued their goals by "recycling" Soviet-era norms, institutions, and networks and using them in combination with transnational ideas, resources, and partnerships. Ultimately, Henry shows that the limited variety of organizations that activists have constructed within post-Soviet Russia's green movement serve as a "fossil record" of the environmentalists' innovations, failures, and compromises. Her research suggests new ways to understand grassroots politics throughout the postcommunist region and in other postauthoritarian contexts.

Religious Life in the Late Soviet Union
Religious Life in the Late Soviet Union

Author: Barbara Martin

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2023-08-18

Total Pages: 296

ISBN-13: 1000930432

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This book presents the first large overview of late Soviet religiosity across several confessions and Soviet republics, from the 1960s to the 1980s. Based on a broad range of new sources on the daily life of religious communities, including material from regional archives and oral history, it shows that religion not only survived Soviet anti-religious repression, but also adapted to new conditions. Going beyond traditional views about a mere "returned of the repressed", the book shows how new forms of religiosity and religious socialisation emerged, as new generations born into atheist families turned to religion in search of new meaning, long before perestroika facilitated this process. In addition, the book examines anew religious activism and transnational networks between Soviet believers and Western organisations during the Cold War, explores the religious dimension of Soviet female activism, and shifts the focus away from the non-religious human rights movement and from religious institutions to ordinary believers.

Crisis and the Everyday in Postsocialist Moscow
Crisis and the Everyday in Postsocialist Moscow

Author: Olga Shevchenko

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 2008-12-17

Total Pages: 258

ISBN-13: 0253002575

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In this ethnography of postsocialist Moscow in the late 1990s, Olga Shevchenko draws on interviews with a cross-section of Muscovites to describe how people made sense of the acute uncertainties of everyday life, and the new identities and competencies that emerged in response to these challenges. Ranging from consumption to daily rhetoric, and from urban geography to health care, this study illuminates the relationship between crisis and normality and adds a new dimension to the debates about postsocialist culture and politics.

The Social Roots of Authoritarianism
The Social Roots of Authoritarianism

Author: Natalia Forrat

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2024-11-08

Total Pages: 273

ISBN-13: 0197790356

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In this book, Natalia Forrat describes two models of authoritarianism: the first in which people see the state as their team leader and the other where they trust informal (non-state) leaders and see the state as a source of perks or punishment. Forrat compares the structures of political machines in four Russian regions, finding that the two maintaining unity-based authoritarianism demonstrated a stable performance across multiple elections, while the other two delivered less stable results. Carefully crafted and sophisticated, Forrat's theory of authoritarian power sheds new light on state-society relations in Russia and helps explain the divergent patterns of regime maintenance strategies in authoritarian countries throughout the world.

The Future Is History
The Future Is History

Author: Masha Gessen

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2017-10-03

Total Pages: 530

ISBN-13: 159463453X

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WINNER OF THE 2017 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD IN NONFICTION FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARDS WINNER OF THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY'S HELEN BERNSTEIN BOOK AWARD NAMED A BEST BOOK OF 2017 BY THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW, LOS ANGELES TIMES, WASHINGTON POST, BOSTON GLOBE, SEATTLE TIMES, CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, NEWSWEEK, PASTE, and POP SUGAR The essential journalist and bestselling biographer of Vladimir Putin reveals how, in the space of a generation, Russia surrendered to a more virulent and invincible new strain of autocracy. Award-winning journalist Masha Gessen's understanding of the events and forces that have wracked Russia in recent times is unparalleled. In The Future Is History, Gessen follows the lives of four people born at what promised to be the dawn of democracy. Each of them came of age with unprecedented expectations, some as the children and grandchildren of the very architects of the new Russia, each with newfound aspirations of their own--as entrepreneurs, activists, thinkers, and writers, sexual and social beings. Gessen charts their paths against the machinations of the regime that would crush them all, and against the war it waged on understanding itself, which ensured the unobstructed reemergence of the old Soviet order in the form of today's terrifying and seemingly unstoppable mafia state. Powerful and urgent, The Future Is History is a cautionary tale for our time and for all time.