“City silence” in Moscow: prerequisites and public involvement in civil society practices

Abstract

The paper aims at assessing the extent to which Moscow residents can keep city silence - an urban life phenomenon describing the passivity of people and their unwillingness to come together for joint actions. The paper is based on the data of the civic society monitoring which is carried out by the Centre for Studies of Civil Society and the Non-Profit Sector of the National Research University Higher School of Economics. The level of involvement of the Moscow residents in offline and online civil society practices are considered in the article. The results of the surveys conducted among Moscow residents are compared with the all-Russian data including different types of settlements. The authors conclude that there are no grounds for characterising the public activism of the Muscovites as a “city silence”. However, further efforts to create favourable and accessible environment for manifesting social activism as a resource of urban development are needed.