The Ethnography of Protest: Who Participated— and Why— in the Rallies of 2021

НАСТОЯЩИЙ МАТЕРИАЛ (ИНФОРМАЦИЯ) ПРОИЗВЕДЕН,РАСПРОСТРАНЕН И (ИЛИ) НАПРАВЛЕН ИНОСТРАННЫМ АГЕНТОМ АРХИПОВОЙ АЛЕКСАНДРОЙ СЕРГЕЕВНОЙ ЛИБО КАСАЕТСЯ ДЕЯТЕЛЬНОСТИ ИНОСТРАННОГО АГЕНТА АРХИПОВОЙ АЛЕКСАНДРЫ СЕРГЕЕВНЫ

Abstract

The article focuses on political street protests of 2021 in Russia. Our research is based on results of sociological surveys of the rallies’ participants, interviews, and ethnographic observations at rallies in January and April 2021 in Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Kazan. The combination of sociological and anthropological methods allows us to understand who these participants are and why they take part in street rallies. It turned out that the ideas of the protests of 2021 as a “revolution of children” or a “protest of the lower classes” are equally wrong. Most participants of the rallies, both new and old, are between the ages of 18 and 39, they have already received or are receiving higher education. For 42% of the participants of the first rally on 23 January, this is the first experience of such kind. The majority of the “newcomers” are young people under the age of 25. Some of the young people perceive their participation in the rally as a political initiation. Not all protesters are supporters of Alexei Navalny: his support is only one of the motives for participating in the rallies. The main motivations are dissatisfaction with the political situation in general, requirements for compliance with the laws, support for all political prisoners, as well as social and economic stratification of the society. Rejection of political violance and social stratification became the main triggers to go out for a protest — primarily for those 42% of «newcomers».

Acknowledgments. The article was prepared within a research grant funded by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation (grant ID: 075-15-2020-908).

We are grateful to Kirill Rogov, the “White Counter” movement, Boris Ovchinnikov for organizing the survey on Facebook, our colleagues in the MAF group and volunteers who conducted surveys and observations: Sergey Belyanin, Boris Peigin, Anna Kurochkina, Maria Gavrilova, Anastasia Karaseva, Artem Serebryakov, Anna Chernobylskaya, Elena Fedorovna Yugai, Elena Alekseevna Yugay, Nina Alexandrova, Anna Orlova, Asmik Novikova, Ivan Sorochan, Guzelia Gimatdinova, Olga Kartasheva, Elizaveta Semirkhanova, Dmitry Nesterov, Elena Gaber, Sergei Ninenko, and the group PS-Lab and the volunteers with whom we collected interviews on April 21.