Dynamics of Mass Protest Actions in Modern Russia: An Event Study

Abstract

The article studies of the dynamics of mass protests in modern Russia using the method of event analysis. Geographically, the sample includes St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Region, as well as Novosibirsk and the Siberian Federal District. 1783 protest events were studied for the period from 2000 to 2021. The author demostrates that the problem-thematic spectrum of mass protest actions is gradually changing. As time goes on, political as well as environmental and urban protests begin to dominate, while labor protests become rare and mostly small. One of the universally revealed trends is a gradual increase in the protest activity of nationalists (in St. Petersburg, also anti-nationalists), followed by a sharp disappearance of this activity after 2014. Social protests have contradictory dynamics: they are losing ground in St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Region but remain relevant in Novosibirsk and the Siberian Federal District. Also, after 2010, in St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Region, representatives of the LGBT community, women's movements, human rights organizations, and animal rights activists became more active, which was not the case in Novosibirsk and the Siberian Federal District. It is concluded that the dynamics of mass protests in the studied period can be explained by the gradual displacement of materialistic values by post-materialistic ones.

Acknowledgments. The reported study was funded by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research and EISR within the Project No. 21-011-32176 «The Dynamics of Protest Activity in Modern Russia (2000—2020): A Protest Event Analysis».