Research Memo: Pro-Government Protest Organizations in Contemporary Russia
prepared for “Mobilized Contention: The State-Protest Movement Nexus”
Matthew Reichert Harvard University Department of Government September 17-18th, 2015 Introduction
This memo overviews a subtype of state-mobilized politics that has emerged in the Russian Federation and the broader former Soviet space: pro-government protest organizations, or what Graeme Robertson calls 'ersatz' social movements.1 Most notable among pro-government protest organizations, and representative as an illustration of the subtype, is Nashi, or officially “the Youth Democratic Anti-Fascist Movement 'Ours!' (Molodezhnoye demokraticheskoye antifashistskoye dvizhenye ‘Nashi’) ” – the formally autonomous, government-funded youth movement and political organization that from 2005 to 2011 frequently organized counter-oppositional public demonstrations.
One objective of this memo is to roughly and inductively conceptualize the particular class of state- mobilized politics represented by this constellation of organizations. Pro-government protest organizations in Russia (as I conceptualize them here) are one example of a "government-organized non-governmental organization" (GONGO), though not all GONGOs are pro-government protest organizations - pro-government protest organizations represent a subset united around a few shared characteristics.
The collection of groups under study here were chosen inductively – they are those groups that appear most frequently in journalistic reports, or where explicitly pointed as important in a series of informal conversations with a small group of Russian intellectuals and dissidents.2 The groups are listed in table 1 (see appendix), along with relevant details. Aside from being cases of state-mobilized contention, they share a few common characteristics: they roughly share a common discourse focused on anti-fascism, anti-intellectualism, and xenophobia heavily peppered with slogans and internet memes; they have some kind of formal organizational body; they (for the most part) have few direct ties to other formal political institutions like Putin’s United Russia party; and most visibly, they all function chiefly to organize or participate in public demonstrations. These groups also vary along a few characteristics that may be surprising: in degree and methods of state support, from direct and public financing to informal behind-the-scenes support; in degree of organization, from small nominal leaderships (Anti-Maidan) to extensive administration (Nashi); and in how they began, from explicit founding by particular state officials (the Young Guard), to independent emergence and subsequent state co-optation (the Night Wolves). The phrase ‘pro-government protest organization’ is meant to capture these characteristics.
To organize what we know about pro-government protest organizations in Russia, I borrow a schema developed by Doug McAdam and the political process theorists, for two reasons. First, the schema is simple and clear. Second, the three chief components of the political process schema – structural opportunities, mobilizing organizations, and cultural frames – map on fairly intuitively and directly to the major patterns evident in these cases.
1 Robertson, “Managing Society,” 542-5. 2 Specifically, I held a number of informal conversations with two politically active professors and one widely known full-time political activist while in Middlebury, Vermont. The chief purpose of these conversations was to record some testimony on what some typical opposition figures consider to be the most important examples of state-mobilized contention in contemporary Russia, and to learn how much and in what ways these figures understood how these organizations worked. One of the stronger impressions I received from this series of conversations was the vagueness and political leaning with which this sample of individuals understood these groups – for example, each subject strongly believed that most pro-Putin supporters were being paid to participate in demonstrations, but was unable to provide any further details (how payments were made, which groups received payments and which did not, etc).
1 Scope: Justifying Temporal and Spatial focus
In the study of social movements it is particularly important to delinate and justify the scope of inquiry over time and across space, since each major theory of social movements relies on social structure as an important precondition limiting what forms of mobilization are possible. Studying cases with major variation in social structure would make comparisons on other key variables (in this memo, mobilizing organizations and cultural frames) more difficult.
Inversely, holding major social structures constant is helpful for explaining social mobilizaiton in terms of other variables – restricting our scope of inquiry to the post-Soviet period allows us to approximate this. In the post-Soviet space, the common relevant 'background' social structural characteristic (or in the political process vocabulary 'polical or structural opportunity') is the breakdown of the state's monopoly on social organization. Ken Jowitt's 'Leninist legacy' thesis famously argued that this common social structure, or lack thereof, should pose serious challenges for the emergence of social movements.3 From the cases reviewed here, one conclusion that might be made is that pro-government protest organizations represent a fulfillment of Jowitt's thesis.
Over space, this memo focuses on the Russian Federation, and devotes only brief attention to the other former Soviet republics. I make the presumption that patterns identified in Russia are likely (though not certainly) to repeat in its neighbors, based on the Robertson's observation that Russia has served as a first-mover and model for its authoritarian neighbors in tactics of social control.4
Political Opportunities: 2004-5 and 2011-2 as Critical Junctures
Questions of Interest:
Which dimensions of the “political opportunity structure” have changed over the period of inquiry (here 1991-present, or alternatively 2000-present [the Putin regime])? Which motivated new patterns of mobilization? McAdam, McCarthy, and Zald provide a few guidelines on where to look for such openings – they suggest: the relative openness or closure of the institutionalized political system, the stability of elite arrangements that undergird a polity, the presence of state allies, and the state’s capacity/propensity for repression.5 Though these authors had democratic, pluralistic societies in mind, their schema generalizes nicely to the hybrid regime context, largely because it is derived from a broader elite member-challenger model of society (from Tilly, 1978 and Gamson, 1968) that also describes social conditions under hybrid regimes.6
Two moments stand out as ‘critical junctures,’ which “establish certain directions of change and foreclose others in a way that shapes politics for years to come.”7 The first is 2004-5, the ‘Colored’ Revolutions, and their reception in the Russian Federation. The second is 2011-2 and the opposition ‘White Ribbon’ protests in Moscow following the 2011 legislative election results. These two moments of crisis opened the regime selectively to new participants, created new state allies, and motivated new state capacities for repression (whether the net capacity changed in any direction is
3 Jowitt, New World Disorder, 284-6. 4 Robertson, “Managing Society,” 545-7. 5 McAdam et. al., Comparative Perspectives on Social Movements, 10. 6 McAdam, Political Process, 36-8. 7 Collier and Collier, Shaping the Political Arena, 27.
2 an unanswered empirical question). How has this particular combination of changes in political opportunity structure shaped the types of new mobilization demanded by the Russian state?
2004-5 as a Critical Juncture
2004-5 saw the introduction of new rhetoric to the Russian political lexicon. The Color Revolutions, in addition to being rhetorically linked with each other, were also linked backward to the Czechoslovak and Yugoslav revolutions of 1989-1992. Of particular importance was the overthrow of Aslan Abashidze, the Russian-backed leader of the semi-independent Autonomous Republic of Ajaria (in Georgia) two days after Putin’s second inauguration ceremony, and the 2004 Orange Revolution in Ukraine. Ukraine was impactful not only for the oft-cited reasons of geopolitical position and historical closeness, but also because the events there co-occurred with two major political shifts inside Russia: protests in January of 2005 against social welfare reforms, which represented some of the first major opposition protests under the Putin presidency; and the splitting and defection of the Rodina party from the ruling bloc, which was accompanied by a public hunger strike by four Rodina Duma members the following month.8
Evidence that these events were felt as major and possible critical conjectural political threats can be seen in changes in rhetoric inside and outside the regime. At this time the notion of “foreign agents” emerged in popular discourse, with accusations (sometimes not unfounded) that international activists from Serbia, Ukraine, Moldova, Armenia, and Azerbaijan had been present in the countries that experienced Colored Revolutions.9 Western organizations such as George Soros's Open Society Institute also became popular targets of suspicion.10 Inside the regime, state officials also adopted a new rhetoric, with particular individuals adopting as their own realm of professional expertise the challenge of countering new oppositional activity – for example the former FSB director and chairman of Duma's security committee Nikolai Kovalev, and Gleb Pavlovskii, director of the new Foundation for Effective Politics (Fond Effektivnoi Politiki). Pavlovskii in particular, who was also an advisor to Viktor Yanukovich during his 2004 ousting, played an outsized role in articulating new, more active state strategies for countering opposition. Pavlovskii introduced the doctrine of ‘preventative counter-revolution,’ marketed himself as a specialist in ‘the technology of counter- revolution,’ and in 2001 designed the ‘Civil Forum’ – according to Robert Horvath, the first major attempt by the Putin regime to co-opt civil society.11 Pavlovskii would later serve as a guiding hand in the development of at least two state-sponsored social movements in the Anti-Orange Committee and Nashi.
2011-12 as a Critical Juncture
2011-12, the second major critical juncture, also saw the Russian state discover previously unknown sources of vulnerability simultaneously with new forms of opposition politics. In December of 2011 United Russia, the ruling party under President Putin, lost its constiutional majority in parliament. This electoral defeat was unprecedented during the Putin era, and like the 2004-5 colored revolutions, demonstrated a previously unavailable channel for regime vulnerability (elections).12 The
8 Horvath, “Putin’s ‘Preventive Counter-Revolution’,” 8. 9 Ibid., 3, 5. 10 Ibid., 4. 11 Ibid., 14-15. 12 Smyth et. al., “A Well-Organized Play,” 26.
3 Moscow “White Ribbon” protests immediately following the elections also represented a new challenge. Previous opposition protest had tended to locate in the regions (where pro-Putin support was strongest), and chiefly contested economic issues. The white ribbon protests represented the first major opposition demonstration that was (1) political in character, not economic, (2) called explicitly for regime change, and (3) was located in the national center.
Thus, in 2004-5, and again in 2011-12, the Putin regime faced new vulnerabilities and new sources of opposition. These demanded new strategies for regime defense – in the language of political process theory, these threats served to opened the regime selectively to new participants, created spaces for new state allies, and motivated new state capacities for repression.
Mobilizing structures: Experimentation and Conglomeration
The political process school provides a number of research questions for characterizing the “organizational profile” of those groups that took advantage of the structural opportunities that opened in 2004-5 and 2011-12; where these groups mobilized to reinforce status-quo political arrangements, these questions acquire an interesting new dimension. Where the political process theorist looks for radical flank effects, we first must establish who is participating, and whether a central-radical divide can even be said to exist.13 Where the political process theorist asks: “do these organizations use ‘disruptive tactics’?” we must ask “what do disruptive tactics look like when directed in support of the status-quo?”14 Finally, as with conventional social movements, we must for each organization ask what are its objectives, whose interests do those objectives benefit and threaten? In the state-mobilized context, answering this question is not always simple – for the cases under study here, the occurrence of what McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly call ‘transgressive’ politics usually does not imply an objective of changing the political system, but rather is directed toward status-quo-reinforcing objectives.15
Tactics: Soliciting Participation
Exactly how do these organizations elicit participation from their constituencies? In the contemporary Russian context, participation generally means visibal presence at scheduled public demonstrations – in other words, the 'resource' being mobilized is attendance. This group of Russian social organizations has adopted a conglomoration of tactics to this end, with no single tactic or coherent strategy winning consistent or exclusive application. There is amongst observes a general sense that earlier organizaitons relied primarily on voluntaristic strategies, while newer groups more frequently use pay-offs and straightforward coercion – however, these observations are anecdotal and any greater certainty requires more and better data.
From this conglomeration of strategies, three 'channels' of participation may be distinguished, which have been used by a number of organizations in differing combinations and to differing degrees. The first channel is voluntary participation: many participants devote their resources to the
13 McAdam et. al., Comparative Perspectives on Social Movements, 14. 14 Ibid.,13-4. 15 Although, it could be argued that if we include preferences for changing the status quo in the definition of transgressive politics, then despite the fact that when these groups protest in the street it may appear transgressive, we should actually classify these actions as contained politics (McAdam et. al., Dynamics of Contention, 7-8).
4 movement objectives simply because those objectives align with their own – in the language of resource mobilization theory, they are simultaneously adherents (those who believe in the goals of the movement) and constituents (those that provide it with resources).16 Amongst these, one puzzling empirical pattern stands out: traditionally, Putin supporters have been pensioners and residents of Russia’s regions; however, these groups mobilize primarily youth from Moscow and St. Petersburg.
The second channel for participation is compellence and co-optation – in practice, money changing hands. This channel poses a challenge for empirical study because existing evidence, which is anecdotal or journalistic, is also highly politicized. State-run media outlets and opposition-leaning independent journalists have painted both opposition and pro-Putin protests respectively as fraudulent, with elaborate and colorful “investigative reports” claiming to have “caught in the act” protestors receiving payment from state or opposition organizers.17 While a commonplace association exists amongst Russians between political-electoral rallies and the opportunity to earn extra cash, it is likely that existing reports on who solicits participation in this way, when, and how much contain a significant amount of information that is blatantly false.18 Nevertheless, a few useful points of likely truth may be discerned. Monetary payment seems to be ubiquitous, and can be distributed via existing formal organizations through employers, professors, and other higher-ups – in Smyth et. al.’s survey of the Moscow ‘White Ribbon’ demonstrations, 6% of respondents reported having been asked by their employer to attend the rally.19 In these contexts, promises of career advancement have been substitutable for cash payments. However, participants are also recruited in direct ways that circumvent formal organizations. Websites such as Massovki.ru, which is typically used to hire extras for film sets, have been employed to hire “rent-a-crowds,” not only for larger public pro-Putin rallies but also for local political rallies across the spectrum of candidates.20 This detail suggests that some of these tactics identified in Moscow and St. Petersburg around major elections may have precedents at the local level, where machine politics is prevalent.
Finally, some participation in state-sponsored demonstrations is achieved via simple coercion. This channel seems to almost always operate through formal organizations, where employers exercise leverage on their subordinates. As Smyth and her coauthors report: “Organizers of the rally on Poklonnaia Hill acknowledged that some participants were forced to participate (‘Miting na Poklonnoi gore’ 2012).”21 Some anecdotal stories of electoral violence exist, either from organized armed groups like the Night Wolves or spontaneously during anti-Maidan protests – however, such stories fail to appear consistently across journalistic reports, and therefore require further verification before further serious study.
16 McCarthy and Zald, “Resource Mobilization and Social Movements,” 1221. 17 One notorious and colorful example of this kind of investigative reporting is an hour-long special aired on the state- owned television channel “NTV” titled “Anatomy of a Protest,” which claimed to have caught on film opposition protesters bussed in from Uzbekistan and receiving payments for their participation in demonstrations (“Anatomiia protesta;” Barry and Schwirtz, “Russian TV Broadcast Besmirching Protesters Draws a Furious Reaction”) 18 Sulimina, “How I recruit rent-a-crowds.” 19 Smyth et. al., “A Well-Organized Play,” 29. 20 Odynova, “Foes Walk Side by Side to Rally Against the Kremlin;” Sulimina, “How I recruit rent-a-crowds; ” Smyth et. al., “A Well-Organized Play,” 29. 21 Smyth et. al., “A Well-Organized Play,” 29.
5 Objectives: From Passive to Active
In addition to tactics, the objectives of pro-government protest organizations changed over time. In the 2004-2011 period of experimentation, state-sponsored groups served primarily as instruments for electoral support – the chief functions of these groups were closely tied to affecting votes.22 The first objective during this period was to mobilize core voters, in order to convey to the broader public an image in which the President commanded a silent majority of support, and could mobilize that majority freely and at will.23 The second objective during this period was to characterize the opposition as a ‘creative class’ of out-of-touch intellectuals puppeteered by Western interests – a narrative tied to the new post-2004 rhetoric animated by the threat of colored revolution.24 It was during this period of experimentation that Nashi, the Young Guard (Moladaia Gvardia), Together (Mestnye), and Stal were formed.
These objectives shifted in 2011-12, when United Russia’s loss in the national parliamentary elections demonstrated that as instruments for mobilizing electoral support, the pro-government protest organizations had failed. Particularly striking was when demonstrations and celebratory concerts on December 4th and 5th (immediately before the election) from Nashi and the Young Guard, alongside the newly created group the Russian People’s Front, failed to deter opposition protesters from entering the street to demonstrate soon afterward.25 Evidencing that these groups were perceived as failed, the president’s reelection committee began to oversee their work more closely, and to take more direct control over responsibilities for rally organization. Later in December, the reelection committee took control of an anti-Orange demonstration organized by the group Essence of Time (Sut vremeni), used the group again in February to counter opposition protests at Bolotnaia square, and then actively out-competed anti-Orange demonstrations with its own official Luzhniki rally at the Russian Exhibition Center (VDNKh).26 Smyth et. al. argue that the Luzhniki rally marked a pivot in the Kremlin’s strategy of mobilization from one of defense (countering opposition protests) to one of offense (actively projecting a particular image).27
Cultural Framings: Creativity from Scratch
In 2011-12, with new political openings and new mobilizing structures came new cultural frames. Before 2011, rhetorical appeals generally followed a (often-riduculed) line focusing on the personal qualities of Putin himself. Putin's advertised strength of leadership was paired with an image of economic stability, with the anarchic 1990s consistently used as the reference point for comparison.28 The post-2011 vision perpetauted by the pro-government protest organizations was, as Smyth et. al. argue, more offensive in nature: one of 'real' Russians standing against a bizare coalition of 'soft' intellectuals and the 'creative class,' western agents, and fascists. As with mobilizing tactics, this vision represented not a deliberate design but an ad-hoc conglomeration, with pieces drawn from consistent and age-old schisms in Russian society (that between the 'intelligentsia' [inteligentsia] and the broader populace [narod]), from rhetoric that had previously been strictly
22 Smyth et. al., “A Well-Organized Play.” 23 Smyth et. al., “A Well-Organized Play,” 26. 24 Ibid. 25 Smyth et. al., “A Well-Organized Play,” 27. 26 Ibid. 27 Ibid. 28 Smyth et. al., “A Well-Organized Play,” 27-8.
6 confined to the Soviet regime (the fear of 'western agents' and foreign intervention), and from long- dormant appeals that had only very sporadically achieved political relevance (defense against fascism). Though a new rhetorical tactic, it its possible to locate precedents during the 2004-11 period of experimentation. One of the earliest examples of such over-the-top symbolic politics occurred in January of 2003, when following the defection of the Rodina party from the ruling bloc, youth activists from United Russia publically held a “political funeral” for its leader Dmitrii Rogozin’s outside the doors of the Russian parliament, declaring ‘His cause has died, but his body lives on.’29
This evolution in strategies of cultural framing has not occurred unidirectionally or without contestation – in line with McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly’s emphases on framing as “a set of iterative processes,” framing for these groups has occurred in conversation with the opposition.30 This is one aspect where state support has been played an especially powerful role in mobilization - in dueling street protests, pro-government protest organizations have leveraged state support by coordinating with government agencies to win symbolically important dates and locations for their own demonstrations, while in the same way sidelining opposition demonstrations. Smyth and her coauthors describe this dynamic during the 2011 demonstrations: “the large pro-Putin rallies took place on Manezh Square (in the shadow of the Kremlin), during a march on Kutuzov Avenue to Luzhniki Stadium, and on Poklonnaia Hill, best translated as Reverence Hill” and “coincided with the Day of defenders of the Motherland,” while opposition protests after several relocations were relegated to the peripheral Bolotnaya square (translates to “swampy square”).31
What we know about Pro-Government Protest Organizations in Russia
Despite the newness of this political phenomenon, and despite the majority of existing data being journalistic or anecdotal, there are a few points of understanding here that have crystallized and can be counted. We know that the 2004-5 color revolutions and 2011-12 ‘white ribbon’ protests in Moscow acted as critical conjunctural moments – they opened the regime selectively to new participants, created spaces for new state allies, and motivated new state capacities for repression. We know that pro-government protest organizations in Russia elicit participation through multiple channels – via voluntarism, compellance or co-optation, and coercion. We know that the strategic objectives of these groups have changed over time, from functioning as a tool for mobilizing votes, to operating as a megaphone for new symbolic politics. Finally, we know that the cultural frames deployed by pro-government protest organizations have changed over time, tracking with strategic objectives – from defensive rhetoric that emphasized stability, to offensive rhetoric that actively characterizes the opposition.
Moving Forward: Forming a Research Agenda
This memo suggests potential and limitations for the study of pro-government protest organizations in contemporary Russia. Existing social science research, journalism, and anecdotal accounts provide enough evidence to suggest that not all state-mobilized contention is alike - that pro-government
29 Horvath, “Putin’s ‘Preventive Counter-Revolution’,” 9. 30 McAdam et. al., Dynamics of Contention, 48. 31 Smyth et. al., “A Well-Organized Play,” 28.
7 protest organizations as they appear in Russia exhibit enough commonality to warrant a distinctive classification as a subtype, while also presenting interesting variation over time and between groups.
At the same time, this topic is an iceberg, of which we can currently see very little. Because pro- government protest organizations in Russia, in their current form, are very new and have changed over time, there is a scarcity of social scientific research on these groups – most of our understanding comes from journalism and anecdotal reports that, in the Russian context, are tied to real-world political agendas. The methodological problems posed by these few sources of data are similar to those faced by scholars of the Soviet Union that were forced to rely on testimony from political dissidents. For this reason, a first priority for further research should be direct observation, in order to fill in the picture of pro-government protest organizations in Russia without needing to rely on politicized data sources.
One particularly pressing research question may serve as a jumping-off point for future research: What are the social-organizational bases of pro-government protest organizations in Russia?
This question is pressing for three reasons. First: almost none of the evidence available currently sheds light on this question. In fact, what we do know only makes this question more puzzling, since participants are reported to be youth from Moscow and St. Petersburg, while President Putin’s traditional base of support is amongst pensioners in the regions. Second: according to McAdam, “if there is anything approximating a consistent finding in the empirical literature, it is that movement participants are recruited along established lines of interaction.”32 Whether this holds true for the case of pro-government protest organizations can serve as a useful test for whether we should expect theories of social movements to explain these cases, or whether we should look elsewhere. Third: the answer to this question in Russia has implications for the ‘Leninist legacy’ thesis mentioned at the beginning of this memo. If pro-government protest organizations in Russia are found to violate the basic finding of the social movement literature and are not based on pre-existing social networks in a meaningful way, then we might hypothesize that pro-government protest organizations have filled in the space left behind by monopolizing soviet social institutions like trade unions and the Komsomol, as per Ken Jowitt’s prediction.33
Potential Research Strategies
Considering further study broadly, a useful advantage offered by the Russian context is the availability of negative cases. While some groups listed in Table 1 persisted over at least a five year period, others 'faded' or decreased over time in their capacity to be a viable instrument of mobilization, while still others were actively shut down by the Russian state. For this reason, the groups covered here are particularly suitable for comparative study.
In the short term, the chief priority of further study should be to get a more complete and direct sense of the 'lay of the land' around these groups, in order to circumvent the data issues described above. This is most likely to consist of loose qualitative work like interviews and participant observation. Since the objective of such short-term work should be a rough sketch, concerns over bias should be temporarily set aside and methods such as snowball sampling for interviews should be readily adopted. However, such work should adopt multiple starting locations, since moving
32 McAdam, Political Process, 44; also Zhao, “Ecologies of Social Movements,” 1494. 33 Jowitt, New World Disorder, 285-6.
8 beyind the liberal-leaning, pro-western Russian intellectual community would likely provide a significant jump in the returns to our understanding of what is going on in these demonstrations.
In the longer term, where research should utilize more systematic methods like focus groups and surveys, the particular challenges posed by these cases become more formidable. Since pro- government protest organizations in Russia utilize multiple channels for eliciting participation, understanding which channels are at work amongst which constituencies and at what times requires the sticky task of distinguishing individual motives – particularly when being a true 'adherent' who 'believes in' the objective of the movement does not necessary rule out also receiving payments or coercive pressure. In other words, multiple channels may be at work simultaneously, so that the counterfactual for “honest” participation is not necessarily payment or coercion. One place to look for empirical strategies to imitate is the literature on vote-buying in developing countries, where researchers face similar challenges of distinguishing between participant motives.
9 Sources Specifically on State-Mobilized Contention in Russia
Secondary Sources
Chaisty, Paul, and Stephen Whitefield. "Forward to democracy or back to authoritarianism? The attitudinal bases of mass support for the Russian election protests of 2011–2012." Post-Soviet Affairs 29, no. 5 (2013): 387-403. Cheskin, Ammon, and Luke March. "State–society relations in contemporary Russia: new forms of political and social contention." East European Politics 31, no. 3 (2015): 261-273. Colton, Timothy J., Henry E. Hale, Luke March, and Graeme B. Robertson. "Responses: Political Science, Democracy, and Authoritarianism." Slavic Review (2009): 552-556. Horvath, Robert. Putin's Preventive Counter-Revolution: Post-Soviet Authoritarianism and the Spectre of Velvet Revolution. Routledge, 2013. ------"Putin's ‘preventive counter-revolution’: post-Soviet authoritarianism and the spectre of Velvet revolution." Europe-Asia Studies 63.1 (2011): 1-25. Robertson, Graeme B. "Managing society: protest, civil society, and regime in Putin's Russia." Slavic Review (2009): 528-547. ------The Politics of Protest in Hybrid Regimes: Managing Dissent in Post-Communist Russia. Cambridge University Press, 2011. ------"Protesting Putinism: The Election Protests of 2011-2012 in Broader Perspective." Problems of Post-Communism 60, no. 2 (2013): 11-23. Robertson, Graeme, and Ora John Reuter. "Legislatures, Cooptation, and Protest in Contemporary Authoritarian Regimes." In APSA 2013 Annual Meeting Paper. 2013. Schwirtz, Michael. "Russia's political youths." Demotkratizatsiya-Washington. 15, no. 1 (2007): 73. Silitski, Vitali. "“Survival of the fittest:” Domestic and international dimensions of the authoritarian reaction in the former Soviet Union following the colored revolutions." Communist and Post- Communist Studies 43, no. 4 (2010): 339-350. Smyth, Regina, Anton Sobolev, and Irina Soboleva. "A Well-Organized Play: Symbolic Politics and the Effect of the Pro-Putin Rallies." Problems of Post-communism 60, no. 2 (2013): 24-39. Smyth, Regina with Irina Soboleva, Luke Shimek and Anton Sobolev, “Defining Common Ground: Collective Identity in Russia’s Post-Election Protests and Rallies,” in Cameron Ross, editor, Civil Society Awakens? The Systemic and Non-Systemic Opposition in the Russian Federation: National and Regional Dimensions, Ashgate Press, forthcoming, 2015. Smyth, Regina, and Sarah Oates. "Mind the Gaps: Media Use and Mass Action in Russia." Europe- Asia Studies 67, no. 2 (2015): 285-305. Wilson, Andrew. Virtual politics: faking democracy in the post-Soviet world. Yale University Press, 2005.
Primary Resources
Anti-orange committee. “Anti-oranjevuii komitet.” www.anti-orange.ru. Anti-maidan. “Antimaidan.” http://antimaidan.ru/. Massovki. “Form uchastnikov i organizatorov massovok: Massovki .Ru” http://massovki.ru/. (forum for participant hiring) NTV. “Anatomiia protesta.” http://www.ntv.ru/video/peredacha/296996/.
10 Journalistic sources
Barry, Ellen and Michael Schwirtz. “Russian TV Broadcast Besmirching Protesters Draws a Furious Reaction.” The New York Times, March 24, 2012. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/25/world/europe/russian-show-besmirching- protesters-stirs-outrage.html?_r=0. Flintoff, Corey. “Rent-A-Crowds May be Boosting Pro-Putin Campaign.” National Public Radio, February 21, 2012. http://www.npr.org/2012/02/21/147205298/rent-a-crowds-may-be- boosting-pro-putin-campaign. Mikhailov, Kirill. “Should we fear the Russian Antimaidan?” Euromaidan Press, February 21, 2015. http://euromaidanpress.com/2015/02/21/fear-antimaidan/. Odynova, Alexandra. “Foes Walk Side by Side to Rally Against Kremlin.” The Moscow Times, December 10, 2011. http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/article/foes-walk-side-by- side-to-rally-against-%20%250Dkremlin/449651.html. Ponomareva, Marina. “Bloggers outraged by NTV documentary on protests.” The Moscow News, March 16, 2012. http://themoscownews.com/politics/20120316/189541449.html. Salem, Harriet. “Ukraine: Night Wolves and unidentified military men seize key Crimea sites.” The Guardian, February 28, 2014. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/28/ukraine- night-wolves-military-seize-crimea. Sulimina, Anna. “‘How I recruit rent-a-crowds’.” The Moscow News. March 26, 2012. http://themoscownews.com/politics/20120326/189565910.html.
Other Secondary Sources of Relevance
Colton, Timothy J., and Henry E. Hale. "The Putin vote: Presidential electorates in a hybrid regime." Slavic Review (2009): 473-503. Evans, Allison D. "Local democracy in a hybrid state: pluralism and protest in Volzhskiy, Russia." Post-Soviet Affairs 30, no. 4 (2014): 298-323. Evans, Allison D. "Protest Patterns in Provincial Russia: a Paired Comparison of Company Towns." Studies in Comparative International Development (2015): 1-26. Fish, M. Steven. Democracy from scratch: Opposition and regime in the new Russian revolution. Princeton University Press, 1996. Frye, Timothy, Ora John Reuter, and David Szakonyi. "Political machines at work: voter mobilization and electoral subversion in the workplace." World Politics 66, no. 02 (2014): 195- 228. Gabowitch, M. "Social media, mobilization and protest slogans in Moscow and beyond." Digital Icons: Studies in Russian, Eurasian and Central European New Media 7 (2012): 213-25. Gel'man, Vladimir. "Regime changes despite legitimacy crises: Exit, voice, and loyalty in post- communist Russia." Journal of Eurasian Studies 1, no. 1 (2010): 54-63. Greene, Samuel A. "Beyond Bolotnaia: Bridging Old and New in Russia's Election Protest Movement." Problems of Post-Communism 60, no. 2 (2013): 40-52. Greene, Samuel A., and Graeme B. Robertson. "Politics, justice and the new Russian strike." Communist and Post-Communist Studies 43, no. 1 (2010): 73-95. Grzymala-Busse, Anna. Rebuilding Leviathan: Party competition and state exploitation in post-communist democracies. Cambridge University Press, 2007.
11 Hale, Henry E. "Democracy or autocracy on the march? The colored revolutions as normal dynamics of patronal presidentialism." Communist and post-communist studies 39, no. 3 (2006): 305-329. ------"Eurasian polities as hybrid regimes: the case of Putin's Russia."Journal of Eurasian studies 1, no. 1 (2010): 33-41. ------"The myth of mass Russian support for autocracy: The public opinion foundations of a hybrid regime." Europe-Asia Studies 63, no. 8 (2011): 1357-1375. ------Patronal Politics: Eurasian Regime Dynamics in Comparative Perspective. Cambridge University Press, 2014. Koesel, Karrie J., and Valerie J. Bunce. "Putin, Popular Protests, and Political Trajectories in Russia: A Comparative Perspective." Post-Soviet Affairs 28, no. 4 (2012): 403-423. Koltsova, Olessia, and Andrey Shcherbak. "‘LiveJournal Libra!’: The political blogosphere and voting preferences in Russia in 2011–2012." New Media & Society (2014): 1461444814531875. Robertson, Graeme B. "Strikes and labor organization in hybrid regimes."American Political Science Review 101, no. 04 (2007): 781-798. Smyth, Regina. "The Putin Factor: Personalism, Protest, and Regime Stability in Russia." Politics & Policy 42, no. 4 (2014): 567-592. Way, Lucan A. "Authoritarian state building and the sources of regime competitiveness in the fourth wave: the cases of Belarus, Moldova, Russia, and Ukraine." World Politics 57, no. 02 (2005): 231-261. Way, Lucan A. "Deer in headlights: Incompetence and weak authoritarianism after the Cold War." Slavic Review 71, no. 3 (2012): 619-646. Way, Lucan. "The sources of authoritarian control after the cold war: East Africa and the former Soviet Union." Post-Soviet Affairs 28, no. 4 (2012): 424-448. Wilson, Kenneth. "How Russians view electoral fairness: a qualitative analysis."Europe-Asia Studies 64, no. 1 (2012): 145-168.
Remaining Works Cited
Collier, Ruth Berins, and David Collier. Shaping the political arena. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2002. Jowitt, Kenneth. New world disorder: The Leninist extinction. Univ of California Press, 1992. McAdam, Doug. Political process and the development of black insurgency, 1930-1970. University of Chicago Press, 2010. McAdam, Doug, John D. McCarthy, and Mayer N. Zald, editors. Comparative perspectives on social movements: Political opportunities, mobilizing structures, and cultural framings. Cambridge University Press, 1996. McAdam, Doug, Sidney Tarrow, and Charles Tilly. Dynamics of Contention. Cambridge University Press, 2001. McCarthy, John D., and Mayer N. Zald. "Resource mobilization and social movements: A partial theory." American journal of sociology (1977): 1212-1241. Zhao, Dingxin. "Ecologies of Social Movements: Student Mobilization during the 1989 Prodemocracy Movement in Beijing 1." American Journal of Sociology 103, no. 6 (1998): 1493- 1529.
12 Appendix
English Name Russian Name Notable Figures Associated Commentary Ours Nashi Vladisla Surkov (principal patron The most widely known and visible of pro-government protest in the Russian government) organizations in Russia, ‘Nashi’ was usually the first group named when, in a short series of informal conversations, members of the Russian Vasilii Yakamenko (leader) intelligentsia were asked to name what they considered to be the most important cases of state-mobilized contention in contemporary Russia.
Nashi posseses most of the chief features that characterize pro- government protest organizations as a subtype of state-mobilized contention: ! Reactionary basis – Nashi's publicmandate at founding was to prevent orange revolution in Russia ! Evolution of discourse – Nashi today a chief perveyor of the anti- fascist narrative ! Distanced state support – Nashi is autonomous from but financed by and supported by key figures in the government Anti-Orange Committee Anti-oranjevuii Organized specifically in reaction to orange revolution; more prominent komitet in 2004-2011 period than post-2011 Moving Together Idushchee vmeste Vasilii Yakamenko (leader) A predecessor organization to Nashi For the Homeland Za Rodinu Sergei Shargunov (leader and A very early attempt at youth organization (unveiled March 1, 2005_ young writer) Essence of Time Sut vremeni Sergei Kurginian (leader and talk show host) Night Wolves Alexander “the Surgeon” The Night Wolves are a biker gang, and the most awkward ‘fit’ on this Zaldostanov (leader) list. They existed autonomously as a nationalist but independent group before being co-opted by the Russian government – the group will now receive lump sums in the form of grants and awards. President Putin has given public support to the Night Wolves by riding with them on television (on a tricycle), and the Night Wolves have become dramatically more active after the annexation of Crimea and secession of Donetsk and Luhansk. According to the Moscow Times, the Night Wolves were also deployed as a paramilitary force during the Russian military presence in Crimea, Donetsk, and Luhansk, and actively coordinated with Russian forces. Anti-Maidan Alexander “the Surgeon” One of the newest pro-government protest organizations, anti-Maidan is Zaldostanov (leader) also less formally organized, and emerged out of counter- Appendix
Anti-Maidan Alexander “the Surgeon” One of the newest pro-government protest organizations, anti-Maidan is Zaldostanov (leader) also less formally organized, and emerged out of counter- Dmitry Sablin (senator and leader) demonstrations during and after the 2014 events in Ukraine. Yulia Berezikova (leader and mixed martial arts athlete) Young Guard Molodaya gvardiya Eurasian Youth Evraziiskii soyuz Movement molodezhy Young Russia Rossiya Molodaya The Locals Mestnye TableSteel 1: This table providesStal a rough sketch and quick details for those pro-government protest organizations that appeared most frequently in journalistic sources, or were named as important during informal conversations with members of the Russian intelligentsia. The list is not exhaustive, but it is representative.