Public as a Social Actor: from mosaic of "issue-based groups" to the unity of "the other world possible"

Abstract This paper is an attempt to address a methodological problem of defining the origin, the structure and social foundations of massive and lasting peaceful street , that had appeared spontaneously and almost simultaneously at the beginning of new millennia in the countries with very different level of public wealth and socio-political structure - from US and UK to Turkey, Brazil and Bulgaria, lately involving similar protest events in and Ukraine. Been driven by different reasons, addressing different targets, those mass street actions have a lot of common features, that allow to consider them as one phenomena, which we define as a new type of social engagement, distinguished both from civil organizations and social movements. This type of engagement is characterized by formation and activities of protesting publics, which can have deep and lasting impact on both society and policy process, including various fields of social policy, by transforming the public sphere through changing dominating public discourses. Such activities are largely based on common demand of ethical nature, that can bring together many diverse social groups and mini-publics, focused on issue-based protests. Paper is exploring theoretical foundations of perceiving self-organized publics as collective social actors with their unique features and capacities. It also seeks to develop a conceptual frame for protest events analysis as manifestations of protest publics, which allows to identify the type of specific public assembled for each event , its “qualities of actorness” and its transformative potential. This conceptual frame is then applied to reconstruct Bolotnaya actions, protests against construction of Gazprom office tower in St. Petersburg and current protests of medical workers against implementation of health reform, which allow to compare the types of publics, that were involved in those protests. The results include suggestions on understanding and interpretation of protest actions based on qualities of protesting publics.

Key words : public sphere, the public, social actor, social movement, protest public, ethic-based protest

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1. Mass protests of new millennia as a challenge to social theory

Civil society structures, NGO's, social movements and protesting public The need for the new analytical instruments often comes all over sudden, when some unexpected social events are happening and analysts are trying to explain it with the theoretical concepts and research frameworks they had used to apply before and they realize, - if they are honest with themselves - that those old instruments do not fully explain what is going on. This is exactly how it happened right after the beginning of the mass public protests in Russia. Though, similar mass protest events were already happening it many places before - in Arab World -Tunizia, in Egypt, in Libia, and in Europe, like in Bulgaria and first Maidan in Ukraine, as well as in post-Soviet Asia, like in Kyrgizia or Kazakhstan, almost each time it happened in such a place, that as a environment for mass rallies was unthinkable before the events actually took place. All those events then develop so quickly that it does not give much time to analysts to develop new research instruments by the time they may disappear – and the new events, even more hard to conceptualize, would appeared in the same place. Similar puzzle seem to had happened in at the end of 2011, when the excitement with really massive, peaceful and cheerful, smiling and civilized mass meetings and rallies, that were organized by volunteers using innovative crowd-funding technologies and proclaimed purely democratic demands “for free and fair elections”, seem to overshadow far less civilized spontaneous rallies of young football fans, that happened on 7 December 2010, led by right- wing aggressive nationalists, calling to commemorate the death of Egor Sviridov, killed on 6 December by a Dagestani national, that were able to assemble about 5.000 young nationalists at Manezhnaya square in Moscow, right beside the Kremlin wall, on 11 December . This exited and aggressive gathering had quickly turned into riots with brutal violence against ethnic nationals, randomly spotted around the center of Moscow , with many injuries and at least one casualty reported1 Both the police and the society were shocked by those Manezhnaya events, as there was no visible organizer of those rallies, and this was claimed - the new "fascist face" of Russian civil society. This led many analysts to re-think what is the true meaning of the term ' civil society', as the nationalist gathering was clearly falling under all the 'classic' definitions of civil society organizations : non-governmental, spontaneous, voluntary, almost ‘grass-roots’. The major surprise was a number of the people assembled in Manezhnaya, contrasting to relatively modest number of devoted ‘members’, of various nationalistic organizations in Moscow, closely monitored by SOVA Center. According to their findings, there are hardly more than few

1 http://www.svoboda.org/content/article/2247186.html 2 hundreds, who clearly identify themselves with ideology and ‘regular activities’, but when it comes to the participants in public rallies known as ‘Russian Marches” attendance can reach several thousands2. So, the most reasonable explanation is, that angry crowd in Manezhnaya can be seen as a 'special type of public', that could be easily assembled in response to a particular ‘troubling message’ of what was interpreted as ‘ethnic killing’, which is possible because of the ‘corrupt law-enforcement’. A vision of ‘certain public’ that can suddenly emerge ‘out of nowhere’ as a response to a message, that all those people want to react to by presenting themselves collectively in a public space, can also be applied to different kinds of mass gatherings, as they come together in masses for a common purpose, like a call to collective prayer. Speaking of ‘Moscow publics’ as those of supporters to TV Rain, or Alexey Navalny, one should also keep in mind existence of completely other publics, that are able to manifest themselves in much more impressive quantities, like those who responded to the call for public prayer on major Muslim Holiday Kurbam Bairam on 16 november 2010, when there was reported 80 thousand people participating3, and in 2011 – more than 170 thousands, when only around the Great Mosque in Moscow at Vipolzov pereulok,7, there were reported more than 80 thousand of Muslims collectively praying together on 6 November, 20114 In this view, the December, 2011 mass rallies in streets of Moscow in support of free and fair elections can also be seen as a ‘certain public’, united in a common action by a response to a message, but at that time the expectations of emerging of a “new mass democratic movement” was so strong, that even first mass rally on 10 December from Square of Revolution to Bolotnaya Square, gathering about 50 thousand participants, was immediately referred to as the "true civil society". But the attempts to explain what kind of civil society this was and what civil society organizations had contributed to bringing people out into the streets, happened not to be easy to answer, as there were very few of the established NGO's seen as organizers, besides the names of some political opposition leaders, while the majority of the names of speaker at the first rally were mostly from artistic and journalist professions. Since the very first mass meeting, there were many attempts made to somehow define, ‘who were all those people’, when protesters were first called 'angry citizens', but it was not too clear, angry with what, as the protest was clearly shifting its focus, as the first polls had reported a significant number of wealthy people involved, growing protest events were called ‘middle – class uprising’ or even 'fur-coat revolution', but this was not adequate either, as there were

2 http://www.sova-center.ru/racism-xenophobia/publications/2013/03/d26655/ 3 http://www.sova-center.ru/religion/discussions/how-many/2010/11/d20290/ 4 ttp://www.gazeta.ru/news/lenta/2011/11/06/n_2084270.shtml 3 many people with quite low income among protesters, finally, recognizing high level of education among protesters, all the participants were referred to as "creative class', but this also happened to be only part of the truth, so the question “who are all those people”, participating in mass protest during winter 2010-2011, still remains open. In approach this question, there are two conventional theoretical models, that seem to be most adequate to be applied : civil society concept and social movement theory, but the claim of this paper is, that none of them can fully grasp the nature of those mass protest. Civil society concept initially seemed to be most natural to be applied, because of several visual similarities of Moscow events with peaceful democratic ‘velvet revolutions’ in East Europe in the end of 80-es, when former ‘Soviet Block’ countries were liberating themselves from communist regimes through consolidated and coordinated protests actions , led by broad political and civil coalitions. During those events citizens expressed their deep mistrust in political elites, pushing governing regimes either to peaceful transformation through a dialogue with protesters, like in , or led to its total collapse, like in Romania. In most of those cases, democratic transformation was attributed to the ‘victory of civil society’ (Arato, Cohen 1992). In case of Russian protest of 2010 it proved to be not adequate for both theoretical ground and for practical reasons. Theoretical concept of ‘civil society’ presupposes an intense and long-lasting organizational work for prior to common action, as the ‘civil society ‘itself is commonly understood as ‘space between family, market and the state,’ (Salamon 2004) but filled with plethora of multiple voluntary associations’, which in practical sense of most research projects is reduced to ‘organized society’, or studying of NGO’s (Heinrich 2004; Aleskerov F., Belyaeva N. 2008; Belyaeva, Proskuryakova 2008) - weather formal or informal - but all having some clear organizational structure and regularly working with their members and constituencies. In case of Russia 2010 it was clearly not the case – neither in terms of ‘prior organization’ of protest events, nor even in terms of mass NGO members participating Practical reason to abandon this type of conceptualization presented itself on 4 February 2012, which was marked by reportedly most massive protest events in Moscow, held almost simultaneously, but opposing each other : White Ribbon anti-Government meeting in Bolotnaya square gathered 120 thousand participants, while pro-Government ’Anti-Orange Threat’ meeting in Poklonnaya Gora gathered some 50-120 supporters. Discussions that followed on ‘where the true civil society’ was present did not happen to be productive, as it was clear, that, even if Poklonnaya meeting was heavily supported and directly managed with ‘administrative

4 pressure’ on participants, society is far from been unified on this subject, instead, is deeply split. Another concept, that seem to be adequate to be applied, is social movement theory, that look on civil participation in a more dynamic way and define social movement itself on the base of what is understood as campaign , which itself is defined as ‘ organized public effort, making a collective claim on the target audience’ ( Tilly, Tarrow 2006; Kleman 2013) Social Movement often employ many different forms of political actions, from petitions to mass rallies and demonstrations, but they always do so through a lot of prior organizational work , including creation of stable organizational structures, or ‘special purpose coalitions’, that can insure ‘a sustained and organized’ manner of collective actions. Participants of social movements are usually clear about their own common identity, as one of the major claims, that they make to the other political actors and to the broader public is on ‘who we are’, or ‘ ‘a name for ‘us’ –‘Cherokees’, ‘Diamond Cutters’ - that are called ‘standing claims’ distinguishing members from non-members, as well as ‘program claims’ that are been addressed to their target audience. (Tilly, 2004) This approach looks to be more applicable, because at certain period, namely, from December 2010 to February ,4 2012, Bolotnaya protests had potential to be developing into a Movement “For Fair Elections”, but by 2012 neither the identity of participants was more clear than “anti- government’, and anti-Putin’, nor their ‘program claim’ stood firm on ‘election procedures’, but shifted to political mobilization5. In our opinion, social movement theory also have a limited application to Russian protest, because it does not explain the very fact of those protest emergence, as there were no prior ‘claimants’ with any clearly set ‘program claims’ and even participants themselves, when questioned about the reasons for their participation, had very different explanations, which makes it hard to speak about their common identity. To be able to catch the very essence of Bolotnaya and similar protest events there are new theoretical concepts needed, which we suggest to be a newly emerging ‘theory of publics’ and their particular type – ‘active public’ or agent public , that is capable to perform as a social actor – without prior organizational work, performed either by civil society organizations or social movement organizers. It is an important novelty, that protest publics bring to the scope of participatory practices – almost total absence of prior organization, that was believed to be necessary. This makes them a valuable object to study and requires new conceptual framework, which we will seek to develop.

5 http://www.novayagazeta.ru/politics/50839.html 5

2. Long road to understanding " the public": from Dewey to Warner and further Studies of public as a social collectivity that at certain circumstances becomes a collective social actor are not completely new, they have a substantial history, which still needs to be reconstructed, distinguishing between mutually supportive and exclusively controversial visions and definitions of the public and its role in social relations. Being relatively new field of study with the its object so blurred and ambiguous , this field is inevitably highly interdisciplinary, resting on contributions by different fields of social studies, including philosophy, political science, communication theory, psychology and complemented by important body of practical knowledge from journalism, marketing and . Needless to say that the major divide between those approaches is where the "social actorness" is seen in those approaches : to what extent the public is viewed as an " object of social impact" , the " target audience", or it is viewed as capable and, in fact, realizing its own potential as a social actor, playing central role in social development. As we are interested in the latter vision, we will begin with one of the first defining works on this subject in modern political science, " The publics and its problems" by , published in 1927. Important to mention, that this work appeared as a polemic response to another noticeable text of Walter Lippman , published in 1925, which was primarily addressed to journalists and organizers of polls, arguing , that they are given too much weight and attention, which they hardly deserve, as the level of complexity of governance has increased so much, that the " ordinary citizen " or " member of the public ", that is been addressed on almost every issue to " share his opinion", can not have an opinion of every single matter of governance, but can only " react emotionally ", while the duty of formulating ideas and solutions should be retained by experts and politicians. (Lippman 1925) . Dewey had responded with quite an alternative vision of an active public , consisting of groups of citizens, that assemble spontaneously in response to the problem, that emerge as a consequence of a particular action, often - a government action, that people are not satisfied or want to put to question *Dewey 1927). Thus, if Dewey approach can be simplified, publics consists of people, who are concerned with the same problem and want to do something about it. Therefore, because there are endless chain of possible actions that can cause problems or worries, those spontaneous publics constantly emerge, overlap and, eventually, disintegrate , but pose a decisive demand on public officials . With this vision Dewey was the first to point out such a fundamental feature of public as it fluidity, its ability to quickly assemble in response to a challenge and disseminate when the common risk or common need is over.

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Another important feature he was able to capture is the cognitive ability of the public to be more than just consumers of information, its ability to add and produce knowledge through communication with each other as well as politicians an experts. As political philosopher, concerned with development of , Dewey had contributed to debate on the role of public in relation with the state and its structures, suggesting the vision of transformative power of public, that " break existing political forms" and seeks to establish new forms of political institutions, " which suits its associational behavior", making state to respond to the public demand. This vision of Dewey, formulated almost a century ago, had found new life as compared with those of Habermas and Foucault, which is been picked up and continued in contemporary debate on public and counter public (see, in particular, Peshkopia 2008 : 26-27, 29-33) The other important step in understanding the public and its capacities, that have to be briefly mentioned, are contributions from James Grunig and Gabriel Vasquez, who are both observing the public from communication science and public relations theory, but are interested in public not from its value of market share or target audience for marketing, but exploring its cognitive and self-organizational capabilities, which makes a strong contribution to its further "actorness". Thus, Grunig, conducting his field study of environmental publics in both rural and urban areas, focused on the process of those publics emergence, based on their situation perception and communication behavior, relating to eight different environmental issues, distinguished their cognitive strategies in dealing with those issues and several levels of their self-organization - from "non-publics " to "aware publics " and to "active publics", depending on their ability to recognize the problem and be able to self-organize to deal with it. Grunig was also trying to see the connection between cognitive strategies and demographic characteristics , but, the conclusion he makes is that " publics, characterized by behavior similarities, cannot be defined by demographic indicators" ( Grunig 1983). Gabriel Vasquez, developing some of the ideas and findings of Grunig, further focused on public cognition process and the ability of certain public groups to develop their own language , describing their common problem, their own narratives, that allow them to recognize each other and distinguish from the other groups. This ability of publics to develop "group consciousness around the problematic situation", allowed Basques to call them ". Homo Narrans", that he suggested to use for development of theory of public relations ( Vasquez 1993). After the importance of " common thinking" and " group consciousness " was discovered, next important step in recognizing role of publics in policy process was done by particular branch of public policy analysis, started by Frank Fisher and his colleagues, who published

7 a volume called " Argumentative turn in Policy Analysis and Planning", where they proved through numerous examples what was intuitively felt much earlier : political process in terms of both developing and formulating policy agendas as well as adopting and implementing political decisions involving specific fields of governance is done through language and ability of those governing and those who are governed to formulate, to argument and communicate their message, that have to be properly understood and arguments be interiorized. In short : democratic policy making is all done through language and argumentation on one hand and the ability and willingness to understand and accept the message - including mechanisms of through group consciousness to support or object to governing message - on the other. This re-discovery of importance of public language and cognitive group consciousness and discourses built around certain problematic issues, was deepened by the frame of " Discourse Coalitions", suggested in the same volume by Maarten Hajer, that brilliantly presented the dynamic of social change within democratic society, based on " competition of discourses" and a possibility of a strategic victory in political competition on both agenda-setting and decisions implementation in policymaking, when a discourse battle is won, changing the very way people think about social problems, because this is shaping the way people act on them (Hajer, 1993). With all those prior steps, it was, finally, Michael Warner, who managed to develop and express in a systematic way a comprehensive vision on this subject, allowing to distinguish and perceive contemporary publics as a new social phenomena, capable of action on its own. Answering to the unspoken question of “what is a public”, Warner claims it to be an “obscure question, considering that few things have been more important in the development of the modernity” and “ an essential fact of social landscape”, it is still a puzzle to say what exactly they are ( Warner 2002 : 49) Warner than follows, that because the “idea of a public”, as distinct from the public , as any bounded audience, is so common to modern culture, everyone seems to understand it intuitively , so he claims his task and his role as “ to bring some of our intuitive understanding into the open in order to speculate about the history of the form and the role it plays in constructing our social world” (Warner 2002 : 50) What emerged as a result – is a comprehensive theoretical descriptive model, applicable to the primer analysis of all types of publics at every major faze of their existence and the role they play in transforming social reality, and, at certain circumstances, in political change. No surprise, that this work was immediately recognized as a guiding source for further research on publics, that had finally got some clear common ground and among many reviewers and followers of Warner’s work the one definition, that was given to his contribution to the field I particularly like is the one by Jessica Blaustein, calling her substantial review of Warner’s book “ How Publics Matter: A Handbook for Alternative World-Making” ( Blaustein 2004 : 171 ) 8

Now, before going into a more detailed analysis of Warner’s description of important characteristics he is attributing to publics, we need to specify our own goal in this exercise : as we are interested in a particular view on publics which is their ability to act on their own and the factors, that contribute to the “level of actorness”, we would not go in much detail in describing all features, that Warner is deriving through observing the different publics, but, rather, concentrate on those, which help in our particular task in exploring public protests, while considering those features one after another in order keep Warner’s original vision in its totality. We would also do it very briefly, in order to fit the scope of a given paper. First feature that Warner is attributing to a public, is that it is self organized and that public comes into being by the virtue of being addressed, as publics, according to Warner, are “a spaces of discourse, made by discourse itself”, when “books are published, shows broadcast, speeches delivered, opinions produced” (Warner 2002 :50) Warner claims that publics assemble in response to the text address to them, including the texts in visual or audio forms, as far as can be understood and reflected upon, and that in this sense the phenomena of public is completely modern, as “neither crowd nor audience nor people nor group will capture the same sense” (Warner 2002 :51) But to be “called upon” or been addressed” is not enough, as a public, appearing in practice as the public, “ must have the way of organizing itself as a body” and “must be organized by something other than the state” (Warner 2002 : 51) We consider this to be an absolutely crucial characteristic of protest publics – to have a capacity to organize itself outside of state structures and beyond any influence from both state and other “pre-organized structures”, as political parties, trade unions, corporate organizations or church - to name the most obvious - if we expect them to act on their own and explore their actorness. Second feature of publics is their functioning as “relations among strangers”, as publics, for Warner, have to be “more than someone’s list of friends” and have to include strangers, that come out to react to the same publicly broadcasted text or a message. (Warner 2002 :55). We also consider this very important and directly applicable to protest publics, because this approach provides a new vision of social collectivity : those are the individuals themselves, who decide if they are “belonging to this public”, as they may find themselves “ interested”, “concerned” or “related to the issue” , regardless of what was the initial goal of the public message transmitted : publication of official election results in a municipality and comments on those numbers may have quite limited public interest, but might also call on quite a large number of strangers to discover that they have a stake in it and find their own way to react to this message.

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Related to this Warner formulates his further points, where number three relates to the form of address of public speech, which he describes to be “both personal and impersonal” ( Warner 2002 : 57) and in number four he is claiming, that “ a public is constituted by mere attention” (Warner 2002 : 60). We consider a former one as not directly connected to our study goal, as it examines not the feature of public itself, but a requirement for a successful public address, and with the later one does not relate to the category of public we are analyzing: as we are focusing on particular phenomena of public protests, “mere attention”, which constitutes “broad category of reflective public”, is not applicable, when we observe the fact its protest activity. While the fifth feature , attributed by Warner to phenomena of public, calling it “ the social space created by the reflexive circulation of discourse “ (Warner 2002 : 62) we find particularly relevant to our study of protesting publics– both at the stage of their assembling and self-organizing, during the active faze of street protest and other public actions, and at the stage when active faze is over, that allows this public to continue reflexive activities on their common experience, and by this – sustaining itself as “a joint body”, proving sense of unity and belonging. Last two features, which Warner uses to describe publics, in our view, have most important explanatory contribution to the field. They are statement six, making a claim that “publics act historically, according to the temporality of their circulation” (Warner, 68) and, finally, seventh, which attributes to publics a unique function of creating a poetic view of the alternative world they create through their discourse, claiming that been a public “is a poetic world-making “ (Warner 2002 : 82). Taken together, those two points may explain “ the public mystique” , as attempting to explain, how is it ever possible, that publics – been so loosely organized – are still able to both sustain themselves and one collective body and produce new world vision, which can mobilize its members for social change. For this reason we will disclose them in more detail. Explaining ‘temporality’ Warner is calling it “punctual rhythm of circulation”, which he see as “ crucial to the sense that ongoing discussion unfolds in the sphere of activity” (Warner 2002 : 68) Applying this to protest publics, we immediately recognize how important is it to constantly keep people connected , but Warner adds to this, is that connectedness have to be both by discourse exchange and by activities, which mutually support each other. In order to bring any social results, common discourses , created by publics, particularly those of protesting counter-publics, that often experience aggressive pressure from the dominant discourse to which they try to oppose, must continue to circulate through time, and the more intense – the better, so that they would make more and more members of the broader public hear,

10 read, speak, write and talk in this same discourse. The more of this is happening, sais Warner, – the closer this public stands to politics. As for the poetic function, the importance of this feature is also hard to overestimate, as Warner brings to the open what many social and political activists already know and use for long time : to make your action successful – make it attractive, creative, theatrical. Modern public has hard time to respond to mere “calls for support” or “fighting against” if it is not packaged in unusual, amusing, often humorous way, and presented in the interactive environment, allowing for participants to express their own creativity. Best example of it in Russia is the case of regularly hold “Monstrations” – mass street marches, mostly by young people, on regular state holidays, with slogans that seem absurd, but having hidden protest meanings6 Though, Warner takes it beyond mere amusing, as he discloses another important feature or publics and mistakes often made, “when the public is thought to exist empirically”, as a certain group of individuals, ready to be addresses or persuaded through merely rational dialogue, while he claims, that public can only be assembled, if attracted by the poetic vision, that go together and beyond rational discourse. For Warner, this is merely the initiating text, to which public can respond to start generating and circulating further discourse - and this is true for protesting publics as well, because any action of government that the public decides to react, may be considered ‘ as certain text’, like decision of former President of Ukraine Yanukovich not to sign Association Agreement with the EU, that had caused the start of protests in Kiiv, or announcing the estimated costs of organizing World Championship in Brazil, that caused mass protests against government spending on Games instead of schooling and health. But for the sake of common language with research community on protests and social movements, that refer to the causes of initial protesting reaction as events , rather than ‘text’ and calling them “triggers” , and in the attempt of creating a common discourse both with “ text-oriented’ researchers and “event-oriented”, we suggest to find a common term , that would content a reference to both text and event and call it a ‘troubling message”, because it refers both to the event, that caused public attention and a text connected to it, that was then heard and interpreted as troublesome by the public, which have chosen to protest. As it is evident from our brief overview, Warners text is thought provoking and inviting to debate, so it is not surprising, that his work was widely recognized and many further interpretations and developments followed. (Wittenber 2002; PeshkopiaIn 2008; Blaustein 2004) In this paper we want to refer to a particular one, by Nick Mahony and John Clarke who

6 http://monstration.ru ; http://ria.ru/society/20090428/169466742.html ; http://sib.fm/stories/2013/05/01/ja-ehtot- gorod-karnaval#gattsm ; 11 are focusing their recent research on the particular ways in which publics are “called into existence” or “summoned”. Analyzing different public speeches of politicians, addressing publics in UK in the context of various interpretations of economic crisis, they had paid attention to different ways in which publics were being addressed and different positions those publics were invited to occupy, which led them to conclusion, that those mediating practices of summoning the publics are not themselves neutral, on the contrary, they are consequential for the sort of public that is been summoned and the role it is invited to perform. On this base they suggested a rough typology of publics, depending on the role prescribed to them : abject publics, that are affected and immobilized, and need to be “spoken for and on behalf of” (Mahony, Clark 2013 : 946-947), audience publics, that are summoned as a choice-bearers, but the choice is limited and pre-decided, like the one between ‘schools or roads’, where the public is viewed as very minimally autonomous (Mahony, Clark 2013 : 947) and the third, “agentic public”, most independent type of public, that is imagined and addressed as reflexive and creative, which “ is supposed to find an identity, form a view “ (Mahony, Clark 2013 : 948) and create its own structure, so that even through a mediation no prescribed outcome is imposed. This division of three types of publics, depending on “ the levels of freedom “ they are given by those who summon them, and also, we believe, dependent on publics own capacities to exercise this freedom, suggested by Mahony and Clarke, is particularly relevant to this paper, because they are close to our own previous writings on actors and actorness , where we distinguish similar triad of levels of actors independence capacities : minimal level, when activities are performed in the interests of others ( similar to abject), when actorness is marginal, due to limited resources ( audiences limited choice) and full-fledged actorness, including cognitive ability, free will to unlimited choices and adequate resources to implement chosen strategies (Belyaeva 2011a; Belyaeva 2011b; Belyaeva 2007) In concluding this theoretical part we want to summarize and slightly reformulate the description of most important features of the phenomena of public in its capacity of a social actor, earlier described by prior researchers, in a particular way, that make it into a conceptual framework, applicable for analysis of protest publics and allowing to distinguish which type of protest publics we are dealing with. First of all, when approaching a protest action or some public event , that looks like a protest, we do not yet know, if it is, in fact a protesting action of certain self-organized public or something else, like historic reconstruction of prior dramatic public events, or artistic performance or administratively managed “demonstration”, where participants were forced to participate. So, to be sure we are dealing with protesting publics – of whatever type and level of their actorness, we would ned to go through several analytical steps. 12

1. Reconstruct the “troubling message”, that was the initial reason of this particular public assembling, paying attention to distinguish between the text or the event, that was triggered public response and its interpretation by protesting public itself 2. Explore the process of this public self-organization, and if it was, in fact happening outside government structures and influence, as well as any other form of pre-existing organizational form or authority. 3. Identify the public spaces, where the unique discourse of this public is been produced, shared, enriched and exchanged, paying attention to diversity of its forms , styles, genres circulation mechanisms. 4. Assess the intensiveness and regularity of discourse exchange and circulation, paying attention to the temporality and ‘winning the head-lines” 5. Evaluate the creativity and attractiveness of the poetic message of the alternative world this public is creating and representing. We believe, that this conceptual frame makes it possible to address several when applied to particular protest events, allows to address some practical questions : Why certain publics, including those assembled for joint protest, sustained and grew while the others did not ? What are the factors, that enable publics to be effective social actors? What enables them to have transformative power – both on social environment and on themselves? Weather those protesting publics can sustain and reproduce themselves, without creating traditional organizational structures used for political contestation - like political parties or clearly structured social movements ? Can those publics, while keeping their nature of been connected “by mere discourse” be successfully reproduced ?

3. Protest public of ‘ Bolotnaya events’ : one or many ? Let us briefly reconstruct the sequence of the events, that had later got the name of ‘Bolotnaya Movement’. Mass political meetings of the citizens of Russia have begun after the elections to the State Duma of the VI convocation, held December 4, 2011, growing protest actions continued during and after the Russian Presidential election campaign March 4, 2012 , which was monitored by an unprecedented number of election observers, who had presented a lot of evidence, that both elections were accompanied by serious violations of the law and massive fraud7.

7 Vladimir Milov. Kak Putin oppozitsiu perehitril. Gazeta.Ru, March, 05, 2012 // http://www.gazeta.ru/column/milov/4026641.shtml 13

The main slogan of the first faze of protest actions was "For free and fair elections!". Major symbol of protest was the White Ribbon8. Central theme of all the protests was their anti-Putin's thrust9.

Mass actions of protests in Moscow and St. Petersburg began on the evening of 4 December., right after preliminary result of elections were announced. The first mass meeting took place in Moscow December 5, 2011, organized by the "Solidarity" movement at the Chistoprudniy Boulevard with the following slogans : "Elections are a farce!", "Give back the choice to the country!", "Give the power back to people!". Information about the meeting was disseminated through Live Journal, Twitter and Facebook, the action brought into streets from 2 up to 10 thousand participants10. Speeches were made by well-known leaders of political opposition. According to the Kommersant and "Vedomosti" journalists, it was the most numerous public assembly in Moscow since 1993, after which there were massive clashes of the of protesters with police at the Lubianka square11. As a result more than 300 people were arrested12. December 10, 2011, protests were held in 99 cities in Russia and 42 cities abroad13 . Moscow opposition rally December 10, 2011, at Bolotnaya square in Moscow became the largest in the last decade14 (on other data — the largest since the beginning of 1990-s15). Evaluation of the authorities of Moscow stated, that rally gathered around 25 thousand people, but according to independent observers and foreign journalists, Bolotnaya brought together over 60 thousand participants16. Among the demands of the protesters were re-elections, as well as the release of political prisoners and the resignation of the head of the Central Electoral Comission of Russia - Vladimir Churov. In two weeks, on 24 December , even more large-scale protest rally took place in Moscow, at prospect Akademika Saharova, that was prepared by the 'protests Organizing Committee', formed after Bolotnaya meeting. Meeting at Sakharova gathered about 100.000 participants in Moscow , many protest meetings were held same day in other Russian cities.

8 http://infox.ru/authority/state/2011/12/09/Simvolom_protyestov_.phtml 9 “Kak je nas mnogo…”. Novie Izvestiya, 26, December, 2011 // http://www.newizv.ru/politics/2011-12-26/156953- kak-zhe-nas- mnogo.html 10 http://www.interfax.ru/moscow/news.asp?id=220276 11 http://www.kommersant.ru/doc/1831691 ; http://www.vedomosti.ru/politics/news/1444277/policiya_presekla_pohod_oppozicii_na_cik 12 http://www.ria.ru/incidents/20111205/507566861.html 13 http://lenta.ru/articles/2011/12/10/worldprotest/ 14 http://kpravda.com/oppozicionnyj-miting-v-moskve-stal-samym-massovym-za-poslednee-desyatiletie/ 15 http://www.economist.com/blogs/easternapproaches/2011/12/protest-russia-0 16 http://www.gazeta.ru/politics/elections2011/2011/12/10_a_3922210.shtml 14

In February 2012, there was a new series of mass actions "for fair elections". Rallies and marches were held in more than 100 cities in Russia and abroad. 4 February was one of the largest rallies against rigged results of the election meeting "For fair elections!" - it was a rally through Yakimanka street and a meeting at Bolotnaya square in Moscow. According to different estimates this meeting collected up to 120 thousand participants17. An important role in organizing the protest marches was played by social networks, where the members of Organizing Committee discussed the dates of actions, slogans and speakers at the meetings. Date 4 February was chosen not by chance - it was timed to the 22th anniversary of the 'March of the Democratic Forces" in 1990, initiating a mass protest of citizens against the Socialist Regime. At the end of February and in March 2012, mass protests have continued. 5 March -the day after the election of the President of Russia- protest rally took place in Moscow with the number of participants from 14 to 30 thousand people. 5 and 10 March in Moscow were two major events, each of them gathering from 10 to 30 thousand people18 . Rally at Pushkin square was broken up by riot police19 . 7 and 18 March there were series of unauthorized actions, in particular in support of political prisoners and against the provocative lie of TV channel NTV, broadcasting the film , blaming the opposition for taking money for protests from USA State Department. Protest rallies were also held in Rostov-on-Don, , Omsk, Barnaul, Tomsk, Nizhniy Novgorod, Arkhangelsk Kostroma, Tula, Voronezh, Ekaterinburg20. Last mass protest rally took place in Moscow on 6 may, connected to the symbolic attempt against Putin’s third Inauguration, which was stopped by stopped and them broken up by police with many people injured and more than 600 arrested, which later resulted in famous “Bolotnaya Case” against 12 meeting participants, most of whom were accused and sentenced to prison, ( quote) , despite of tireless work of hundreds of activists to collect evidence in their innocence and regularly coming to court hearings in their support21. Though there were more mass protest in Moscow after those events of 6 may 2012, and they were attended by the large number of the same people, that participated in winter protest of 2011 – 2012 ‘Bolotnaya Movement’ - as a lable, as a movement, as a specific attitude to protest and even the ‘protest public’ itself, within ‘political temporality’ of two consequtive electoral campaigns was over.

17 http://www.gazeta.ru/news/lastnews/2012/02/04/n_2191809.shtml 18 http://www.rg.ru/2012/03/05/pushka.html 19 http://www.newsru.com/russia/06mar2012/popova.html 20 ВЦИОМ. Опрос на выходе участников шествия и митинга на Болотной набережной 4.02.2012. г. Объем выборки - 800, шаг отбора 21 http://bolotnoedelo.info 15

Now, attempting to apply the concept of analysis of protesting publics to ‘Bolotnaya events’, broadly understood from first protest meeting on 5 December 2011 to last rally on 6 May 2012, we are guided by a major conceptual point, that the publics do not readily exist, they only emerge at the point of been called for and assembled. Applying it to all the scope of so many controversial events, that happened within his time, we have to admit, that there was quite a different public at Bolotnaya on 10 December and at the rally of 6 may 2012, both in terms of how their common identity was perceived and their common discourse, if any, of expressing their ‘vision of the better world’, if only such a vision was not reduced to ‘the world without Putin’, which hardly creates an attractive vision of future. In fact, strictly speaking, we should consider each of those protest events as constituting its ‘own public’, because the results of studies available show, that not only demographically, but also in terms of attitudes and self-articulation, that was easy to see on numerous slogans participants design and presented , what is more important to our study, there were significantly different publics. Such a study might help to reconstruct much better understanding of those events. Now we will only consider analysis of ‘Bolotnaya Public’ during two events, that were both at the beginning of the mass protest, when the public was just emerging, not far apart from each other and almost equally massive: ‘Bolotnaya-10’ and ‘Sakharova-24’, which we claim to be ‘protest public in a making’, to which we will try to apply our five-point analytical scheme. Reconstructing ‘troubling message’, we consider this to be publication of election results, that were seen by thousands of observers not only as fraud, but also as a sign of total ignoring both existing rules and popular belief in ‘change of power through elections’. Self-organization of this protest public was remarkably quick, almost immediate : from first meeting on 5 december to the truly mass rally on 10 december it was less than a week – and this public was self-organized not only ‘apart of the state structures’, but also apart of the other pre- existing organizational forms: though important initiative was taken by Solidarnost , the organizing committee was promptly enlarged, involving journalist, artistic leaders, social volunteers. As for the public spaces, that were available to this public to express their views and discuss plans for the upcoming events, we consider them to be limited and not easily accessible, both because there were no opportunities to organize live meetings , as the election issue was considered ‘sensitive’ and the on-line spaces were few, not well moderated and they were not suitable for deliberations and developing common discourse, rather focused on merely organizational issues .What played an important positive role, was media support from part of ‘official media’, which created and aired a number of public appeals from opinion-makers to join the protests. 16

Discourse exchange was limited, as it mostly happened only during public meetings themselves, when amazing number of participants were creating their own slogans, which expressed both their identity, their concerns, their claims to authorities and their ‘visions of the future’, which were mostly remarkably creative, but either individual presentations or manifestations of small issue-group identity and demands (Lur'e 2012) As for the ‘poetic message’ and the ‘vision of the better world’ that creative and agent publics have to produce and present to manifest themselves, the best of those that we had found to be a common one – is a vision of ‘solidarity of free people’, during the “White Ring” action, when thousands of participants with white ribbons and other white symbols connected hands around the Boulevard Righ in Moscow. This was really creative : because participants did not use the streets, there was no need to have any authorization for an action, that brought together over 50 thousand people and created an atmosphere of celebration. But it was hard to reproduce. Summarizing: Bolotnaya-Sakharova winter protest public was rather well-organized, clearly independent and fairly creative, which allows to attribute it to the agent-type public. But it could neither create a clear common identity nor develop enough public spaces to produce and reproduce common discourse and deliberation on specific vision of the ‘better world’ and ways to approach it. Specific communities, that either existed before and joined the protest, like ecologists or left political activists, or those which were formed during protest actions, like “Movement of 5 December”, had developed their specific discourses, but not a common one, which allows to formulate a hypothesis, that Bolotnaya movement, even at its most consolidated first months, still was not one protest public, but many.

4. Gazprom vs Skyline in St Petersburg : defending a living heart of the City After applying the analytical frame of " protest publics" to mass events in Bolotnaya, where the public appearance and public drive was pretty obvious, the question remains, if the same frame is fruitful when applied to purely social protests, that are driven by very specific problems of social wellbeing, like healthcare, quality of food in local childcare center or attempts to preserve the historic heritage of the surrounding city environment . Social protest are usually studied within the approach of social movement theory, which provides good tools to inquire into their social strata origins, its activism motivations, leadership patterns, mobilization techniques and methods of coalition building, which allows to broaden the scope of actions and involve more resources into movement activities. Major research focus in those studies is to understand social movements internal structure and their development dynamics between and within other social organizations, that allow them to join in wider and

17 more effective collective social action. (Kleman K., Mirjasova O., Demidov A. 2010; Kleman 2013) We want to look at social protests from the other angle : to see them as publics united by common discourse and ability to communicate and exchange this discourse with broader society, to consider them as " mini--protest publics" or " publics -in-the-making" and explore, if this can explain more about them, including their sustainability and dynamics, as well as their effectiveness in developing their identity and communicating it into broader public discourse. For this we will switch the logic of analysis from traditional way of describing social protests through the scheme: problem - leaders - public mobilization- activities - results, to focus more on their " publicness" and qualities of protesting publics , beginning with reconstructing a " troubling message", that a particular public found important to respond, following by self- organization and designing social spaces for creation of common discourse, including ways of communication this discourse to "wider public". The first case we selected for such analysis is St. Petersburg protests against the construction of Ohkta Center Tower by Gazprom state-owned company, that were lasting from 2006 to 2010 and had mobilized quite a broad and vibrant protesting public, uniting broad range of individual ‘city defenders’, and specially created ad hog groups, joined by wide associations of several artistic unions, research communities, veterans organizations, including the Survivors of Leningrad Siege, legal and technical experts, industrial workers collectives, university students , secondary schools, public intellectuals and many different pre-existing groups in support of city’s cultural and historic heritage, creating such a strong and consolidated protest, which, eventually, was able to stop the plans of construction. We had chosen this particular protest for applying ‘protest publics approach’, because it is widely known both through media coverage and through prior research (Gladare 2013; Dixon 2010) so that there is less need to re-tell the major events and we could concentrate on analysis. But before the case addressing the case itself, it is important to notice, the very special atmosphere and special ‘aura’ that exists in St. Petersburg in relation to its cultural heritage issues, because here we are dealing with special type of not only ‘pre-existing’, but ‘ever- existing public’ that had been created in relation to what is known as “Myth of St. Petersburg” (Gladarev 2013 : 28-29) and sustained for years - and forming around a specific moral and ethical unity of its citizens on relation to the city which they feel to be " a living a subject", with its own soul, character and inner life, that they are connected to and called to protect ( Gladarev 2013) Such special groups, concerned with particular risks to historic buildings, since their appearance, continue to function and joining other groups, for example, " Salvation Group", started in 1986 18 by students of history and journalism in attempt to save the house of Delvig, group " Ecology of Ordinary Architecture", started in 1987 in support of preservation of the historic "Angleter" Hotel and same year - a group " For return of historic names ", and " Council for Ecology of Culture , that itself consisted of big number of small informal groups , that were priory formed to protect and preserve specific cultural sites . Later, in 2005, local group of citizens of Vasilievsky Island was formed, to protect it from constructing a highway through the island and sea passenger terminal. Those and many other local movements accumulated their efforts in a movement " Living City ", opposing city-planning policy of Mayor Matvienko. Activities of those groups as " protest mini-publics" created a particular environment, in which, by the time of November 2006, when the major " troubling message" had emerged from city Administration, that the plans of Gazprom to build its office in the historic center, with skyscraper of 300 meters high, there was enough of the " pre-existing protest public" , ready to immediately respond to this challenge. Important to notice, referring in this respect to Warner's theoretical claim, that " publics never exist before been addressed ", St. Petersburg case presents a particular situation, when such ‘culture protection’ publics did not only ‘pre-exist’, but they were - to use the theatrical term – were sort of ‘warmed up’ as they were repeatedly bothered by destructive and threatening activities of City Administration before, so the public, concerned with preservation of historical heritage had enough time to get ‘self-organized outside of the state’ for a long time prior to this particular event. The risk of a dramatic damage to the city center - in terms of its ecology, transport system, living conditions of citizens of Okhta region, architectural standards and, mostly, beautiful historic skyline, making city center be a part of UNESCO heritage, immediately galvanized all the existing protesting publics and called for creation of a much broader public, including people who were not participating in any of such activities before. At the peak of broad public protests against Ohkta Center in August 2009 a broad " Citizen Coalition in Defense of St. Petersburg " united about 20 different organizations , including long existing , experienced and well-resources NGO’s like Non-governmental organization "Memorial", ECOM Center of Expertise of the St. Petersburg Society of Naturalists , the city branch of the All-Russian Society for the Protection of Monuments of History and Culture; well- known urban social movements of citizens " Living City ", " Ohtinskaja Arc ", " Defend Vasilievsky Island ", " League of Women Voters ", " Solidarity", " Green Wave ", " Movement of Civil Initiatives" , and small groups of citizens , " " Square Ivan Fomin , " Council initiative groups Moskovsky district of St. Petersburg and others; regional branches of political parties of St. Petersburg "Yabloko" , "Left Front" , "Spravedlivaya Rossiya” (“Just Russia"), the 19

Communist Party of the Russian Federation; Such a strong Coalition, definitely, was a well established self-organization. In terms of creating spaces for discourse formation, ideas articulation and discussions of possible joint protest actions, there was a vast variety of both on-line communications and off-line actions, which all Coalition members were organizing both on their own resources and joining forces – from expert round tables on technical and legal issues of construction to organizing humorous performances with ‘alternative competitions of Gazprom tower’, from writing poetry devoted to beloved city to discussions with war veterans on moral issues of defending the city, to addresses of writers and film makers, that was broadcasted by local media, the mass rallies and demands of organizing referendum on this issue, to collecting signatures.

Together with off-line activities, there were special on-line resources, created by Coalition and its members, which were in some way specialized in their functions. For example the web-site of the Living City Organization http://www.save-spb.ru/section/ohta/info.html , which was always a place for developing common discourse of ‘people who love their city’ and ‘care about its heritage’, was publishing UNESCO Documents , relating to St.Petersburg, that was available for free download, results of sociological surveys on the issue and news about inti-Gazprom campaign. Web site Gasprom-City http://gazprom-city.spb.ru that was specially created to unite protesting public was publishing all the official documents and critical expert materials concerning the construction, including expert opinions from architechtors, ecologists, economists and from the position of public interests. This resource was opened for public deliberation, allowed different opinions to be posted, as well as to vote on discussed issues, which also very much contributed to deeper understanding of the whole issue and allowed the broad public to form its own opinion about the construction, its potential benefits and risks and consolidate their joint attitude . Another web-resource that is worth mentioning was a web-site Spasi Piter – Save Petersburg - http://www.spasipiter.ru that was specially created for the monitoring of the court cases campaign, that were organized by construction protesters , so that everyone interested can read legal documents regulating process of construction and follow all the stages of court hearing. Finally, the joint web-site of all the Coalition members, called “NO to Tower”22 http was used by merely technical purposes - collecting signatures, disseminating campaign , posters, booklets and leaflets, that were available for downloading . This quick overview demonstrates what a wide variety of communicating spaces were created,

22 http://bashne.net 20

That allowed members of this protesting public not only to develop joint discourse, but also to communicate it easily – both within their specialized min-publics, like lawyers or ingeneers or architects , working on the issue, but also between those mini-publics, which created broad join understanding of common goal – defending the city and created a common identity – ‘city defenders’ . The poetic message, created by this public – ‘ people united to defend the beauty of their city from greedy strangers’ – is a particular strong one, because it united love to the city, defending history and culture and opposing to non-transparent business relations between State-giant Gazprom and City Administration. The results of this broad and lasting public protest was , undoubtedly , victorious and this victory can be claimed to be both political and legal . and cultural, the latter is most important in the context of analytical frame of exploring publics and public engagement. Political one can be marked by 9 December 2010, when Mayor Matvienko made a public statement, that she agreed with Gazprom leadership about moving the construction of their office out of city historic center, and the legal one came shortly after, on 20 December 2010, with the decision of the St. Peterburg city court banning construction at Ohkta cape any buildings more than 40 meters high But what even more important in the context of our analytical frame of exploring protest publics and their role as a social actor, is that in this case they were able to win culturally by creating such a powerful discourse of " defending St. Petersburg", that even official Government structures, initially fully siding with Gazprom, have nothing to counter-position and had to switch sides, making " counter - public " win a discourse , positioning suit as a dominating one. This demonstrates creative " transformative power " of strong public discourses, that is able to suggest a poetic " alternative vision " - blue ribbon, symbolizing unique historic skyline - that had passed a test of " transformation of both polity and identity in the city " ( Megan Dixon 2010).

5. Protest of medical workers : public in the making The very different field of social protest, that we want to explore next is the field of healthcare, where we are witnessing a growing contention between the Russian Ministry of Health, implementing health reform and " optimization of using healthcare resources" and medical personnel of clinics and emergency services, particularly, in Russian provinces, where level of life and social well-being is significantly lower , than in the capital. As the result , there is growing number of protest actions of medical workers, that had started in 2010 and continuing into 2014, which raise similar concerns and articulate similar demands , recently start been organized in some common actions and creating common language . This 21 prompts us to use those protest in attempt to identify, if we are can consider this to be another type of protest public, and a stage of its formation. The " dramatizing message", received from the Government, was the one by health authorities, about the implementation of Presidential Order23 to raise the wages of medical workers to the " above of the average on the regional wage ", which in fact was held in a way of forcing medical workers to work 2-3 shifts for the same salaries, while dramatic loss of specialized medical personnel is increasing and clinics and hospitals start been closed in the name of " optimization of resources ". This provoked protesting reaction from an active part of medical community. As the response to this troubling message protesting public start been formed in different Russian provinces, manifesting itself by various actions, organized by medical personnel of local clinics , in such cities as Arhangelsk24, Ekaterinburg, Ivanovo, St. Petersburg25, Kaliningrad26, Rzhev27 in Tver Oblast, Izhevsk Udmurtia Republic28 , Vladilavkaz in North Ossetia29, Berdsk30 in Novosibirsk Oblast, Moscow31. The start of the self-organizing and consolidating of this public began on 2 April 2013 by the creative action of medical workers of Izhevsk , protesting against overwork and low wages in the form of " Italian strike" or working strictly according to rules and norms, which prescribed to a doctor to spend with each patient no more than 10 minutes and refused to continue the over- work, imposed by their clinic administration. The level of consolidation of medical workers of Izhevsk was really high, as the " Italian strike" action was joined by 8 clinics out of 9 existing in the city32. This action was organized by their independent Trade Union " Action", which was formed during the previous protest action - during 22 December 2012, which was joined united representatives of all pediatric clinics of the city33. When the " Italian strike" did not bring results, on 18 April protesting medics went on hunger strike, spreading news about this through medical community and the result was, that within days, by 20 April, different actions in their support were held in 23 cities of Russia and a big

23 Указ Президента Российской Федерации от 7 мая 2012 года N 597 "О мероприятиях по реализации государственной социальной политики" / Российская газета, 09 мая 2012 года, № 5775 24 Газета «Труд», № 167 за 09 сентября 2009 г. / http://www.trud.ru/article/09-09- 2009/228520_vrachi_xotjat_bolshe_vrachej.html 25 Сайт движения «Автономное действие» / http://avtonom.org/people/profsoyuz-deystvie 26 Газета Труд, 04 Октября 2007 года 27 Сайт международной ассоциации трудящихся / http://www.aitrus.info/node/3336 28 Российская газета, 22 апреля 2013 года 29 Сайт международной Ассоциации трудящихся http://www.aitrus.info/node/3300 30 Газета "Курьер. Среда. Бердск"/ http://www.kurer-sreda.ru/2013/10/01/116498 31 Газета.Ru http://www.gazeta.ru/social/2013/05/24/5335741.shtml 32 Сайт «Радио Свобода»б 02 апреля 2013 года / http://www.svoboda.org/content/article/24945445.html 33 Информационное агентство Newsroom / http://newsroom.su/?p=284#ixzz30axSaqew 22 report about those events published in Rossiyskays Gazeta34, which was a first recognition of a newly formed collectiveness . Consolidation went further through the channels of Trade Union " Action", which held its first Conference in Moscow in February of 2014, where representatives of 11 regions of Russian federation took part, which can be sited as a land mark of medical self- organization outside of the state35. In terms of the attempts of specific discourse formation, it is still early to say, because the language used in both direct speech during the meetings and protest events is mainly the one of description hard working conditions and calculating the level of wages, that was promised in Presidential Decree and the one that exist in reality, which is two or even three times lower. Though, there are several examples creative language, that is appearing on placards like " Poverty - stricken medics - handicapped Russia ", or trying to connect dramatic problems in medical profession with violating of Constitutional right for state-sponsored healthcare, or to use elements of show in protest actions, like in Sverdlovsk, where two new year trees were decorated during public meeting: one with numbers of " promised wages", the other - " with real ones". But the overall discourse so far do not extend beyond labor rights and articulation of interests is limited to direct demands, like " No to destruction of free medical care!" or " Medics should be paid as Military!". As for the forms of protest, they are still mostly passive, like pickets, congresses, hunger strikes, but no such forms are used as applying to prosecutor's office or filing a claim for the court in defense of their rights. The self-identity, that is portrayed in their public appearance so far, is that of the victim of non-effective and non-transparent bureaucracy, and the address their claims to those, who were violating their rights. Protesting medics do not make attempts to address a broader public and the only information resources that are informing regularly about their activities, are several web-sites of trade unions , like ( quite) ....and those monitoring protest action, like Institute of Collective Action. Summarizing the first stage of this protest, as this case is far from been developed and it is still not enough information available, we can say, that medical protesting public is just in the making, but there are some clear risk , that are seen even from the first steps : though been quite independent and developing its self-organization outside of the state, this public begins to great a very narrow discourse of ‘low wages’ and ‘non-transparent payment schemes’, that might be limiting their opportunities in future. Another risk , that can be identified , is that the type of addresses they are sending to possible supporters and to their own followers, is also limited to the ‘call for support’, which is more suitable for creating audience publics, that would be waiting

34 Российская газета, 22 апреля 2013 года 35 Сайт Института коллективного действия / http://www.ikd.ru/node/19331 23 for pre-decided alternatives. For the future successful development of such protests, those risks should be taken into account.

Conclusions Mass protest movements, that are rolling over the globe for the last several years are demonstrating that forms of citizens self-organization had not been exhausted , and when conventional forms do not work or are perceived not effective, new forms emerge, like protest publics, whose major resource and transformative power lays in its discursive practices. There had been several theoretical frames created by social sciences to analyze various forms of public participation, and because its forms are rapidly evolving, analytical instruments should also evolve , in order to keep up with social practice and in this paper This paper suggested yet another theoretical model of addressing public protests, based on analysis of protesting publics, that emerge through those protest, which allows to distinguish their different types according to the level of their actorness. Protest publics framework also allows to explain their social origin not on the base of demographic data or belonging to a particular social group, like ‘students’, “workers” or ‘middle class’, and not binding all the diverse participants by one ‘common interest’, but, rather, disclose its formation on basis of shared discourse and common ethical demand towards the power structures. Completely new capacity of protesting publics, is their ability to transform, rather than aggressively confront their opponents, developing alternative poetic discourse of the “other world possible”, while such transformation also includes members of protesting publics themselves. This can be expressed by one of the slogans at Bolotnaya, addressed both to political elites and to protesting publics in attempt to shape their identity : “ We are not an opposition, we are your employers. We are not just protesting, we are firing you out “. Together with Social Movement Theory, that is focused on " formation, activities and outcome" of movements, its leadership, organizational structure and diffusion mechanisms, “theory of publics” is mostly concerned by the question “how publics are made”, how are they summoned and sustained “, “how do they communicate their alternative vision”. Those approaches, while dealing with same object of study, have different focus of attention and can successfully complement each other : while social movement theory judges movements success mostly by the number of followers and “political outcomes”, success of protest publics is attributed to their sustainability, creativity, their transformative power of ‘world vision”. Often based on ethical demands, broad protest publics have a greater potential to transform the societies at large, including both elites and protest members, rather than just push for specific policy decision, that can be short-lived. 24

Publics turn to broader horizons, this is why it is often hard to find an immediate "output " or “result” of the activities of " protesting publics", because, as Michael Warner had proved, it takes time for those new world visions that they develop to take root. Working with protest publics and other types of agent publics and creative counter-publics, we have to be patient, and remember, that " : Publics act historically. They are said to rise up, to speak, to reject false promises, to demand answers, to change sovereigns, to support troops, to give mandates for change, to be satisfied, to scrutinize public conduct, to take role models, to deride counterfeits (Warner 2002 : 88) So, it is worth working for analysis and support of those publics to develop. The other discovery, that I had made through collecting recent publications on "purely social protests" - from those of organized labor, to raising against home violence, or poor quality of food in the child-care, to protecting ecology and city environment - it is really hard to counter- position them to what is known as " political protest", particularly in contemporary Russian context, where many social problems emerge out of ineffective political governing structure and absence of working democratic mechanisms to address those issues. Been triggered by very specific "local issues" like closing hospital, delay in social payments or leaking roof in child-care center, those protests produce protesting mini- and micro – publics, that address those problems and begin discussing them that almost inevitably produce an " alternative thinking" and alternative “better world possible”, that involves new visions for political renewal as well. In this way, if the social protest is carried out by truly independent agent public by the fact of their mere discussion of their social problems and sharing their own discourse with the broader public, they are joining in with "political protest". At its first stage such participation can be only virtual, at the next stage of protest public development –it can easily transform to personal participation.

25

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