As was explained in the previous section, Oborona activists’ self-understanding is based on shared gendered and classed ideals of intelligentsia, dissidence and positive identification with the West. However, even if Oborona’s goals – change of government and a western-type liberal democracy – are political, the group has not created a shared political and ideological base. Instead, the political solidarities and affiliations in the group are more complex and range from libertarians to social-democrats. I suggest that because of these fluid and sometimes contradictory political affiliations, the sense of groupness (Brubaker and Cooper 2000), feelings of belonging and solidarity, in Oborona are not based on shared political goals but on generational ties, friendship, and communication (obshchenie). Activists construct connective ties that keep the group together through the idea of shared generational experiences and action. Furthermore, activists’ sense of belonging is enforced through friendship ties and family terms, which reflect the Soviet forms of group formation, youth hang-outs, the so-called tusovki, and intelligentsia’s circles, known as kruzhki, which are defined by obshchenie: being together and communication (see Yurchak 2006, 148).
Depoliticizing Activism: Oborona as ‘Civic’ or ‘Political’
When talking about political ideologies, Oborona activists found it difficult to identify a common political reference point:
Vladimir: It’s hard to position him [the typical participant]… We cannot say he is a social-democrat, liberal, or so forth. Everyone has very different views on political credos (na politicheskiy kredo). He is difficult to position.
Also Katia explained to me about the irrelevance of different political ideologies in the group:
See, if we stand for democratic values, democratic values mean precisely that there can be social-democrats and there can be libertarians. We have Vova, who is a libertarian. Okay.
Let them be. Surely, we are not United Russia where everybody has to be the same (odinakovymi)16. No. In fact, in the coordinating council we have very intelligent people who can accept each other’s point of view. That is normal.
The number of active participants in Oborona tended to be small, and the turnover rate relatively high. Because of the lack of shared political ideology, the movement’s ideological base relied on individual political solidarities of the participants. For example,
16 According to Olga Kryshtanovskaya (2011), United Russia also has a wide platform of different political ideas and thus it is in fact structured quite similarly to Oborona as accommodating a wide variety of political affiliations.
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in the spring of 2010 Viktor explained to me that even if the movement supported more right-wing ideas, it could become more ‘socialist’ if people with socialist ideas would join the movement. During my fieldwork, this type of shift in political orientation occurred when two rather influential activists with more social-democratic ideals entered the core group and started to promote a more leftist agenda, such as the educational reform and opposing the state-proposed fees in education. In October 2010, Oborona was in the middle of this change. Its long time leading figure had left his position as a coordinator, and new activists entered the group. Inna’s hesitation to define the ideological position of the movement at that time demonstrates the fluidity of the movement’s inner politics:
LL: What kind of ideology does Oborona have?
Inna: Uh, at this point it's a complicated question. Because Oborona is undergoing changes in the composition of its activists, as well as some ideological [changes]… We have changed our objectives, goals, and strategies a little. This is a sore point (bol’nyi vopros).
When I visited Moscow after the dissolution of Oborona in October 2012, one of the core activists explained to me that ‘the new people’ had steered the movement too much to the left and therefore she decided to leave the group. However, instead of evolving into a leftist group, Oborona dissolved altogether, mainly due to the pressure of its more right-wing activists who did not support this path of development. In 2012, the more left-oriented activists started to plan a new branch of Oborona outside of Moscow in order to continue cooperation.
The weak political connectedness, i.e. the relational ties that link the activists together (Brubaker and Cooper 2000), was further reflected in the activists’ definitions of the group as political or civic. My questions of Russian politics and the movement’s political ideology created many different answers and activists were somewhat confused about the movement’s ideological position. Despite Oborona’s political goals, many participants presented the movement as ‘civic’ or ‘societal’ (grazhdanskaia or obshchestvennaia) instead of political (politicheskaia). Some of the activists emphasized that Oborona does not have any political ideology whatsoever and is therefore purely ‘civic’. Others saw that Oborona’s ideological base was non-violent resistance and constitutional rights, while some described Oborona as a ‘pure political project’ or a ‘political platform’. Activists’
confused relation to political ideologies and goals reflects the diversity of political positions in the movement. Furthermore, this confusion reflects the shared idea in the group that politics in Russia are ‘dirty’ and that politicians are ‘bad’. By insisting on Oborona’s ‘civic’ nature, activists could distance themselves from these ‘dirty’ politics and portray Oborona as taking a moral higher ground:
Katia: It is like the Russian philosopher Berdiaev said, that the Russian intelligentsia thinks that power itself is a sin (vlast' sama po sebe grekhovna). Therefore, it is a sin to hold power and a sin to rule (rasporiazhat'sia) people. I am not a religious person, but I share the attitude of the Russian people that everyone who has power is bad (plokhie).
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Activists’ understanding of what is ‘political’ was often tied to formal political parties and politicians. One of the activists explained that before joining Oborona, he was involved in an environmental group to protect Lake Baikal and to stop the building of an oil pipeline in the region. He emphasized that this group was ‘not political but civic’.
Also, Daria makes a distinction between different themes, such as antifascism or human rights, as not being ‘political’:
And we don’t only do political events but we also have people who are interested in rights-defending themes, antifascism, there are all sorts. Well, being anti-draft (antiprizyv, referring to army drafts), is certainly more about defending rights than about politics.
(Daria)
For Boris on the other hand, ‘political’ means to fight for power and to try to be in power.
He refers to Oborona as ‘anarchist’ in a sense that it is not taking part in institutional politics:
Well, for me, the internal structure of the organization is important, [it is] sufficiently anarchist, and for me it is not a political project. That is, Oborona does not exactly participate in politics, that is, it doesn’t fight for power, yes. (Boris)
Because Oborona participants associate party politics with corruption and personal gain, they did not want to identify as a political project per se but frame the movement’s activities as ‘civic’. This resonates with the activist self-understanding, which is based on intellectualism and dissident traditions, and the idea of the intelligentsia as a social group that is distinguished not only from the masses, but also from powerholders (Kochetkova 2010). Traditionally, intelligentsia’s ‘true’ place has not been in formal politics but in society, in moral critique. This suspicion towards politics and politicians is not unique for Oborona, but distrust in most public institutions is characteristic for Russians in general, shown by Shlapentokh (2006; see also Petukhov 2008). Furthermore, depoliticizing the movement is a way of overcoming political fragmentation within the group and to create commonality and feelings of belonging despite political discrepancies. Because political ideologies could not create a sense of groupness in Oborona, it had to be constructed through other attributes, namely through generational ties and friendship.
Generational Ties: ‘The New Free Generation’
Instead of political attributes, Oborona activists emphasized their shared generational experiences as an important source of connectedness and solidarity inside the group. For Oborona activists, mainly born in the late 1980s and the 1990s, the 1990s form an important shared generational experience as the ‘new free generation’, as Oborona calls itself in its Declaration (Deklaratsiia, see Appendix 1). Oborona makes a strong distinction from Soviet times and the previous generations by stating that its participants are ‘free of the burdens of the Soviet past and care about the future instead’ (Deklaratsiia).
Even if Oborona activists have different opinions of the success of the reforms in the
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1990s, they share a nostalgic relationship to the 1990s and the era of democratic reforms.
They see the 1990s as a time of freedom and ‘real’ democracy with free media and elections. Some of the activists, like Aleksandr, believe that growing up in the 1990s and during the glasnost’ and perestroika periods was a good time for the ‘personality formation’:
I’m very happy that my period of secondary school happened during these years when the old Soviet ideology was already gone, but before Putin came to power, before this semblance of today’s ideology was formed. Or this fake-ideology (lzhe-ideologiia) … This time was a lucky interval between one ideology and the attempt to make another ideology.
Therefore, this was a very good time for personality formation.
For Mikhail, the general politicization occurring during the 1990s meant that he has been interested in politics ‘since childhood’. Alla too, talked about her generation and their
‘vaccination of freedom’:
And my teens, when everything is formed in the head, happened in the 1990s. And that’s why this is a booster vaccination (moshchnaia privivka). I always say that especially our section of this generation has the vaccination of freedom (privivka svobody) and those who are younger, they no longer remember, how it was at that time. (Alla)17
Activists recount their memories of the 1990s, such as watching the news or listening to radio with their families and friends of their parents who had gathered to discuss what was going on in the country, or they retell their parents’ stories of the 1990s. Alexey Yurchak (2006, 2) claims that the perestroika and glasnost’ policies were first thought to be yet another state-orchestrated campaign, but after a few years, Russians started to realize that something ‘unimaginable’ was happening. According to Yurchak, people living through these changes talked about their experiences of a sudden ‘break of consciousness’ and
‘stunning shock’ quickly followed by excitement and readiness to take part in the transformation. These experiences of the possibility of ‘unimaginable’ change have shaped the identities of the young Oborona activists and their individual aspirations and expectations (see also Swartz 1997, 103). Activists see that through their personal memories, or their parents’ stories, and positive identification with the democratic changes of the 1990s, it has been easier for them to adopt democratic ideas and to believe in the chance of future change as well. These stories create a sense of belonging to this ‘new free generation’ and also to the wider democratic movement in Russia.
Katia told me how her mother took to the streets during the skirmishes at the beginning of 1990s:
When there was all that situation of the year ’91, and ‘93, my mom took to the streets. She struggled for democratic goals when the tanks drove. At that time, I was in a village far away from Moscow, but mom was here. I was really small. She wasn’t afraid that there were people driving tanks, and she took to the streets, like that, with her friends. My father
17 Alla did not want to reveal her age but mentioned that she is some years older than other participants in the movement.
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did not go at that time, simply because he was not in Moscow, [and where he was] there was no place to go. But in general, they are more like, of course, not activists, not as active as I am.
Katia’s story reflects the general nostalgia and positive identification among the Oborona activists whenever they talk about the 1990s as a period of liberation and struggle for democracy. This idealization of the 1990s as a time of freedom and active participation is a marginalized discourse in contemporary Russia. The statements of Vladimir Putin as well as of the pro-Kremlin youth movement Nashi associate the 1990s with a period of chaos, moral degeneration, and citizen passivity. President Putin has referred to the collapse of the Soviet Union as ‘the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century’
(BBC News 2005). While Oborona activists refer to their parents and the 1990’s reformers as freeing the country from its totalitarian past, Nashi’s manifesto refers to them as
‘defeatists’ who sold out the country. Instead of their parents’ generation, Nashi represents their grandparents’ generation and especially the World War II veterans as their ‘heroes’
(Hemment 2012). However, both anti- and pro-Kremlin youth movements articulate their position in relation to the past, and as the active ‘new’ generation with a promise for an active and dignified position that differentiates them as activists from what are seen as the apolitical contemporary young Russians.
Just as Katia does, also other young activists talk about their parents being liberal-minded and not supporting the current regime. However, the young do not count their parents as being currently politically active, and this way the activists differentiate themselves from their parents’ generation. Aleksandr described his family as ‘politically neutral’ and Mikhail described his parents ‘more like a kitchen-type of intelligentsia’, referring to the Soviet dissidents that gathered in the kitchen to discuss and to write, read, and distribute illegal literature. For Oborona activists, talking is not enough to be counted as ‘political’ let alone as being ‘activist’, but activism requires some concrete ‘action’
through which the activist identity is performed. According to Zhanna, ‘activism is not only talking but doing’. Oborona activists mentioned the street activities and humorous flash mobs and games, which involved running from the police or getting arrested, as a youthful way of engaging in politics in comparison to adults’ unexciting pickets. (I will analyze Oborona’s street performances in more detail in chapter 6.)
Zhanna suggested that being young means taking a more active and optimistic position, because young people have not yet become cynical as the adults are. In the movement’s Declaration, Oborona activists describe themselves as ‘thinking, daring, interested in the fate of their country, ready to take responsibility for its future’. Young activists in other Russian youth movements share this discourse as well. The pro-Kremlin movement Nashi uses this same discourse of dis-identifying youth activism from ‘adult’
political practices, and Nashi leaders talk about their movement as a space in which to do something ‘real’ (Lassila 2011b, 262). Interestingly, this same discourse of ‘action’
(aktsiia) as the embodiment and enactment of political beliefs is found in research by Pilkington and others (2010) on Russia’s skinheads, who also refer to their group as a
‘movement of action’ and to other, non-active people as ‘kitchen racists’ who have failed in action (Pilkington 2010, 121). ‘Action’ and ‘doing’ seem to be shared discursive
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frameworks of Russian youth activism across ideological boundaries; it is a way for young participants to distinguish themselves from the ‘apolitical masses’ and their parents’
generation, which is currently in power.
Also McFaul (2003) writes about the ‘new generation’ of Russians and argues that
‘this is the first generation since 1917 in Russia to come of age in (a) an independent Russia, (b) a capitalist economy, and (c) a ‘free’ (albeit not altogether democratic) political system’ (McFaul 2003, 65). He claims that this generation became politically aware during the period of 1990s democratization and their views differ from the views of their parents, and are very distinct from those of their grandparents. McFaul describes the younger generation in Russia as more pro-market, pro-democratic, and pro-western than other age cohorts. (McFaul 2003, 64–70.) However, even if Russian youth seem to distinguish themselves from their parents’ generation, they hold various and individual political and moral viewpoints from anti-western to pro-western and from conservative to liberal, for instance, and thus, labeling the generation too generally tends to give too narrow an idea of the diversity of Russian youth and their views.
Soviet Continuities of Groupness: Tusovka and Kruzhok
Oborona participants often talk about their group with strong affection and refer to other activists as their good friends or people with whom ‘they feel comfortable’ (Vova).
According to Lebedev’s (2008, 226) comparative study on Russian youth movements, especially oppositional movement activists, emphasize the importance of friendships in their groups. Usually the first thing my interviewees mentioned when talking about benefits of participation were the friends they met through activism:
Probably, it is that, now for me, Oborona, the Moscow [group], in the first place, it is simply my friends. [---] But for me, it is not only like-minded people (edinomyshlenniki), with whom my views coincide, it is people, with whom I can spend part of my free time, also when not practicing politics, [we] can just go to the dacha (country-cabin). (Anton) Some of the activists refer to Oborona and the opposition in general as a ‘political tusovka’. Tusovka refers to youth’s hanging out especially in the Moscow rock scene during late socialism, from the 1960–70s onwards (Pilkington 1994, 234) and more generally, interaction patterns of the countercultures of the Soviet Union located it in the informal public sphere (Zdravomyslova and Voronkov 2002, 63–64). Zdravomyslova (2003, 144) argues that tusovka is ‘founded on face-to-face communication between those who enact it’ and that these actors are ‘united by shared practices, attitudes, and styles of individual conduct and interaction.’ Since Soviet times the term tusovka has evolved to designate ‘all particularistic informal communication realms’, not only dissident and ethnic communities but also salons and different forms of gentleman clubs (Zdravomyslova and Voronkov 2002). According to Pilkington (1994, 234–237), tusovka includes sociability and communicative interaction (obshchenie) with like-minded people.
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Many Oborona activists talked about the meaning of activism in terms of obshchenie, and they brought up sociability and discussions as one of the most important rewarding elements of their participation:
LL: What does participation mean to you?
Vera: Well, it means that I can communicate (obshchat’sia) with people who share my opinions of the Russian reality (deistvitel’nost’), who understand me, and with whom it is possible to express my discontent more openly somehow.
Katia: Well, everywhere, there is this element of personal communication (element lichnostnogo obshcheniia), with young people in general. So in a youth movement, Oborona, for example, is a remarkable case, where everybody marries. [Lists three couples who ‘met in the opposition’.] So this is also an indicator of Oborona, that we have this kind of deep communication (obshchenie) that unites (splochaet) people.
Obshchenie can be translated as communication and being together. Alexei Yurchak (2006, 148) argues that obshchenie does not only mean talking and spending time together, but also involves nonverbal interaction and intimate commonality as well as intersubjective sociality. It is a performative act that, among other functions, includes judging and controlling of who belongs to us (svoi), to ‘our’ people (Yurchak 2006, 149;
103). Obshchenie is not only typical for Oborona, but other studies have noted the importance of sociability and mutual support in Russian civic activism (Salmenniemi 2008; Kulmala 2010). According to Salmenniemi (2010, 321), organizations have partly replaced the terrain of Soviet collectives and provided for the activists ‘feelings of belonging in a time of socioeconomic dislocation’. Also Lebedev (2008, 210) found in his study on several youth movement activists, both anti- and pro-Kremlin, that friends, tusovka culture and obshchenie were considered as more important values than ideological
103). Obshchenie is not only typical for Oborona, but other studies have noted the importance of sociability and mutual support in Russian civic activism (Salmenniemi 2008; Kulmala 2010). According to Salmenniemi (2010, 321), organizations have partly replaced the terrain of Soviet collectives and provided for the activists ‘feelings of belonging in a time of socioeconomic dislocation’. Also Lebedev (2008, 210) found in his study on several youth movement activists, both anti- and pro-Kremlin, that friends, tusovka culture and obshchenie were considered as more important values than ideological