The Specter of a “Revolutionary Situation”

Abstract

Based on material from nationwide surveys conducted by the RAS Institute of Sociology in monitor mode, this article explores the probability that a “revolutionary situation”—an increase in mass protest actions by the “lower classes”—will take shape in present-day Russia. An analysis of the results of a survey conducted in the early spring of 2016 and a comparison of it with previous “waves” of surveys show that in the near term (the next year or two) a “revolutionary situation” will remain only a dangerous specter for Russia—mass protest actions will be merely a potential threat, not a living reality. This is based on the fact that in 2015 there was a moderate level of personal participation in various protest actions. In addition, protest actions today are primarily of an economic nature: People protest mostly against layoffs, price rises, and so on, rather than against the government. A paradox is evident: Many protest against the existing socioeconomic “rules of the game,” but their protest has not been consolidated; the protest against existing political institutions has “leaders” (the liberal opposition), but that protest is much less massive. At the same time, one should take note of a dangerous phenomenon regarding the high volatility of the characteristics of the protest activity: Russian citizens are capable, in response to “stimulative” events, of whipping around and changing their sociopolitical preferences.

Keywords:

• protest actions
• public-opinion surveys
• “revolutionary situation”
• social deviancy
• social protest

Notes

1. This popular expression was taken from Marx’s 1850 article “The Class Struggle in France from 1848 to 1850” [Marks, Engel’s, 1956, p. 86]

2. The liberal political scientist A. Obolonskii describes this as a negative, repressive attitude of the government, deeply entrenched in our tradition, toward any social activism unless it is authorized “from the top,” and especially, but not exclusively, toward political activism, against which prohibitive, punitive measures are always especially purposeful and brutal [Obolonskii, 2013, p. 109].

3. Examples include the following: [Kara-Murza, 2006; Sulakshin, 2009; Gapich and Lushnikov, 2010; Ponomareva and Rudov, 2012; Manoilo, 2015]. There are few contrary examples—emphasizing the objective utility of mass nonviolent protest—in the contemporary literature; one of the few illustrations is [Inozemtsev, 2016]. It is symptomatic that the online comments to this article included the phrase “rehabilitation of the concept of ‘revolution’”; if the rehabilitation of revolution is under discussion, this means that it has been condemned.

4. Even during the period of the greatest increase in the authority of the radical liberal opposition, which was criticizing the political regime for authoritarianism and corruption, the population’s involvement in the conflict between the government and the radical opposition was not very deep. This was found, for example, when the RAS IS in 2013 conducted its regular nationwide survey of the population and the following question was purposely inserted in the questionnaire: “Recently opposition political forces, with increasing frequency, have been sharply criticizing the government and urging people to go out into the streets and participate in mass protest actions. Whom are you more likely to support in this instance—the government or the opposition?” The survey results showed slightly more support for the opposition than for the government, but both of these groups turned out to be in a minority: Only 17 percent chose the response “more likely to support the government” and only 21 percent were “more likely to support the opposition.” The overwhelming majority—nearly two-thirds of the population (61.9 percent)—asserted that they were “not willing to support either of them.” The narrowness of the social base of “antigovernment” protests manifested itself even more starkly in subsequent years.

5. The reference is to the song “Ten’ burevestnika” (“The Petrel’s Shadow”), the title track on an album released by patriotic pop singer Oleg Gazmanov in 1993.—Trans.

6. An allusion to a famous quotation from Goethe’s play Faust, in which Faust imagines saying to a passing moment: “Stay awhile, you are so beautiful!” (“Verweile doch, du bist so schön!”)—Trans.

7. A quotation from Pushkin’s novel The Captain’s Daughter.—Trans.

8. The concept of “protest potential” used here is the same as the expression “potential for protest” that is already used in the scholarly literature—mindsets (orientations) of social actors toward open (public) expression of their discontent through mass protest-related actions [Kinsburskii and Topalov, 2016, p. 21].

9. There may have been substantially more of them, since in the 2013 and 2016 surveys the respondents who viewed protest actions with disapproval or indifference very likely included people who had previously taken part in such actions but later became disillusioned with them or chose, out of caution, to give a “socially acceptable response.”

10. The Bolotnaya Square case involved charges against thirty people for allegedly assaulting police on May 6, 2012, during the “March of Millions,” which was to terminate on Bolotnaya Square outside the Kremlin. The case prompted an international outcry. Some defendants were sentenced to prison terms of up to four and a half years, while others received amnesty.—Trans.

11. A popular phrase from the 1896 poem “To a Young Poet,” by the Russian Symbolist poet Valery Bryusov (1873–1924).—Trans.

12. See Press-vypusk No. 2776. “Problemy strany i kak ikh reshat’” (http://wciom.ru/index.php?id=236&uid=115151).

13. Monitoring obshchestvennogo mneniia, 2015, No. 1(125). January-February, pp. 60–62 (http://wciom.ru/fileadmin/file/monitoring/2015/125/2015_125_61_Politics.pdf).

14. Between February and April 2015, there was an increase in world oil prices, which created the illusion that crisis-related phenomena had ceased in the Russian economy; but then the decline in oil prices resumed, and continued until January 2016, devaluing the ruble.

15. In the questionnaire for the 2015 VTsIOM survey the question was worded as follows: “If mass protest actions or demonstrations were to take place in our town/rural raion against the decline in living standards, unjust actions by the authorities or in defense of people’s rights, would you take part in them or not?” [Kinsburskii and Topalov, 2016, p. 28]. When ordinary people are asked about their willingness to come out against injustice and in defense of their rights, they may take it as “testing for cowardice” and express (in words) much more of a willingness for protest than they really feel. To avoid this, the RAS IS survey questionnaires ask simply about a willingness to take part in protest actions, without “suggesting” to the respondent what they are directed against.

16. We should stress that, based on the nationwide survey data, it is basically impossible to identify and study the milieu of political radicals per se who are organized and actually ready for violence. After all, the total number of all such radicals (radical nationalists, antifa, radical Islamists, etc.) in Russia, according to experts’ estimates, amounts to a few tens of thousands (a maximum of 100,000–200,000), which on a nationwide scale constitutes small fractions of a percent, so they are unlikely to end up at as respondents in the surveys at all, and even if they do end up among them, they are unlikely to be candid with unfamiliar interviewers. The respondents who declare during the surveys their readiness for armed resistance are most probably “sympathizers”—part of the far end of the radical nonsystemic opposition.

17. The “Primorsky Partisans” was the name given by the news media to a criminal group of young people, close to the skinhead-nationalists, who lived in one of the poor settlements in Primorsky Krai and who carried out attacks in 2010 on militiamen, according to the criminals’ statements, in protest against “cops’ lawlessness.”

18. A quotation from Vladimir Mayakovsky’s epic poem “Vladimir Ilyich Lenin”: “The specter of communism wandered about Europe, it would fade away, then loom anew in the distance.”—Trans.

19. The home of the Russian government in Moscow.—Trans.

20. A quotation from Pushkin’s poem “To Chaadaev.”—Trans.

21. This indicator, proposed by N. Latova, shows the relationship between the proportions of respondents who rate their social–psychological condition positively and negatively during a nationwide survey, on a scale from 0 points (everyone rates their condition unfavorably) to 100 points (everyone rates their condition favorably) [Rossiiskoe…, 2015, pp. 19–21].

22. The meaning here is the classical interpretation (proposed by V. Lenin) of a revolutionary situation as a political crisis leading to a change of government, when the “lower classes” do not want, and the “upper classes” are unable, to live in the old way [Lenin, 1981, pp. 69–70].