The Formats, Factors, and Social Base of Civic Activism in Today's Russia

Abstract

This article is devoted to the study of practices of civic activism in Russia. The tasks of the study included determining the ratio between the political and the nonpolitical components of the activism, determining the scale of the prevalence and rootedness of the different forms of civic participation in life practices, analyzing the social base of civic activism, and discerning its main factors of development.

Notes

English translation © 2015 Routledge Taylor and Francis, Inc., from the Russian text © 2014 “Sotsiologicheskii zhurnal.” “Grazhdanskii aktivizm v sovremennoi Rossii: formaty, faktory, sotsial'naia baza,” Sotsiologicheskii zhurnal, 2014, no. 2, pp. 48–71. A publication of the Institute of Sociology, Russian Academy of Sciences. [Notes have been renumbered in this translation.—Ed.] Natal'ia Nikolaevna Sedova is a senior science associate in the Center for Comprehensive Social Research, Institute of Sociology, Russian Academy of Sciences. Translated by Kim Braithwaite.

^1. The size of the aggregate sample was 1,600 respondents, representing the adult population of the Russian Federation (age eighteen and older), on the parameters of sex, age, education, and type of community of residence. It is a multistage zoned sample with a quota selection of units of observation at the final stage. The study was carried out using the questionnaire method.

^2. It is interesting to note that according to the data of a survey by the All-Russian Center for the Study of Public Opinion (VTsIOM) titled “Electoral Panel,” the effectiveness of discussions of social and political problems on the Internet, in the forums, and on the social networks, in the opinion of Russians, is only slightly less in effectiveness than forms of participation such as membership in a political party or participation in the activity of some kind of nonpolitical civic movement. All these formats are considered highly effective by only 7–8 percent of the respondents, and the effectiveness of membership in a party is rated as medium by 39 percent, participation in a civic movement by 43 percent, and discussion and debate on the Internet by 36 percent (2013, eighth wave; for more detail concerning the study see “Proekt ‘Elektoral'naia panel’ 2011–2012'”; Sait VTSIOM, http://politpanel.wciom.ru (accessed June 15, 2014).

^3. Classified with the group of “active political involvement” are the respondents who reported at least one of the following kinds of participation: in civic and political demonstrations; in the work of political parties; in the activity of human rights organizations; in bodies of local self-government; in election campaigns as observers, canvassers, and so on; and in maintenance of connections with politically like-minded people on the Internet. The group of “sideline type political involvement” consists of respondents who were not included in the group of “active political involvement,” but who mentioned at least one of the following kinds of participation: discussion of political events with friends and colleagues, and participation in elections as voters.

^4. The conclusions have been drawn on the basis of calculations carried out by the author using data of the sixth wave of the European Social Survey (ESS) project, conducted in 2012 in twenty-four countries, including Russia. The file of data in the SPSS and the set of survey instruments (the questionnaire) were taken from the project site www.europeansocialsurvey.org.

^5. The questionnaire included two other kinds of possible activities that we did not take into account: carrying or posting the symbols of some political, social, civic, ecological, or other action or organization; boycotting—refusing to purchase or consume certain kinds of goods or services, in order to express protest.

^6. Involvement in at least one type of active political participation.

^7. Participation in the activity of at least one type of civic organization, association, or community.

^8. Sympathy with and a readiness to support at least one type of civic association.

^9. This approach to the study of the civic and political aspects in Russian civic practices was drawn upon by the authors of a book of the same name edited by S.V. Patrushev ([3], p. 17).

^10. By way of comparison we will cite data characterizing people's readiness to participate in civic and political life that were obtained in the course of the aforementioned VTsIOM survey “Electoral Panel” (2013, eighth wave): 30 percent of the respondents stated that they are “unquestionably” or “mostly” willing to participate in civic and political life; 40 percent did not rule out that possibility, but they defined their position as “mostly not willing,” and 25 percent stated that they are not willing to at all (6 percent found it difficult to answer).

Additional information

Funding

The article was prepared in the context of the project “Civic Activism: New Subjects of Civic and Political Action” (2014), which was carried out by the Institute of Sociology, Russian Academy of Sciences, with the support of the Institute for Social, Economic, and Political Research, a nonprofit foundation (Fond ISEPR).