Abstract
In a context where the dominant model of power relationships is authoritarian, the only possibility for democratization of the system is mobilization from below. Although social and political structures in Russia are quite unfavourable for social mobilization, social protest and citizens' movements have been developing during the past three years. They face serious difficulties attempting to expand themselves and affirm their own values, identities and claims, but they do exist. Their leaders play a key role in taking the initiative to begin collective action and assume responsibility for it. In the activists' milieu we notice a growing sense of powerfulness and a tendency for social trust to reinforce it, thereby creating conditions for possible construction of an alternative model of power relationships. In an adverse context, the expansion of such a model is quite limited and the likelihood of institutionalization of alternative practices quite weak. Nevertheless, a democratic style is developing within activist networks, to a relatively high degree depending on the leaders' personality.
The reforms that began in post-Soviet countries in the early 1990s have caused a number of unexpected results in practically all spheres of society. In Russia, especially, the expressed aim of building democracy has turned into a strengthening of authoritarian power relationships, particularly visible at the top of the power system but also in the sphere of everyday life. As illustrated by most of the sociological polls, Russian society as a whole is characterized by weak citizenship, lack of trust in social relationships and a limited sense of belonging to a single society, not to mention civil society.Footnote1 In this context, the building of democratic institutions is quite problematic, in so far as the norms and practices at the bottom of Russian society reflect the authoritarian and non-democratic norms and practices at the top. What might produce a change in traditional norms and practices? In this study we assume that the social movementsFootnote2 that have emerged during the past few years could bring new models of social relationships, norms and practices, potentially able to introduce change in the dominant model of power relationships.
We base our argument on the preliminary results of two research studies. The first is a project called ‘The new emerging social movements in Russia’, conducted by the Institute of ‘Collective Action’ (IKD, headed by the author) in collaboration with the Institute of Sociology of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Maison des Sciences de l'Homme (Paris). The research proceeds by interviews with activists and rank-and-file participants of social movements in Russia. We have already transcribed up to 70 interviews which are complemented by other data from regular observation and daily monitoring of collective actions.Footnote3 The material provided by this research will be compared with the primary data drawn from preliminary results of the Research Development Initiative ‘Particularities of Power in the Post-Soviet Context: Theoretical Considerations and Empirical Studies of Bureaucracy’ (Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada file No. 820-2005-0004), which is based on interviews with bureaucrats and experts.
Although Russian society can be considered as very fragmented and highly passive in the realm of social or collective action, the research on emerging social movements gives evidence of the possibility for collective action to occur and for certain people to become involved in collective action.Footnote4 Why are they doing so, and what are their motivations and values? What is the nature of the relationships among activists, and between them and other social groups and institutions? Are they defining a new model of social relationships which, over time, could effect change in the dominant model of power relationships, largely imposed by the power elite and by bureaucracy? The answer is far from obvious, especially in light of the pregnancy of the dominant structure of power relationships that is supported and maintained by the participation of the whole society, which tends to reproduce the dominant model of power. At present we are unable to offer more than informed assumptions which we will work towards confirming at a later stage of our research.
The Co-participation of the Top and the Bottom of Society in Reproducing the Model of Imposed Power Relationships
The whole social structure of Russian society is marked by the pervasiveness of imposed power with a strong division between organs of power and society. As conceptualized by Anton Oleinik,Footnote5 imposed power is based on the coercion, manipulation or co-optation of those who prove their loyalty. Moreover, this kind of power is not limited by any superior principle, and is an end in itself. It is a power ‘over’ which has nothing to do with the power ‘to’, and even less with the ‘power together’. This essay does not aim to verify empirically this qualification of power relationships, but it does question the extent to which Russian citizens accept such a model.
First of all, it seems that most Russians do indeed see the dominant power as an imposed power. They are far from confident about the willingness or ability of power-holders to respect and implement the law, to listen to their demands and to guarantee equal respect for people's rights and interests. Interviews and empirical surveys show that ordinary people have very weak trust in formal political institutions such as the government or the Duma. Sociological polls show that Russians expressed high levels of distrust in all institutions except the president and the church.Footnote6 Some research shows very clearly that Russian people want the law and other democratic values (fairness, impartiality, justice, honesty and so on) to be implemented, but do not rely on the official power – viewed as partial, corrupt, arbitrary – to do so.Footnote7 So one could say that the Russian identity is enveloped by a disjunction between ideal values (which are expressed in the official discourses of state officials invested with power) and the reality of the power relationships, which is more comparable to the model of imposed power.
However, the paradox is that such a model of power relationships is accepted, if not seen as legitimate, by most of the people. There are no massive protest movements against illegitimate power. Even the holder of the highest power, President Vladimir Putin, enjoys very great popularity. But it should be noted that this popularity is linked to his person, and not to his policy, which is criticized in all dimensions except for the foreign one (according to polls conducted by the Levada Centre, 2003–6).Footnote8 An interpretation may be that Putin symbolizes the recovery of the country's strength on the international scene; this fits the model of domination and subordination which structures power relationships in Russia.
From interviews with non-activist ‘ordinary’ people we can describe the more generalized scheme of relation to power, which is as follows:
You do not trust it and do not see it as legitimate, but you cannot contest it, at least not openly, because the power is strong and has the ability to make arbitrary use of the law and violence; while you can hardly be protected by power, you can easily suffer its negative consequences. So the most rational choice and the most secure strategy is to procure the appearance of subordination and loyalty. Within this general framework you can either try to obtain advantages by building interpersonal relationships with some useful people in power, or you can retreat from the public sphere into your private micro-group. This is the general scheme that is reproducing at both macro- and micro-levels, at the bottom as well as the top of the society.
‘Today our Ministry encloses itself by a wall from the public.’ (Head of a federal ministry department [otdel])
‘Initiatives from below don't count for anything.’ (Head of an executive power department in a Russian region)
‘The population has no influence [on policy]; the main factor of influence is business.’ (Head of a federal ministry department)
In their interpersonal relationships, bureaucrats seem to observe the rule (mentioned above) according to which the most important condition to secure one's position in the hierarchy is to demonstrate loyalty to the persons one is dependent on (business groups or power groups). This appears to be the only constraint; all other things are permitted, including breaking the law (provided this is not too overt). Another interesting point is that one can exercise power as one wishes so long as the appearances of democracy and loyalty to the higher power are respected; the form of behaviour counts more than its content. If these two principles (strong subordination and observance of appearances) are violated, punishment will follow, generally by being fired, from time to time by being subject to juridical or tax investigations, and less frequently by imprisonment.
The most striking feature of this model of power relationships based on the absence of control from below or formal constraints is that it is reproduced at the bottom, by ordinary people in their everyday lives. From our research among workersFootnote9 we obtained evidence of widespread self-initiated practices designed to protect their own interests. Either they build some kind of client-style relationships with the boss or someone closer to power in the plant, or they retreat and try to do their job in such a way as to have the fewest possible contacts and problems with the hierarchy (by observing the appearance of loyalty, for example). Formal rules, institutions or rights, such as trade unions or justice, are mostly not trusted: they are seen as arbitrary tools used by power-holders.
The same can be observed in other spheres of everyday life. As many sociologists have pointed out, the most widespread strategy used by ordinary people to survive or improve their living standard is to appeal to micro-networks of informal interpersonal relationships providing reciprocal help.Footnote10 Those networks constitute some kind of cliques, as A. Khlopin called them,Footnote11 which means that the individual belongs to a limited micro-group where there is strong trust based on experienced interpersonal face-to-face relationships. But it should be noted, first, that this kind of relationship is limited to a micro-group or a micro-network of reciprocal help, and can rarely be opened to other groups and even less to society as a whole; second, that these micro-groups are not free from imposed power relationships. In most cases there are heads of groups or networks linked with people who have higher power and can arbitrarily make use of this position to control the group and impose rules so that group members are committed to loyalty.
While trust and helping behaviour exists in interpersonal relationships, it is problematic in considering the society as a whole. The micro-groups or cliques are tightly closed and quite unable to open themselves to other groups. They are also structured by very informal rules, mostly imposed by the head or heads of the groups, which are not easily translated to general rules or social norms. And, finally, these groups are not citizens' groups, since they are dealing with the private problems of individuals belonging to the groups rather than appealing to formal political institutions or even bypassing them. And they prevent people from getting involved in public life in general.
As mentioned above, collective actions are very infrequent, and, apart from the traditional act of voting (to demonstrate apparent respect for formal democracy), Russian citizens largely do not participate in public life. The Social Capital SurveyFootnote12 established that in Russia four-fifths to nine-tenths do not belong to a single voluntary association. This figure might appear to be comparable to other areas in the world (as indicated, for example, by the European Social SurveyFootnote13), but we have to take into account that a large proportion of Russian NGOs exist only formally and do not engage in any real activity apart from collecting funds, so that these figures are obviously exaggerated. In the case of protest actions, official statistics (which underestimate these kinds of collective actions) and even polls indicate an unreal number of strikes and other kinds of protest actions (demonstrations or meetings). To use Hirschman's terms, ‘Exit’ and ‘Loyalty’ are predominant in a system that prevents people from having ‘Voice’.Footnote14
All these observations provide a picture of a very stable and socially rooted system of imposed power relationships which fit and supplement each other at micro- and macro-levels, at the top and the bottom. So we have to question the capacity of such a system to change, or to be challenged. Obviously the system matches the interests of the people invested with power, so that changes, if they are at all possible, can be brought about only by constraints coming from outside (pressures at the international level) or by reactions from within, from people who are inside the system, but are suffering from it to a greater extent than they gain by participating in it.
How Can Social Protest Occur in Such Unfavourable Structural Conditions?
Taking into consideration the impact of imposed power on processes in diverse spheres of everyday life and in all groups of the society, the likelihood that some groups will challenge the dominant power model is very low. While acknowledging the strength of the whole political structure, however, we do not admit that there is no possibility whatsoever for challenging it. We are not trying to argue that structural and institutional frameworks, and the informal power relationships of today's Russian society, are not determining features of citizens' everyday lives. But the recent increase in social protest demonstrates that some grassroots social initiatives are emerging and beginning to build networks that could potentially challenge the dominant model of power relationships. In order to test the assumption, we will, on the one hand, first analyse the conditions for social protest to occur and then question the demands of social activists and their representation of ideal power and will, on the other hand, pay attention to the power relationships structuring the activist networks themselves.
New social movements have emerged in Russia since the first massive upheavals against the reform of the social benefits system at the beginning of 2005. Tens of thousands of people, mostly pensioners but also young leftist, trade union and human rights activists and so on, took to the streets of almost every town, in some cases for days, to protest against a law that threatened social security rights. This first wave continued for several months and forced the government to accept a compromise. After the end of 2005, protest actions flared up against the new housing code and the current so-called ‘communal’ (housing) reform. Besides these main social movements, other thematic networks are appearing, such as the movement of car drivers for safe roads or in favour of the protection of Lake Baikal, and hundreds of grassroots local initiatives are being undertaken by so-called ‘initiative groups’ of people at the micro-level of their household, neighbourhood or town.Footnote15
What are the main motivations and factors influencing involvement in collective action? The situation varies very much by region, but is not necessarily linked to objective regional characteristics; protest movements are strong in depressed and developing regions, as well as under more or less ‘autocratic’ regional power styles, so there are other explanations for collective action. At this stage of the research on social movements, it seems that the key role is played by the individual who initiates collective action. Regardless of the scale of the leadership (whether of the household or the region), the most important factor (see below) is that the person is recognized as having authority and being reliable. Many new leaders who had no experience in politics or public affairs have emerged in the wave of recent protest movements. They are characterized by a relatively high educational level, wide contact networks, social dynamism (many of them have interrupted ascendant professional careers to participate in protest movements), a sense of initiative, competence in public interventions, and organizational know-how. The role of leaders is one of the main points in trying to explain how social protest can occur under such unfavourable institutional constraints: they are able to resist the influence of imposed power thanks to a very strong personality.
Who are these leaders? Where are they from? Here we need to base our explanation on biographical research which is still in process, but let us give some examples. While following one of the first demonstrations against ‘monetization of the welfare benefits’ as a journalist, Andrei, aged 35 at the time, within a few months became the most respected leader of the citizens' action co-ordinating council, created in February 2005 in the city of Izhevsk. He was already active on a cultural level (he founded a students' theatre company) and an intellectual one (he confesses a great admiration for Immanuel Wallerstein) but in his youth he was scarcely interested in politics. Before devoting himself to the protest movement of his city, he had a relatively high standard of living as a journalist and specialist in ‘public relations’ for professional politicians. His participation in the movement, then his growing militant commitment, led him to discover another world but also reduced his income by more than half. Within two years, between two courses at the university, where he teaches history, and two articles in an oppositional newspaper in quasi-bankruptcy, he runs from one meeting to another, from one gathering to another, organizes the inhabitants in defence committees, and his telephone never stops ringing. In short, from a young intellectual with a career on an upward trajectory, he became the ‘spoilsport’ of the local authorities and the principal referent for thousands of people wishing to defend their rights.
Lena, aged 40, an economist, a board member of the association of the joint owners of her building, is a militant of the movement of the citizens' initiatives from Saint Petersburg. She managed a small Internet firm and was not at all worried about politics (she never voted). At the beginning of 2005, she was forced to close her firm because of the so-called ‘State arbitrary’ (in Russian, gosudarstvennyi bespredel – disregard for formal rules). Subsequently she has worked at home, and began to pay attention to the problems of her building, and started to study the new housing code and to seek information and contacts related to housing problems. Having experienced the administrative and legislative barriers to the self-management of the building and having met practised activists, she became increasingly committed to collective action. One year after her firm went bankrupt, she was elected to head the ‘Our Building’ local association of housing owners.
Sergei, aged about 60, a bus driver laid off in 2005, is one of the most active figures of the local bus workers' trade union in the city of Perm. From a family of workers without education, he tried all kinds of jobs and travelled all over the country before settling in Perm. He undertakes self-instruction and reads extensively. Very curiously, he developed a passion for the occult. To safeguard their employment, he took the initiative to mobilize his fellow workers against the municipal authorities' decision to privatize local public transport. Then, after having taken part in the demonstrations against the ‘monetization of welfare benefits’, he joined the co-ordination council of the protest actions of the city of Perm.
Nastya, Tat'yana, Igor', Vasya, Yevgenii, Nina – there are hundreds devoted to the improbable task of collective mobilization and of learning citizens' rights and capacities; hundreds of highly individual biographies that do not conform to any pattern. Perhaps we can provisionally conclude – subject to the full analysis of our biographical interviews – that leaders are strong individuals who present themselves thanks to certain character traits (sensitivity to injustice, curiosity and intellectual openness, a critical mind, social dynamism), the interplay of circumstances, the result of certain meetings and the willingness to take outstanding personal risks.
Although the personality of leaders is a very important factor in mobilizing people for collective action, it does not explain everything. A second explanation, as far as rank-and-file social activists are concerned, is the existence of a concrete threat to individual welfare. It must be emphasized that the first motivation for people to engage in collective action is the defence of their direct and very concrete or pragmatic interests: not to be expelled from their home, not to pay excessive communal charges, to protect the square in front of the house, to get support for medication and so on. Local campaigns are mounted on specific practical issues, such as combating plans to build a block of flats or car park on a local recreation ground, to turn people out of workers' hostels, or police brutality, linked with the new stage of reforms initiated under Putin's government; following economic restructuring, reform of the social sphere is being undertaken. As a consequence, most people, living until now just above the poverty line, see their standard of living threatened, and are beginning to react and defend themselves. State policy is encroaching upon people's lives through social reform, making it more difficult for them to retreat into the private sphere or to solve problems through informal interpersonal relations.
Facing new threats, people usually react initially in the traditional manner, appealing to networks of interpersonal relationships. But in more and more cases these appear to be of no help because, first of all, most of the problems cannot be solved at an individual level. Second, social activists often say they first tried to solve the problem through the usual means of writing letters to official bureaucrats, obtaining a meeting with them, reaffirming their loyalty and belief that state officials will take care of their citizens. But they faced ‘arbitrary’ responses, unwillingness to help, ‘indifference’ and ‘dupery’, ‘corruption’ and ‘mockery’. Only after these appeals proved to be useless, and in turn produced anger and denunciation of alleged unfairness and social injustice, did some people engage in collective public protest. Thus people are progressively losing their final illusions of paternalistic power which from time to time deigns to help its subjects in exchange for loyalty. Sometimes the road to disillusion is quite long if the social activists initially call for the help of the highest authority (Putin), but sooner or later they usually come to the conclusion that power-holders do not care about citizens' complaints and demands. This provides strong motivation for people to mobilize collectively. They form citizens' initiative groups, organize protest actions, and actively seek contacts with other initiative groups facing the same kind of problems.
What are the general demands and values defended by initiative groups and participants in movements? At the stage when people already have experience of concrete relationships with power and collective action, their claims gain in generality. The most popular slogans and values proclaimed by social activists are ‘citizens’ control' (that is, their own identification as citizens who have the right to control power) and ‘fairness’ (that is, the same law and same rights for everybody, regardless of their place in the power hierarchy). It is very important to notice that activist groups demand full and genuine citizenship rights. Of course, these values remain abstract and weak but they represent an obvious challenge to the dominant institutional framework.
A second important feature of social protest is the rise of self-organizing initiatives, independent of formal institutionalized political parties or power representatives. For example, around problems aroused by the housing reform, we can observe a growing mobilization of housing committees, neighbourhood associations and groups of community leaders, or simply residents who are more active than the average over the issue of management of buildings and lands. Even though information about the reform is lacking, networks of activists have undertaken to propagate it and, as a result, more and more people are beginning to wonder about the future of their building. Building and neighbourhood residents' meetings are proliferating, sometimes organized by activists in certain networks or by political parties, but most frequently by the residents themselves. The idea of organizing themselves and managing their own building, so that it is not placed under the control of a management association imposed by the city hall, is beginning to enter their minds. The trend involves only a minority of the population at present, but if this movement establishes itself we can expect to see progress in the self-organizing of the general population. So the main idea here is the sense of individual empowerment: people are learning in practice that they can organize and exercise power themselves.
A third important tendency from the perspective of challenging existing power relationships is the trend to build alliances and co-ordinate efforts. More and more local initiative groups and campaigns move to work together and build networks or co-ordinating councils. These co-ordinating committees are beginning to create structures and to establish links in order to exchange experience and information. Activists claim the need for solidarity and the necessity of union, which appear to be important values, at least in activists' discourses.
As a whole, with the threads of discontentment and the nests of opposition being very diverse, the movement is still relatively scattered. However, the beginnings of co-ordination can be seen, thanks to the operators of several networks. The biggest protests are those which begin spontaneously or which are co-organized by a coalition of diverse social and political groups. In this respect, the Soviets Co-ordination Union (SKS) is a very interesting example. It is a union of regional committees for co-ordinating the struggles developed out of the pensioners' movement two years ago, continuing by spreading to incorporate new cities and towns and new social groups. The most socially active cities – Izhevsk, Perm, Omsk, Novosibirsk, Vladivostok, Saint Petersburg, the Moscow suburbs, Samara, Tol'yatti and others – have seen the development of co-ordination between coalitions of this type through the SKS network. The appeal made by SKS on the theme of ‘a month of protests for a social housing policy’ (12 February–18 March 2006) adds strongly to the growing dynamism of the movement. Taking the example of Izhevsk (Udmurt Republic), the local soviet or council (‘for co-ordination of citizen actions’) brings together representatives of the pensioners' association, the RKRP (the Russian Communist Workers' Party), independent journalists, students, trade unionists, anarchists, liberal opposition movements, inhabitants of workers' housing, neighbourhood committees and so on. At the demonstration on 12 February 2006, more than 4,000 people assembled at their behest and blocked the traffic for several hours.
The movement is still far from organizing itself politically at a national level, and it is not obvious that it can even be referred to as a social movement as such. But this author would argue that there is potential for the growth and structuring of a social movement. The success of active and open co-ordination of grassroots initiatives, such as that of SKS, shows the possibilities for development. Moreover, in the literature on social movements we can find approaches that indicate a chance for social movements to occur even when the ‘structure of political opportunities’Footnote16 is far from favourable. The point is to observe or ask protestors themselves about their perceptions, demands and desires. Thus Charles Kurzman in his study of the Iranian RevolutionFootnote17 shows that perceptions matter more than some underlying ‘reality’ of political structure. He argues that, although the Iranian people considered the coercive power of the state to be intact right to the end, they perceived the opposition as having increasing its strength and opportunities, which gave way to the Iranian revolution. And Kurzman concluded that social movement theory has to reconsider the relationship between ‘objective’ and ‘subjective’ definitions of political opportunity:
If opportunity is like a door, then social-movement theory generally examines cases in which people realize the door is open and walk on through. The Iranian Revolution may be a case in which people saw that the door was closed, but felt that the opposition was powerful enough to open it. … It turns out that Iranians were able to open the door on their own.Footnote18
It's quite difficult to do these things, to fight all the time against arbitrary and illegal actions of the local government and our hostel's owner, to learn the laws, to become aware that you have not only obligations, but also rights. But if you don't do this, you are not considered as a human being, so we do it, we are beginning to get a sense of the fact that we are bosses of our lives and have rights. And you get satisfaction from it, too, because you feel that you can do something in that life, that you can do something for yourselves and for the others. (Woman from the movement for hostels for workers, July 2005)
I may be naive, but I didn't know that in our country such things could be possible, that the state could behave like this with their citizens, as if we were enemies. It's quite unusual for me to participate in such protest actions, but I think we have to do it, we have to make things change. Unfortunately in our country people support each other very little. If we didn't wait until a problem occurs to us and supported people facing trouble, if there were more solidarity between people to defend common positions, we could change many things, change this system. (Woman from the movement of ‘deceived co-investors’ who are fighting for flats they have paid for in advance, May 2006)
At the beginning we only sent letters to the local authorities in order to protest against the demolition of our homes, but they ignored our letters, our opinion. When bulldozers arrived, we had no other choice than to block them. We settled on permanent camp here. All the neighbours came to help. We know each other very well; we are living like in a little village here in the Moscow suburb. Only thanks to our radical action did the local authorities start to pay attention to us. It's really pleasant to see how many people come to support us from Moscow and even from other towns. I believe that thanks to that we'll force Moscow municipality to respect the law and the inhabitants' rights. (Female member of the initiative group of the inhabitants of Butovo town in the Moscow suburb, July 2006)
Power Relationships Within Activist Networks
The question that we shall try to answer is whether or not the emerging social movements are reproducing the dominant model of power relationships, and to what extent they are able to introduce a new model, founded on democratic norms and social trust. Given the emergent character of activist networks and their fragmentation, it is quite impossible to give a complete or final picture of the power model by which they operate. Nevertheless we can start to analyse some key trends.
The first aspect we can point to is the informal mode of building activist networks. Nearly all the new networks appearing during the past couple of years have no formal status or formally elected executive bodies. They mostly emerged from spontaneous upheaval and are based on informal agreements between key personalities who represent some initiative groups or formal organizations but who engage more fully in the co-ordination process. The duration of such a model of relationships depends on permanent agreements and negotiations between key personalities, so interpersonal conflicts have to be kept smooth. It is an expensive model in terms of personal involvement.
Second, networks are founded on weak ties. Collective decisions are mostly taken by consensus and imply the possibility for the groups or individuals who disagree with the decision of the majority not to implement it. The model matches the democratic ideals (fairness, equality and freedom) of participants in new movements. It is also very convenient at the beginning in order not to threaten new partners with strict obligations and to protect the autonomy of each partner. But in the long term it weakens networks, especially in the face of institutionalized bureaucratic organizations with strict discipline and subordination. Freedom from constraining ties can also weaken the position of people deprived of power, as pointed out by Pierre Bourdieu.Footnote19
Third, as networks are structured on the basis of ties between leaders, there is a tendency for leaders (who are those working intensively to mobilize resources) to concentrate on their own resources such as contacts, information, authority and so on. Even if leaders tend to redistribute resources (as most of them are trying to do), there is a disproportion in this process. Although this disparity is recognized and legitimated by leaders' human and personal investment, for us it raises the question of the possible democratization of the process of mobilizing resources.
However, the main question, according to our analysis, is of the possibility for activist networks to go beyond the clique-style social model. Such a possibility implies other kinds of relationships based, on the one hand, on something more general than interpersonal trust and, on the other hand, on something other than leaders' imposed power.
Sociological literature concerning trust is very rich and the theme evokes intense debates. On the basis of a rational and cognitive perception of trust, some sociologists contest the thesis according to which trust is necessary for democracy.Footnote20 However, in the institutional context of such new democracies as Russia we can argue, following Piotr Sztompka,Footnote21 that trust is a key condition not only for democratization but also for the re-composition of the society (socium).
What is trust other than our personal and practical knowledge of someone's reliability or trustworthiness based on common belonging to the same micro-group? According to Sztompka, trust implies confidence, but not certainty, that some person or institution will behave in an expected way. A trusting person decides to act in spite of uncertainty about the future or doubts about the reliability of others' promises. Sztompka writes: ‘facing other people we often remain in the condition of uncertainty, bafflement, and surprise’.Footnote22 This remark is especially important in Russia's uncertain institutional framework, where most of the rules and relationships are characterized by changing informal logic. So trust is a gamble; it requires a person ‘to make bets’,Footnote23 but it is a necessary condition for involvement in action, even more so in collective action. The problem once again is that, although it may be true, as Eric Uslaner argues,Footnote24 that generalized trust in others has deep roots in individual psychology and upbringing, structural conditions are nevertheless important in influencing trust. As for Russia, we cannot imagine that a general trust in existing institutions and in the conditions of the existing type of social relationships could be possible (or rational). What do we observe among new activist networks in Russia?
In our research, we do find trust to lie at the basis of involvement in collective actions. First of all it is interpersonal trust. Social activists often say they attended their first meeting or demonstration in the company of trustworthy persons of their acquaintance, or in response to an invitation by leaders who were trustworthy in their eyes. However, there are also many other kinds of trust. A key point to notice is that activists gain confidence in themselves by participating in collective activities. Many of them recognize that they have discovered that they can ‘do things on their own’, they can ‘have influence’ in an external context. And this confidence makes it easier for them to establish relationships with other people on the basis of trust – to open themselves to others. Interviews and surveys also show that there is a higher degree of trust in the framework of a network of collective action. There is a sense of being committed to each other, which is based on sharing the same values and defending common interests. Activists co-operate with one another and each expects others to do what they are supposed to do. This is true even if money is involved; it is not rare for activists to contribute personal resources for common action. As far as common identity is concerned, we find evidence of a growing sense of community bringing people together on the basis of a feeling of having been deceived (in Russian, obmanuty) by state power, having been treated unfairly. And this motivation – the struggle for fairness and equity – becomes a very strong one. Most of the leaders talk about their sense of having more responsibilities and obligations than rights towards the activists, which also reveals their eagerness to be considered trustworthy.
But trust becomes especially important and needs to gain in generality when the network is growing, enlarging to embrace new participants and establishing durability. At that stage we could define trust as an expectation that all network members will respect the same rules. It is a sense of a community of interests, rules and norms. This is far from evident because of the informal character of rules inside activist networks, and even more because of the uncertain and unfair character of the general social rules of Russian society such as they are realistically perceived by the majority of the population. A good criterion to identify the existence of such trust (as engagement in a co-ordinating structure of durable collective action) is the extent to which people from the initial group or groups are keen to open themselves to new participants and to discuss with them the rules of their interaction, eventually to adapt and change the rules in order to satisfy everybody. It involves risks: you do not know the new entrants very well; you have no common experience of interaction. What does our study show in this respect? It seems that initiative groups and pre-existing networks act in different ways in facing the need to enlarge.
It is worth noting that some trends are already becoming visible although the survey has been undertaken only for the past two years. In 2006, when I first wrote about new social movements in Russia,Footnote25 networks and co-ordinating structures were at the fledgling stage and were very weakly differentiated; problems of internal regulation and enlargement were not very visible. A year later, we observe the conflicts arising within and between groups and organizations. This evolution is quite understandable, given the continued development of activist networks. On the eve of several regional and national elections they became an object of competition between some leaders and some organizations – the primary stage of institutionalized political parties.
Demarcation lines follow two criteria: conditions of enlargement and regulation of power relationships. They give way to internal and external conflicts. As far as enlargement is concerned, conflict pits network leaders against one another and divides regional or thematic co-ordinating structures. To exaggerate demarcation as being understandable, we can say that those leaders who are attached to their leader status (they usually have formal titles such as ‘president’ or ‘chairperson’) are far less eager to invite new participants, seeing them as a threat to their status. And if they do accept new entrants, for example under other members' influence, they refuse to change anything in the way the co-ordination structure is functioning.
In contrast, more open-minded leaders are working to recruit new members and to enlarge the network to new groups. One of them declared an attempt to ‘play the role of a social integrator’ through building networks. And they do try to change the rules in order to make networks more attractive to new entrants. In most cases their strategy can be explained by their strong authority among the target groups and also among the initial group's members. They have a good reputation in larger segments of the population and have more social capital than leaders defending their position inside the initial group. Their authority is linked less to formal status, and more to personal qualities, good reputation and an approved way of acting.
In the same way, open-minded and monopolistic leaders differ where power relationships are concerned and the question of control is at stake. The more open ones defend democratic positions in the sense that they express the need to make people full citizens, to activate them or, to use a stronger term, to empower them. They used such phrases as ‘we work in order to waken the population’, ‘we help people only if they help themselves first’, ‘we try to help people in self-organizing’. And observation of their activist practices shows that they do indeed try to act in such a way, helping to build initiative groups, organizing micro-collective actions, building links between different groups, founding new thematic movements and so on. As a result they really succeed in instilling confidence into rank-and-file activists, which is a key point for the building of a new model of power relationships.
Leaders of the second kind present logical arguments for controlling and managing their organization or network. They say they represent the organization, have to take care of its durability and are waiting for loyalty and respect from members because of their leadership. This attitude is closer to the model of hierarchical power than to that of collective empowerment. Even closer is the attitude of other political organizations trying to take control of new activist networks. Competition is intensifying around new networks and many political parties such as the RKRP, the Yabloko Party (headed by Grigorii Yavlinskii), or the OGF (United Citizen Front), a political organization founded by the former chess champion Garry Kasparov. They act by introducing divisions into existing networks, offering services and help to some leaders or key activists, and publicizing and agitating on behalf of their organization. The main objective in these cases is recruitment of new members at the expense of new activist networks, rather than the growing mobilization of the whole population. These organizations have abundant resources of many kinds – material, political, administrative, informational – and this poses a threat to less resource-rich activist networks. They are also more formally and bureaucratically organized, which means they can count on discipline and propose that their members rely on the party or the leader rather than on themselves and self-organization, which can be attractive to many new participants not very keen to engage in an everyday struggle. So this scheme tends to reproduce the dominant model of power relationships – relying on passive loyalty to an empowered leader, and delegation of power in exchange for service provision. It is worth noting that in some cases these political organizations have settled an alliance with some network leaders for whom the defence of status is at stake.
We have not mentioned other parties closer to institutionalized power such as the Communist Party of the Russian Federation or the governing party United Russia because they have totally embraced the dominant model of imposed power and deal with citizens' initiatives only if they can entirely control them. It should be noted that state power is now struggling with these initiatives in order to deprive them of autonomy, as was very clearly illustrated by the state officials' reaction to the second Social Forum in Saint Petersburg on the eve of the G-8 summit in July 2006. The government first consented to provide the right for activists of social movements to organize their forum in the Kirov stadium so that it could appear to be democratic. In reality it can be considered the most massive repression operation undertaken in post-Soviet Russia. Hundreds of activists were arbitrarily controlled by the police, thrown out of the trains, and jailed on false pretexts; some of them were beaten. Such repressive activities demonstrate one side of the ‘official’ policy towards these movements. The other side is the attempt to orchestrate them; the governor of the Saint Petersburg region came to visit the forum, the president proposed holding a meeting with the forum's organizers, and the media were told that the government was pleased to help ‘anti-globalists’. This is important to note because it confirms the thesis that state power is not at all interested in the emergence of autonomous citizens' initiatives. So the new social movements could represent a potential challenge for the maintenance of imposed power.
Conditions for the Emergence of ‘Democratic’-style Leaders
Our examination of the importance of leaders and the way in which they exert their leadership highlights further complexities of power that prompt us to extend the analysis. If the social and political context favours ‘informal arrangements’, egoistic behaviour or subordination to imposed power, not only does the emergence of social movements appear problematic – a sociological enigma which we partly examined above – but also the existence of leaders who defy this model of power relationships. It is thus necessary for us to try to understand where leaders come from, and what pushes them to act contrary to dominant norms. The question is: how do certain people, who obviously have a strong personality, engage in collective contestation (rather than, for example, in pursuing their individual professional careers) and take the responsibility of leadership while sharing their power, and how does their engagement pass the test of time?
The most effective method for this type of investigation is the biographical inquiry, which we have so far carried out with a very restricted number of leaders. In spite of the difficulty of this type of incursion into the private life of activists more eager to discuss their public life, it is necessary for us to continue this approach, as some theorists of social movements have attempted to do.Footnote26
On the basis of data available at this stage, we can already identify certain characteristics common to ‘democratic-style’ leaders:
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They appeared or were confirmed in their capacity as leaders on a wave of mobilization, which means that they were recognized as leaders by ‘the street’, by a group engaged in collective action. The first source of their authority (or leadership) is thus the ‘people’, people not abstract and remote but people in action and close (their ‘social base’ to use political vocabulary). It should be noted that this proximity, the source of the specific authority acquired by local leaders, also causes difficulty for the emergence of a larger‐scale movement since it thwarts the appearance of federal leaders.
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The initiative group or activists' network is the principal source of their public recognition. While the leaders in question can also depend on other organizations of which they are members or leaders (political associations or parties), these do not provide the recognition or the authority that the broader militant networks confer. It has also to be noted that the public recognition of these leaders is usually not limited to the grassroots militant groups alone, but goes well beyond. If indeed they can participate in public debates or carry out negotiations on an equal basis with representatives of institutionalized power, they owe it especially to the authority that the militant networks confer to them (not to their formal status, personal contacts or material resources).
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The leaders in question are made emotionally dependent on their social base by common struggle, successes celebrated collectively and failures endured in ‘tightening the elbows’. In the interviews, the leaders lose themselves readily in long, detailed and romantic accounts of one or another episode of collective action that has marked them. Talking about such episodes, their eyes sparkle and emotion intensifies; feelings of joy, pleasure and pride are apparent. Lastly, the experience of collective capacity-making seems a source of self-assertion. It is a discovery made by the individual, but also for and with others – a self-assertion that does not occur through adopting dominant standards (to make money or to obtain institutional position) but, on the contrary, through challenging standards. The longer engagement lasts, the closer are the links between leaders and the basis of their legitimacy, and the less leaders are tempted to choose another line of action and conform to dominant norms. A rupture of the emotional bonds can even cause a serious personal crisis.
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Leaders of this type profit from an increase in their social capital. They are recognized by more and more people, on a local scale initially, then on a regional one and, very slowly, in some federal networks. They are respected and trusted. In return, as interviews show, they insist on their right to deserve respect, to be worthy of confidence, which thus implies as many obligations as rights.
The Unsolved Question: Possibilities of Institutionalizing a New Model of Power Relationships
While the new social movements represent a potential challenge to the existent power system, it does not mean that they are able to achieve their goals and to implement a new model of power relationships. We have seen some features of such a model, based on collective empowerment and general trust in the framework of collective actions. But we also pointed out the strong impact of structural conditions which prevent this alternative model from being implemented and, above all, institutionalized in stable and durable norms, rules and regular practices. The new activist networks based on trust and empowerment are supported mostly by rare leaders with a very strong personality and commitment to the cause of governance by the citizenry.
To sum up our argument, we can say that people engaged in activist networks show increasing distrust in institutionalized official power and increasing trust in each other only on the basis of their participation in the same collective actions. It is not a generalized trust in everybody and anything under all circumstances, which would be quite dangerous in the Russian context. It is a specific trust in other activists sharing the same commitment. It is a trust in the framework of collective actions. But it is far more than interpersonal trust in micro-groups of reciprocal or client-like help, far more than cliques.
Inside the activist networks people also gain confidence in themselves, in their ability to act and to have an impact on their environment, which is a determinant in the potential to challenge the imposed power model. They begin to trust people they did not know before participating in collective actions. They are confronted with other specific demands and interests, learn to pay attention to them and find a way to associate them with more general claims. So they experience a process of rising up to make more general demands on issues of importance to the citizenry. Through discussions and debates on the key demands of the movement's agenda, participants are slowly becoming politicised, in the sense that they are dealing with some kind of public or common good.
The main problem, as we have noted several times, is the precariousness of the process which is occurring in the very unfavourable context of a dominant model of imposed power relationships. The emergence of another model mainly depends on the leaders' commitment, and we have seen that they are already facing pressures and competition. The strategy of opening and empowering is quite risky in regard to the hierarchical and authoritarian model of most other organizations. This weakness could be balanced if activist networks produced rules of their own and tried to formalize them; that is to say, if they begin a process of institutionalizing their own model of power relationships, at least in the framework of activist networks. The process is occurring in some regions and within some thematic networks through the adoption of regulations or statutes. But almost everywhere the process faces strong obstacles and leads to internal conflicts. So at this stage the question of the possible institutionalization of an alternative model of power relationships remains wide open.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Karine Clément
Karine Clément, Doctor of Sociology, is Research Fellow at the Institute of Sociology of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow and director of the independent NGO Institute of ‘Collective Action’ (IKD, www.ikd.ru). She is conducting research projects in two fields of sociology: collective actions and flexible work, mostly applied to Russian society.Notes
1. Since the middle of the 1990s sociological polls show a constant high level of distrust towards other people in the society (at the end of 2006 about 74 per cent of respondents thought that ‘with people you have to be careful’ and only 22 per cent that ‘people can be trusted’, whereas in 1991 the corresponding proportions were 41 and 36 per cent): see Civil Chamber of the Russian Federation, ‘O sostoyanii grazhdanskogo obshchestva v rossiiskoi federatsii 2006 g.’ (On Civil Society in the Russian Federation in 2006), available at <http://www.oprf.ru/files/doklad.pdf>, accessed 21 Nov. 2007.
2. By social movements we mean every kind of collective action provided by any kind of networks which have a certain regularity, are sustained by some co-ordinating or organizational bodies and advance some general claims about social and political issues. We have especially been paying attention to two mass movements: the movement of pensioners against the reform of the social benefits system, and the movement of ‘housing activists’ in connection with the so-called ‘communal’ reform.
3. The data provided by the monitoring of collective actions and their observation is both quantitative and qualitative. It includes weekly statistics of the number of collective actions and participation in them (arranged thematically according to the field of protest), observation reports on activists in action – in a meeting, conference, demonstration and so on (which can be matched with the activists' discourses), and self-reflection on experiences of participant observation by several sociologists who are at the same time activists (observer participants).
4. From summer 2002 to summer 2003 only 9 per cent of the respondents took part in any form of collective social actions, and from 1989 up to 2003 only 27 per cent. Figures are from FOM (Fond ‘obshchestvennoe mnenie’: Public Opinion Foundation), VTsIOM (Vserossiiskii Tsentr Izucheniya Obshchestvennogo Mneniya: Russian Public Opinion Research Center), Levada Centre, cited by Vladimir Rimski, ‘Tseli i motivy politicheskogo i obshchestvennogo uchastiya rossiiskikh grazhdan’ (Purposes and Motivations for Russian Citizens' Political and Social Participation), Foundation INDEM (Information Science for Democracy), 2007, at <http://www.strategy-spb.ru/partner/files/rimskyi.pdf>, accessed 21 Nov. 2007. See also monthly press releases of the Levada Centre about the social and political situation in Russia, at <http://www.levada.ru/press.html>. However, in the past few years we can observe a growing number of participants in collective actions, especially in winter 2005. In January–February 2005 some 500,000 people participated in massive demonstrations across Russia for the defence of the social benefits system. It was the most massive social upheaval in the past decade. Afterwards, protest actions and other non-institutional forms of citizens' mobilization happened more frequently, but at a micro-level. Monitoring of collective action conducted by IKD shows an average of about 10,000 participants per week in collective actions from the beginning of 2006 to March 2007. The problem is that except for the ‘pensioners’ upheaval', sociological polls are not able to fix such a micro-sociological phenomenon as the growth of scattered collective actions on a lesser scale. Their data show a maximum of 1–3 per cent of the population being involved in protest actions. The only way to catch the trend is to choose activist networks as a preferential polling target. An attempt to do so can be found in Sergei Patrushev (ed.), ‘Sotsial'nye seti doveriya, massovye dvizheniya i instituty politicheskogo predstavitel'stva: opyt ‘starykh’ i ‘novykh’ demokratii v usloviyakh globalizatsii' (Social Networks of Trust, Mass Movements and Institutions of Political Representation: Experience of ‘Old’ and ‘New’ Democracies), research paper (Moscow, Institute of Sociology, Russian Academy of Sciences, 2007).
5. See his introduction to the present collection, entitled ‘Putting Administrative Reform in a Broader Context of Power’.
6. Levada Centre, 9 April 2007, ‘Doverie institutam vlasti’ (Trust in Power Institutions), at <http://www.levada.ru/pres/2007040901.html>, accessed 21 Nov. 2007.
7. Sergei Patrushev (ed.), Institutsional'naya politologiya (Institutional Political Science) (Moscow: Russian Academy of Sciences, 2006).
8. 13 Sept. 2006. ‘Otnoshenie k presidentu V. Putinu’ (The Relation to President V. Putin), in Social'no-politicheskaya situatsiya v Rossii v avguste 2006 goda, at <http://www.levada.ru/press/2006091302.html>, accessed 21 Nov. 2007.
9. Karine Clément, ‘Formal'nye i neformal'nye pravila: kakov optimum?’ (Formal and Informal Rules: What is the Optimum?), in Vladimir Yadov (ed.), Stanovlenie trudovykh otnoshenii v postsovetskoi Rossii (Moscow: Academicheskii Proekt, 2004), pp.135–92.
10. Richard Rose, ‘What Does Social Capital Add to Individual Welfare? An Empirical Analysis of Russia’, Studies in Public Policy, No.318 (Glasgow: University of Strathclyde, 1999).
11. Aleksandr Khlopin, ‘Grazhdanskoe obshchestvo ili sotsium klik: rossiiskaya dilemma’ (Civil Society or Cliques: Russian Dilemma), Politiya, No.3 (1997), pp.5–26.
12. Rose, ‘What Does Social Capital Add to Individual Welfare?’
13. For information on the European Social Survey, see <http://www.europeansocialsurvey.org>, accessed 26 Oct. 2007.
14. Albert O. Hirschman, Exit, Voice, and Loyalty: Responses to Decline in Firms, Organizations, and States (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1970).
15. For more factual information about these movements see Karine Clément, ‘La contestation de gauche et les mouvements sociaux émergents’ (Paris: CERI, 2006), at <http://www.ceri-sciencespo.com/archive/mai06/artkc.pdf>, accessed 27 Oct. 2007.
16. Doug McAdam, Political Process and the Development of Black Insurgency. 1930–1970 (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1982).
17. Charles Kurzman, ‘Structural and Perceived Opportunity: The Iranian Revolution of 1979’, in Jeff Goodwin and James M. Jasper (eds.), The Social Movements Reader: Cases and Concepts (Oxford: Blackwell, 2003), pp.38–48.
18. Ibid., p.112.
19. Pierre Bourdieu, ‘Le capital social. Notes provisoires’, Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales, Vol.31 (Jan. 1980), pp.2–3.
20. Russel Hardin, ‘Conceptions and Explanations of Trust’, in K.S. Cook (ed.), Trust in Society (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2001), pp.3–39.
21. Piotr Sztompka, Trust: A Sociological Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).
22. Ibid., p.22.
23. Ibid., p.69.
24. Eric M. Uslaner, ‘Producing and Consuming Trust’, Political Science Quarterly, Vol.115, No.4 (2000), pp.569–90.
25. Karine Clément, ‘Poyavlenie novykh sotsial'nykh dvizhenii v Rossii’ (The Emergence of New Social Movements in Russia), in Patrushev (ed.), Institutsional'naya politologiya, pp.229–64.
26. David Croteau, William Haynes and Charlotte Ryan (eds.), Rhyming Hope and History: Activists, Academics and Social Movements (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2005); Richard Flacks, ‘Knowledge for What? Thoughts on the State of Social Movement Studies’, in Goodwin and Jasper (eds.), The Social Movements Reader, pp.135–53.