The Russian Protest Movement of 2011–2012: A New Middle-Class Populism
Keywords:
Ernesto Laclau, people, populism, Russia, social movements
Abstract
The article deals with the mass civic protests that shook Russia in 2011–2012. The article examines the question of populist and ideological self-determination on the part of the protesters qua political subjects. Based on a group empirical study of protest rally participants, the author points to the frequent populist self- identification used by the protesters. They called themselves “the people,” although they obviously represent a minority, and share some special features such as a relatively high level of education and income. The article analyzes this phenomenon within the context of the theory of populism. It reconsiders some aspects of this theory and identifies the Russian case as a historically new but currently quite typical version of populism.
References
Ackerman, Bruce (1994). The Future of Liberal Revolution. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Badie, Bertrand (1997). “Une faillite du politique.” Vingtieme siecle 56: 226–228. Badiou, Alain (2005). Being and Event. Trans. Oliver Feltham. New York: Continuum. Beck, Ulrich, Anthony Giddens, and Scott Lash (1994). Reflexive Modernization: Politics, Tradition and Aesthetics in the Modern Social Order. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Belanovskii, Sergei, Mikhail Dmitriev, Svetlana Misikhina, and Tat’iana Omel’chuk (2011). Dvizhushchie sily i perspektivy politicheskoi transformatsii v Rossii [The driv- ing forces and perspectives of political transformation in Russia]. Moscow: Center for Strategic Research Foundation. http://new.csr.ru/index.php/ru/published- works/our-media/228-2011-03-28-16-38-10.
Bell, Daniel (1973). The Coming of Post-Industrial Society. New York: Basic Books. Beissinger, Marc, Amaney Jamal, and Kevin Mazur (2013a). “The Anatomy of Protest in Egypt and Tunisia.” Foreign Policy, April 15.
Beissinger, Marc, Amaney Jamal, and Kevin Mazur (2013b). “Who Participated in the Arab Spring? A Comparison of Egyptian and Tunisian Revolutions.” http://www. princeton.edu/~mbeissin/beissinger.tunisiaegyptcoalitions.pdf.
Bikbov, Alexander (2012). “The Methodology of Studying ‘Spontaneous’ Street Activism (Russian Protests and Street Camps, December 2011–July 2012).” Laboratorium 4.2: 275–284. http://soclabo.org/index.php/laboratorium/article/view/41/91.
Brown, Wendy (2011). “Occupy Wall Street: Return of a Repressed Res-Publica.” Theory & Event 14.4, Supplement. Buechler, Steven M. (1995). “New Social Movement Theories.” Sociological Quarterly 36.3: 441–464.
Canovan, Margaret (2005). The People. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Canovan, Margaret (1981). Populism. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
Canovan, Margaret (1999). “Trust the People! Populism and the Two Faces of Democ- racy.” Political Studies 47: 2–16.
Castells, Manuel (1983). The City and the Grassroots: A Cross-Cultural Theory of Urban Social Movements. London: Edward Arnold.
Clement, Carine [as “Karin Kleman”], Andrei Demidov, and Ol’ga Miriasova (2010). Ot obyvatelei k aktivistam: zarozhdaiuschiesia sotsialnye dvizheniia v sovremennoi Ros- sii [From ordinary people to activists: emerging social movements in contempo- rary Russia]. Moscow: Tri kvadrata.
Dalton, Russell J., Manfred Kuechler, and Wilhelm Burklin (1990). “The Challenge of the New Movements.” In Challenging the Political Order: New Social and Political Movements in Western Democracies, ed. Russell J. Dalton and Manfred Kuechler, 3–20. New York: Oxford University Press.
Della Porta, Donatela and Mario Diani (1999). Social Movements: An Introduction. Ox- ford & Malden, Mass.: Blackwell.
Eder, Klaus (1993). The New Politics of Class: Social Movements and Cultural Dynamics in Advanced Societies. London: Sage.
Etkind, Aleksandr (1998). Khlyst: Sekty, literatura i revoliutsiia [The Khlyst: religious sects, literature, and revolution]. Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie.
Etzioni, Amitai (1970). Demonstration Democracy. New York: Gordon and Breach. Gabowitsch, Mischa (2013). Putin kaputt!? Russlands neue Protestkultur. Berlin: Suhrkamp.
Goldfarb, Jeffrey (2012). “ ‘The Politics of Small Things’ Meets ‘Monstration’: On Fox News, Occupy Wall Street and Beyond.” Divinatio 35: 63–79.
Gouldner, Alvin (1979). The Future of Intellectuals and the Rise of the New Class. New York: Continuum.
Gusfield, George, ed. (1995). Protest, Reform, Revolt. New York & London: Wiley.
Hegel, G.W.F. (1991). Elements of the Philosophy of Right. Trans. H.B. Nisbet. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Honneth, Axel (1996). The Struggle for Recognition: The Moral Grammar of Social Con- flicts. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Huntington, Samuel (1991). The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Cen- tury. Norman, Okla.: University of Oklahoma Press.
Ivanov, Maksim (2013). “Vladimiru Putinu doveriaiut, no voskhishchaiutsia im men’she” [Vladimir Putin is trusted, but admired less]. Kommersant, September 27. http://www.kommersant.ru/doc/2305992.
Javeline, Debra (2003). Protest and the Politics of Blame: The Russian Response to Unpaid Wages. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Kagarlitsky, Boris (2008). “Otritsanie oritsaniia. O kolebaniiakh generalnoi linii” [Ne- gating the negation: on fluctuations in the general line]. Russkaia zhizn’, Febru- ary 1. http://www.rulife.ru/mode/article/497.
Kant, Immanuel (2000). Critique of the Power of Judgment. Trans. Paul Guyer and Eric Matthews. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kirchheimer, Otto (1966). “The Transformation of Western European Party Systems.” In Political Parties and Political Development, ed. Joseph La Palombara and Myron Weiner, 177–199. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.
Kriesi, Hanspeter (1989): “New Social Movements and the New Class in the Nether- lands.” American Journal of Sociology 94.5: 1078–1116.
Laclau, Ernesto and Chantal Mouffe (2001). Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics. London & New York: Verso. Second edition.
Laclau, Ernesto (2005). On Populist Reason. London & New York: Verso.
Lefort, Claude (1988). Democracy and Political Theory. Trans. David Macey. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Levinson, Alexei (2012). “Eto ne srednii klass—eto vse” [It’s not the middle class—it’s everybody]. Vedomosti, February 21. http://www.vedomosti.ru/opinion/ news/1509376/eto_ne_srednij_klass_eto_vse#ixzz2fNoRdMCr.
Magun, Artemy (2013). “Taking Democracy Seriously.” In Decentring the West: The Idea of Democracy and the Struggle for Hegemony, ed. Viatcheslav Morozov, 23–45. Farnham: Ashgate.
Magun, Artemy, and Svetlana Yerpylova, eds. (forthcoming). Politika apolitichnykh. Grazhdanskie dvizheniia v Rossii, 2011–12 [The politics of the apolitical: civic movements in Russia, 2011–12]. Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie.
Matveev, Ilya (forthcoming). “Dve Rossii: Kulturnaia voina i konstruirovanie ‘naroda’ v khode protestov 2011–12” [The two Russias: culture war and construction of “the people” during the 2011–12 protests]. Forthcoming in Politika apolitichnykh. Grazhdanskie dvizheniia v Rossii, 2011–12, ed. Artemy Magun and Svetlana Yerpy- lova. Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie.
Marx, Karl (1843). “On the Jewish Question.” In The Marx-Engels Reader, ed. Robert Tucker, 26–46. New York: Norton & Company, 1978.
Mellucci, Alberto (1996). Challenging Codes: Collective Action in the Information Age. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Minogue, Kenneth (1969). “Populism as a Political Movement.” In Populism: Its Meaning and National Characteristics, ed. Ghita Ionescu and Ernest Gellner, 197–211. Lon- don: Macmillan.
Mouffe, Chantal (2011). “Constructing Unity Across the Difference: The Fault Lines of the 99 %.” Tidal 1: 5.
Mouffe, Chantal (2005). On the Political. New York & London: Routledge.
Muller, Jan-Werner (2011). “Getting a Grip on Populism.” Dissent, September 23. http:// www.dissentmagazine.org/blog/getting-a-grip-on-populism.
Negri, Antonio and Michael Hardt (2005). Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire. New York & London: Penguin Books.
Panizza, Francesco, ed. (2005). Populism and the Mirror of Democracy. New York & Lon- don: Verso.
Ranciere, Jacques (2004). The Disagreement: Politics and Philosophy. Trans. Julie Rose. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Robertson, Graeme (2011). The Politics of Protest in Hybrid Regimes: Managing Dissent in Post-Communist Russia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Robertson, Graeme (2012). “Russian Protesters: Not Optimistic but Here to Stay.” Rus- sian Analytical Digest 115 (June 20): 2–8.
Rogov, Kirill (2013). “Sverkhbol’shinstvo dlia sverkhprezidentstva” [A supermajority for a super-president]. Pro et Contra 3–4 (May–August): 102–125.
Rosanvallon, Pierre (2008). Counter-Democracy: Politics in the Age of Distrust. Trans. Arthur Goldhammer. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Schedler, Andreas, ed. (2006). Electoral Authoritarianism: The Dynamics of Unfree Com- petition. Boulder, Colo., and London: Lynne Rienner Publishers.
Spivak, Chakraworti Gayatri (2011). “The General Strike.” Tidal 1: 8–9.
Taguieff, Pierre-Andre (2002). L’illusion populiste. Paris: Berg International.
Taguieff, Pierre-Andre (1997). “Le populisme et la science politique. Du mirage concep- tuel aux vrais problemes.” Vingtieme siecle 56: 4–33.
Tarrow, Sidney (1998). Power in Movement: Social Movements, Collective Action and Poli- tics [1994]. New York & Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Taylor, Charles (1994). “The Politics of Recognition.” Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition, ed. Amy Guttman, 25–73. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Touraine, Alain (1985). “An Introduction to the Study of Social Movements.” Social Re- search 52.4: 749–788.
Touraine, Alaine (1977). The Self-Production of Society. Trans. Derek Coltman. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Virno, Paolo (2002). A Grammar of the Multitude: For an Analysis of Contemporary Forms of Life. Trans. Isabella Bertoletti, James Cascaito, and Andrea Casson. New York: Semiotext(e).
Virno, Paolo (2005). “Theses on the New European Fascism.” Trans. Alessia Ricciardi. Grey Room 21 (Fall): 21–25.
Volkov, Denis (2012a). “The Protesters and the Public.” Journal of Democracy 23.3 (July): 55–62.
Volkov, Denis (2012b). Protestnoe dvizhenie v Rossii v kontse 2011–2012 gg.: Istoki, dina- mika, rezultaty [The protest movement in Russia in late 2011 and 2012: origins, dynamics, results]. Moscow: Analiticheskii Tsentr Iuriia Levady (“Levada-tsentr”). http://www.levada.ru/sites/default/files/movementreport_0.pdf.
Badie, Bertrand (1997). “Une faillite du politique.” Vingtieme siecle 56: 226–228. Badiou, Alain (2005). Being and Event. Trans. Oliver Feltham. New York: Continuum. Beck, Ulrich, Anthony Giddens, and Scott Lash (1994). Reflexive Modernization: Politics, Tradition and Aesthetics in the Modern Social Order. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Belanovskii, Sergei, Mikhail Dmitriev, Svetlana Misikhina, and Tat’iana Omel’chuk (2011). Dvizhushchie sily i perspektivy politicheskoi transformatsii v Rossii [The driv- ing forces and perspectives of political transformation in Russia]. Moscow: Center for Strategic Research Foundation. http://new.csr.ru/index.php/ru/published- works/our-media/228-2011-03-28-16-38-10.
Bell, Daniel (1973). The Coming of Post-Industrial Society. New York: Basic Books. Beissinger, Marc, Amaney Jamal, and Kevin Mazur (2013a). “The Anatomy of Protest in Egypt and Tunisia.” Foreign Policy, April 15.
Beissinger, Marc, Amaney Jamal, and Kevin Mazur (2013b). “Who Participated in the Arab Spring? A Comparison of Egyptian and Tunisian Revolutions.” http://www. princeton.edu/~mbeissin/beissinger.tunisiaegyptcoalitions.pdf.
Bikbov, Alexander (2012). “The Methodology of Studying ‘Spontaneous’ Street Activism (Russian Protests and Street Camps, December 2011–July 2012).” Laboratorium 4.2: 275–284. http://soclabo.org/index.php/laboratorium/article/view/41/91.
Brown, Wendy (2011). “Occupy Wall Street: Return of a Repressed Res-Publica.” Theory & Event 14.4, Supplement. Buechler, Steven M. (1995). “New Social Movement Theories.” Sociological Quarterly 36.3: 441–464.
Canovan, Margaret (2005). The People. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Canovan, Margaret (1981). Populism. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
Canovan, Margaret (1999). “Trust the People! Populism and the Two Faces of Democ- racy.” Political Studies 47: 2–16.
Castells, Manuel (1983). The City and the Grassroots: A Cross-Cultural Theory of Urban Social Movements. London: Edward Arnold.
Clement, Carine [as “Karin Kleman”], Andrei Demidov, and Ol’ga Miriasova (2010). Ot obyvatelei k aktivistam: zarozhdaiuschiesia sotsialnye dvizheniia v sovremennoi Ros- sii [From ordinary people to activists: emerging social movements in contempo- rary Russia]. Moscow: Tri kvadrata.
Dalton, Russell J., Manfred Kuechler, and Wilhelm Burklin (1990). “The Challenge of the New Movements.” In Challenging the Political Order: New Social and Political Movements in Western Democracies, ed. Russell J. Dalton and Manfred Kuechler, 3–20. New York: Oxford University Press.
Della Porta, Donatela and Mario Diani (1999). Social Movements: An Introduction. Ox- ford & Malden, Mass.: Blackwell.
Eder, Klaus (1993). The New Politics of Class: Social Movements and Cultural Dynamics in Advanced Societies. London: Sage.
Etkind, Aleksandr (1998). Khlyst: Sekty, literatura i revoliutsiia [The Khlyst: religious sects, literature, and revolution]. Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie.
Etzioni, Amitai (1970). Demonstration Democracy. New York: Gordon and Breach. Gabowitsch, Mischa (2013). Putin kaputt!? Russlands neue Protestkultur. Berlin: Suhrkamp.
Goldfarb, Jeffrey (2012). “ ‘The Politics of Small Things’ Meets ‘Monstration’: On Fox News, Occupy Wall Street and Beyond.” Divinatio 35: 63–79.
Gouldner, Alvin (1979). The Future of Intellectuals and the Rise of the New Class. New York: Continuum.
Gusfield, George, ed. (1995). Protest, Reform, Revolt. New York & London: Wiley.
Hegel, G.W.F. (1991). Elements of the Philosophy of Right. Trans. H.B. Nisbet. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Honneth, Axel (1996). The Struggle for Recognition: The Moral Grammar of Social Con- flicts. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Huntington, Samuel (1991). The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Cen- tury. Norman, Okla.: University of Oklahoma Press.
Ivanov, Maksim (2013). “Vladimiru Putinu doveriaiut, no voskhishchaiutsia im men’she” [Vladimir Putin is trusted, but admired less]. Kommersant, September 27. http://www.kommersant.ru/doc/2305992.
Javeline, Debra (2003). Protest and the Politics of Blame: The Russian Response to Unpaid Wages. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Kagarlitsky, Boris (2008). “Otritsanie oritsaniia. O kolebaniiakh generalnoi linii” [Ne- gating the negation: on fluctuations in the general line]. Russkaia zhizn’, Febru- ary 1. http://www.rulife.ru/mode/article/497.
Kant, Immanuel (2000). Critique of the Power of Judgment. Trans. Paul Guyer and Eric Matthews. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kirchheimer, Otto (1966). “The Transformation of Western European Party Systems.” In Political Parties and Political Development, ed. Joseph La Palombara and Myron Weiner, 177–199. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.
Kriesi, Hanspeter (1989): “New Social Movements and the New Class in the Nether- lands.” American Journal of Sociology 94.5: 1078–1116.
Laclau, Ernesto and Chantal Mouffe (2001). Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics. London & New York: Verso. Second edition.
Laclau, Ernesto (2005). On Populist Reason. London & New York: Verso.
Lefort, Claude (1988). Democracy and Political Theory. Trans. David Macey. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Levinson, Alexei (2012). “Eto ne srednii klass—eto vse” [It’s not the middle class—it’s everybody]. Vedomosti, February 21. http://www.vedomosti.ru/opinion/ news/1509376/eto_ne_srednij_klass_eto_vse#ixzz2fNoRdMCr.
Magun, Artemy (2013). “Taking Democracy Seriously.” In Decentring the West: The Idea of Democracy and the Struggle for Hegemony, ed. Viatcheslav Morozov, 23–45. Farnham: Ashgate.
Magun, Artemy, and Svetlana Yerpylova, eds. (forthcoming). Politika apolitichnykh. Grazhdanskie dvizheniia v Rossii, 2011–12 [The politics of the apolitical: civic movements in Russia, 2011–12]. Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie.
Matveev, Ilya (forthcoming). “Dve Rossii: Kulturnaia voina i konstruirovanie ‘naroda’ v khode protestov 2011–12” [The two Russias: culture war and construction of “the people” during the 2011–12 protests]. Forthcoming in Politika apolitichnykh. Grazhdanskie dvizheniia v Rossii, 2011–12, ed. Artemy Magun and Svetlana Yerpy- lova. Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie.
Marx, Karl (1843). “On the Jewish Question.” In The Marx-Engels Reader, ed. Robert Tucker, 26–46. New York: Norton & Company, 1978.
Mellucci, Alberto (1996). Challenging Codes: Collective Action in the Information Age. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Minogue, Kenneth (1969). “Populism as a Political Movement.” In Populism: Its Meaning and National Characteristics, ed. Ghita Ionescu and Ernest Gellner, 197–211. Lon- don: Macmillan.
Mouffe, Chantal (2011). “Constructing Unity Across the Difference: The Fault Lines of the 99 %.” Tidal 1: 5.
Mouffe, Chantal (2005). On the Political. New York & London: Routledge.
Muller, Jan-Werner (2011). “Getting a Grip on Populism.” Dissent, September 23. http:// www.dissentmagazine.org/blog/getting-a-grip-on-populism.
Negri, Antonio and Michael Hardt (2005). Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire. New York & London: Penguin Books.
Panizza, Francesco, ed. (2005). Populism and the Mirror of Democracy. New York & Lon- don: Verso.
Ranciere, Jacques (2004). The Disagreement: Politics and Philosophy. Trans. Julie Rose. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Robertson, Graeme (2011). The Politics of Protest in Hybrid Regimes: Managing Dissent in Post-Communist Russia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Robertson, Graeme (2012). “Russian Protesters: Not Optimistic but Here to Stay.” Rus- sian Analytical Digest 115 (June 20): 2–8.
Rogov, Kirill (2013). “Sverkhbol’shinstvo dlia sverkhprezidentstva” [A supermajority for a super-president]. Pro et Contra 3–4 (May–August): 102–125.
Rosanvallon, Pierre (2008). Counter-Democracy: Politics in the Age of Distrust. Trans. Arthur Goldhammer. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Schedler, Andreas, ed. (2006). Electoral Authoritarianism: The Dynamics of Unfree Com- petition. Boulder, Colo., and London: Lynne Rienner Publishers.
Spivak, Chakraworti Gayatri (2011). “The General Strike.” Tidal 1: 8–9.
Taguieff, Pierre-Andre (2002). L’illusion populiste. Paris: Berg International.
Taguieff, Pierre-Andre (1997). “Le populisme et la science politique. Du mirage concep- tuel aux vrais problemes.” Vingtieme siecle 56: 4–33.
Tarrow, Sidney (1998). Power in Movement: Social Movements, Collective Action and Poli- tics [1994]. New York & Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Taylor, Charles (1994). “The Politics of Recognition.” Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition, ed. Amy Guttman, 25–73. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Touraine, Alain (1985). “An Introduction to the Study of Social Movements.” Social Re- search 52.4: 749–788.
Touraine, Alaine (1977). The Self-Production of Society. Trans. Derek Coltman. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Virno, Paolo (2002). A Grammar of the Multitude: For an Analysis of Contemporary Forms of Life. Trans. Isabella Bertoletti, James Cascaito, and Andrea Casson. New York: Semiotext(e).
Virno, Paolo (2005). “Theses on the New European Fascism.” Trans. Alessia Ricciardi. Grey Room 21 (Fall): 21–25.
Volkov, Denis (2012a). “The Protesters and the Public.” Journal of Democracy 23.3 (July): 55–62.
Volkov, Denis (2012b). Protestnoe dvizhenie v Rossii v kontse 2011–2012 gg.: Istoki, dina- mika, rezultaty [The protest movement in Russia in late 2011 and 2012: origins, dynamics, results]. Moscow: Analiticheskii Tsentr Iuriia Levady (“Levada-tsentr”). http://www.levada.ru/sites/default/files/movementreport_0.pdf.
Published
2014-06-25
How to Cite
Magun, A. (2014). The Russian Protest Movement of 2011–2012: A New Middle-Class Populism. Stasis, 2(1). Retrieved from https://stasisjournal.net/index.php/journal/article/view/67
Section
Articles
Copyright (c) 2014 Stasis
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
