Protest movement in Russia: the view of sociologists

Author: VK

In our view, the dynamics of the protest movement still come in waves: the wave surges, then it rushes back. And there is no trend towards decreasing or increasing. But there are polls that we have conducted at three major meetings: the first one was in December, the second one on February 4, and the third one on June 12. This time, we surveyed 531 people. So here are the five main facts, not only about the meeting, but also about the protest movement as a whole, because there were three surveys, and we can compare the answers received on June 12 to the preceding ones.
 
So the first fact is that the socio-demographic composition and the socio-professional composition of the protest movement have essentially changed. The average age has declined, there are more young people: people under the age of 34 years constituted two-thirds of the participants in the meeting. There are fewer people of middle age, and there are very few pensioners.

The socio-professional composition has also become narrower and, I would say, simpler. More than half of the protesters on June 12 were representatives of three groups: the so-called creative class, office workers and students, the youth. In contrast, the number of workers, engineers and technical workers, pensioners, civil servants and municipal employees has declined dramatically in comparison even with February, let alone December.

What unites the participants of the protest actions, why do some people go there, and others not? We have identified three factors concerning the mood of these people. The first one is a clear need for self-realization. We have suggested to people that they decide: what is more important to you - some kind of development, a kind of novelty, self-fulfillment, or peace, order, stability, etc. And almost 78% chose the first vector; then there are people who want something different and associate their life with these changes. The second thing in common is a high degree of dissatisfaction with the situation in the country. About two-thirds said that it did not suit them. This contrasts sharply with the average estimates for the country as a whole. The third is disorder, dissatisfaction with their own lives. For us, this was also pretty weird, but about 49%, one in two, said that the situation in their own lives did not suit them. For the country as a whole, there is exactly the opposite situation: even those who expressed dissatisfaction with the situation in Russia as a whole, when we asked them about their own personal situation, they usually said: “no, we are fine. There's something wrong with the country, but we are alright”. Here we see that the situation is different. Oh, and one more thing: the socio-economic reasons for the protest are almost negligible. This does not concern our respondents.
 
Now let us pass over to what is probably the main issue; whether there is an influx of new forces to the protest movement, or is there, on the contrary, an outflow. 84% of those surveyed at the meeting on June 12 reported that they had participated in similar protest actions in the past. Only about 16% said that they had come to this action for the first time. In my opinion, this is a very small number. And, in my view, this says that there is no influx of new forces to the movement. Those who came would be better described as "fellow travellers", and there is absolutely no guarantee that they will come again. So this flow is very limited.
 
We have identified several groups among the participants of the movement, with the exception of those who are fellow travellers, of whom I have already spoken. There are semi-permanent members, that is, they don't come to every event, but they have participated in at least a few large meetings. That's about one-third of these. And the main team, we have called them "the core", 54%, participated in all the major events in Moscow that have taken place in the last six months, that is, they are the same people.
 
Now let us pass over to the effectiveness of the protest movement. You know that if you do something with no result, then at some point you have a choice - whether to hit the wall or not. And here is the key moment: there is a split between the ardent revolutionaries, who are willing to continue to hit the wall, and more rational, sober, balanced and pragmatic people, who go away having seen no results. In our case, such a moment, judging by the polls, has already occurred. Those who believe that the protest movement is ineffective have ceased to take part in actions, and those who have remained, in contrast, believe it is very effective. It is a great question if it is true; often people mistake the wish for the reality, just in order to explain why they go to these events from time to time if they do not have any effect. Nevertheless, 64% believe that this protest movement is quite effective. When you ask why, what arguments they have, it turns out that they have two main arguments. Firstly, the government pays them attention. Secondly, the protests continue, the movement isn't dying, new members are arriving. Here are two arguments.

 
Nevertheless, there was widespread dissatisfaction with diverse aspects of the organization and the conduct of the event on June 12, and the discontent has grown substantially. If, let us say, at a meeting on February 4 about 43% of respondents expressed at least some claim, now the figure was two-thirds. Everybody seems to be happy, they all come and promise to continue coming, but there is something they do not like.

Well, the last fact which I would like to mention right now is the leaders of the protest movement. You know that there are a lot of them, they are all very different and are not very fond of each other, but they have to try negotiating somehow. In comparison with the situation in February, there were significant changes in the ranking of the popularity of these leaders. The reason for this is disputable. We can say that some of them really took some correct position that received support, but we can talk about something else. The composition of the meetings' participants has changed; many supporters of some leaders who went to meetings, for example, in February, have left, and the supporters of other leaders, more radical and more consistent, remained. How did they change? Yavlinsky's popularity has fallen, as well as Prokhorov’s. The popularity of Udaltsov and Yashin has grown. Well, the most important thing is the fact that Navalny has become the undisputed leader of the protest movement: his rating has tripled in the four months from February to June. Once again I say, in my opinion, this is not just a result of the effective policy of Navalny, but it is a result of the reduction of the total number of participants in the movement.
 
Olga Kryshtanovskaya, head of the Center for the Study of Elites of the Institute of Sociology of Russian Academy of Sciences
 

As for the participants in the protests, they are often called the creative class, hipsters, and so on; some words are not very clear, but there are some very simple definitions that are understandable for everyone. The protest movement is represented by the Russian intelligentsia. Here are some figures. The national average of people who have higher education is 28%; 70% of the protesters have a higher education. People who have a degree are 0.4% of the population of Russia; 5.8% of the protesters have a degree. About 50% of the people are employed in mental labor and about 17% are students (given that their number amounts to 9% of the Russian population) among the protesters. This quite clearly shows us that this is a group that is always traditionally known as the intelligentsia, which has traditionally opposed the government, and, in fact, all the significant revolutionary changes and attempts at revolution occurred due to this section, the Russian intelligentsia. Here it is really quite young: the average age is below the average in Russia, it is a little older than 30 years. The vast majority of these people have travelled abroad to Western countries at least once and compared the situation in Russia with the western situation. Many of them have wanted to emigrate, but for some reason they did not emigrate. So here is the status of the national depression, when we feel that everything is bad because of this comparison; it was formed long ago, and now it has found its expression.

 
Why is it so? I think it is very important to analyze the media space in which these communities are formed. They can be called "cloud communities", or as I would like to call them, "hedgehogs”; their solid core is located in social networks. 65% of  the participants of the protests learned about any protest actions on the internet. The majority of this information is on Facebook – there is about 40%. This is followed by VKontakte with 20% and Twitter with 18%, while LiveJournal, which is losing ground, has only 5.5%. 25% of the opposition freely surf the internet and find this information anywhere. These people have spoken on the internet  for a long time of their intention to protest. And as soon as the opportunity to go to real protests appeared, they did it, they looked at the reaction and they saw that it was safe enough. As soon as they sense danger, they again become the core in social networks and leave the streets, but do not cease to exist. Therefore, it is a special attitude to leadership, what I have to say. This is a completely new reality; the authorities do not understand, perhaps, how to interact with it, because this community is managed by accounts in social networks which are interchangeable. You can arrest any man, but his account will be supported by a different one, etc. It is possible that the opposition itself does not really use its new features, but these opportunities exist, and we should understand how all this will be done.

 
We have made a pyramid of protest. At the top there is a small group of revolutionaries, who are willing to act in the strongest terms: they are ready to be arrested and for harsh measures of confrontation, and they claim that their main goal in the struggle is Putin himself. They are fighting against Putin. These revolutionaries are only 3%. The next group, more than 25%, is against the whole political system and dissatisfied with the lack of democracy, and so forth. But the largest group, the third, 40%, does not set global revolutionary goals. They are protesting against the lack of a legal state in the form of the presence of flashing lights, absence of fair trials, lack of equality, the presence of double standards in our judicial system and law enforcement, nepotism, etc. That is, from all the protesting masses, the majority of these people are protesting against the lack of equality in Russia. This is now the key point that we have established.