September 30, 2019, 08:30 / Opinions

How the protest has changed

Sociologist Alexey Zakharov and anthropologist Alexandra Arkhipova about who went to Sakharov Avenue in the summer of 2019 and on September 29

Alexey Zakharov

Alexandra Arkhipova

On Sunday, September 29, on Sakharov Avenue in Moscow, despite the rain and cold, a rally agreed by the mayor’s office, organized by the unregistered Libertarian Party, took place. The main demand of the rally is to stop the political repression of those who were detained on July 27 and August 3, 2019 in Moscow during the so-called “mass riots” - actions not approved by the Moscow authorities, the participants of which demanded that independent candidates be allowed to participate in the Moscow City Duma elections.

It would seem that in terms of mass numbers this rally should have been comparable to the previous one, held at the same place on August 10 - then, according to the volunteer organization “White Counter”, 50,000–60,000 people came to Sakharov Avenue. But on September 29, “White Counter” counted only 25,200 people at the rally (Moscow police say about 20,000 participants), i.e., more than two times less than on August 10. Why? Has the protest “deflated” – have people lost interest in political actions? Or is it something else?

We can judge how the composition of participants in mass actions is changing, as well as their motivation, from the results of our observations and surveys, which we have been conducting regularly since 2011. On September 29, folklorists and anthropologists from the group “Monitoring Current Folklore” with the support of “White Counter” ", as well as groups of volunteer researchers interviewed 905 people on Sakharov Avenue. As before, we tried to ensure the representativeness of the sample by interviewing people passing through the frames at a certain interval - we asked every seventh person. About 20% of respondents refused to participate in our survey. This is very little for opinion polls.

According to some socio-demographic indicators, this rally was similar to previous ones. The overwhelming majority of participants - 86% - were Muscovites (among the participants in the rally on August 10, for example, 80% of respondents lived permanently in Moscow). The ratio of men and women was also not much different: 57% were men, which is not significantly less than usual. (But there are also interesting differences. For example, 78% of those who came to Sakharov are people with higher education. Moreover, 6% of respondents have an academic degree of a candidate or doctor of science. In total, in Russia there are less than 0.5% holders of academic degrees - i.e. that is, at the rally this population group was overrepresented by more than 10 times.)

The popularity of Sunday's action in Moscow does not allow us to talk about the end of the protests

Politics / Democracy

But the age composition of the participants has changed significantly compared to the summer protests - and this, in our opinion, allows us to answer the question of what is happening with the protest in Moscow now.

When we discuss rallies, we, as a rule, focus on young people - how many students and schoolchildren came out, and forget about other age groups that are capable of changing the protest. But the percentage of young people on Sakharov Avenue on September 29 was about the same as in the summer: a little more than 20%. The share of young rally participants is generally quite stable: on August 10, 2019, there were 24% of them on Sakharov Avenue, and at the rally on December 24, 2011, there, on Sakharov Avenue, about 30%.

If we talk about the median age of the protesters, the protest has become much older: at the summer rallies it was about 30 years old, and on Sunday half of those who came to Sakharov were over 40 years old. In the older age group - 66 years and older - compared to August 10, not only the relative, but also, apparently, the absolute number has increased, while the interest of everyone else (primarily 25-35 year olds) in street actions decreased.

Moreover, the core of the participants consisted of veterans of protest actions. According to the interviewers, among those interviewed were those who, according to them, still went to defend the White House in 1991. A large number of participants “entered into action” after the assassination of Boris Nemtsov and the rallies of 2011–2012. There were very few newcomers - only 7% came out to a street protest for the first time on September 29, another 11% did it for the first time in the summer of 2019, during the summer political crisis. For comparison: 35% of newcomers came to the pickets on September 18 in defense of Pavel Ustinov (he was sentenced to 3.5 years in prison for allegedly committing violence against a member of the National Guard), and 18% came to the rally against Sakharov on August 10.

Thus, it turns out that the “core” came to the rally on September 29, which constantly goes to mass actions. Almost all of them are ready to come to political events in the future, and the share of those for whom the consistency of the action is not important for the decision to participate has increased, although slightly: from 46 to 51%.

We observe the greatest decline in numbers in another age group – from 26 to 35 years. If at the rally on August 10 the share of this age group was 36%, then at the rally on September 29 it was only 21%.

Apparently, people of this age value their time most highly and soberly assess risks. They are ready to participate in public street actions only if there is some very compelling reason for this.

The word “street” is not accidental here. This Sunday, fewer people of this age came out to Sakharov Avenue than before, but it was among them that the largest number - 85% - of those who expressed their readiness to donate money for political needs and support for political prisoners. And younger participants in the rally—under 25 years of age—expressed greater readiness to go out on pickets (individual or collective) and attend court hearings on the “Moscow case.”

At least 17% of participants came to Sakharov with prepared posters or made them on the spot, which corresponds to the usual average level for such actions. In addition to typical protest posters like “Freedom does not require approval”, “No to repression”, “Freedom for students and freedom for universities”, Sakharov also had humorous ones, referring to the most current events: “Uncle Shaman, come! Uncle shaman, banish me!” in the hands of a child (an echo of the story of the Yakut shaman Alexander Gabyshev, who went to Moscow to exorcise the demon from Putin), a parody “I/we Zolotov” is in a man (a parody of a now popular form of expression of solidarity). Its author was mistaken for a provocateur at the rally, and the man had to explain himself to the rally participants for quite a long time before he was finally allowed to unfurl his poster. One woman came to the rally with a “silovik doll” based on “little ditties from the Internet,” such as “What kind of screams are heard / Near Moscow in the distance? / The Russians are being tortured there: / They are touching his hand.” This is a popular flash mob that took over social networks in September. In three days, such ditties (in total we recorded more than 170 stories) received, according to our calculations, more than 20,000 reposts.

Let's summarize. We are sure that a whole battle is now unfolding on social networks over why relatively few participants came to the rally on September 29. In our opinion, the point is not at all that the protest was “blown away.” There is simply no one form of protest that is common to all social and age groups. A protest is not just about going to a rally on one cold or, conversely, warm day. Protest is a process, and there are many actions in it that are characteristic of different social and age groups: some repost messages, others go to court, others help political prisoners, others picket, and others go to mass rallies.

Now we see that the protest, at least for a while, has returned to its usual course and state - with a “core” of permanent age participants, a significant part of which is the urban intelligentsia. Other groups went into semi-dormant mode or chose forms of protest unrelated to street activity.

Authors: sociologist, anthropologist

A rally in support of those involved in the “Moscow case”. Photos

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On September 29, a coordinated rally was held on Academician Sakharov Avenue in support of those involved in the “Moscow case”

/ Dmitri Lovetsky / AP Photo