What prevents the anti -war movement from uniting?

Kolt continues the project on the theory and practice of self -organization “around the horizontal” .

Self -organization needs not only horizontal communities separately, but also in their consolidation for a single purpose.

For example, for the anti -war movement, which last year made repeated attempts to find common forms - primarily in the new emigration - but they have not yet been crowned with significant success.

The head of the "greenhouse of social technologies" Alexei Sidorenko looks at this experience, is looking for systemic mistakes in it and offers how they could be fixed.

“In most cases, success is exaggerated, as the winners write the history of the losers. In the history of networks, it is often the other way around. Successful networks avoid public attention. ”

Nial Ferguson, “Square and Tower.
Networks and power from Masons to Facebook "

My name is Alexei Sidorenko, I am leading the project “Greenhouse of Social Technologies”, whose mission is to strengthen civil society with the help of education in the field of it . I want to propose here my view of the urgent problem of combining anti -war movement.

After more than two decades, dismantling the fragile and imperfect Russian democratic institutions, the regime reached the terrorist stage: the invasion of a neighboring country began. Independent media are blocked, the largest political leaders in imprisonment, hundreds of people are called foreign agents (and thousands are waiting for their label every Friday), tens of thousands of people are building a new life in exile. Including my colleagues and friends.

“All hope for the lower communities” - such thoughts come to many in early 2023.

Despite the obvious difficulties of civil society, to impoverish and burn out, the war more acutely raised the question of the need for coordinated producer actions, especially anti -war ones.

I was lucky to become a witness (and sometimes a participant) of many discussions associated with the fate of the anti -war movement. One of the large plots of these discussions is the unification of the lower initiatives.

Given the fact that this process is going on right now, and the fact that right now is watching a direct and cruel enemy (authoritarian Russian state) right now, I cannot share all the observations. But some, in my opinion, cannot provide the advantages of the attacking side, but are able to help unite.

Why unite?

In social networks, you can find a lot of dreams about the beautiful and free Russia of the future. All of them proceed from the expectations that the country will go into this new state somehow on its own. But it is obvious that real changes are possible only with public power with a scale that would be able to create conditions for changes.

Last summer, in the framework of the Laboratory for the Study of Civil Society (this is a small research department in the “Teplitsa”, opened in 2022), we came to the conclusion that the total audience of all anti -war channels and publics (taking into account very probable impositions) does not exceed 500,000 people. Suppose that taking into account the audience of large opposition media, this figure is not six -digit, but seven -digit. But in order to change the country with a nine -digit number of the population, the lower initiatives need to be more active and meaningful to approach the activation of the audience close to them.

It is necessary not only to unite, but also to scale. A sufficient condition for the victory of the actors will be such a number of people related to each other, which significantly exceeds the number of supporters of the status quo (a numerical protest factor was also discussed in an interview with Grigory Yudin. - Ed. ) So the unification is really necessary as a resource for struggle and real changes.

One of the most popular articles of the “greenhouses” last year is the text of the activist and human rights activist Igor Blazhevich, who says the same thing: “It is important not to remain alone. Invest 1/4 of your time in doing something with others, not alone. So you help others engage in what is important to them, and expand your contact network. And this is vital: if for a long time you invest a lot of time and energy in establishing communication with other people, you will gain strength for further struggle. And you will need this power when the possibility of real changes will appear. ”

If it is so important to unite, then why is it not yet possible? It seems to me that this has several reasons.

Search for a common denominator

The process of combining democratic forces in Russia systematically failed. I recall, for example, the split along the ATP - “Yabloko” in the middle of the zero. Or the next unsuccessful experience is the coordination council of the Russian opposition, which taught that it is necessary to unite around values, and not out of the desire to make the coalition infinitely wide. But here not everything is so simple.

Almost all the conversations about the unification sooner or later come to the search for a common denominator. The question sounds like this: “What should be a minimum set of values ​​in the coalition, so that my project/movement/blog should not be shaved to join it?” Sets of such criteria look different, but they always form quite complex ethical frames.

Or the discussion begins to go in this vein: “And it is also important for me that the fundamental value is X ...”. The next participant adds another value, but it is included in the conflict with the values ​​of the third. After such an exchange, the question of unification can, in principle, be closed.

People discussing the general denominator almost never go towards minimizing and eliminating all conflictogenic. On the contrary, they make a new one. It seems to participants in the conversation that if you do not insist on all the values ​​of your own organization, you will compromise it itself. The addition of new criteria easily becomes an apple of discord and ultimately stops the conversation.

In this, in my opinion, the error lies. At the entrance to the coalition, the connecting link between the actors should work precisely the common values. If you look at the general denominator as a dialogue condition, and not as a binding frame, as a tool in which it is not necessary to see a compromise, then the possibilities of diplomacy between different initiatives look completely different.

What common value denominator should you choose now?

Let's say new producing decolonial movements indicate that it is impossible to use the national argument as a common denominator. We are not in the 19th century to build a community on the basis of romantic nationalism.

Personally, my answer is this: a common denominator for anti -war movement should consist of just one point - respect for human rights . Of course, I would like to add more “non -violent communication” (both as value and as a form of communication between organizations). But this logically follows from a fairly voluminous set of human rights, so it is self -evident.

But what about those who do not recognize human rights? In my opinion, with such people, you should not form coalitions. We may have different views on economic policy, on feminity, on taxes, visas, on methods of raising children, on religion, on the legacy of the 90s, faith in progress, for mask regime, oligarchic capital, forcibly resistance to the Putin regime or on historical memory. But if we do not agree on the issue of human rights, then this conflict cannot be circumvented. More precisely, as follows: any attempts to neglect human rights for the sake of political benefits have always turned into the defeat of anti -authoritarian democratic forces. It makes no sense to build a wide coalition around anything else.

It is worth emphasizing that the search for a common denominator does not mean the need to forget about the differences. No, this is just a search for the principles of unification and a single communication protocol.

Moreover, if the democratic movement wins, then it is on this platform based on human rights that that a dialogue with the defeated apparatus of a hierarchically centralized state can be built.

Fragmentation and defragmentation of civil society

The unification is hindered by the technological environment. Social networks algorithms are kept on the economy of attention andwin, rather, from srach than from the search for consensus.

In addition to the already wide Russian open spaces, there is a global dispersion of the Russian anti -war movement - according to the latest estimates, the new Russian diaspora politically took shape in at least three dozen countries.

We will not forget that the Russian civil society has passed through the process of deinstationization. Over the past nine years (starting with the May decrees), the Putin state has strangled it, using the entire set of authoritarian practices - from the ban (the Law on undesirable organizations), “toxicization” (law on foreign agents) to co -optation (heyday of the Fund of Presidential Grants). In a recent newsletter of the “public services”, a statemarquetologist calls “civilian society” militaristic initiatives- although it is a pseudo-citizenship (it cannot be called “civilian” due to the lack of respect for civil rights and freedoms).

Many organizations that remained in Russia generally switched to underground regime, and this imposes new significant restrictions on the possibility of their inclusion in more open forms of coalition communication.

A separate problem of civil society is the unevenness of its various actors. How to unite if in this soup and broccoli, and rice, and carrot? On the one hand, very young initiatives without developed media (telegram channels or leaders who de facto act as media of their own initiatives). On the other hand, organizations that have already been able to create a considerable audience of tens of thousands of people around them, which, of course, inspires respect, but still does not solve the problem of mobilizing truly large groups.

Finally, large vertically integrated opposition political systems. The audience of their YouTube channels is calculated by millions, although it is often passive spectators, for whom the very fact of participation in opposition information exchange is the maximum of their activist involvement.

Of course, such actors have more advantages than the lower, humanitarian, service or IDENTITY-BASED initiatives. But everyone, absolutely everyone should think about how to unite.

Finally, the role of media should be noted. The ratio of the media is very important-these are the same anti-war movement actors as the lower initiatives, but it seems that the media imagine the policy of the 90s. That is why many independent (and Western) media are occupied by the Kremlin and the next crazy initiatives of the state, and not the policy of the protest movement and the policy of unification. The optics of Russian media in exile is in many ways tuning only to see only large objects.

Organizational diplomacy and organizational democracy

In the book “Social Projects that changed Russia. 2012–2022. Inspirational stories of the decade ” , published in the“ greenhouse ”last year, I point out two important challenges that are facing the civil society to form a truly wide coalition that claims to be federal representation:“ 1) a challenge of democracy-that is, how collectively make decisions based on the principles of equality, human rights and the supremacy of the right within organizations of various sizes: from neighboring children to large international coalitions of diasporary organizations; 2) a call of diplomacy - that is, how to establish partnerships between organizations themselves and between organizations and their audiences. ”

If we talk about democracy, then problems arise at the level of decision -making within organizations, but in general at the level of legitimacy of the entire civil society. In my opinion, the issue of democracy is unreasonable without creating an alternative representation. That is: 1) elections to such a representative office (and in the case of diasporas - elections at large distances); 2) Voters' verification; 3) protection of their personal data; 4) the legitimacy of the election commission; 5) legitimacy of results; 6) votes. In general, all these are difficult, but resolved issues. On the other hand, if they do not take them, then they will not be decided. You can start simply with the development of requirements.

In the field of organizational diplomacy, at least the following questions come to mind. 1) The development of the formats of interaction between initiatives - for example, a description of the role of the Connector or Ambassador with other organizations. Perhaps a protocol is needed - what it makes sense to discuss with other organizations and which are not. 2) the second element may be the active participation of business, donors, media in the creation of spaces, methods for dialogue and coalition decision -making.

How to unite?

Obviously, no one has a definite answer. But we can imagine that the unification process must meet the following criteria: 1) the possibility of remote participation; 2) low processes of processes; 3) inclusion; 4) competition of various forms of association. I will explain.

Remote participation. During this year, we saw that some actors have already held organizational congresses of the diaspora (in some cities several times)-someone with a big one, someone with less success. Laboratory and workshops were also held. But with conferences and laboratories there is a difficulty - the very nature of such events creates (in most cases) the problem “Thank you for that (not) called”. Already the process of turning on some and the non -inclusion of others prevents the unification. It can be assumed that it will never be possible to invite all anti-war actors to one conference, that is, the disconnecting effect will be present almost constantly if it is not trying to comprehend it and somehow constructively work with it. Perhaps we need to talk about the forms of interference interaction.

Speed. It is often believed that you need to unite quickly. But I have never met a successful attempt by a quick unification. All of them, as a rule, ended with burnout and quarrels.

In the absence of resources, the bottom initiatives (and this, in my opinion, is a fact) and their distribution in space, the unification process should be, on the contrary, slow - and as inclusive as possible.

Inclusiveness. Inclusiveness is important for the breadth of initiative coverage, and the low speed of the process is so that everyone has time to cut down. But inclusiveness does not mean omnivorousness. In Europe, legislative standards are being developed for several years - including to discuss everything that is possible and involve more participants.

Competition of solutions. In the current initiatives, you can also find a structural approach (“We will build everyone here because everyone works wrong”) or its opposite is a research approach (“We will do a certain experiment here, we will see how the rest will react”). But both of them interfere with the equality of organizations.

The output here seems to be a competitive solution of decisions: different actors in the atmosphere of respectful and constructive rivalry simultaneously develop different solutions to the same problem, perfectly understanding their “neighborhood”, but not trying to forcefully lead the rest.

An attempt to lead. Over the past year, we saw at least two or three attempts to lead the protest movement. All of them ultimately had a destructive effect.

Recall that the opponent of the lower initiatives is the hierarchical centralized state of Putin, which is perfectly oriented in principle, “share and rule”, always winning from the next split in the opposition. Therefore, when planning the value and technical infrastructure for uniting, it is necessary to check: will it be perceived as “an attempt to lead”?

Such decisions should be adopted, possibly independent actors, who, for example, in the charter will have the impossibility of leading multi -component social movements.

About "elephants" and "mosquitoes"

Describing the idea of ​​parallel computing, the famous Dutch scientist Edsger Dikstra proposed a dichotomy between the "elephants" and "mosquitoes".

“Elephants”, according to Dycster, are large computing processes, often clumsy, unable to solve truly complex problems. “Mosquitoes” are multiple small processes working in parallels with each other.

The next iteration of this dichotomy was “Elephants made up of mosquitoes” - this is how Dycstra describes coordinated computing microprocesses. Now this logic is used, for example, in computer safety.

The fact is that any major essence is a target. But if it is created from many small entities that can be autonomous, but coordinated to work, then it becomes a much more effective tool.

2022 was the year of civil society survival. Discussions about its unification say that we are moving from survival to the offensive.

In the end, it should be said that with the huge complexity of this task, the fundamental principles of any solutions should be simplicity and minimalism. One common denominator, simple, but reliable protocols of interaction, an understandable and achievable goal.