Chat instead of square. What could the future of the Russian public sphere look like?

Yulia Galyamina

Is it possible to divide society by banning rallies, closing independent media, killing and driving political opponents out of the country? Politician Yulia Galyamina shows how closed chat rooms, anti-cafes and book clubs are turning into a new counter-public sphere - a network of horizontal communities without a single center. Through Jurgen Habermas, Nancy Fraser, and the Soviet experience of informal associations, she explains why pressure on public policy does not always destroy civic ties, but sometimes makes them less visible and more tenacious, and most importantly, more democratic.

Russian authorities require materials from people they have included in the register of “foreign agents” to be marked. The editors do not agree with this status, but for the safety of authors from Russia and at their request, they are forced to indicate:

18+ THIS MATERIAL (INFORMATION) IS PRODUCED, DISTRIBUTED AND (OR) SENT BY FOREIGN AGENT YULIA EVGENIEVNA GALYAMINA OR CONCERNES THE ACTIVITIES OF A FOREIGN AGENT YULIA EVGENIEVNA GALYAMINA.

In one day, the police disrupted 120 underground film screenings of Zvyagintsev’s “Minotaur” in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Krasnodar and Omsk.

The first reaction to this “news” was a mixture of joy and indignation. Joy that there are already so many film clubs, and indignation that they have reached them. And only after a couple of seconds doubts appeared. And not in vain. Because the channel on which this text appeared turned out to be “Panorama” - a collection of parody “news”. This sequence suggests that the prank was a success: satirical supposedly informational notes are based on this - they must be believable, capture real trends and simply exaggerate them a little. It is not for nothing that the slogan of the news agency “Panorama” is: “Ahead of events.”

This news reflects two main trends in modern Russian social life. This is, firstly, the development of communities and projects within Russia that are invisible at first glance, and secondly, a rather broad repressive system that fights everything alive in politics. And, of course, the genre tells us that the underground sphere is not, in fact, so widely developed (120 showings of a banned film in one day is still an unlikely thing), and the repressive machine, fortunately, is not as coordinated and systemic as adherents of the theory of Russia as a totalitarian Mordor believe.

The birth of Russian publicity

In this article we will focus on the first trend, the context for the development of which is the second. That is, the focus of our attention will be the unofficial public sphere, which I, following some philosophers, would like to designate as the “counterpublic sphere”, or simply “counterpublic”.

To move on, it is necessary to make a short excursion into the conceptual apparatus that I use. The basic concept is the “public sphere”, which was introduced by the recently deceased great German philosopher Jurgen Habermas.

The public sphere is a special socio-political space in which citizens can discuss important public issues. There are two types of public sphere. There are weak publics - that is, those that have the opportunity to form positions on certain issues, but cannot make decisions. And there are strong publics - also a place for discussion, but not only that. In strong publics - parliaments, councils, general meetings - it is possible to make decisions that are binding on certain groups of people.

Later, feminist philosopher Nancy Fraser critically complements Habermas's theory by introducing another concept:

“Counterpublics” are also a space for discussing political issues. However, they are created by oppressed groups. Their voice is weaker than the voice of even weak audiences. The fact is that he is not taken into account by powerful publics and is constantly marginalized.

Habermas in his works described a certain ideal of the public sphere, the discussion in which should be built, first of all, on the principles of rationality and compliance with the rules of communication, independence from state dominance and the ability to influence its decisions. The active role of the participants in discussions and the unity of the communication space for the whole society are also important. Fraser adds to this ideal such characteristics as equality of participants, the permissibility of the expression of private interests, and a plurality of coherent strong and weak publics.

However, at the time of the formation of the Russian public sphere, which was born from the roots of the aptly named “imperfect” Soviet publicity, philosophy noted the decline of this area in the liberal-capitalist world.

Habermas and other authors sounded the alarm: the public sphere was almost completely moving into the sphere of mass communication. Now the main role is played not by the individual citizen or the community with their exchange of opinions, but by the opinion leaders and the crowd that sympathizes with them. In addition, individualistic attitudes and indifference to the common good take over. Communication is immersed in consumer relations, and the role of commercial advertising is increasing in the media. And whoever dines a girl, dances her. And it is precisely this publicity regime that was dominant in the West at the time of the collapse of the USSR that Russia takes as a model.

At the same time, in liberal democracies there is still not only mass communication, but regularly updated parliaments and other elected bodies (strong publics) that depend on the will of citizens. As well as professionalized non-governmental organizations (weak publics) and self-organizing non-dominant groups (counterpublics), which can take over weak and even strong public spheres). In Russia in the 90s, none of this was sufficiently developed. Thus, for example, the culture of strong publics that had formed in the late USSR in real councils and congresses of people’s deputies was quickly suppressed (the first most famous step was October 1993). But weak publics and counterpublics did not have time to develop: there were very few public organizations, and there was nothing to say about the political independence of marginal groups.

The borrowed regime of mass publicity, which has been intensifying since the late eighties, managed to form quite successful institutions. However, in Russia there was even greater inequality, individualism, and consumerism of the masses than in the West.

People were disappointed in politics, they were inexperienced and therefore easily succumbed to manipulative techniques, and the complex emotional legacy of the nineties and the betrayal of the intellectual elites deprived us of the chance to get a developed public sphere. As a result, in the 2000s, media institutions could not resist the onslaught of authoritarianism - a rather systematic and gradual onslaught.

The first to go under the knife was television, which by the beginning of the 21st century had managed to develop primarily due to competition among the “oligarchs” (remember the NTV case), and then spread to other forms of mass communication: print media and radio. At the same time, the censorship machine was being tested, the mechanics of which currently have a wide arsenal: this is the “legal” system, and repressive practices, and a regime of intimidation, and technical blocking tools, and even direct force.

However, in parallel with the onset of authoritarianism at the state level in society, approximately from the second half of the 2000s, when the Internet began to develop, reverse processes began. These processes of public political emancipation led to a gradual reformatting of the public sphere. And these were changes from below, mostly against the will of the authorities (not counting the short period of Dmitry Medvedev’s rule, which encouraged much of what would later be harshly repressed).

The most obvious transformation is occurring in the realm of alternative mass media. Despite their obvious opposition, until 2022 they played the role of weak publics, that is, they could influence government decisions. Moreover, some opposition media were able to find models that overcome the hereditary defects of the mass communication system, namely the deprivation of the audience's subjectivity. They created models that involved people in the media, primarily through co-financing models (the most striking example: the now considered undesirable independent publication Meduza).

In addition, in tens of tens, society begins to create new public connections and emerge from the “public muteness syndrome.” More and more people want to participate in public communication. Examples include increasingly massive rallies, the growth in the number of charitable and public organizations, and the emergence of local communities that begin to influence decision-making. That is, independent weak publics are being created in Russia!

Moreover, uncontrolled candidates take part in elections and even sometimes win (at least at the local and regional level). That is, a partial transition is taking place from weak publics to strong ones, albeit without the right to a decisive vote.

Authoritarian power and manipulative opposition

However, at the beginning of the 2020s, a rather interesting two-part model of the authoritarian public sphere is being established in Russia.

The first element of this system - the state public sphere was as far as possible from the normative description: unpredictable, irrational and manipulative. It was based on mass communication with the passive role of people. Strong publics (parliaments, councils, etc.) were practically monopolized and very closed to outside view, and weak publics (near-state public organizations) did not have their own voice. The only advantage of this state public sphere was that it was still quite coherent, which is the downside of the lack of plurality of players in this field.

The second element was an alternative public sphere independent of the state, which, however, still had a certain influence, that is, it could well be called a weak public. It had many more positive elements (the aforementioned media, which relied exclusively on their subscribers, the emerging network of horizontal grassroots communication, numerous public organizations), which, under favorable conditions, could have advanced Russian political life far. But the conditions were unfavorable: the atomization and depoliticization of society had not yet been overcome, and the repressive machine was intensifying. The main idea of ​​the opposition is direct, as they say, “head-on” confrontation with the authorities. This means that the focus was on momentary efficiency rather than long-term development of publicity. That is why the qualities of the antagonist began to be reproduced in the dominant segment of the alternative public sphere.

First of all, this is the mass nature of communication, which does not imply an active role for the audience.

The opposition leaders knew how to do it, and citizens were encouraged to become simply supporters and do what they say. Remember the slogan: “You don’t reflect, you spread,” which, starting in 2011, was repeatedly used by Alexei Navalny.

In addition, the most important feature of the oppositional public sphere is the desire for manipulation, monopolization and hierarchy.

However, in contrast to the state public sphere, several competing major players have formed in the opposition sphere, primarily FBK, Open Russia (both are recognized as undesirable organizations, extremists and terrorists), City Projects and some others. This led to the squeezing of small groups into the counter-public sphere or their appropriation. Remember how difficult it was for small communities with their own small political problems to break into large opposition media, or how large opposition players sought to gather local activity under their umbrella in municipal elections.

Monopolization also occurred due to the merging of political and media activities in the hands of the same political players.

Navalny, Khodorkovsky, Katz and Varlamov acquired their own media empires. Unlike the old opposition such as the Yabloko party, the new players sought to have large media platforms under their control. However, such consolidation not only made the opposition public similar to the state one, but also made it a major target for attack.

Such a blow was not long in coming. Large opposition structures and people associated with them, in principle, were always subject to pressure, but this was the usual sluggish persecution. The main blow came at the beginning of the 2020s, and large opposition structures were completely squeezed out of the domestic Russian space after February 2022. It was at this moment that the authorities decided to abruptly turn the board over and completely shake up the entire public sphere.

As a result, large opposition structures and media independent of the Russian state ceased to exist on Russian territory. And if this story had taken place a hundred years ago, one could talk about the complete disappearance of the alternative public sphere.

However, the uniqueness of the modern situation is that thanks to the communicative Internet revolution, a large and dominant public physically squeezed out of the country’s territory can maintain its scale through mass media communication. Thanks to these processes, several large and extensive media empires have grown abroad in the opposition segment of YouTube.

It would seem that large media outlets have not lost anything, but have only expanded. However, several changes did occur. Since addressing them was criminalized, this entailed natural consequences - the transformation of all activity into media activity, and all media activity into mass and unidirectional: the domestic Russian audience lost even those small opportunities for dialogue (open communication, reposts, discussion) that it had before.

This led to a decrease in the influence of the opposition on society within Russia. Their physical absence from Russian everyday life makes their structures too distant from the life world of those for whom they were originally created. As a result, some of them switched their focus either exclusively to Russians who had left, or to European structures in general, which, in particular, was reflected in the formation of the so-called platform of democratic forces under PACE.

In addition, the opposition public has lost at least some positive influence on government decisions, which means that they have moved from the status of weak publics to the status of, albeit large and visible, counterpublics.

As a result, from being part of the all-Russian public sphere, from the state of a weak public, which included its own audience, opposition publicity moves into the category of a counterpublic with a mass, impersonal audience, comparable to a television audience, which is no longer part of this public, but only a mute observer.

In parallel with the hunt for large audiences, other processes were taking place. Any street activity was prohibited, many public spaces that were not associated with any political media forces were closed, and certain social networks were prohibited. All this narrowed the space for public dialogue.

As a result, individual people who were previously part of large opposition publics and at the same time found a place for general public discussion began to be squeezed out into isolated information bubbles. This was facilitated by the fact that, in addition to purely repressive mechanisms, authoritarian authorities successfully use neoliberal digital regulation techniques embedded in social network algorithms.

The exception is the Z-blogosphere, which can still be called a weak public, since it still has a certain influence on the state. However, the situation is gradually changing: in many ways, the “zetniks” have either already gone into opposition to the regime or have a huge potential to switch after the end of hostilities, which means they have much less influence on the authorities. However, the authorities have not yet decided to apply repression to them as massively as to that part of the political spectrum that advocates the victory of Ukraine or even from a pacifist position, and therefore is using softer means, blocking access to their main media platform - Telegram.

Old imitation, young chats

Despite everything, the Russian authorities failed to completely purge the public sphere: in Russia, as usually happens in its history, there remain public spaces that adapt to external circumstances. In many ways, these spaces are similar to the well-described practices of the Soviet period, when formally official, controlled public space began to be used for informal communities. Vivid examples of those years are rock clubs at youth houses.

So today we know many examples of disguising spaces in which important discussions for society take place as non-political ones (such as anti-cafes, book clubs or interest clubs), charitable projects that are engaged in the common good, but also formally remain “out of politics” and even cooperate with the authorities, are preserved and new local media are preserved and created, which avoid sensitive political topics, but successfully deal with the local agenda.

Another Soviet phenomenon is imitation and sabotage, which in modern Russia manifest themselves primarily in school. As research shows, school routine successfully uses the Soviet experience of semantic evasion from ideological practices, turning them into a formality or even just a form of reporting.

Another means is Aesopian language, which can be used to convey prohibited meanings in official spaces, for example, mass submission of applications addressed to the president in the reception room of his administration or the “Noon against Putin” queue.

However, in this article I wanted to draw special attention to another perfect form of publicity, which in Soviet times simply could not be so developed due to a different technological structure. And we are talking about invisible counterpublics, under the radar of the state machine, that exist thanks to closed chats on Telegram. They are virtually impossible to track and ban. After all, with all the advantages of Telegram, there are many other platforms of this kind.

This type of counterpublic can well be called communities, and communities with a high level of involvement and subjectivity of their participants.

Communities that are invisible and therefore do not directly influence short-term politics work for the long haul.

They are developing a different type of publicity: independence from state or monopoly-opposition domination, a high level of communicative culture that has appeared literally in recent years, subjectivity and distributed leadership, horizontality, new forms of internal institutionalization, and most importantly, an interest not just in defending private interests, but in the search for common values ​​and the pursuit of the common good.

Communities can have (and are better off having) relatively regular physical communication, but constant online communication makes them more resilient. There are many of these communities throughout the country (however, people in exile can also take part in them) and they are diverse in nature: they are environmentalists and animal rights activists, defenders of historical monuments and urbanists, women's communities and communities of local activists.

Since the complete closure of communities usually leads them to fairly rapid degradation, many communities are forced to constantly adjust their openness. For example, to exist in several modalities, often without external, official institutionalization and visibility. However, they can integrate into the official public sphere, promoting their messages, but not going beyond the red lines.

They are also inventing a variety of new and safer institutions (eg, face-to-face communication, forwarding messages through connected chats, breaking up communication across different communication channels). This is how a new, specific counter-public space is created, which many researchers call the term “rhizome” - an unstructured network. It communicates through people simultaneously participating in many communities and through special institutions of horizontal communication, such as, for example, citizen conferences.

Communities spontaneously create a new system of communicative connectivity, while this connectivity and the speed of information flow within the rhizome are constantly increasing (however, this is still a subjective feeling).

All this distinguishes invisible communities from the bubbles described above and turns individual groups into a counter-public that communicates and interacts with each other. The latter, which, despite today's invisibility, strives to break through the public muteness both today and in the future.

What opportunities do these new practices open up in this very future? The famous neo-Marxist philosopher Ernst Bloch believed that there are “objective possibilities” lying on the surface that lock the future in the iron grip of necessity.

It is obvious that such objective possibilities for Russia can only be thought of as an authoritarian-disciplinary and liberal-capitalist (as a variation of the neoliberal) model. Well, or the continuation of their strange hybridization, which we observe in modern Russia. These objective possibilities are realized in the aspect that interests us through two alternative, non-overlapping public spheres: the official and the opposition. Moreover, both of these spheres, as we showed above, are as far as possible from the ideal of publicity, as Habermas and Fraser thought of them.

Weak utopia

However, Bloch writes that in addition to “objective” ones, there are also “real possibilities” - these are possibilities on which a “weak” utopian view of the future can be based. What makes this view utopian is the desire for radical change, and what makes it weak is that it is not a mere theory or fantasy, but is based on alternative social and political experience, an alternative political culture of subjects and public spaces that we find in the present, here and now. The sustainability and constant development of new communities creates those very alternatives that can become real opportunities for the future and form the basis of a new weak utopia.

An opportunity that is hiding under the radar today: the possibility of political agency and participation, distributed leadership and flexible horizontal institutionalization, the desire for dialogue and diversity, the possibility of political friendship and concern for the common good.

Obviously, the practices I described turn out to be not so widespread and require rather specific conditions, and therefore they are difficult to classify as objective possibilities. Однако их устойчивость и постоянное развитие демонстрируют их потенциал как реальных возможностей для будущего. Они создают те самые модели и общественный опыт, на которые может опираться утопическое мышление и утопические проекты.

But not only that. Предложенный взгляд на сложившуюся в России ситуацию с публичной сферой создает возможности действия в настоящем ради будущего. Сохранение и развитие контрпубличной сети — может стать важным направлением деятельности тех людей, которые не согласны отдавать свой жизненный мир ни одной из видимых массовых публик: ни государственной, ни оппозиционной. Такой взгляд создает ценность строительства сети даже без сиюминутных плодов влияния, возможности которой у контрпубличной невидимой сети нет.