(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Why don't Russians protest the war in Ukraine? [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.', 'Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags'] Date: 2023-02-15 It’s a perplexing question. Russia finds itself in the middle of an unnecessary imperialistic war with disastrous consequences propped up by lies and producing a constant stream of body bags being sent back home. The country has alienated most of the rest of the world, brought crushing new sanctions down on itself, seen NATO expanded and more unified than ever and watched as hundreds of thousands of its best and brightest fled the country to avoid being drafted. So what aren’t the streets filled with angry Russians demanding an end to this idiocy? It’s a good question. Part of the answer is unique to Russian culture but part of it is just because of the dangers of protest in an authoritarian regime with no qualms about using repressions. When the war started a year ago, Russians did indeed take to the streets. There were nearly 500 protests in about 150 cities. But after a few weeks and thousands of arrests, the protest movement fizzled out. Instead, writes scholar Sasha de Vogel for Meduza, “demonstrations have almost entirely given way to forms of resistance like arson, open letters, train derailments, and symbolic acts like laying flowers.” What happened? After decades of escalating repression to prevent protest, Russian society was not well-positioned to resist the war with street actions in February 2022. The state has wide discretion to declare a protest illegal, exposing participants to legal consequences that are virtually impossible to resist in court, and violence at the hands of paramilitary police forces like OMON, SOBR and Zubr. On top of that, the 2021 crackdown on civil society dismantled critical networks, including Alexey Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation and Memorial, which had the capacity to coordinate a national protest movement. Culturally, the common belief that politics and governance are the concerns of those with power, not of regular people, has produced widespread apathy and what activists decry as learned helplessness: many Russians are simply not interested in protest. But even if the repression had not been ramped up, people aren’t going to protest something they actually support. A repressive state isn’t the only obstacle to mass protest movements. Even without these conditions, mass antiwar protests can only occur if a large number of Russians oppose the war. There is no evidence that this is the case. Even surveys designed to allow respondents to reveal controversial opinions do not suggest that large swaths of society are concealing antiwar sentiments. Support for the war is largely unaffected by evidence of Russian-committed atrocities; rather, support tends to decline with perceptions of success. Even a large share of what could be considered antiwar organizing has been devoted to aiding those evading mobilization or seeking to emigrate — different from defending Ukrainians. It is also telling that there have been no considerable antiwar protests in the destinations abroad where Russians have fled. In other words, we are not in a situation where Russians are simply hiding deeply felt antiwar beliefs but would take to the streets if enough others do. How could people support such a war, the blatant attacks on civilians, the incompetence of their own military, the disregard for the lives of soldiers? Well, perhaps they just aren’t paying that much attention. The mobilization has yet to really hit ethnic Russians in places like Moscow and St. Petersburg. It has mostly swept up men from republics like Buryatia. Plus, the economic sanctions that everyone thought would cripple Russia’s economy has yet to do so. De Vogel makes a good point about the United States and the Iraq War. But let us assume that Russians did protest the war in large numbers. Another question looms: Would it work? The Putin regime has caved to protesters on environmental concerns, social benefits, and taxes, but rarely on political issues. Concessions on a regime-critical policy that is so strongly identified with Putin himself are unlikely without truly massive numbers of protesters, far greater than Russia has ever seen at a single protest — and even then, success is far from guaranteed. For instance, the movement against the invasion of Iraq in 2002 was one of the largest antiwar protest campaigns in both American and world history, yet American troops did not withdraw until 2011. Indeed, Americans shaking their heads at how Russians can feel so disconnected from the horrors in Ukraine might think back to their own engagement with the Iraq War: how closely did they follow events on the ground? How often did they go to a protest? How effective did they think those protests would be? So massive street protests are unlikely to stop this war or bring down the regime. My own view is that this war ends with a Ukrainian victory sufficient to qualify as an unacceptable humiliation to most Russians. The regime will fall when Russia’s elite have finally had enough of watching the wealth they have stolen for decades slowly drain away and stage a coup. 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