Fresh forms of dissent in Russia

The Kremlin’s suppression of rights activists opposed to the war has led many to find new ways to make demands for peace and freedom.

The Monitor's View

Few people in Russia speak out against the war in Ukraine these days. Repression of almost all dissent has tightened. Yet more than half of Russians want peace, according to a poll by the independent Levada Center. That quiet sentiment is finding new forms of expression, not so much in words as in action.

Take, for example, an initiative by many Russian citizens to help Ukrainian refugees travel to Europe. A similar American-style underground railroad assists young Russian men in fleeing the military draft. More than 300,000 were able to leave last fall during the first wave of conscriptions.

One of the few remaining activist groups fighting for civic rights, OVD-Info, filed a complaint this week with the Constitutional Court. The complaint seeks to overturn a law that bans people from speaking out against the invasion. The legal plea has little chance of success; Russian courts are not independent. Yet the action at least draws attention to the official terror on dissent.

Another type of action is the unexpected popularity of a new book, “The End of the Regime: How Three European Dictatorships Ended,” by exiled Russian scholar Alexander Baunov. Now in its fourth printing, the book is about the return of democracy to three European countries (Spain, Greece, and Portugal) in the late 20th century after periods of dictatorship. The parallels to the regime of Russian President Vladimir Putin are obvious.

Simply buying the book is a political statement, writes the author in The New York Times. “Russians have not stopped asking questions about what comes next,” he says.

Street protests against the war were suppressed soon after the invasion in February last year. But many Russians still signal their opposition in public, from tattoos to graffiti to yellow ribbons. To get around media censorship, new forms of news distribution have sprung up.

“The Kremlin failed to destroy civil society,” writes Grigory Okhotin, co-founder of OVD-Info. Many groups that were banned continue their work in different ways. “Hundreds of thousands of people, despite all the risk, have continued to support public structures and take part in their work as volunteers,” he states.

Mr. Putin has been fighting a second war in Russia itself, writes Andrei Kolesnikov of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Foreign Affairs, “and this war is unlikely to go away even if the conflict in Ukraine becomes frozen.”

More than a year into the war, dissent by many Russians is a cry for their country to be based on individual rights rather than displays of national power, says Mr. Okhotin.

Mr. Putin still seems secure in the Kremlin. But, according to Damon Wilson, the president and CEO of the National Endowment for Democracy, “History tells us the most repressive and seemingly secure regimes can crumble, brought down by ordinary people demanding freedom.”

For now, Russians are making those demands in new and fresh ways, living in the truth of their inherent rights.