Citizens in Russia saw a measurable chance for change — and immediately mobilized. Yes, this chance is measured in millionths of a percent — but it is intelligible. Had there been a little bigger chance, even more people would have reacted. If the chance had become really big, society would have simply exploded. What I’ve been talking about for a long time has happened: people act collectively not when they run out of patience, but when they understand that their joint activity can produce a real, concrete and measurable result . In the case of Nadezhdin, this is his registration in the presidential elections.

Why does the Kremlin need Nadezhdin? Well, and why do they let him in “on TV”? After his anti-war speeches, foreign journalists regularly called me and asked: “How is this possible? We thought that there was censorship in Russia and that Russian citizens simply did not know the truth! But a man appears on TV and tells the whole truth! Maybe it’s just that people of Russia really love Putin and sincerely support his war?”

This is the strategy of the presidential administration. Nadezhdin is to get his 1.5% and thereby show exactly what the Levada Center polls constantly tell us: in Russia there are 140 million ghouls and several tens of thousands of normal people. Like, calm down already, the country is for Putin and the war.

But it is worth keeping in mind that this result will only be a pleasant bonus for the Kremlin: it is clear that in this plebiscite it will solve much more important problems for itself. They can’t afford for things to go wrong just to put the icing on the cake. Therefore, if Nadezhdin gains too much in the polls, the Kremlin has a whole arsenal to bring down his popularity. For example, we know that Nadezhdin had close ties with the liberals of the 1990s — it would be enough for him to begin publicly uttering some of their rhetoric. That would be a wonderful result: a united anti-war candidate says unpopular things, and this is very convenient to discredit the entire anti-war line.

They can “buy” him with the promise of a high position. Nadezhdin has repeatedly proven that he is ready to make deals even with the devil — he was nominated both from Fair Russia [a minority political party which formerly stood on a relatively progressive platform but has since often aligned decision making with United Russia] and participated in the primaries of United Russia [the majority ruling party led by Putin]. Will he really refuse this time? Or a couple of weeks before the vote he can be deemed an extremist/terrorist, thereby intimidating those who want to vote for him. Well, the simplest thing is that if something doesn’t go according to the “1.5% plan,” then Nadezhdin could simply be rudely removed from the elections at any moment.

Kremlin domestic policy curator Sergei Kiriyenko must have learned something from the 2020 uprising following the Belarus presidential election. There, too, it all started with queues of people wanting to sign for Sergei Tikhanovsky, Viktor Babariko and Valery Tsepkalo. And then Lukashenko made a grave mistake and allowed Tikhanovsky’s wife Svetlana to participate in the elections. As a result, people, who a month earlier were unlikely to have thought about any kind of protests, began to believe in the possibility of change through “demolition” of the election results and street actions in their defense. And  for this they literally went to their death: thousands of protesters did not disperse, even despite the people killed in the streets by security forces . Yet in the end they dispersed because the hope for that very specific result from the actions of each of them disappeared.

We have already seen a similar mobilization in Russia. In 2021, when Alexei Navalny returned to the country and was immediately arrested. That year, our country became one of the first in the world in terms of the number of protesters. We are talking about a mass movement that has unfolded throughout the country. Although the chances of liberating Navalny [out of police custody] were exactly equal to the chances of a change of power in the country.

Since the beginning of the war, Russian society has not had such, even illusory, hope for change. Even the actions of Yevgeny Prigozhin before and during the rebellion did not give it. Yes, he created an alternative to the official and at the same time legal point of view on the situation in the country. But he did not mobilize people, although I am sure that he had explained to the citizens for what future they should support his speech, and many would have risen simply because there is a demand for something new.

The formula for initiating collective action is simple. Understanding how your personal participation can affect the situation and having a clear, measurable result that can be seen. Of course, people still assess the risks of their actions, but the influence of this factor is not as high as is often thought. Sure, no one wants to be imprisoned or beaten up. And no one would take a chance just like that. But if people see that they are able to change the situation, then they are ready to accept very big risks.

Of course, a legal election campaign also means minimal risks. You just need to put your signature in, and then campaign and vote if they register. All of this, in theory, is permitted by law, so the internal threshold for people to participate in this is low. You don’t have to climb into a tank to do this, as was the case with Prigozhin. Beautiful! But it is not the case that repression can eliminate any collective action. Otherwise, politics would not have been needed, and there would have been no mass activity anywhere. History shows that people are willing to risk their lives for high common goals.

In Russia there is no militarized majority that will have to be broken. The majority merely tolerates war, considering it an inevitability that is better not to think about. The [continuation of war is, in fact,] promoted and forwarded only by small groups who have decided to become demonstratively brutal and make a career out of it. The fatigue of Russian society from the war and from the old people in the country’s leadership is enormous. It is very easy to gather a powerful anti-war majority from this situation .

At the same time, to the question: “How much longer will people endure?” there is a correct answer: “As much as it takes.” Because people stop tolerating and move to collective action not when it becomes unbearable. After all, one can always hide even deeper, adapt even more. They move to collective action when an alternative appears. And today there are not enough alternatives. “No to war!” is a wonderful slogan, but it is not clear from it how we will live after the war ends. So far, no one has formulated a vision of the future that would combine the protection of Russia’s national interests, an understanding of the country’s worthy place in the world, from the point of view of the Russian people themselves, and a clear picture of how life in the country is to be organized.

There is Putin, with whom everything is clear: living under him will suck, but at least it’s clear how and by what rules. When someone voices a clear alternative to this, preferably in the legal space of Russia, that very “gap” will appear into which all the huge accumulated protest potential of society will rush. The reason can be anything: from a banal domestic conflict to one unsuccessful decision by the administration. Observers will be perplexed: how is it that people have always tolerated this, but now they stopped? But in reality, change will have already begun by this point.

 

This essay was translated for ZNetwork.org by Sergey Voronin. The original essay was published in Russian by Verstka.media.

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