printTemporal and Cross-Regional Variance in Environmental Protest Activity of Russians (2007–2021)
Semenov A.V.
Cand. Sci. (Pol.), Senior Research Fellow, Laboratory for Comparative Social Research, HSE St. Petersburg, St. Petersburg, Russia andre.semenoff@gmail.com
Snarski Ya.A.
Research Assistant, Laboratory for Comparative Social Research, HSE St. Petersburg, St. Petersburg, Russia yaroslaw1861@gmail.com
Tkacheva T. Yu.
PhD, Research Fellow, Laboratory for Comparative Social Research, HSE St. Petersburg, St. Petersburg, Russia tkacheva.tatyana@gmail.com
the study was supported by RSF grant No. 23-18-00661.
Semenov A.V., Snarski Ya.A., Tkacheva T. Yu. Temporal and Cross-Regional Variance in Environmental Protest Activity of Russians (2007–2021). Sotsiologicheskie issledovaniya [Sociological Studies]. 2024. No 2. P. 62-74
The environmental movement in Russia has been a most institutionalized form of collective action. Originating from the Soviet period and gaining momentum in late 1980s, it survived the 1990s’ dramatic transformations as well as the changes in political opportunity structure in the 2000–2010s. Extant scholarship on environmental activism in Russia has been largely focused on casestudies of regional mass-mobilization, such as environmental campaigns at Shiyes station in Archangelsk. The paper represents the first systematic study of cross-regional variance in environmental collective action in Russia. Drawing on three datasets, we trace the general evolution of environmental protests in the period from 2007 to 2021 and provide a typology of Russian regions. The latter allows us to classify Russian regions by intensity and sustainability of eco-mobilisation. We demonstrate that, despite narrowing opportunities, the intensity of environmental protests during the last decade has been on the rise. The typology allows us to describe the existing variance and suggest new questions on the nature and factors of environmental protest activity in Russian regions.
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