Russia’s Protest Movement · Global Voices

Anti-Putin protest, Russia. Flickr/Freedom House (CC BY 2.0).
Russia's political opposition has struggled to define itself in the aftermath of widely criticized elections for the national parliament and presidency. Over the past year, Global Voices’ RuNet Echo extensively covered the response to those elections: mass protests, which constituted some of the greatest social turbulence to visit Russia in more than a decade. Those explosions of collective action led many Russians to conclude that they had “woken up in a new country.”
But had they? Can nations change overnight, or was this a mere flight of fancy?
RuNet Echo is interested precisely in these questions, and we seek answers in the arena where the opposition is most active: the Russian Internet. In an environment where formal politics is heavily controlled and pluralist competition is thoroughly constrained, the digital disputes occurring within the opposition are in fact some of Russia's most important civic debates.
Moreover, on October 20 and 21, 2012, several prominent members of the anti-Kremlin protest movement will conduct a national election for a grand “Coordinating Council” to lead Russia's opposition. This represents a potentially decisive moment in the self-identification and ossification of a social movement that began nearly a year ago.
This special coverage has its own Twitter account – for updates, please follow @runetecho. Or you can subscribe to our RSS Feed. Check back for frequent updates.
Please contact Kevin Rothrock if you have story ideas or links for this page.
What we do: Global Voices bloggers report on how citizens use the Internet and social media to make their voices heard, often translating from and to different languages.
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2012
08 Oct – Russia: Winners & Losers in Round 1 of the Opposition's Debates
05 Oct – Russia: The Opposition Coordinating Council's Great Debates, Day 1.0
25 Sep – Russia: Writers Put Down Pens to Stand Atop Soap Boxes
21 Sep – Russia: Activist Journalists or Bolshevik Bloggers?
18 Sep – Russia: Ksenia Sobchak's Civil Platform Candidacy
16 Sep – Russia: Forecasts for the Protest Movement's Elections
15 Sep – Russia: Protest Movement Struggles with Keeping Itself Democratic
09 Sep – Russia: Top Opposition Blogger Investigated for Ethnic Extremism
01 Sep – Russia: Activist Jailed on Trumped Up Drug Charges
28 Aug – Russia: Protesters Aim for Elected Office
20 Aug – Russia: Zombies Versus the State in Omsk
08 Aug – Russia: Pussy Riot Doomed by its own Supporters?
04 Aug – Russia: Political Ambitions for Most Influential Blogger?
11 Jun – Russia: United Russia Deputy Wants to Sue Navalny for 60 Billion Rubles
05 Jun – Russia: Oppositionists Ponder Putin's Legacy
31 May – Russia: #OccupySeliger?
18 May – Russia: The RuNet's Enduring Tomatoes & Tusovki
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