Resisting Polarization: Activist Tactics from Putin-era Russia with Dr. Maria Sidorkina

Russian political discourse has been marked by polarization between pro-state and anti-state activists and media actors since at least as far back as Pussy Riot's controversial concert in 2012. To what extent does the “culture war” description have purchase among citizens working to sustain a vibrant public life beyond Moscow’s celebrity-centered political scene? Drawing on participant observation and interview data gathered during fieldwork with activists in Novosibirsk—Russia’s third-largest city—Professor Sidorkina accounts for how local activists interpret, use, and push back against state and media-fueled polarization and its demobilizing effects. The innovative practices activists have developed during a decade of dealing with political polarization invite us to see Russia not just as a source of problems for democracy, but as a site for new experiments in civic life.

Thursday, March 19, 2020 4:00 - 5:00 pm Room 505, Fifth Floor The Elliot School of International Affairs 1957 E St. NW  Light refreshments will be served RSVP

Maria Sidorkina is an Assistant Professor of Slavic and Eurasian Studies and Anthropology at University of Texas at Austin. She received her Ph.D. in Cultural and Linguistic Anthropology from Yale University in 2016 and was a post-doctoral fellow at Harvard's Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies in 2016-2017, and the Center for Humanistic Inquiry at Amherst College from 2017-2019. She researches speech and politics, digital media, and post-socialist public life. Her current book project is on forms of liberal and non-liberal collective action in Russia in the wake of the 2011-2012 Fair Elections protest movement.

PONARS Eurasia  is an international network of scholars advancing new approaches to research on security, politics, economics, and society in Russia and Eurasia. The program is based at the Institute for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies ( IERES ) at the George Washington University's Elliott School of International Affairs. PONARS Eurasia is supported in part by a grant from Carnegie Corporation of New York.

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