Dissent and Protest in Post-Soviet Culture

Considering power and resistance in contemporary Russia and post-Soviet republics across disciplines will allow us to engage with larger, theoretical questions about state-citizen interactions beyond the margins of the liberal project: How do political activists speak to the state? In turn, how does the state encourage, respond to, and censor activist speech? Drawing on examples from Putin's Russia and post-Soviet Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan will develop methodologies for studying how state power is undermined "from below" by ordinary citizens seeking to shape politics and policy. We will take protests seriously as events; consider interactions between protest participants and the social spaces in which protests take place; and situate events with respect to ordinary moments of cultural and political life. The course is structured around active student discussion with a few supplementary lectures and zoom interviews with political activists and artists in exile. Advanced knowledge of Russian is required.