Taiwan Journal of Democracy, Volume 8, No. 2: 1-14
Russian Civil Societies
Conventional and “Virtual”
Mark R. Beissinger
Abstract
Recent developments in Russian politics present a challenge to the traditional
understanding of civil society. In hybrid regimes like Russia, conventional
civil society is often weak. But as recent events in Russia demonstrate, with the
rise of the Internet, “virtual” civil society-fostered through dense networks of
online interaction-may function as a substitute, providing the basis for civic
activism even in the presence of an anemic conventional civil society. This
mixture of weak conventional civil society and robust “virtual” civil society
imparts a particular dynamic to state-society relations within hybrid regimes
in the Internet age. As this essay demonstrates, “virtual” civil society breeds
weak political organization and a false sense of representativeness within
political oppositions, at the same time as injecting a greater degree of volatility
into politics and presenting incumbent regimes with particular challenges for
repression.
Key words: Civil society, Russia, Internet, protest, Putin.
Much of our understanding of civil society derives from West European and
North American experiences from the late eighteenth to the early twentieth
centuries. Out of that protracted historical development, civil society came to
denote that sphere of active voluntary associations and organizations, distinct
from state and economy, through which social cooperation and collective
action takes place. In its idealized Tocquevillean form, civil society has been
conceptualized as a dense network of face-to-face civil associations and
volunteer activities functioning on a more or less permanent basis in society.
Civil society of this sort has been widely considered a critical condition for
the functioning of a stable and effective democracy, as it nurtures the social
capital necessary for citizens to solve collective action problems and provides
Mark R. Beissinger is Professor of Politics at Princeton University and Director of the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies, Princeton University. <mbeissin@princeton.
edu>
December 2012 | a bulwark against the unbridled abuses of the state. Particularly in the 1990s
and early 2000s, democracy promotion came to rely heavily on supporting
the development of NGOs such as labor unions, professional associations,
chambers of commerce, student groups, cultural organizations, human rights
organizations, and so on (i.e., formal civil society organizations with their own
physical space that relied primarily upon face-to-face networks).1
Recent developments in Russian politics, however, present a challenge to
the traditional understanding of civil society. In hybrid regimes like Russia,
conventional civil society is often quite weak, in part because of the legacies
of past authoritarian rule, in part because hybrid regimes fear civil society
as a potential challenge to their hegemony and seek to contain it. However,
events in Russia in 2011 and 2012 demonstrate that, in circumstances in which
conventional civil society remains weak, “virtual” civil society-fostered
through dense networks of online interaction-may function as a substitute,
providing the basis for civic activism even in the presence of an anemic
conventional civil society. This mixture of weak conventional civil society
and robust “virtual” civil society imparts a particular dynamic to state-society
relations within hybrid regimes in the Internet age. Specifically, as I demonstrate,
“virtual” civil society breeds weak political organization and a false sense of
representativeness within political oppositions, at the same time as injecting
a greater degree of volatility into politics and presenting incumbent regimes
with particular challenges for repression. In these respects, Russia’s experience
with “virtual” civil society is hardly unique; similar phenomena can be found
wherever conventional civil society has been stunted by authoritarian rule but
Internet usage is rapidly increasing and remains relatively uncensored.
The Weakness of Conventional Russian Civil Society
By nearly every comparative measure, Russian associational life is extremely
weak. To be sure, citizen activism temporarily sprouted during the glasnost’
years, particularly in Russia’s largest cities, and the communist monopoly
on association gave way to the growth of conventional civil society over the
following decades. But even this modest growth in associational life was
viewed as a threat by President Vladimir Putin, particularly as his regime
grew increasingly authoritarian. Beginning in 2006 in the wake of the colored
revolutions (which had a clear component of conventional civil society
promotion to them), the Russian government imposed new restrictions on
NGOs, forcing them to register with the government if they wished to continue
to operate. Under the new legislation, foreign financing of NGOs was restricted,
and the government retained the right to inspect NGOs and to ask judges to
1Thomas
Carothers, Aiding Democracy Abroad: The Learning Curve (Washington, DC: Carnegie
Endowment, 1999).
| Taiwan Journal of Democracy, Volume 8, No. 2
shut them down should they violate governmental regulations. Indeed, several
thousand organizations were shut down under the new law. Particularly hard
hit were Russia’s human rights organizations, which depended heavily on
foreign funding. In place of the open model of state-society relations that
predominated in the 1990s, Putin and his hand-picked successor, Dmitry
Medvedev, promoted a neo-corporatist approach as a way of containing
potential challenges. Since the 2006 law, the Russian government has become
one of the main sources of funding for Russian NGOs, providing $51 million
annually in grants. According to one study by the government itself, 44 percent
of Russian NGOs receive government funding-a fact that obviously constricts
their ability to act as a bulwark against abuses of state power.2
As Howard and others have noted, civil society in post-communist
societies in general is significantly less developed than in advanced industrial
democracies.3 But when one looks at conventional measures of civil society
development, the overriding feature of Russian civil society has been its
utter feebleness-not only in comparison with Western Europe, but even in
comparison with other European post-communist states. Figure 1 provides
comparative data on various measures of conventional civil society activity
from the Life in Transition Survey II, conducted by the European Bank for
Reconstruction and Development and the World Bank in late 2010 among
approximately thirty-nine thousand households in thirty-four countries.4 As it
shows, Russia had the lowest level of citizens reporting active membership in a
voluntary organization, the second lowest level reporting passive membership
in a voluntary organization (after Bulgaria), the lowest level reporting
participation in demonstrations or strikes, and the lowest level reporting that
they had ever signed a petition among all of the European post-communist
states. Some post-communist states in 2010 were approaching West European
levels of civil society activism on a number of these measures. Russia, however,
continued to lag far behind, not only in comparison to Western Europe, but even
in comparison to other European post-communist states. Moreover, as figure 2
shows, Russians have an extremely low level of trust toward conventional civil
society associations. Only about 12 percent of Russians express trust toward
NGOs, in general-a level that is dismally low compared not only to Western
Europe, but to nearly every other European post-communist state as well.
2Human
Rights Watch, “Russia Choking on Bureaucracy: State Curbs on Independent Civil
Society Activism,” Human Rights Watch Report 20, no. 1 (2008): 1-76.
3Marc Marjé Howard, The Weakness of Civil Society in Post-Communist Europe (Cambridge,
England: Cambridge University Press, 2003).
4See “Life in Transition Survey II: After the Crisis,” http://www.ebrd.com/pages/research /
economics/data /lits.shtml (accessed June 23, 2012 ).
December 2012 | | Taiwan Journal of Democracy, Volume 8, No. 2
Figure 1. Conventional Measures of Civil Society Activity in Russia (EBRD LITS, 2010)
Figure 2. Trust in NGOs
The Robustness of “Virtual” Russian Civil Society
Yet, there is one area of social interaction in which Russia is clearly not a
laggard: the Internet. Russia is one of the most “socially networked” societies
in Europe, at least if measured in terms of total number of Internet users and
the amount of time they spend at social-networking sites. Indeed, 12.3 percent
of all Internet users in Europe are located inside the Russian Federation- 61.5
million people in December 2011-the largest Internet community in Europe
outside of Germany.5 By the beginning of 2012, half of Russia’s population
used the Internet. Moreover, about 75 percent of Russia’s Internet users use the
Internet to engage in online social networking, and studies show that Russians
are some of the heaviest online social networkers worldwide in terms of time
spent at social-network sites per user. As figure 3 indicates, with an average
of 10.3 hours a month per visitor, Russians spent almost twice as much time
at social-networking sites as did Americans in April 2011, ranking Russia
the second highest among countries (after Israel) in online social-network
engagement.6 The online social-networking market in Russia also has some
5“Internet
Users in Europe, December 31, 2011,” Internet World Stats: Usage and Population
Statistics, http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats4.htm (accessed June 24, 2012).
6Data on social networking come from Comscore Media Metrix, April 2011, http://www
.comscoredatamine.com/2011/06/average-time-spent-on-social-networking-sites-acrossgeographies/ (accessed June 24, 2012).
December 2012 | distinctive features. Facebook controls a relatively small portion (19 percent)
of the market, ranking fifth among social-networking sites. Instead, the most
visited online networking site in Russia is a local Russian firm-Vkontaktewith approximately 22 million unique visitors every day (65 percent of
whom live in the Russian Federation). Not far behind is another Russian
site-Odnoklassniki-with 16.7 million unique visitors. Russia witnessed an
astounding growth in its online community from 2009 to 2011. During that
time, the number of unique visitors to Vkontakte increased by 75 percent,
and the number of unique visitors to Odnoklassniki by 150 percent, while the
number of hours spent at social-networking sites per month by the average
Russian user grew by 56 percent. If, as Marwell and Oliver argue, the larger
and more variegated a population and the degree to which it is networked, the
more likely it is to achieve a critical mass for the provision of public goods,7
then Russia’s online community, with its vast size and highly networked
character, would seem to have high potential for producing collective action.
Thus, if Russia’s conventional civil society in the Tocquevillean sense has
remained stunted and stagnant, Russia’s “virtual” civil society-its bloggers,
online networking sites, and online associations-have blossomed.
I cite these developments not simply as interesting social facts. Rather,
the emergence of Russia’s “virtual” civil society was the driving force
behind the unusual explosion of civic activism in Russia in 2011-2012. The
demonstrations over electoral fraud that took place on Bolotnaya Square
on December 10, 2011 (involving sixty thousand participants), at Prospekt
Figure 3. Average Monthly Hours per Visitor at Social Networking Sites
7Gerald
Marwell and Pamela Oliver, The Critical Mass in Collective Action: A Micro-Social
Theory (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1993).
| Taiwan Journal of Democracy, Volume 8, No. 2
Sakharova on December 24, 2011 (one hundred thousand participants), and at
Bolotnaya Square again on February 4, 2012 (eighty thousand participants),
were the largest manifestations of civic activism in Russia since the collapse
of the Soviet Union. Protests occurred in hundreds of cities across Russia,
though only in Moscow were large demonstrations mounted. The participants
consisted primarily of two elements: (1) traditional opposition political parties
from across the political spectrum (liberals, leftists, and nationalists from
such groups as Yabloko, Left Front, the Communist Party, and the National
Bolsheviks); and (2) members of the new middle class, many of whom had
never previously participated in any civil-society or protest activity, but who
were mobilized into activism largely through the Internet.
The central grievance of the protests was the widespread electoral fraud
used by the regime in the December 2011 parliamentary elections. The official
results gave Putin’s party, United Russia, 49 percent of the vote and 52 percent
of the seats in the Russian Duma, allowing it to rule without consulting other
parties. But the official results in particular districts were significantly out of
line with public opinion polls. Thus, according to various estimates, the actual
support for United Russia in Moscow was around 30 to 35 percent; yet, in the
final tally, Moscow election officials reported that 46 percent of the vote went
to United Russia. There were widespread reports of “carousel” voting (when
voters are bused around by the government to numerous electoral districts to
vote multiple times), of ballot boxes stuffed with ballots prior to the opening of
the polls, and of local election officials filling out ballots themselves.
Electoral fraud is nothing new in Russia, however; practically all elections
in Russia since the mid-1990s have been marred by significant fraud. Rather,
something important had changed to touch off such widespread protests.
Certainly, the international context played some role; the Arab Spring and
Occupy movements demonstrated the possibilities of civic activism and the
power of Internet organizing, inspiring numerous protests around the world,
from Wisconsin to Bucharest. More importantly, the December 2011 elections
occurred at a low point in Putin’s popularity. Throughout his eight years as
president (2000-2008) and four years as prime minister (2008-2012), Putin
carefully managed public opinion through control over television (the main
source of news for the vast majority of the Russian population), and his
popular support had never dropped below 50 percent. But in fall 2011, Putin’s
popularity dipped precipitously (into the low 40s), due to his announcement
that he, not Medvedev, would run as the United Russia candidate for president,
laying bare Putin’s behind-the-scenes domination over the political system. In
particular, the prospect of twelve more years of Putin as president (assuming
he would run again in 2018, as the constitution permits) was repugnant to
many.
Just as important to the origins of the protests was the new social force that
underpinned it: the middle class. Over the previous decade of unprecedented
prosperity and growth, a new educated middle class began to emerge in
December 2012 | Russia-particularly in Moscow and a few other major urban centers. In 20112012, central Moscow was full of signs of new-found wealth: well-dressed
men and women; an explosion of restaurants and coffee houses; ubiquitous
BMWs; well-kept flower beds near newly renovated apartment buildings; and
nail salons (the ultimate expression of disposable income). There is a significant
portion of the Moscow population that lives below the official subsistence
level (in 2008, 23 percent of the city’s population).8 But in 2012, the average
monthly wage of a Moscow resident was double the national average and had
been rapidly growing over the previous decade.9 Public opinion polls of those
participating in the protests showed that they were overwhelmingly educated,
middle-aged, and significantly better off than the Moscow population as a
whole. Over 60 percent of the participants had a higher education (compared
to about 25 percent of the Moscow population and 16 percent of the Russian
population over fifteen years of age). And only 7 percent indicated that they
did not have sufficient money for food or clothes (many of these were likely
pensioners, who constituted 11 percent of the protestors). Only 4 percent of the
protestors described themselves as “workers,” while 46 percent self-identified
as “specialists.” The protestors were not wealthy; about a third owned their
own automobiles, 9 percent owned their own businesses, and only 5 percent
were completely unconstrained in their purchases.10 Rather, they represented
overwhelmingly the educated middle class, the intelligentsia, which had been
growing increasingly secure economically over the previous decade.
Significantly, many in this new educated middle class were mobilized into
politics for the first time-largely through their use of the Internet as a source
of news, information, and social interaction. As is true in many hybrid regimes,
television-the main source of news for most of the country-is highly censored,
driving those in search of accurate information into the blogosphere. By the end
of 2011, about a quarter of the Russian population was using the Internet as its
main source of news.11 Blogs and social-networking sites played conspicuous
roles in exposing electoral fraud in the December 2011 elections. Footage shot
by cell-phone cameras and posted on the Internet created a vastly different
information environment, as the Russian Internet was inundated with dozens
8“20
Million Live in Poverty in Russia,” Kommersant’, May 15, 2008, http://www.kommersant
.com/p891767/poverty/ (accessed June 25, 2012).
9“The Wealthy Moscow Suffers from Unequal Income Distribution,” BOFIT Weekly, 2012/22,
June 1, 2012, http://www.suomenpankki.fi/bofit_en/seuranta/seuranta-aineisto/pages/vw201222_
3.aspx (accessed July 15, 2012).
10See “Press-vypusk: Opros na prospekte Sakharova 24 dekabria” [Press-release: Survey at
Prospekt Sakharova, December 24], http://www.levada.ru/26-12-2011/opros-na-prospektesakharova-24-dekabrya
and
http://www.levada.ru/print/13-02-2012/opros-na-mitinge-4fevralya (accessed June 25, 2012).
11Kirill Rogov, “Fontany i instituty” [Fountains and institutions], Novaia gazeta, no. 61, June 4,
2012, http://www.novayagazeta.ru/politics/52920.html (accessed July 2, 2012).
| Taiwan Journal of Democracy, Volume 8, No. 2
of videos purporting to capture incidents of electoral fraud. These circulated
through blogs and social-networking sites. As Aleksandr Morozov, one of the
many Russian political bloggers who publicized the accusations, noted, “If we
didn’t have social networks, we wouldn’t have heard about the sheer quantity
of violations. Thanks to social networks, election observers for the first time
were able to speak widely about the violations and disgraces that they saw at
polling stations.”12 The star of the demonstrations-Aleksei Navalny-gained
notoriety through his blogging activity, framing United Russia as “the party of
swindlers and thieves” to the over sixty thousand Russians reading his blog on a
daily basis (his Twitter feed drew over 135 thousand followers).13 Much of the
participation in the December 10 demonstration was mobilized through socialnetworking sites, with as many as thirty thousand people pledging ahead of
time that they would attend. According to surveys of the protestors, 56 percent
of those who attended the December 24 demonstration heard about it from
Internet publications or blogs (true for 61 percent of those who participated
in the February 4 demonstration)-as opposed to 33 percent who found out
about it from friends or neighbors, and 18 percent from television. In short,
in 2011-2012, a “virtual” civil society, built around members of the newly
secure middle class, connected to one another through the Internet, emerged in
Moscow (and to a lesser extent, elsewhere in Russia). It provided the networks
and cohesion lacking within conventional Russian civil society, forming the
basis for an unusual burst of societal activism.
The Political Consequences of “Virtual” Civil Society
Russia is hardly an exception in how the emergence of “virtual” civil society,
fueled by the growth of Internet usage among the middle class, has provided the
connections necessary for civic action in a way that conventional civil society
could not. In recent years, a number of hybrid regimes in which conventional
civil society has been weak have seen the growth of a “virtual” civil society
(blogger communities, online associations, and social-networking sites) that
has come to play a critical role in politics. But while “virtual” civil society may
provide the structural basis for challenging hybrid regimes when conventional
civil society remains weak, the politics flowing from “virtual” civil society has
distinctive elements.
For one thing, some have questioned whether the weak ties characteristic
of “virtual” civil society can generate the kind of sustained high-risk activism
12Quoted in Tom Balmforth, “Russian Protesters Mobilize Via Social Networks, as Key Opposition
Leaders Jailed,” Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, December 8, 2011, http://www.rferl.org/
content/russian_protesters_mobilize _online_as_leaders_jailed/24414881.html (accessed June
25, 2012).
13Navalny’s blog can be found at http://navalny.livejournal.com/.
December 2012 | necessary for constraining a repressive state, contending that this requires the
presence of strong network ties (friendships, personal acquaintances, and faceto-face relationships) capable of pulling individuals, who otherwise might not
have the resolve to participate, into collective action.14 The very fluidity of
the Internet, with its easy entry and exit, makes stable association problematic
and causes “virtual” civil society activism to be more episodic in character,
injecting volatility into politics without necessarily providing the structures
necessary for sustained civil-society activism. Others have argued that “virtual”
civil society fosters a participatory style of citizenship by generating norms of
engaged citizenship and nurturing political engagement. In their view, “virtual
civil society appears to have many of the same individual benefits for citizen
norms and political involvement as traditional civil society activity.”15
The jury is still out on this question, but the Russian case provides some
critical evidence for the debate. Throughout the 2011-2012 protests, there
was a significant core of individuals who repeatedly participated in these
events. Thus, 61 percent of those participating in the February 4 protests
also participated in the December 24 protests, and 57 percent of those people
had also participated in the December 10 protests in Bolotnaya Square.16 As
political opportunities receded after Putin’s victory in the presidential elections
in March and participation grew riskier, the crowds in Moscow diminished in
size. The so-called “March of Millions” on May 6, 2012, in protest of Putin’s
inauguration (at which considerable violence occurred between police and
protestors) attracted only twenty thousand participants. Putin’s attempts to
suppress the movement by introducing new legislation imposing stiff fines on
unauthorized protests helped to some extent to revive the movement, pulling
about fifty thousand protestors into the streets on June 12 at the “March of
Millions II” event. But as the crowds grew smaller and the risks of protesting
increased, those left on the streets were primarily a core of repeat participants.
Thus, 54 percent of those participating in the June 12 rally had participated
in at least three prior protests held by the movement, another 30 percent had
participated in less than three, and only 16 percent participated for the first time.17
It also appears that the vast majority of those mobilized through the Internet
14Malcolm
Gladwell, “Small Change: Why the Revolution Will Not Be Tweeted,” New Yorker,
October 4, 2010, and Doug McAdam and Ronelle Paulsen, “Specifying the Relationship
between Social Ties and Social Activism,” American Journal of Sociology 99, no. 3 (1993):
640-667.
15Miki Kittilson and Russell Dalton, “Virtual Civil Society: The New Frontier of Social Capital?”
Political Behavior 33, no. 4 (2011): 625–644.
16See “Opros na mitinge 4 Fevrialia” [Survey at the February 4 meeting], http://www.levada.
ru/print/13-02-2012/opros-na-mitinge-4-fevralya (accessed June 25, 2012).
17VTsIOM, “Sotsial’nyi portret protestnogo dvizheniia v Moskve” [Social portrait of the
protest movement in Moscow], Press-vypusk, no. 2056, June 27, 2012, http://wciom.ru/index.
php?id=515&uid=112859 (accessed July 3, 2012).
10 | Taiwan Journal of Democracy, Volume 8, No. 2
participated with family or friends in the event; thus at the February 4 rally,
though 70 percent of the participants learned of the rallies through the Internet,
69 percent showed up at the rally with friends rather than alone.18 Similarly,
at the June 12 rally, 73 percent participated with friends or acquaintances.19
The weak ties of the Internet seemed to have readily transformed into a vast
multitude of nodes of strong ties weakly connected to one another rather than
simply a crowd of isolated individuals connected only through the Internet.
Indeed, some have argued that such a configuration of strong ties connected
through weak ties is actually a highly effective combination for mobilizing
large numbers in revolutionary action.20 So far, “virtual” Russian civil society
has generated a sizeable core of committed activists across time, but the key
tests are yet to come, particularly as the risks of collective action rise.
Perhaps the deeper questions about “virtual” civil society have less to do
with whether “virtual” civil society can breed the commitment necessary for
high-risk activism than with the ability of “virtual” civil society to generate
viable political alternatives. In the Egyptian Revolution, for example, the
bloggers and online activists who spearheaded the revolution ceded the
electoral stage to more conventional civil-society organizations (like the
Muslim Brotherhood), representing a vastly different set of values. Signs of a
similar organizational weakness of “virtual” civil society have been apparent
in Russia as well. As one political observer has noted:
The internet as an alternative source of information and as an
instrument of political mobilization plays an ambiguous role
in the political process. On the one hand, it sharply lowers
the costs to the opposition for disrupting the [regime’s]
informational blockade and for mobilizing its followers.
However, the ease and speed by which these barriers are
overcome leads to a situation in which the opposition (or
more precisely, the leaders of protest) appear before a hundred
thousand person crowd of followers completely unprepared
institutionally.21
18VTsIOM,
“Miting 4 Fevralia na Bolotnoi ploshchadi: rezultaty oprosa uchastnikov” [The
February 4 meeting at Bolotnaia Square----Results of a survey of participants], Press-vypusk,
no. 1954, February 15, 2012, http://wciom.ru/index.php?id=515&uid=112492 (accessed July 3,
2012).
19VTsIOM, “Sotsial’nyi portret protestnogo dvizheniia v Moskve” [Social portrait of the protest
movement in Moscow].
20Jack A. Goldstone, “Is Revolution Individually Rational? Groups and Individuals in
Revolutionary Collective Action,” Rationality and Society 6, no. 1 (1994), 154.
21Rogov, “Fontany i instituty” [Fountains and institutions].
December 2012 | 11
A problem with “virtual” civil society that differentiates it from conventional
civil society is that “virtual” civil society establishes no coherent oppositional
leadership, but merely a loose network of informational nodes. Its most
authoritative leaders are not politicians but bloggers. This renders it difficult
to identify those with whom the regime should negotiate were it to seek
compromise, or even how protest might migrate from the streets to the
electoral system. As sociologist Lev Gudkov observed, one of the main
reasons for a decline of protest activism in spring 2012 was that the leaders
of the movement “were not able to articulate a clear program of actions and
to provide a perspective for development of the protest frame of mind. They
were not able to transform the protests either into party forms…or into a more
or less formalized movement.”22 Thus, “virtual” civil society may provide a
basis for challenging hybrid regimes, but not necessarily for building effective
political alternatives to such regimes, leaving the streets as the only playing
field for confrontation between regime and opposition.
Third, there is the problem that “virtual” civil society tends to breed a false
sense of representativeness within the opposition, an illusion that the opinions
articulated through electronic networks mirror those of society as a whole.
The organizers of the Moscow protestors claimed to represent the authentic
voice of Russian society. But there was a significant disjunction between the
positions they espoused and those of society at large. The participants consisted
primarily of self-identified liberals and democrats (70 percent at the December
24 protests), even though a small minority of Russians self-identify as such.
Indeed, 38 percent of participants in the December 24 protest indicated that they
had voted in parliamentary elections for the liberal party Yabloko (even though
Yabloko had received only 3.4 percent of the national vote in the election, and
somewhere between 8 to 12 percent in the city of Moscow).23 Though the
protestors’ main demand was for Putin’s resignation, all public opinion polls
taken at the time of the March 2012 presidential election gave Putin a solid
majority of public support. Certainly, as the demonstrations indicated, Putin
had lost the support of the Russian intelligentsia, particularly in Moscow. But
surveys found that only 22 percent of the Russian public at large was positive
about the opposition’s demand for “Russia without Putin,” while 54 percent
opposed it.24 In particular, the gulf between opinion within the intelligentsia in
22Levada-Tsentr,
“Press-vypusk:, Sotsiolog Lev Gudkov--ob ugasanii protestnogo dvizheniia v
Rossii i perspektivakh ego rosta” [Press-release: Sociologist Lev Gudkov on the decline of
the protest movement in Russia and the prospects for its growth], May 5, 2012, http://www.
levada.ru/05-05-2012/sotsiolog-lev-gudkov-ob-ugasanii-protestnogo-dvizheniya-v-rossii-iperspektivakh-ego-rost (accessed July 13, 2012).
23See “Press-vypusk: Opros na prospekte Sakharova 24 dekabria” [Press-release: Survey at
Prospekt Sakharova, December 24], http://www.levada.ru/26-12-2011/opros-na-prospektesakharova-24-dekabrya (accessed June 25, 2012).
24Fond Obshchestvennoe Mnenie, “Marsh millionov” [The march of millions], Dominanty, no.
24, June 21, 2012, 21-25, http://bd.fom.ru/pdf/d24mm12.pdf (accessed July 15, 2012).
12 | Taiwan Journal of Democracy, Volume 8, No. 2
Moscow (which imagined itself through the Internet as Russian society) and
the Russian provinces remained considerable. In short, there is a tendency for
“virtual” civil society to imagine the Internet as society and to over-estimate
the strength of opposition.
Finally, “virtual” civil societies present particular challenges for those
seeking to contain them. The strategy adopted by highly repressive regimes
(like China and Belarus) has been to censor the Internet in order to maintain
the hegemony of proregime discourse and prevent the growth of “virtual” civil
society. The alternative approach-preferred by softer authoritarian regimeshas instead emphasized surveillance of the Internet, identifying those who
present a threat and devising strategies for disrupting and marginalizing them.
In the wake of the 2011-2012 protests, the Putin regime introduced a series
of repressive laws aimed at undermining “virtual” civil society. It increased
tremendously fines (up to $15,000 for organizers) for participating in protests
that are unauthorized, draw larger crowds than anticipated, occur at a time
or location not approved by the authorities, or turn violent. It legislated that
NGOs receiving money from foreign donors must register as “foreign agents.”
And it passed a law allowing censorship of Internet sites on the basis of a court
decision or with the approval of authorized federal executive bodies (supposedly
to counter child pornographers, but as critics rightly noted, the law could easily
be abused to shut down specific “virtual” civil-society Internet sites should the
authorities so decide). The gamble involved with this strategy is that arbitrary
acts of repression against “virtual” civil society may themselves become a new
grievance, mobilizing significant numbers onto the streets, and that “virtual”
civil society is well positioned, with its ready-made networks, to resist such
acts. Indeed, public opinion polls taken after the regime’s violent break-up
of the “March of Millions” and subsequent protest camps showed that the
majority of Russians opposed repressive measures against the movement,25
and some credit the repressions with helping to revive the movement.
Can “Virtual” Civil Society Support Long-Term Democratic
Development?
The Russian experience demonstrates how, in societies where conventional civil
society remains weak, the Internet can provide an alternative basis for civilsociety development. But as we have also seen, “virtual” civil society assumes
a structure and configuration that injects particular features into politics. It
lacks coherent leadership and organization, connecting myriad nodes of friends
and acquaintances through the weak ties of blogs and social-networking sites.
25Levada-Tsentr,
Press-vypusk, “Protestnaia aktivnost’ v strane” [Protest activity in the county],
June 7, 2012, http://www.levada.ru/07-06-2012/protestnaya-aktivnost-v-strane (accessed July
15, 2012).
December 2012 | 13
It breeds a false sense of representativeness within the opposition, leading it to
over-estimate the degree of social support it enjoys. And while it eases barriers
to mobilization and injects greater volatility into state-society relations, it
provides few coherent alternatives-either negotiated or electoral-to the
status quo. In all these respects, one might question whether “virtual” civil
society truly provides the same advantages for stable and effective democratic
development as conventional civil society traditionally has. The question is
not whether “virtual” civil society can provide a basis for citizens to solve
collective-action problems in order to contain unbridled political abuses, but
rather whether “virtual” civil society is capable of doing this on a more or
less permanent basis and can provide the organizational cohesion needed for
exercising a more enduring influence over the state.
14 | Taiwan Journal of Democracy, Volume 8, No. 2