Pushkin House is hosting a panel discussion exploring recent anti-war protests across Russia, during which over 15,000 people have been detained, fined or arrested. While most opposition leaders are either in prison or have been pushed out of the country, a number of grassroots initiatives are flourishing, including notably the Feminist Anti-War Resistance which has amassed over 25,000 supporters on its social media accounts in a matter of weeks.
We have invited political commentators and activists both from Russia and the UK to present their perspectives on the future of Russian protest, the history of civil society in Russia and the potential for effective opposition to Russian military aggression. Join Tomila Lankina, Ella Rossman and Yulia Taranova for the evening to hear their insights into what is going on in Russia as it plunges into an era of totalitarianism.
Photo by Vladislav Postnikov, protest in Yekaterinburg against the war on 24 February 2022.
ABOUT THE SPEAKERS
Tomila Lankina is Professor of International Relations at the LSE’s International Relations Department. Her research focuses on comparative democracy and authoritarianism, protests and historical patterns of human capital and democratic reproduction in Russia and other states. She has published articles in the American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, British Journal of Political Science, Comparative Political Studies, The Journal of Politics, Comparative Politics, World Politics, Demokratizatsiya, Europe-Asia Studies, Post-Soviet Affairs, Problems of Post-Communism and other journals. Her latest and third book is The Estate Origins of Democracy in Russia: From Imperial Bourgeoisie to Post-Communist Middle Class (Cambridge University Press 2022).
Ella Rossman is a doctoral student at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies in University College London. She was previously a researcher and a lecturer at the Faculty of Humanities in Higher School of Economics, Moscow. Ella participated in Russian independent education and feminist initiatives, and is one of the coordinators of the Feminist Anti-War Resistance group. Her research is now focused on late Soviet girlhood; she is also interested in the history of gender studies and feminism in Russia. Ella's articles were published in History of Science and Humanities, New Perspectives and Ab Imperio. She wrote for Meduza, Navaya Gazeta, and Riddle.
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Yulia Taranova MPP (Oxon), is a doctoral researcher at King's Russia Institute. In 2017 she founded the Social Sciences Lab — a Moscow-based non-profit focused on developing and delivering educational programs for young social scientists in Russia — which was labelled a “foreign agent” and forced to close in summer 2021. Prior to that, Yulia spent several years working on the Open Government initiative.
Yulia has co-authored a World Economic Forum report Effective Leadership in International Organisations and has written for the New York Times, The Economist, Financial Times and Forbes.
The event will be moderated by Denis Stolyarov, assistant curator at Pushkin House.