Freedom’s children in protest movements: Private and public in the socialization of young Russian and Ukrainian activists

Abstract

This article deals with the problem of political participation and public sphere learning by adolescents during the mass protests in contemporary Russia and Ukraine. Referring to theories of contentious politics and the public sphere in the post-communist world, the author highlights the debate around the relations between private and public in this context: is the value of public participation formed in the private sphere and then translated into a public one? Or rather, is the public realm something opposite to the private? Using in-depth biographical interviews with the adolescents participating in the Bolotnaya and Maidan movements, the author considers this dilemma through the lens of activists’ socialization. The analysis discovers that there is no direct connection between the values of private independence and public freedom during the growing-up process of adolescent activists. The values of private independence appropriated by Russian adolescents do not automatically translate into practices in the public sphere, and, conversely, Ukrainian activists strongly adhere to an ethic of political freedom, but to do it they prefer to break with the values of the private sphere rather than transfer them into politics. To conclude, the author discusses some implications of the analysis of political participation of adolescents on how notions of private and public are composed in Russia and Ukraine.

“Too immature for politics?” Political agency in the eyes of Russian adolescent protesters, 2011–20

“…As I have shown elsewhere (Erpyleva, 2018(Erpyleva, , 2021, many adolescent participants of the FFE movement acted out traditional "children's" roles compared to adult protesters. Some of them followed rallies online, obeying their parents' requests not to participate physically in protests.…”

Transport reforms and its missing publics: Insights from marshrutka abolishment and transport ‘modernisation’ policies prior to FIFA World Cup 2018 in Volgograd, Russian Federation

“…In this sense, Ingrid Oswald and Viktor Voronkov find the application of ‘western’ public sphere imaginaries, materialised as free accessible spaces inviting for supposedly inclusive encounters and democratic negotiation, not very useful in the Russian context (Oswald and Voronkov, 2004). Instead, they introduce the ‘public–private sphere, which can be understood as a space between the official and the purely private realms (Erpyleva, 2018). Correspondingly, researchers from the Global South especially have pointed out how a Eurocentric concept of public spheres serves as a superficial explanation to legitimise the lack of democracy and civil society, thus reproducing a quasi-colonial modernity paradigm along the evaluation of public spheres (Nawratek and Mehan, 2020; Qian, 2014).…”

Negative visibility and ‘the defences of the weak’: The interplay of a managerial culture and prisoner resistance

“…The 2013–2014 mass protests, known as the Maidan or Revolution of Dignity, epitomized this disjunction and the unwillingness of many to accept it. These events marked further departure from the Gulag legacy of legal nihilism, passivity and resignation in the face of state violence, as well as Ukraine’s increasing distinctiveness among other post-Soviet societies (see Erpylyeva, 2018; Khlevniuk, 2015).…”