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In the second part of the research project on protest actions in Russia, Ukraine, and the Soviet Union, the project teams plan to examine social protests. These differ from political protests - the object of investigation in the first part - in several regards. First, since social protests are concerned with the distribution of resources, welfare measures, labour conditions, and wages, authoritarian and hybrid regimes like the ones under study have more leeway in making concessions to protestors, since they do not necessarily challenge the incumbents' hold on power. Second, social protests often display different patterns in their organizational structure, their participant base, and in the repertoire of contention. For these reasons, an understanding of dynamics of societal contention in the studied cases is incomplete without a thorough investigation of social protests. Moreover, an explicit comparison with political protests regarding A) key individuals, B) the diffusion of strategies, C) discourses and popular perceptions, and D) elites' reactions, offers insights into the logics of regime functioning more generally, which promises to advance theoretical debates beyond the geographical limits of the post-Soviet space. Building on the productive connections that were established between the partners in the first part of the project, the project teams draw on expertise from an interdisciplinary team of historians, political scientists and sociologists.

• Prof. Dr. Heiko Pleines

  Forschungsstelle Osteuropa an der
  Universität Bremen
  Abteilung Politik und Wirtschaft
  Osteuropa-Gebäude
  Bremen
  

• Dr. Natalia Savelyeva

  Center for Independent Social Research
  Public Sociology Lab
  St. Petersburg
  Russia
  

• Dr. Volodymyr Ishchenko

  Center for Social and Labor Research
  (CSLR)
  Kiev
  Ukraine
  

• Irina Flige

  Research and Information Center Memorial
  St. Petersburg
  Russia
  

• When Does Diffusing Protest Lead to Local Organization Building? Evidence from a Comparative Subnational Study of Russia s For Fair Elections Movement

• Back-to-normality outsiders: Zelensky s technocratic populism, 2019 2021

• Navalny s Digital Dissidents: A New Dataset on a Russian Opposition Movement

• Protests by journalists in competitive authoritarian regimes: repertoire and impact in the case of Ukraine (2010-14)

• Wohnraum und Krieg in der Ukraine