This article examines Russian citizens’ support for and participation in civic activism today, nearly three decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Specifically, we consider how activism has evolved over time in two key issue sectors—environmentalism and women’s rights. We draw on a recent nationally representative survey that challenges existing stereotypes of Russians as apathetic and/or fearful of participating in civic activism, showing, to the contrary, that Russians are willing and interested in engaging in public activities. Data from field interviews with environmental and feminist activists, along with the authors’ past twenty-five years of research in these areas of Russian civic activism, allow us to identify an ongoing shift from professionalization and formalization of NGOs in the 1990s and early 2000s, to informal organizing, often assisted by social media platforms, today. We argue that the three major social and political drivers of this change in Russian civic activism are the contraction of political freedoms, the decline in foreign funding, and the availability of web-based communication and fundraising technologies.

本文考察了在苏联解体近 30 年后的今天，俄罗斯公民对公民活动的支持和参与。具体来说，我们考虑了激进主义如何随着时间的推移在两个关键问题领域——环保主义和妇女权利——中演变。我们借鉴了最近一项具有全国代表性的调查，该调查挑战了对俄罗斯人冷漠和/或害怕参与公民活动的现有刻板印象，相反，表明俄罗斯人愿意并有兴趣参与公共活动。对环境和女权主义活动家进行实地采访的数据，以及作者过去 25 年来在俄罗斯公民活动这些领域的研究，使我们能够确定 1990 年代和 2000 年代初期非政府组织的专业化和正规化正在发生的转变，到非正式的组织，如今，通常由社交媒体平台提供帮助。我们认为，俄罗斯公民行动主义变化的三个主要社会和政治驱动因素是政治自由的收缩、外国资金的减少以及基于网络的通信和筹款技术的可用性。