Feminist (de)mobilization in the wake of authoritarian Russian aggression

When Yugoslavia violently dissolved, feminists who suddenly found themselves within the new ethno-nationalist Serbian borders transitioned from dissidents to “disloyal citizens”, rejecting the imposed citizenship and choosing feminism as their only reference point (Zaharijevic, 2015). When Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Russian feminists were among the most vocal to mobilize against the authoritarian regime and its imperial aggression. This paper sheds light on Russian feminists’ resistance against authoritarian aggression and its limits. In particular, the paper looks at who (de)mobilized and why they did so. It sketches three different groups within feminist activism. Based on interviews with Russian feminists and their social media posts, the paper analyses the first two groups. These are feminists who were active already before the full-scale invasion and have either remained engaged since or retreated. The online activism of the newly founded Feminist Anti-War Resistance movement and especially its digital self-published magazine Zhenskaya Pravda (Women’s Truth) on the other hand, serves as a window into understanding the third groups: new feminist actors who entered the scene after February 2022. Overall, the paper offers preliminary results into how Russian feminists’ make sense of their agency and the subversive strategies they deem appropriate in a state of authoritarian aggression that is also flanked with explicit anti-gender politics, such as a reinforced anti-gay propaganda law for instance. It does so by comparing their current meaning-making process with how they perceived their margin for manoeuvering before the invasion. It shows that while some have mobilised, there are serious limitations to their impact and there is no sign of a broader movement that would reject the Russian state and nationalist nation-building as such. This might hinder transnational feminist solidarity with Ukrainian feminists as Serbian feminists successfully managed to establish and maintain throughout the 1990s.