Exposure to Transnational Repression and Political Engagement: Evidence from a Panel of Russian Exiles

Transnational repression (TNR), authoritarian states’ efforts to monitor, intimidate, and punish their citizens abroad, has become an escalating threat to opposition communities in exile. Existing scholarship argues that TNR can be highly effective at demobilizing and atomizing diasporas by raising the perceived costs of political “voice” from abroad. Yet most evidence comes from qualitative studies, limiting our ability to estimate TNR’s overall effect on political participation. Moreover, we know little to what extent political withdrawal is driven primarily by direct victimization or also by secondhand exposure, i.e. learning that repression has affected one’s social circle. This study addresses these gaps using a unique panel survey of Russian citizens who left Russia after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 in opposition to the Putin regime. We document diaspora members’ exposure to various forms of TNR, including legal repression, sentences in absentia, and less visible practices such as interrogation at border control, restrictions on consular services, and proxy repression of exiles’ relatives. We implement a difference-in-differences design to estimate how direct and indirect exposure to TNR influences political participation and political remittances. We further disaggregate effects by type of transnational repression and examine whether impacts persist over time. By providing the first large-N, longitudinal estimates of TNR’s behavioral consequences in a major contemporary exile community, the study clarifies if diaspora remains resilient in the face of repression.