1950s and 1960s
The second wave of urban discontent in Eastern Europe started during the period of thaw introduced by Nikita Khrushchev in the aftermath of Stalin’s death in 1953. A series of mass protests against poor standards of living and political repressions broke out in the streets and squares of major cities in the Eastern Bloc. Notably, uprisings and demonstrations occurred in 1953 on Leipziger Straße in Berlin (Ostermann and Byrne 2001, 163–165), in 1956 on Adam Mickiewicz Square in Poznań (Grzelczak n.d., 98–101) and on Kossuth Lajos Square in Budapest, also in 1956.4 The public spaces of cities in several of the Warsaw Pact countries also featured in the worldwide protest movements of 1968, four years after the thaw ended. 5
1985 to 1991
From the second half of the 1980s, triggered by the 1986 glasnost (transparency/openness) and perestroika (restructuring) reform policies, urban protests started to appear in the Eastern Bloc. In the Baltics, for example, protesters actively used music in what would later be known as the Singing Revolution of 1987–1991 (Smidchens 2014). Opponents of the Soviet regime rganized numerous concerts in city centres and formed a human chain between the three capitals, Tallinn, Riga, and Vilnius, to demonstrate their unity in their discontent with the USSR (2014, 249). These actions inspired similar protests, notably in Ukraine (Hansen, Rogatchevski, Steinholt and Wickström 2019, 36–37). Between 1989 and 1991, the Warsaw Pact gradually fell apart as series of both nonviolent and violent anti-communist revolutions occurred in capital cities across the Eastern Bloc. Notable events include masses of East Germans tearing down the Berlin Wall in November 1989, and the failed military coup of August 1991, which was partly stopped by the masses of people who went out into the public spaces of Moscow and other Russian cities (Marples 2004, 84). The Soviet Union was dissolved later that same year.
2000s
Following a somewhat chaotic decade in the 1990s,6 a new wave of social movements and mass protests hit the Balkans, Eastern Europe, and Central Asia in the 2000s (see fig. 5). Inspired by the Eastern European protests of the late 1980s, the demonstrators used nonviolent means to occupy central public squares in capital cities. The protests were often triggered by election fraud, and they demanded (and often achieved) the resignation of the elites that had managed to hold on to power after the breakup of the Eastern Bloc. The social movements of the 2000s are usually known as colour revolutions, with reference to the bright colours and symbols employed by the protesters. Although not in the former Soviet Union, the Yugoslavian Bulldozer Revolution, which overthrew President Slobodan Milošević in 2000, is often regarded as the first of the colour revolutions (e.g. by Tucker 2005).
Figure 5: Notable protests and colour revolutions in post-Soviet states in the 2000s
| Year | Country | Focal point | Name(s) | Result |
| 2003 | Georgia | In front of the Parliament (Tbilisi) | Rose Revolution | Resignation of President Shevardnadze, new parliamentary elections. |
| 2003–2004 | Armenia | Freedom Square (Yerevan) | 2003–2004 Armenian Protests | Forceful removal of protesters, legal retributions against protesters and protest organisers. |
| 2004–2005 | Ukraine | Maidan (Kyiv) | Orange Revolution | New presidential elections. |
| 2005 | Kyrgyzstan | Ala-Too Square (Bishkek) | Tulip Revolution | Resignation of President Akayev, new presidential elections. |
| 2005 | Azerbaijan | Gelebe/Galaba Square (Baku) | 2005 Azerbaijani Protests | Some concessions. “[O]fficial results for 7 or 8 of 125 parliamentary seats [were] annulled.” (Chivers 2005) |
| 2006 | Belarus | October Square (Minsk) | Kalinowskyi Square/Jeans Revolution | Forceful removal of the protest camp, legal retributions against protesters and protest organisers. |
| 2008 | Armenia | Freedom Square (Yerevan) | 2008 Armenian Protests | Forceful removal of the protest camp, protesters killed, legal retributions against protesters and protest organisers. |
| 2009 | Moldova | Great National Assembly Square (Chișinău) | Twitter Revolution | New parliamentary elections, resignation of President Voronin. |
The above three categories (form, motivation, waves) are not intended to be exhaustive, but to illustrate that “urban contention” is a multifaceted term with historic and contemporary relevance to most regions in the world. The following section serves two purposes: 1) to provide a justification for choosing Kyiv, Minsk, and Moscow as case studies for the three articles in this study; and 2) to show that space and protests are important factors which have affected, and continue to affect, the political situation in the East Slavic area.
2.2 Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia
Since this study is limited by a number of factors, such as time, funding, and space available, the project has been narrowed down geographically. The case studies are limited to the capital cities of Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia for three main reasons. Firstly, the three countries have many similarities. Secondly, despite these similarities, there are some interesting differences between the respective national opposition movements. Finally, two outside factors have pushed me to select these cases. I shall return to these shortly.
Furthermore, each case study has also been geographically limited to one or two urban public spaces, as the word limitations provided by the journal article format rarely allow for more. The choices and delimitations for each case study are discussed more thoroughly in each of the three chapters.
Similarities
Kyiv, Minsk, and Moscow are the capital cities of the countries often referred to as the Slavic Triangle (see e.g. Godin 2014), a term originating from the countries’ shared history. The territories of Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia each cover parts of Kievan Rus’ (pprox.. 882–1240), the Tsardom of Russia (1547–1722), and the Russian Empire (1722–1917), and they were all signatories to the Treaty of the Creation of the USSR in 1922, which was dissolved in 1991 by the collective decision of the three heads of state. In