Figure 6: The Slavic Triangle (map)
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Map: Júlio Reis/Wikimedia Commons. Licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en) (edited by Arve Hansen)
Differences
However, the differences between the three countries are significant, too. Ukraine was one of the countries upended by a revolution in the 2000s, as the Orange Revolution of 2004–2005 resulted in regime change. Conversely, Belarus and Russia avoided becoming part of the wave of colour revolutions.7 This tendency repeated itself in the 2010s, as protests in Minsk and Moscow at the start of the decade all ended badly for the protesters,8 whilst the latest Ukrainian revolution of 2013–2014, centred on Maidan in downtown Kyiv, led to regime change for the second time in nine years.9 Today, protests continue to exert an influence on local and regional politics.10
Moreover, whereas the opposition in Kyiv has Maidan as an urban space designated for protest, the opposition in Minsk has very limited access to the city’s urban spaces; and in Moscow, although the authorities do allow protests, they carefully select which spaces to sanction for such actions, most probably to restrict the impact of the protests.
Outside factors
This study forms part of a research group studying Russian space (broadly understood to include Belarus and Ukraine).11 I have also lived in each country for an extended period of time (in Belarus, 2006–2010; in Ukraine, the first half of 2011 and 2013–2017; in Russia, 2011–2013). I thus have first-hand knowledge of, and a network of friends and acquaintances in, each of the three cities.
2.3 Relevance
Since prehistoric times, people have related by necessity to the intricacies of physical and social space, to the associations and emotions such spaces evoke, as well as to the possibilities and obstacles they provide. Even though our environment has changed, our basic human instincts are still active and, as in the prehistoric era, people congregate to discuss, deliberate, interact, and—in times of trouble—struggle together to find a solution to the problem.
The small selection of collective actions mentioned in this chapter demonstrates that urban mass protest can be a means of changing society, used by people across the world. With the spread of social media, waves of protest can expand with increased speed, and the Internet has facilitated the extension of protest movements, such as the colour revolutions, the Arab Spring, the Occupy movement, and the Yellow Vests. However, although the Internet is available in and used by the majority of the world’s population, people still use physical space in order to protest. This is because the presence of a group of people assembled at a focal point of the city serves a number of purposes that are rarely served by collective online action. A physical protest shows that there is discontent in the city, and that people are willing to sacrifice time and effort to come out in support of their cause.
I do not wish to undermine the power of the Internet as a tool for mobilising people to protest. Social media outlets clearly have several qualities suitable for facilitating and/or organising mass protest (see for example Herasimenka 2016). Yet, for a collective action to be effective, it more often than not needs some form of physical manifestation. Urban protests occur where people are concentrated, and so are often hard to ignore. On one hand, citizens are forced to react to the protests as they obstruct movement and demand attention, and some might be inspired to join in. On the other, the authorities are also forced to react, and their reaction (whether by way of official statements, violence, or both) might further spread the news of discontent. Mass protest also represents a form of threat to the authorities. It might mean that people expect the authorities to change their ways, or else they will not vote for those in power again; and it might discourage others from doing so, too. It can also be a threat of violence, as a large group of discontented people has the potential of turning into a mob and removing the authorities by force.
Consequently, urban public space has both a historic and a contemporary relevance, and the ways in which people perceive and use space, especially at times of contention, still have an impact on local, regional, and global politics and society today.
How are mass protests affected by geographical urban space in modern cities? To answer this question, it is first of all necessary to consult the research literature to see whether such a spatial perspective exists. If not, how should such a model be structured?
1 This way of thinking about human nature has its roots back in the cognitive turn of the mid 1950s. At this time, sciences such as psychology, linguistics, and anthropology began distancing themselves from the traditional way of looking at the mind and body as separate entities; and the new cognitive sciences moved towards a more integrated interpretation of the human mind, which sees most aspects of the human body (and possibly the environment in which it moves) as interrelated (Miller 2003; Núñez and Cooperrider 2013; Thagard 2018).
2 The revolution erupted in 1789 with the storming of the Bastille, a symbol of monarchical oppression, and was fuelled by the poverty and sickness created in the overcrowded and unsanitary districts of Paris. Moreover, the insurgency was possible in no small part due to barricades raised in the city’s narrow and easily defendable streets and alleys (Doyle 1989, 178-191; Traugott 1993; Wilde 2018).
3 At its peak, in the 1960s and 70s, the Soviet Union covered a sixth of the planet’s landmass, controlled the world’s largest nuclear arsenal, and dominated the Warsaw Pact military alliance. This alliance was created as a counterweight to NATO in May 1955 and consisted of the 15 Soviet Republics in the USSR as well as Albania (until 1968), Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, and Romania. This group of republics and countries is referred to as the Eastern Bloc.
4 The Hungarian student protests turned into a revolution and triggered a Soviet military intervention the same year, resulting in “more than 3,000 dead and 13,000 injured as well as over 4,000 destroyed buildings. Actual losses were probably higher” (Hoensch 1984, 219).
5 1968 is a year famous for the amount of urban protests worldwide. In the West, public spaces were occupied by demonstrators in London, Madrid, Mexico, Paris, Rome, West Berlin and numerous other cities; and the social movements of that year showed that even seemingly stable democracies can burst into protests, riots, and even revolutions (see Kurlansky 2005.). While people in the West were largely protesting in the name of equality and socialism, the protests in the East demanded political freedoms and increased autonomy from the Soviet Union. When the Kremlin ordered the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 to stop the Prague government’s new reform programme, thousands of Prague-dwellers took to the streets to protest. A number of demonstrations in support of the Czechoslovaks appeared in cities across the Soviet Union, too, including at Red Square in Moscow (Wojnowski 2018, 85; Bichof, Karner, and Ruggenthaler 2010; Kondrashova 2018).