One possible drawback of keeping the article-based chapters intact is that it has prevented me from updating some key information: The president of Ukraine, for instance, is no longer Petro Poroshenko, as stated in the first case study from 2016. The opposition in Minsk of 2020 is no longer coloured by its geopolitical views to the extent it was at the time of publishing the second case study in 2017. And Moscow, described in the third case study from 2019, is no longer as cluttered by fences and building projects as it was when I conducted field work in the city.
The purpose of these chapters is not, however, to describe current events—such information may be found elsewhere—but to illuminate the importance of urban protest, and to help researchers across a range of academic disciplines to understand this largely neglected element of societal contention. I believe the minor issues I have mentioned here will not distract the reader from the main subject and message of the book. In any case, it is necessary to summarise in brief the key events that have taken place since I wrote my original thesis.
Since the publication of Mass Protests from a Spatial Perspective, several important things have happened in the post-Soviet part of the world, demonstrating that a spatial perspective is relevant and important for our understanding of protest.
In the far eastern region of Russia, Khabarovsk Krai, for example, thousands of people have regularly gathered on Lenin Square since July 2020 to demonstrate against the Russian regime and the imprisonment of former governor Sergei Frugal (Flikke 2020, 16–18). The contestation between demonstrators and police over who controls Lenin Square shows that this particular space is symbolically important, at least for the parties involved.
Lenin Square has also contributed to producing powerful imagery for the national and regional opposition. A movement against the Russian leadership, able to fill one of the largest urban squares in Russia with people (the square’s size is second only to Red Square in Moscow), has the potential to reduce Kremlin influence over the Far East.
The protests have now spread from Khabarovsk to other Siberian cities, including Novosibirsk, Irkutsk, Krasnoyarsk, Vladivostok, and Omsk (Gladkikh and Ievstafieva 2020; Taiga.info 2020), and there have even been demonstrations of support for the Siberian dissenters in St. Petersburg and Moscow (BBC Russian Service 2020a). Increasingly, the authorities have begun resorting to violence in order to supress the movement (BBC Russian Service 2020b), but the protesters show few signs of stopping.
Another mass movement for change is currently underway in Belarus, on the borderland between Russia and the EU. Here, a wave of urban contention has struck every major city and most towns across the republic, beginning well before the presidential elections of 9 August 2020. Angered by election fraud and spurred on by the relentless brutality of government agencies, hundreds of thousands of Belarusians have aimed at—and in many cases succeeded in—occupying and appropriating urban spaces that have long been associated with President Aliaksandr Lukashenka. This has happened in spite of presidential control over a powerful army of law enforcement agencies, ready to use violence to suppress dissent.
In the capital, Minsk, protesters are marking “their” territories with the white-red-white flag of the opposition and tying ribbons wherever they can. An open space on Charviakova Street, outside the city centre, has even been turned into the Square of Changes (Bel.: Ploshcha peramen), complete with opposition flags, a mural to “the DJs of change”, and regular evening concerts (Boguslavskaia 2020). The struggle over the Belarusian presidency is an urban conflict in more than one sense.
Finally, in Kyrgyzstan, mass protests erupted on Ala-Too Square in the capital Bishkek in early October 2020, triggered by fraudulent parliamentary elections (Pikulicka-Wilczewska 2020). Here, too, the protesters’ choice of square was no coincidence. Two previous revolutions began on Ala-Too Square, and it seems likely that the protests of October 2020 will result in a third Kyrgyz Revolution in the space of little over 15 years.
These three events show how social and political protests continue to utilise and interact with urban public space and its possibilities. The spatial perspective presented in this book offers an additional dimension for understanding their complex dynamics.
I would like to thank the many people who have read and commented on this project during its development, especially my examiners Julie Wilhelmsen, Andrii Portnov, and Bjarge Schwenke Fors and my two closest colleagues at UiT, Yngvar Steinholt and Andrei Rogatchevski.
Thanks are also due to Kirsty Jane Falconer for her thorough language editing, Valerie Lange and Jana Dävers at ibidem Press, and to the Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics and Society series editor Andreas Umland.
I would further like to thank all respondents and interviewees for contributing to this book. Their accounts have been invaluable.
Finally, I wish to thank my family—especially my wife and friend Marina Dyshlovska—for loving support while writing this book.
Arve Hansen, Oslo, January 2021
Figure 1: Post-electoral protest, Minsk, August 2020
Photo: Artem Podrez / Pexels. https://www.pexels.com/photo/protesters-in-belarus-5119461/
1 Starting Point
Went to Kyiv […] metro still closed […] Got around the police blockades easily. […] I returned to the Maidan. Still felt like a safe place.
Kyiv, 20th February 2014
This excerpt is from one of the numerous field notes I made during the final days of the Ukrainian revolution (2013–2014). I was studying the events in Kyiv for a research project in East Slavic area studies (Hansen 2015), and went to the iconic site of the protests, Maidan (Independence Square), to observe the scene after the latest clashes between police and protesters. The contention in Kyiv had started three months earlier in response to the government’s sudden U-turn away from EU integration, and it had rapidly changed into a broad movement against the incumbent president Ianukovych. The conflict escalated into violence and, by this point, many people had been killed.
I arrived at Maidan for the second time that day at approximately four or five o’clock in the afternoon. At the time, rumour had it that 780 protesters had been killed over the previous 24 hours.1 The city was in a state of shock, and there was much uncertainty as to what would happen next. Yet, for some reason, I felt quite safe where I was standing.
I knew Maidan well: the entrances and exits, the many tunnels underneath, the seemingly random monuments mixed with intrusive advertising boards, kiosks, and architecture from all periods of Ukraine’s Soviet and post-Soviet past. Many times over the previous three months, I had wondered why this particular space had become the symbol of protest in Ukraine. Now, during these final days of the revolution, it was evident that the authorities had been unable to clear the square and stop protesters (or curious people like me) from entering it, despite numerous road blocks and a heavy riot police presence. Strangely, I also noticed that, even though everything was uncertain and no one knew whether the authorities would launch another attack, it didn’t feel particularly frightening to be where I was standing. If anything, I figured, I could always find a way out.
It became apparent to me then that Maidan was a very suitable place for protest, although I could not define precisely why.
Maidan is merely one of several examples of a town square that has turned into a location of great political significance. Actions and events spring immediately to mind at the mere mention of the Bastille, Red Square, Taksim, or Tahrir. We associate these places with the making of history: places where revolutions have been started, dictators