[Given the Russian government’s brutal repression of dissent,
the level of Russian resistance to the Putin regime’s war on Ukraine
is quite remarkable. ]
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PAYING HOMAGE TO RUSSIAN WAR RESISTERS  
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Lawence S. Wittner
February 13, 2023
LA Progressive
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_ Given the Russian government’s brutal repression of dissent, the
level of Russian resistance to the Putin regime’s war on Ukraine is
quite remarkable. _

, Wikimedia Commons

 

Beginning on the evening of February 24, 2022, the date of Russia’s
full-scale invasion of Ukraine, many thousands of russians
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defying threats from the authorities, staged nonviolent antiwar
demonstrations across their nation. On the first night alone, police
made 1,820 arrests of peace demonstrators in 58 Russian cities. Over
the ensuing weeks, the mass protests continued, with the intrepid
demonstrators chanting or holding up signs reading “No to War.” As
the authorities viewed any mention of “war” as a crime, even
elementary school children were arrested when they said the forbidden
slogan. Some peace demonstrators took to holding up blank signs, but
they, too, were arrested. By March 13, according to OVD-Info, a
Russian human rights group, the police had made at least 14,906
arrests of these and other Russian peace demonstrators.

Russian war resisters
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engaged in numerous other activities. Marina Ovsyannikova, an editor
at Channel One Russia, disrupted the station’s main news program by
holding up a sign reading: “NO WAR. Stop the war. Do not believe the
propaganda.” Prominent cultural figures and politicians spoke out
publicly against the war. By March 1, an online petition protesting
the invasion had drawn a million supporters. Signers of open letters
that called for stopping the war included 30,000 technology workers,
6,000 medical workers, 3,400 architects, more than 4,300 teachers,
more than 17,000 artists, 500 scientists, and 2,000 actors and other
creative figures. Other activists posted antiwar stickers in
neighborhoods, replaced supermarket labels with protest statements,
and even wrote peace messages on currency. Most startlingly, Russian
Soldiers
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refusing to fight in Ukraine.

Naturally, the authorities
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infuriated by this resistance and determined to crush it.
Demonstrations were brutally suppressed through arrests, huge fines,
and violence against activists. To bolster the legal basis for
repression, the Russian parliament passed laws that provided 10 years
imprisonment for spreading “fake” news about the armed forces and
5 years imprisonment for “discrediting the army.” In
mid-March, Vladimir Putin
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denounced “the scum and the traitors” who opposed his war policy
and promised that the Russian people would “spit them out” like
insects who had flown into their mouths. This “necessary
self-cleansing of society will only strengthen our country,” he
promised.

Indeed, the intense repression coupled with a massive government
pro-war propaganda campaign and a gathering sense of futility on the
part of activists did have a damaging effect on Russian war
resistance. About 300,000 Russians
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many of them well educated and leading figures in the arts and
sciences, fled the country rather than remain under these
circumstances. Dozens of independent communications media
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banned, while others announced that they would cease reporting on the
war. Although daring individual and small-scale resistance continued,
the movement declined in the late spring and summer of 2022.

But Putin’s announcement, on September 21, of a draft call-up of
300,000 young men for the Ukraine war provided the movement with new
momentum [[link removed]]. Despite the
banning of unsanctioned rallies, protest demonstrations erupted in
dozens of cities across the nation, with more than a thousand
demonstrators arrested in the first few days. In Moscow and St.
Petersburg [[link removed]],
protest was especially strong, organized by Feminist Anti-War
Resistance and Spring, an antiwar group popular among students.
Dispatched to suppress the activism, Russian police responded with
great brutality and, also, arrested more than 700 demonstrators.

More spontaneous protests
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people new to political activism, also broke out far from the main
centers of Russian life, especially in the North Caucasus. Opposed to
the war and determined to stop the conscription of their men, angry
local residents resorted to beating up Russian officials delivering
draft notices. In Dagestan, one of Russia’s poorest republics,
crowds of local people tried to demonstrate against Putin’s
mobilization but, as elsewhere, their protests were smashed by the
police and the military. Similar protests erupted in Siberia,
including Yakutsk, where hundreds of women engaged in an impressive
demonstration against the war and conscription.

The most dramatic response to Putin’s military mobilization was the
sudden, massive exodus of young men
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sometimes accompanied by family members, from Russia. Leaving their
homeland behind, hundreds of thousands of these war resisters surged
toward the safety of neighboring nations like Georgia, Armenia,
Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan. At the border of Georgia
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cars awaiting entry stretched 18 miles. An observer explained:
“People don’t want to go to war.” According to one fetailed
analysis
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nearly 700,000 Russians fled their country between late September and
early November 2022.

In some ways, of course, this mass exodus, like the one immediately
after the beginning of the 2022 invasion, did not endanger Putin’s
grip on power. Like the departure of dissidents during Russia’s
authoritarian regimes of the past, it significantly reduced opposition
on the home front. Coupled with nearly 20,000 arrests
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remaining war resisters feeling isolated and dispirited
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Even so, the struggle continues. Ilya Yashin
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a prominent politician and opposition figure refused to back off from
his criticism of Russian war crimes in Bucha and, as a result, in
December, received an 8-1/2-year prison sentence. In his final
remarks, he stated: “It’s better to sit behind bars . . . and
remain an honest person than silently feel shame for the blood spilled
by your government.” Mikhail Lobanov
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a leader of the University Solidarity labor union and democratic
socialist politician, was repeatedly arrested
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imprisoned, and sometimes badly beaten during 2022 for such crimes as
displaying a “No to War
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banner on his balcony and “discrediting the army.” But he, too,
remained defiant.

The example of these and other courageous war resisters should remind
us that, despite the violence of the Putin regime, a better Russia is
possible. 

_LAWRENCE WITTNER is Professor of History emeritus
[[link removed]] at SUNY/Albany. His latest book is a
satirical novel about university corporatization and
rebellion, What’s Going On at Aardvark?
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* Ukraine invasion
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* Russian dissent
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* repression
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