“Fifty Shades of Feminism in Putin’s Russia: A Comparative Study of Feminist Grassroots Mobilisations”

With the rise of feminist and women’s movements around the globe, the anti-gender state policies have gained new popularity and been promoted by the political elites. While Western feminist movements have been using institutional and judicial powers to fight against injustices, many activists in non-democratic or authoritarian states lacked access to these opportunities. In Russia, starting from the mid-2010s, the feminist and women’s grassroots movements have become more visible and recognizable in the public discourse. Some grassroots activists even turned into new celebrities later while advocating for the domestic violence law and supporting the survivors of sexual harassment cases. However, while many scholarly works were written about Moscow and St.Petersburg communities and their dynamic development throughout 2000-2021, there is a lack of understanding of the reasons for the emergence of flourishing feminist grassroots activism in the Russian regions. Thus, based on the analysis of multiple semi-structured interviews, rich online data from social media communities, and available autobiographies and memoirs, this paper attempts to answer the following questions: Why do some Russian regions have active feminist grassroots communities, while others do not? What explains the emergence of active feminist groups in a non-democratic political setting with a hostile environment for marginalized and vulnerable groups? And finally, under what circumstances do feminist activists can stand up against backlash on gender equality in Russia? The preliminary results suggest that historically active and flourishing civil society organizations, in particular, NGOs having foreign donors’ support, have contributed to the emergence and development of local feminist communities, supported their activities, and provided the necessary infrastructure for offline events while fast development of the Internet connections allowed activists, especially those from the Russian regions, to learn the tactics and strategies of organizing from metropolitan feminist communities (like Moscow or St.Petersburg) and international feminist groups. In general, the paper contributes to the discussion about the tactics and strategies of mobilising for marginalised and vulnerable groups in authoritarian post-Soviet settings. It also attempts to present the Russian case through the theoretical lenses of gendered social movements theories.