ibidem-Press, Stuttgart

Contents

Abbreviations

A Note on Language

Foreword by Julie Wilhelmsen

Preface

1 Starting Point

Part I

2 Space in Context

2.1 Complexities of Urban Contention

2.1.1 Form

2.1.2 Motivation

2.1.3 Waves

2.2 Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia

2.3 Relevance

3 Mapping the Field

3.1 Protests

3.1.1 Repertoires

3.1.2 Nonviolent Contention

3.1.3 Colour Revolutions

3.1.4 Non-spatial Factors

3.2 Space

3.2.1 Public Space

3.2.2 Physical Space

3.2.3 Contested Spaces

3.3 The Gap

4 Definitions and Research Questions

4.1 What Is a Mass Protest?

4.2 What Is Urban Public Space?

4.3 Research Questions

5 Theorising and Development

5.1 Approaches to Theorising

5.1.1 Field Work

5.1.2 Respondents

5.1.3 Mapping

5.2 Ethical Considerations

5.2.1 Interview Ethics

5.2.2 Practical Utility

5.3 Geographical Determinism

5.4 Conception

5.4.1 M.A. Thesis

5.4.2 PhD Proposal

5.5 Theorising

5.5.1 Prestudy

5.5.2 Formulating a Theory

5.5.3 Transitional Study

5.6 Causal Chains

5.7 Main Study

5.8 Post-test Theorising

6 Variables and Methodology

6.1 Independent Variables

6.1.1 Perceived Elements

6.1.2 Physical Elements

6.1.3 Social Elements

6.2 Intermediary Variables

6.2.1 Spatial Qualities

6.2.2 The Political Environment

6.3 Dependent Variables

6.3.1 Emergence

6.3.2 Realisation

6.3.3 Impact

Part II

7 Prestudy

7.1 Physical Space

7.1.1 Spatial and Urban History

7.1.2 Daily Use

7.1.3 Protest Space

7.2 Symbolic Value

7.2.1 25 Years of Protest

7.3 Function

7.4 Conclusions

8 Transitional Study

8.1 A Spatial Perspective

8.2 Belarusian Protests from Glasnost’ to Lukashenka

8.3 Perceived elements

8.3.1 October Square

8.3.2 Independence Square

8.4 Social Elements

8.4.1 The Political Centre

8.4.2 The People’s Centre

8.4.3 Independence Square

8.4.4 October Square

8.5 Physical Elements

8.5.1 October Square and Ploshcha 2006

8.5.2 Independence Square and Ploshcha 2010

8.6 Conclusions

9 Main Study

9.1 Towards a Spatial Perspective

9.1.1 Spatial Elements

9.1.2 Spatial Qualities and the Political Environment

9.1.3 Protest Areas

9.2 Moscow, Swamp Square and the March of Millions

9.2.1 The Political Environment of Moscow

9.2.2 Public Spaces in Moscow

9.2.3 The Elements

9.2.4 Spatial Qualities

9.2.5 Emergence, Realization, Impact

9.3 Conclusions

Part III

10 To Paris and Beyond

10.1 Republic Square and the Yellow Vests

10.1.1 Applying the Model

10.2 Summary and Conclusions

10.2.1 “So what?”

10.2.2 Limitations

10.3 Moving On

References

Abbreviations

CAT Collective Action Theory

DOC Dynamics Of Contention

NESH National Committee for Research Ethics in the Social Sciences and the Humanities (Norway)

OWS Occupy Wall Street

POS Political Opportunity Structure theory

PRT Prospect-Refuge Theory

PT Process Tracing

RCT Rational Choice Theory

RMP Resource Mobilisation Perspective

ROC Repertoire Of Contention

RSCPR Russian Space: Concepts, Practices, Representations

SCM Structure-Cognitive Model

A Note on Language

This book describes events, people, and places mainly from three Eastern Slavic countries: Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia. Each of these countries uses the Cyrillic script and has its own national language, as well as linguistic variations encompassing proper nouns: yet, for historical reasons, Russian has become the lingua franca of the region. The long history of Russian hegemony and long periods of russification have also led to the widespread international adoption of Russian forms for Ukrainian and Belarusian proper nouns. For these reasons, the Ukrainian capital is usually known as Kiev (from Rus. Киев), rather than Kyiv (from Ukr. Київ). Likewise, the Belarusian president is known as Lukashenko (Rus.: Лукашенко), not Lukashenka (Bel.: Лукашенка); while the conflict region in Eastern Ukraine is known as Donbass (Russian: Донбасс), not Donbas (Ukrainian: Донбас). Conversely, some proper nouns are known by their national variants, as is the case with the current Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyi (Ukr.: Володимир Зеленський), not Vladimir Zelenskii (Rus.: Владимир Зеленский), and Hrodna for the town in Western Belarus (Bel.: Гродна), rather than Grodno (Rus.: Гродно).

Scholars are often advised to use the transliterations most predominant in English, as these are most recognisable to the majority of readers. Yet such a language policy often leads to inconsistencies, and readers asking why some proper nouns are based on the Russian forms while others are not. As far as I can see, there are only two solutions to this problem. Either the scholar consistently and exclusively transliterates from the relevant Russian forms; or, conversely, they transliterate all proper nouns from the local languages. The former solution is often used because it is more consistent with the predominant name forms in English. (Another reason might be that most scholars within the field have a level of proficiency in Russian, but limited knowledge of the other two languages). The choice of Russian could additionally be justified by the large prevalence of Russophone speakers in all three countries. Although there is a precedent for the former solution in East Slavic area studies, the latter is not unheard-of, and scholars such as the Canadian historian David R. Marples (2004) and the British political scientist Taras Kuzio (2005) use the national variants of proper nouns.

I have chosen the latter option. Thus, the transliterations of proper nouns found in this book reflect their national origins. The reader will also encounter proper nouns that are less frequently used, such as Kyiv and Lukashenka (rather than Kiev and Lukashenko). However, I have retained the familiar variants of some terms and proper nouns in order to avoid confusion (e.g. Kievan Rus’, not Kievskaia Rus’ from Rus. Киевская Русь; or Kyivs’ka Rus’ from Ukr. Київська Русь).

I have used the ALA-LC Romanisation tables from The Library of Congress for all Ukrainian, Belarusian, and Russian words, with some exceptions. I have avoided confusing typographic ligatures and diacritical marks, such as i͡e for the Russian е; and ï for the Ukrainian ї. Similarly, I have kept some internationally recognised variants that are too omnipresent to change: for example, the former Russian president is Boris Yeltsin rather than Ieltsin (or, with ligatures, I͡Elt͡sin).

To complicate the matter further, in Belarus, there are three written languages: Russian and Belarusian, both of which are official languages, and the classic Belarusian Tarashkevitsa. The name of the president could be transliterated as Aleksandr Lukashenko (Russian); Aliaksandr Lukashenka (Belarusian); and Aliaksandar Lukashenka (Belarusian Tarashkevitsa). I use the official Belarusian (Aliaksandr) for proper nouns. Please note that the Belarusian letter ў is transliterated as w, not u.

For consistency’s sake, I use the translated forms of place names in this book (i.e. October Square, not Kastrychnitskaia). A notable exception is Maidan (Ukr.: square), which is used both instead of the longer original (Maidan Nezalezhnosti) and the translation (Independence Square), the reason being that Maidan has become a widely recognised word in the West, even among non-Slavists.

All translations are my own unless stated otherwise.

Foreword

What impact does the physical space in which protesters raise their grievances have on their success or failure in achieving their goals? This is the intriguing question that Arve Hansen raises, and to which this book provides a theoretically, methodologically, and empirically sophisticated answer. It elaborates a theoretical model to explore the causal connections between urban public space and mass protests. As such, it is not only a valuable but also a major contribution to the growing research on mass protests and urban space.

This book also presents and analyses three of the most acute cases of urban protest today, namely those of Kyiv, Minsk, and Moscow. The combination of thematic focus and empirical case studies can, therefore, hardly be more timely. A wave of protest movements is rolling across what we refer to as the ‘former Soviet space’. Judging by recent events, it is not going to stop any time soon; even in Russia, where enormous and costly efforts have been made to create ‘stability’ under President Putin. The intense, at times highly simplistic public debate around these events makes this distinctly scholarly contribution particularly welcome. The book gives us details and specifics about the very different social and physical spaces of Kyiv, Minsk, and Moscow, despite their common Soviet heritage.

This analysis is built on the results of the author’s extensive field work: interviews as well as personal observations, all based in Hansen’s thorough knowledge of all three East Slavic languages and cultures and his experience of living in Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine. Careful attention is paid to the history and symbolic value of the urban spaces under analysis. The meticulous circuit of observing, noting, mapping, and interviewing is particularly commendable, resulting as it does in clear visual and textual presentations of the protest spaces in Kyiv, Minsk, and Moscow.

Hansen’s approach to the theoretical debate on protest, and the core terms within it, is also nuanced and attentive to detail. He crafts his definitions of mass protest and urban public space, as well as his theoretical model, using the cases at hand and in close consultation with the extant literature. The outcome is an excellent piece of academic handiwork. The process of developing the theoretical model over time, guided by empirical findings in the individual case studies, is presented clearly and well. Reading this book will prove highly instructive for students who wish to learn how to combine in-depth empirical work with theory development.

Examining the theoretical debate on protest, Hansen identifies a lack of attention in the literature to the connection between space and protest. Rightly pointing out the dangers of geographical determinism, he sets himself the ambitious aim of providing the systematic and generalised approach to space and protest that is missing. A comprehensive explanation of urban protest will have to include a wider set of social variables beyond those investigated in this book, which is clearly part of a broader, evolving research agenda under development. However, by the end of the book, Hansen has convincingly demonstrated the importance of geographical space and how it contributes to the emergence, realisation, and impact of protests. The spatial perspective also promises a fruitful application to cases beyond the former Soviet space.

Julie Wilhelmsen

Senior Research FellowNorwegian Institute of International Affairs

Preface

This book is based on my doctoral thesis, Mass Protests from a Spatial Perspective: Discontent and Urban Public Space in Kyiv, Minsk, and Moscow (Hansen 2020), which I defended and published in March 2020 at UiT: the Arctic University of Norway.

The question that spurred me to write my thesis—and, subsequently, this book—was how mass protests are affected by urban public space.

Based on field work in Eastern Europe spanning several years and interviews with demonstrators, protest organisers, and observers, I gradually developed an approach to assess the enabling and constraining effects of urban public spaces on public protest. I call this model the spatial perspective on mass protests; or the spatial perspective, for short.

The model was tested and refined by looking closely at three case studies, each of which served as the basis for an academic article. These case studies investigate protest spaces in three different cities—Kyiv, Minsk, and Moscow—and reflect three stages in the development of the spatial perspective. My thesis originally consisted of the three articles mentioned here, framed by seven introductory chapters.

The main difference between the thesis and the book you are now reading is that the three articles have here been integrated as chapters in their own right, for improved readability.

In addition, feedback from the doctoral committee has been incorporated where required, and some additional minor tweaks have been made to the case studies. However, the arguments and structure of the original articles have been kept largely unchanged. The main advantage of this approach is that it more clearly shows how the spatial perspective was developed.

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 ousted, or rebellions crushed.

Central urban spaces can thus create powerful imagery, and we intuitively understand that space has importance. Yet how are massive collective actions, such as the latest Ukrainian revolution, affected by urban public space? Or, to put it another way, how does urban space facilitate and/or inhibit public protests? These questions led me to the current study.

Figure 2: Maidan, Kyiv, February 2014a

Photo: Arve Hansen

Structure

This book describes the development of a spatial perspective on mass protests, a model which has been applied to three case studies: Kyiv, Minsk, and Moscow. It consists of ten chapters, divided into three main parts, one theoretical, one practical, and one concluding.

Part I opens in chapter 2 with a contextualisation of space and its central position in human society since the prehistoric era. It outlines a history of contention in urban public spaces, and explains why public spaces in the East Slavic region form the topic of this book.

Having established that urban public space has both a historic and a contemporary relevance, chapter 3 provides a systematic review, in two sections, of the existing research on protests and space. The first section (3.1) includes general theories within sociology and political science, and research on the specific conditions necessary for a collective action or revolution to occur. The second (3.2) looks at the various research on public (philosophy), physical (architecture, urban planning, geography), and contested space (urbanism). In the third section (3.3), an existing gap in the available research is identified. Even if connections between space and protest are discovered in the research literature, and from a variety of perspectives, none of the publications surveyed provide a systematic and generalised approach to the analysis of this causal relationship.

Chapter 4 continues the discussion of chapter 3 by providing two key definitions of mass protests (4.1) and urban public space (4.2), before stating the primary and secondary research questions of this book in full (4.3).

The theorising and development of the spatial perspective, from the conception of an idea to a complete theoretical model, are described in chapter 5. This includes the theory and approaches to theorising applied during the various stages of the model’s development (5.1), and some of the ethical considerations taken into account during the process (5.2), as well as my main reservation about developing a theory with a focus on geography. From this starting point, the development of the model is traced from its beginnings (5.4) through different stages of theorising and testing (5.5) to a description of the causal chains between urban space and mass protests employed in the final model (5.6). The project’s three case studies were written in parallel with the model’s development, and thus also reflect the various stages of the process. The first case is described as a prestudy (5.5.1), the second as a transitional study (5.5.3), and the third as the main study, demonstrating how the spatial perspective can be applied in its current form (5.7).

The causal mechanisms described in chapter five are explicated in chapter 6, including the model’s independent (6.1), intermediary (6.2), and dependent variables (6.3).

Part II consists of three chapters, each based to a large extent on the cases described in chapter 5: The prestudy of Maidan in Kyiv (chapter 7); the transitional study of October Square and Independence Square in Minsk (chapter 8); and the main study of Swamp Square in Moscow (chapter 9).

The single chapter of Part III—chapter 10—provides a final demonstration of the spatial perspective as applied to Republic Square (Place de la République), Paris, during a demonstration there on 6 January 2019 by the Yellow Vests (Fr.: Mouvement des gilets jaunes). The case study is used to demonstrate how the research questions outlined in chapter 4 have been answered, and forms the basis for arguing that the model can be used as a tool and a language to discuss spaces of contention and to provide new insights into the study of social movements and mass protests. Following a brief review of the contents, findings, and utility of this book, I then suggest a few ways in which the spatial perspective can be developed further.

1 The Ukrainian Ministry of Health later announced that the actual number of those killed was 82 (Ukrainian Ministry of Health 2014).

Part I

Figure 3: Maidan, Kyiv, December 2013

Photo: Arve Hansen

2 Space in Context

Human beings are cognitive creatures. We experience the world around us through our external sensory input, such as touch, smell, and sight, which our brains interpret based on our experiences, memory, and thoughts. One fundamental aspect of the experienced world is space and, consciously or subconsciously, we never stop interpreting the physical environment around us. This does not imply that we are necessarily aware of how this analysis is done, or even that it is being done in the first place. We often are unable to appreciate the full extent and impact of it or to explain how it works to a third party. Nevertheless, we are instinctively aware of our surroundings, sense their uses, opportunities, dangers, and risks, and adapt our behaviour accordingly.1

This keen sense of place has probably played a vital part in the survival of our species. When our early hominid ancestors, millions of years ago, entered new ground, instincts would be activated to provide information about the possibilities and dangers that particular space might provide. Exploring a new location, an individual would be sensitive to whether the space made them feel relaxed and safe, or alert and uneasy.

Over time, as the human capacity for social interaction evolved, space would come to be perceived not just as a place that might provide food and a chance to eat (or, conversely, a threat of being attacked and eaten), but also as a location for the increasingly complex social interactions between individuals within a group. Thus, the instinctive human perception of space would come to include information about other people and about the social interactions and relations occurring in that space. A newly arrived individual would, for example, soon sense whether this was a place to eat, relax, converse, and mate, or to be on its guard against other individuals in the group. It would know—with little conscious effort—where its allies and friends were, find the possible exits, sense whether it belonged in the group, and locate itself strategically according to its position in the social hierarchy: whether funny, loud, and boastful at the centre of the group, or reserved, quiet, and humble near one of the exits. Individuals who were oblivious to such social space would probably end up as outcasts, or worse, killed.

According to the Australian anthropologist Terrence Twomey (2014), our discovery and domestication of fire hundreds of thousands, perhaps even over a million years ago (Gowlett 2016) probably facilitated the evolution of human cooperation. Twomey explains how making a fire and keeping it going was a costly endeavour, yet the result was a good from which all the individuals in a group could greatly benefit. Hence, the domestication of fire would stimulate cooperation (Twomey 2014). We could therefore imagine that, for groups of hunter-gatherers in prehistoric times, the campfire would become one of the first dedicated spaces for social interaction. Here, people would flock together not only to eat and sleep in the relative safety from predators, insects, and cold weather, but also to process past events, discuss gains and risks, and make a plan of action for the day to come.

After the Neolithic Revolution of approximately 10 000 BCE, humans gradually started to live in fixed settlements and the new agricultural technology laid the foundation for explosive population growth (Bellwood and Oxenham 2008). In the new and increasingly urban setting, the locations of social interaction and planning would probably move from the campfire into urban spaces, such as marketplaces, town squares, or other focal points of growing villages and cities. We can find archaeological evidence from the Bronze and Iron ages, for instance, which indicate that social and deliberative spaces were valued to such an extent that they were rganizati as various forms of political institutions. Popular assemblies in urban space could be found in the Ancient Greek Agora (Anc. Greek.: ἀγορά), the Roman Forum Romanum, and the Slavic Veche (Rus.: вече); or, conversely, in the outskirts of settlements, such as the Scandinavian Thing (Icel.: þing).

However, urban spaces have some significant limitations as formal places of deliberation and public administration. Notably, the central plaza of a large city may not have enough physical space available for all people to attend, and large groups of people are often at risk of being affected by demagoguery. For these and other reasons, in most societies, public rganization moved into the remit of formal political institutions. Yet the cities’ urban spaces have remained as necessary parts of the landscape, needed in order for people to move from one place to another. Additionally, they function as places for trade, recreation, and social interaction. Urban spaces are often the location of joyful activities such as festivals and public entertainments, but also, sometimes, of floggings and executions. Some rulers might use the city’s focal point to display their might, too—for instance, in the form of army drills and parades. Moreover, although the majority of formal decisions now occur in buildings, the potential use value of urban space for people to discuss, deliberate, and decide on a course of action has not gone away.

Throughout human history, people have tended to congregate in central places in times of trouble. Such gatherings sometimes occur on the initiative of rulers to collectively find a solution to a shared problem (such as how to respond to an imminent invasion or the death of a prince). Yet, every so often, the ruling elites are themselves perceived as the problem, and the urban squares and marketplaces might be seized by the people and turned into arenas of opposition.

Figure 4: Althing, Iceland

Iceland’s form of popular assembly (Icel.: Alþingi) was first located on Thingvellir (the Assembly Fields, Icel.: Þingvellir)/Lögberg in the tenth century CE. Photo: Andrei Rogatchevski

2.1 Complexities of Urban Contention

Urban contention has a large number of aspects, and several of these are discussed in the next chapter. But there are three ways to look at and categorise urban collective actions that should be mentioned here to provide the reader with a sense of the complexity of the phenomenon: 1) the various forms of urban contention, 2) the motivations people have for action: and, 3) the local, regional, and global tendencies or waves of contention of which the collective action is part.

2.1.1 Form

One form of urban contention is the violent mob, wholly or partially controlled by powerful individuals such as politicians, religious leaders, and oligarchs. The mob has often been used as a tool to incite violence in cities against political opponents and so change the political landscape. In the Ancient Roman Republic, for example, groups of discontented plebeians often became an important force in the frequent (and often violent) transitions of power (Brunt 1966). Another example might be the veche (popular assembly) of the Medieval East Slavic Novgorod Republic (1136–1478), where the crowd were often more powerful than their prince. Historical chronicles recount how the Novgorodians, under heavy influence from wealthy boyars, sometimes removed ineffective leaders by force (Paul 2008; Evtuhov, Goldfrank, Hughes, and Stites 2004, 88–89).

Urban contention can also be seen in the uncontrolled violent crowd which, under pressure, stands up to the ruling elites and overthrows them in violent riots, uprisings, and revolutions. The French Revolution (1789–1799) is a particularly prominent example because it shows how space can both foster discontent and provide a suitable environment for insurgencies.2

Conversely, urban discontent can manifest as nonviolent protests, such as the 1913 Women’s Suffrage Parade on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C. (Lumsden 2000), or the 1919 May Fourth Movement at Tiananmen Square in Beijing (Wasserstrom 2005).

2.1.2 Motivation

Another way to look at urban contention is by considering the motivation for the action. The US is a fitting example to illustrate that urban contention can have a wide range of different motives, ranging from a wish to improve living conditions, e.g. the Great Railroad Strike of 1877 (De-Michele 2008), to the many movements against wars and military interventions (see for example the protests against the war in Vietnam [History.com 2019], and in Iraq [Chan 2003]). Cities in the US have also seen multiple protests for the equal rights of oppressed groups in society, such as the 1969 Stonewall Riots and the birth of the Gay Rights Movement (Kuhn 2011), the feminist movements of the 1970s (Spain 2016), and the more recent Black Lives Matter protests (Karduni 2017); collective actions aimed at causing harm, such as racially motivated violence in Southern US cities (Olzak 1990); religiously inspired protests, such as the Washington for Jesus rally in 1980 (Flippen 2011, 1–23), and social movements against economic inequality, such as the 2011 Occupy Wall Street protest movement (Gillham, Edwards, and Noakes 2013).

2.1.3 Waves

A third approach to urban discontent is to see it as waves that come and go, sweeping through periods in history, changing power structures and the layout of societies. A large number of such waves of contention have occurred throughout history in cities across the globe. In Eastern Europe, for example, we can identify at least four waves, shown here together with their political aftermath:

1917

Eastern Europe did not become part of the three European waves of revolution of the 1820s, 1830s and 1840s that followed in the aftermath of the French Revolution. But the radical new ideas of European thinkers, combined with the grievances of war and deep inequality in society, turned into a series of urban uprisings in the Russian Empire and eventually into the October Revolution of 1917. The Soviet Union was created in the aftermath of this revolution.3

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 post-Soviet times, the three countries have struggled with many of the same obstacles: a brutal transition from planned to market economy, widespread corruption, autocratic leadership, popular discontent, etc. Moreover, there are strong ethnic, linguistic, cultural, political, architectural, economic, and criminal similarities and bonds between the three countries.

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).

6 In Eastern Europe, the 1990s are often known by the Russian term Likhie devianostye, which can be translated into English as the Wild Nineties. The period got this label due to the chaos that followed the Soviet Union’s collapse. The 15 newly born post-Soviet states had to reorient their economic models towards a new reality and create new political systems while struggling with severe scarcity of consumer goods and social security, explosive crime rates, rampant corruption, and uncontrolled privatisation. At the same time, wars and uprisings for independence broke out frequently in the Caucasus (notably in Abkhazia, Chechnya, Dagestan, Ingushetia, Nagorno-Karabakh, and South-Ossetia) and in the Transnistria Region of Moldova, triggering several, often unpopular, military interventions by Russia and other countries. Just when the economic situation started to recover, the 1997 financial crisis in Asia hit the former Soviet Union hard, particularly Russia and its trade partners Ukraine and Belarus. It should be noted that the Russian authorities support the use of the term Likhie devianostye, as it focuses on the negative aspects of the unstable decade between the Soviet Union (stability) and Putin (new stability), although for many Eastern Europeans, the decade was seen as one of freedom and possibilities rather than anarchy (see for example Rusin 2016; Boldyrev 2018; Osipov-Gipsh 2019).

7 In Russia in 2000, the presidency changed from the unpopular, ageing and sickly Boris Yeltsin to the comparatively young, reasonably sober and physically very fit Vladimir Putin, who for several reasons enjoyed high levels of popularity well into the mid-to-late 2000s (9.2). In Belarus, too, the economy had been growing since the early 2000s, and mass protests were mostly ideological (driven by Belarusian nationalists) or constitutional (against the policies of President Aliaksandr Lukashėnka). Yet none of these protests resulted in a colour revolution (8.2).

8 The 2006 protests in Minsk and the 2011–2012 protest movement in Moscow were suppressed so harshly that the opposition of both countries was effectively disabled for several years to come (8.3.2, 9). In both cases, the protesters were met with violence, hundreds of demonstrators were arrested, and the leaders of the opposition received long prison sentences.

9 The revolution has greatly affected both regional and global power politics. Russia has accused the EU and US of orchestrating what they perceive to be a coup d’état, and the Ukrainian revolution became Russia’s pretext for occupying the Crimean Peninsula and supporting the separatist movements in the Donbas region in Eastern Ukraine. Thus, the revolution indirectly became one of the triggering events for the deteriorating relations between Russia and the West today.

10 Since 2014, protests in Ukraine have for the most part been aimed at the policies of President Petro Poroshenko (2013–2019) and President Volodymyr Zelenskyi (since 2019). In Belarus, little has changed, and protests are usually suppressed in much the same manner as before. In Russia, following the annexation of Crimea, a surge in patriotic sentiment led to members of the opposition being labelled traitors, and discontent has remained at low levels. Since 2016, there has been an upswing in public protests in the country. A variety of economic and social problems have motivated hundreds of thousands of Russians to participate in numerous collective actions in cities across the country (9.2.1).

11 The research group RSCPR (Russian Space: Concepts, Practices, Representations) “is engaged in a multidisciplinary study of Russian attitudes to their own and other people’s/nations’ spaces […] which can provide insights into the interdependence of Russian space and Russian identity, both at an individual and a state policy level” (UiT n.d.). Ukraine and Belarus are often (and especially in Russia) perceived as integral parts of a “Russian” world.

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