Passion for Putin’s Palace: Political Protests in Modern Russia

In this article, the author analyzes the protest activity in Russia in January–February 2021. Protest activity came to Russia after A. Navalny’s investigation of V. Putin’s palace in Gelendzhik. Like the Belarusian protests in August 2021, the Russian protests were suppressed by the police. A feature of the Russian protests was their mass character. A large number of cities in almost all Russian regions were involved in the protest. Based on the data of secondary analysis, the author tries to give his own research of the Russian protest activity in January–February 2021. Protest activity in a number of Russian regions did not look accidental. One could observe protest activity in them before, but with a different agenda. The factor of unpopular government is of great importance in regional protests. The authorities no longer have the proper stock of legitimacy. This fully applies to the governors appointed by V. Putin, and, often, not directly related to the regions that have their own specificity. Case studies of protests in Russian regions show new trends. The protests are increasingly carnival-like. Power is ridiculed and discussed with irony. Familiar dialogue with the authorities is confirmed in various forms and languages of protest. From the author’s point of view, protest activity in Russia will increase by the fall of 2021. In September 2021, elections to the Russian Parliament are to be held. The author assumes that disappointment with the authorities in Russia will grow. The social base of new protests can be broader.

Belarus’ external debt in the context of the pandemic and ways to resolve it

The changes in the amount of the external debt of Belarus depending on various factors are analyzed. The study found that the consequences of the epidemic COVID-19 had a significant impact on the increase in the amount of external debt. In addition, political protests against the government have a special weight in the reasons for the growth of Belarus external debt, since their consequences significantly reduced the level of confidence on the part of foreign investors, which led to a fall in the ruble. The role of foreign countries as the main creditors in the external debt of Belarus, as well as in the economy of Belarus as a whole is examined, and the importance of the Belarusian friendship with Russia is considered. In conclusion, an assessment of the structure of the Belarusian economy and methods of its regulation is carried out, and then possible ways of settling the Belarusian debt are presented.

What can cognitive linguistics tell us about language-image relations? A multidimensional approach to intersemiotic convergence in multimodal texts

In contrast to symbol-manipulation approaches, Cognitive Linguistics offers a modal rather than an amodal account of meaning in language. From this perspective, the meanings attached to linguistic expressions, in the form of conceptualisations, have various properties in common with visual forms of representation. This makes Cognitive Linguistics a potentially useful framework for identifying and analysing language-image relations in multimodal texts. In this paper, we investigate language-image relations with a specific focus on intersemiotic convergence. Analogous with research on gesture, we extend the notion of co-text images and argue that images and language usages which are proximal to one another in a multimodal text can be expected to exhibit the same or consistent construals of the target scene. We outline some of the dimensions of conceptualisation along which intersemiotic convergence may be enacted in texts, including event-structure, viewpoint, distribution of attention and metaphor. We take as illustrative data photographs and their captions in online news texts covering a range of topics including immigration, political protests, and inter-state conflict. Our analysis suggests the utility of Cognitive Linguistics in allowing new potential sites of intersemiotic convergence to be identified and in proffering an account of language-image relations that is based in language cognition.

When “I” Becomes “We”: Religious Mobilization, Pilgrimage and Political Protests

Scholars have extensively studied social and psychological components of pilgrimage in the past decades. Its political ingredients have less been taken into account. Moreover, there is marginal scientific evidence on connections between pilgrimage and political protests: A response to injustice within a specific agenda and certain goals, remembrance, testimony, imagination, as well as transformation, along with communion and solidarity—are some common features of pilgrims and protesters. There is also the resource mobilization factor—to be analyzed here with a view upon the Romanian 1989 anti-communist revolution in Timișoara. We look at religion as a provider of social ties, in terms of messages with political connotations coming from clergy, and of chain reactions inside religious groups. The qualitative research relies on content analysis of documents, and of 30 semi-structured interviews with former participants to the demonstrations. Results point towards a subtle and circumstantial collective religious mobilization before and during the Romanian revolution. Similarities with pilgrimage are related to the presence of a resourceful actor, converting individual into common needs and generating a collective identity. Differences refer to the spiritual vs. political movement, and to the socio-religious experience vs. the secular search for freedom and justice.

Protest in Russia 2017-2021: Technologies and Patterns

The article analyzes the patterns and technologies of organizing political protest in Russia in the period 2017-2021. The author concludes that the start of the protests in March 2017 was aimed at influencing the presidential elections in March 2018, in addition, the protests of schoolchildren were to launch the pattern of chain reaction in rising of protest actions. The author states that in this new wave of protests, there is a change of face of protest: that is an attempt to remove one of the main problems of Russian political protest - a large number of opinion leaders, each of whom has an extremely low rating, and the absence of single ideological orientation of the protest. Protest organization technologies share patterns with the radical mass forms of social protest known as the color revolutions and events of the Arab Spring. Political protests of 2017-2021 again showed the operability of simple slogans, but the impossibility of a long-term alliance in the ranks of protesters. The lack of a strong ideology makes these protests swift: explosive and rapidly fading, unable to mobilize new supporters.

The Nicaragua Protest Crisis in 2018–2019: Assessing the Logic of Government Responses to Protests

Despite constant monitoring, we lack a good explanation for the 2018–2019 protest crisis in Nicaragua. The escalation of protests, repression, duration, and the death toll are surprising. Applying a novel political and economic cost framework, we benchmark Nicaragua’s historical and recent political protests and explain the Ortega administration’s responses, thus providing a rich case (with comparative data for context) that makes sense of this extraordinary period of protest. The empirical analysis buttresses our qualitative case study of protest motivations and tactics and extreme state violence that define four phases of the conflict. The combination of qualitative and quantitative analyses creates one of the first robust studies of protest–response dynamics of this protest crisis. We conclude that these protests are unique with respect to previous protests in the country and the region and that government repression was a logical response in some phases but was inconsistently applied.

The Kremlin Learns to Strike Back: Assessing Reactions to Protests in Russia

In the light of the turbulence in the post-Soviet space, consolidation of the regime, and prevention of possible dangers to it have always been among the main goals of domestic politics for Moscow. While lessons can be drawn from external revolutions, the regional context is as important because it allows testing what works in the Russian context. What may work in Cairo may not be effective in Kazan. Existing analyses focused on Russia primarily look at a general picture, or occasionally Moscow and/or St. Petersburg. Therefore, this paper tests the hypothesis that during the third Putin presidency, the Kremlin developed practices at both regional and federal levels to ensure regime survival when faced with protests. I believe that the nature of a protest influences governmental response. I divide the protests by the type of demonstration, their length, and demands. I find that regardless of the type of protest, regional governments are more concerned with cracking down, whereas, at the federal level, crackdowns are primarily on political protests.