Authors

Svetlana Erpyleva¹;  ¹ Public Sociology Laboratory, Russian Federation

Discussion

Environmental crises are at the heart of material, social, and cultural concerns worldwide. The rise of youth climate activism since 2018 (e.g., climate strikes, Fridays for Future movement, Extinction Rebellion) has been followed by an increase of social science research on international youth mobilization around climate issues. However, this research has been focused on Western democracies. In non-democracies—where politicians are less dependent on the demands of their constituency, protesters often face repressions, and social movements can be lost behind various social or anti-regime protests—politicization of environmental emergencies can be an especially tricky issue. Understanding these differences and dynamics is an important area for further research. Drawing on the Russian Fridays for Future movement as a case, I look at how young climate activists in Russia “avoid politics” while variously connecting the movement’s agenda with the issues of political system/regime change at the same time. My analysis shows that given then current polarization in Russian political culture and harshening of the repression of dissent, climate activists find themselves in a paradoxical situation: They strive to preserve an apolitical image of the movement, but they nevertheless cannot stay away from “politics.” In the presentation, I identify several ways of how the activists both reproduce and challenge the movement’s public apoliticism.