Authors
Vladimir Ponizovskiy3; Lusine Grigoryan1; Marie Isabelle Weissflog2; 1 University of York, UK; 2 Ruhr Universitaet Bochum/le Havre, Germany; 3 Durham University, UK Discussion
In 2022, the world expected that Russian citizens would rally against a war that placed their own futures in jeopardy. The limited scope of anti-war action - as well as few bright counter-examples - were difficult to understand. During the summer of 2022, we surveyed 1000 Russians living in Russia about their attitudes towards the war in Ukraine and any actions they took or plan to take to either support or oppose the war. We focus on three different types of predictors of anti-war collective action in an authoritarian context. First, we look at differences in the subjective construal of the war by assessing what kind of consequences people think the war has for basic human values; we then test whether differences in these construals are predictive of collective action. Second, we test how media consumption shapes attitudes and behaviour. Third, we look at feelings of group-based guilt and shame, specifically whether it is necessary to have a sense of control over the government's decisions to experience these emotions, and whether experiencing these emotions increases the likelihood of engaging in anti-war action. We find that while most participants agreed that the war has negative consequences for the weak and the vulnerable, and is likely to thwart their egoistic goals, cluster analysis differentiated between those who saw the war as consistent with the values of tradition and security and those who did not. These beliefs helped explain anti-war action beyond the usual predictors, and the beliefs were associated with exposure to state-controlled, as opposed to independent media. Finally, we find that moral shame (as opposed to image shame) is more strongly associated with anti-war action than even attitudes towards the war. 
