Authors

Discussion

The purpose of this paper is to examine how Russian citizens express their negative attitudes towards the war in Ukraine through their participation in non-political civic activities.  Due to the impossibility of participating in open street protests or leaving the country, civic activism, and specifically volunteering to assist Ukrainian refugees to leave Russia, has become one of the rare means of expressing opposition to the war. This paper utilizes Albert Hirschman's concept of Exit, Voice, and Loyalty and the sociology of emotions to illustrate how outrage over the war is being converted into some "constructive" volunteer work.

The paper is based on the study of anti-war civic activism in Russia that was conducted in 2022-23 and the case study of a volunteer TG group “Piter Proezdom ” helping Ukrainian refugees who found themselves on Russian territory while escaping the war but wanted to get asylum in Europe. The empirical data includes 30 in-depth interviews with active members of TG group.