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Intro: In the Russian cases, the Russians never had to fight, at least since the last several centuries, for its own nation and against imperial domination and oppression, in the same way that the Ukrainians or the Lithuanians or the Estonians or the Latvians or the Georgians have had to. And these kinds of passions for keeping their nation free is what unites the people. And Russians never had to fight those battles. #AskDifferent, the podcast by the Einstein Foundation.

Marie Röder: Welcome to today's episode. My name is Marie Röder and I'll be your host. “Those who want to read the future must leave through the past.” That is a quote that is attributed to the French writer and politician André Malraux. And it still rings true today, especially when we look at Russia and its war against Ukraine. One question comes to mind. Why are so many people in Russia so silent about this war? My guest today might have an answer. She's a political scientist who spent years studying opposition in Russia, and she even wrote a book about it, “A History of Dissent in Russia”. For there were and there are people standing up against authorities. So, who carries the rebellion within Russia? This is my main question for this episode. And my guest is Tomila Lankina, professor for international relations at the London School of Economics and now an Einstein Visiting Fellow in Berlin. Welcome, Professor Lankina.

Tomila Lankina: Thank you. Pleasure to be here. 

Röder: Your latest book, “To Live for Freedom, A History of Dissent in Russia”, tells the story of resilience and resistance across centuries from the Tsars to the Bolsheviks to Putin. What first drew you to this project personally? 

Lankina: What first drew me is if we're talking about the very, very latest impulse, because I have been interested in Russian protests for years, and I have looked at, analysed Russian democracy and trying in the 1990s when it was still meaningful to talk about democracy and when people could still protest without the risk of being thrown into jail or other kinds of harassment. So, I've been looking at protests and dissent and sort of trying to understand where the democratic impulse comes from or where indeed the support for authoritarianism comes from in Russian society for a long time. But since Russia began its full-on aggression against Ukraine, of course, we know that the war started in 2014, not in 2022. But in 2022, Russia began its full-on aggression against Ukraine in violation of international law. And the first impulse I had was to understand where the protest would come from. And also, I anticipated that Russians will mobilise in a widespread protest movement against the war. And in fact, this book was conceived as one analysing the dynamics of this kind of anti-war movement and protest movement. And of course, many of us and I come from that part of the world myself. Originally, I was born in Uzbekistan, but also spent some time in Russia. We're very, very sorely disappointed. What we see is not so much protest as a kind of apathy and passivity. And I realised that my book is going to be not so much about protest, although protest historically forms a big part of this project. I just completed my book. But the book is also about non-dissent. And specifically, what is it about Russian society that has crippled dissent? Even when it does emerge, it is very fractured, very divided, very in some ways inconsequential for the political system. And often it kind of peters away very quickly. And the question is why? 

Röder: We're going to dive into this question just in a little bit. I read that your research began with a discovery in the archives. Photographs, letters and other materials from an ordinary Russian family that somehow captured your whole topic. Can you explain what exactly did you find and why did it feel so significant? 

Lankina: Yes, it felt very special. It's like one of those rare serendipity moments that every researcher craves but doesn't come very often. In fact, I was in the region of Samara a few years ago before the full-on invasion of Ukraine, when I still went to Russia. Now I don't go out of principle anymore. When I was still going to Russia, I think around 2017, that was when I was working for my previous book. And I was introduced to a lady who I was told is active in the civil society of Samara. She's a civic activist. And then she starts talking about an archive somewhere in the deep south in America. And she said that nobody has looked at that archive or few people have done. It's certainly not very well known. And she sent me some links and I followed up and contacted the people in the archive. It's in Louisiana, in the American state of Louisiana. And I was absolutely astonished because what I found has then taken me to this other area of Russian history. This is an archive of a family originally of old believers. Old believers were a group that emerged out of the church schism in the Russian Orthodox Church in the 17th century. And so, these pictures allow us to trace, you know, what happened to this movement of these religious nonconformists since the 17th century and pretty much to the present really. But especially the archive was rich on what happened to them right before and right after the revolution. And before the revolution, you know, we're talking about the period of like late 19th century, early 20th century, modernisation, rapid modernisation in the Russian Empire. And I realised that these were not just, they were not religious fanatics anymore. The descendants of these people were the engines of modernisation in Russia. And they were in fact the engines of the nascent, very fragile democracy because they supported politically liberal parties during the first period of kind of democratic awakening and some democratic reforms and introduction of democratic institutions, which were, of course, very imperfect. We're talking about the Czar's Manifesto of 1905, which allowed the creation of the first Russian parliament. And this was all the Bolsheviks, of course, destroyed all of this. So the archive allows us to trace this movement, which shows Russia in a very different light. But we know very little about this movement of religious nonconformists. And I also look at various other sects, quote-unquote sects. They were often Russia's own homegrown Protestant movement. So very similar to the Protestant Reformation in Europe. And they shared many of the same features with the Protestant Reformation in Europe. And that also applies to old believers. What were those features? These were learned people, and they became more educated, more literate, compared to your typical Russian Orthodox rural population. So this archive really opened my eyes on this very little-known aspect of Russian history and the kind of impulse that they engendered in Russian society or parts of Russian society of staying away from the state, being detached and living in their own world. That didn't disappear with the Bolshevik Revolution. 

Röder: We already now, we're like in the history of rebellion within Russia. And you just explained to us that it stretches back very long, back to the 17th century. And it involves people from different walks of life. You already mentioned some of them now. But can you explain a little bit more really who were these dissenters? And where did they come from and what connected them? What ideas connected them? 

Lankina: Yeah, so the religious, original religious schism actually, and in that sense, it's a big contrast to the protests that we have seen in Russia since, you know, since that big moment. It actually encompassed wide swathes of the population from the very wealthy, influential, notables or nobles, you know, they were called boyars in Russia at the time. And indeed, there were lots and lots of peasants and tradespeople and merchants. So it was really socially encompassing. There was that glue of faith that brought these people together. And faith as in originally in response to the reforms of ritual by a patriarch called Nikon. So there was that religious glue, but it wasn't just about religion. What was happening in the 17th century and a little bit before that? So we're talking about quite a long sort of blurred period. It didn't all happen in one day or one year. Some of these developments of political reform against which these believers also rebelled, they came gradually, and they were gradually strangling the freedoms that Russians had. I'm not saying that the Russian people were free before these reforms, you know, 17th century. But what was happening is gradually serfdom was emerging and really encompassing more and more people. The monasteries were enserfing peasants. Those Orthodox church monasteries were actually at the forefront of the expansion of slavery, servitude in Russia. But also, eventually, this institution of saslovia, which is also very pivotal to the argument I'm making in my book, which is basically a caste-like categorisation of social groups into at the very top, the nobles or aristocrats, then the kind of intermediate bourgeois estate of merchants and an urban category of mishany. These were city people, clergy, and at the very bottom, peasants. And peasants were also divided into serfs and so-called state peasants, which had more freedoms. But this division of Russian society into these caste-like estates, which were quite rigid, they really created divisions within Russian society. And I call them the mainland. So mainland Russia became less and less free. That story we know. Then I also look at these religious groups, and I call them islands. Because what happened was, after the Great Schism, many of them literally ran away. They set up outposts in the woods, in marshlands, in areas of northern Russia, in Siberia, where at the time, we're talking about the 17th century from the 1660s onwards, many of these areas were still sparsely populated. So they created what I call islands or mini oases of what I call another kind of Russia. Of course, in some ways, it's metaphorical. And of course, as political scientists, we tend to come up with templates that might be simplifying reality. But I think these are useful metaphors for understanding the two different Russias, the mainland and the island Russia, that were developing essentially side by side. 

Röder: So you were talking about how there were essentially two different societies developing, mainland Russia and then the islands. And if we now try to go forward to the present, I want to understand how this history translates to today. So essentially asking why do some people resist and why do others remain silent? And you've written in your newest book, you've written about deep rooted political indifference among many Russians, even among those who live in exile. You yourself live in London and you meet now you're in Berlin. I'm sure you meet Russians living in Berlin as well. How do you explain that many Russians do not really participate in standing up against this war? 

Lankina: So let me step back a little bit. And, you know, now we're talk a little bit also about the Soviet period, because many people see that as a big, massive rupture, historical rupture, which, of course, it is. But certain features of that czarist society actually smoothly transitioned into the Soviet, into the communist period, namely that within the mainland, there were also highly educated estates like the noble estate, because you had to even climb those ranks along that grid of servitude to the czars. You had to obtain good education. And often this were very privileged sort of lycees for noble people and etc. There were also schools for merchants and technical schools. But the peasantry remained largely illiterate. So within the mainland, there was a high division between people who were educated, very small percent of the population and the vast majority of semi-literate peasants, mostly within the Orthodox Russian Orthodox Church. And islands, we're talking about more educated people. And historically, also the islands in my conceptualisation also included minority populations within the Russian Empire. Polish people, Muslim Tatars who were more literate and their women were more literate than, for instance, the typical Russian Orthodox peasant, male and female. So you had this also division into educated and less educated groups. What happens then is the Bolshevik Revolution happens. And after the revolution, essentially, the division between mainland and islands recreates itself. And now you have educated people, some of them joining the mainland as becoming, you know, the Communist Party, the apparatchiks or, you know, professionals in various capacities serving the regime. And you have the self-selected islanders, people who don't want to have anything to do with the Soviet regime. But herein is an important consequence of this. So in Russian society, a pattern of detachment emerged within these islands. So becoming an islander meant you're taking a stand. You're nonconforming. You want to keep your faith, your principles or whatever. But you're also detached. The phenomenon of running. And that is something that's a metaphor and is also running for real. It runs through the story of descent over centuries that I talk about. Namely, that to escape being associated with an awful, ruthless regime whose ideology you don't accept, you run either literally or metaphorically. And you separate yourself from the state. And we see that very much in Russian society under Putin and also now with the war. Of course, we see that a lot of people physically, literally ran. So for some, a political act of resistance is protest. For others, it is about disengaging, running away. And that's one way to keep your principles. But of course, there are still little islands, islets within Russian society even now. There is the feminist anti-war resistance movement. There are these brave, many of them are actually women, brave men and women who are resisting Putin head on. But we are talking about a tiny minority of the population. Behind these high-profile cases stand millions of people who are not doing very much. 

Röder: I want to ask a personal question. You yourself, you grew up in the Soviet Union and in Calcutta, India, as I read. You have a very different approach. You're very outspoken. And you recently even held a lecture in a bunker for Ukrainian students in Kiev. In your book, you call out Putin as the great Darth Vader. And I'm sure it has consequences to be so outspoken. How has Russia's full-scale war against Ukraine changed your academic work? Can you still go back to Russia? 

Lankina: I certainly, I can go back to Russia, but I certainly have no intention whatsoever for moral and political reasons. And, of course, these reasons, as I talk about in my book and I accept it, they're also fraught with moral dilemmas. Because essentially what I'm doing is very similar to a lot of Russians who are not challenging the political power head on. But there was a time when it was still safe to do that. And I travelled to Russia through the 2000s. And what astonished me about when I would talk to fellow Russians is how content they were that their material situation was fine and they have no intention of challenging anything. Even though it was very obvious that the country would be become more and more authoritarian, if not acquiring fascistic tendencies, you know, certainly in the second decade of the 2000s. And yet they were doing very little to challenge us. So in terms of my own work, I have not been to Russia because I think it would be immoral for me to essentially go and, you know, have any kind of association with this country. Now, certainly, as long as Putin remains in power, I won't. So I decided that for myself as a moral choice even before it became very, very unsafe. Now, of course, it's also unsafe to go to Russia because I've been giving donations to Ukraine. And I went to Ukraine earlier this year. I had volunteered to teach a course at the Kiev School of Economics. And I remember when I was just about to go, everything, my class was everything was planned. My train tickets were there in place and everything was all the logistics were planned. Russia began bombing Kiev and other cities in a kind of the intense new wave of bombings began around that time in the spring of this year, which, of course, we're seeing now is continuing and is getting worse and worse. My own university and my own relatives were telling me, is it a good time to go? And I heard even from my own colleagues saying, could you not postpone your trip? And I was just so surprised that how could I even postpone it? You know, I had made a commitment. And so I went and actually during the time I was there in Kiev, I witnessed just outside my hotel a drone was shot down and a building, a civilian building was the top floor was in flames. And I learned subsequently that a mother and her son died. And I could see everything. I could hear the explosion. I could see it. I could see the firefighters, the people standing in their dressing gowns outside. And I think people have to know and more people should go to Ukraine and try to do something to whether it's teaching or volunteering, helping in some ways in the kind of civic sense. I don't know, firefighting, whatever skills one has. And I think it's everybody's individual moral choice. Are we collectively achieving very much? Probably not as much as we want to. But certainly I think, you know, I should also say that the biggest inspiration for me are the Ukrainian people and their bravery. And I have an explanation for why the way they mobilise, the way they protest is different from the way the Russians do it. And I looked at Soviet period dissent of Ukraine as well. There were just more people, more numbers. And the question is why? And one answer I have is just like the Poles and the Russian Empire, the Ukrainians had to fight for their own nation. And that fight and that spirit of fighting for their freedom as a nation actually helps unite people, otherwise divided by class. Because all societies are divided into class categories and self-identify as, you know, working class or upper class, middle class. That's not unique to Russia. What in Russian, in the Russian case is the Russians never had to fight, at least since the last several centuries, for its own nation and against imperial domination and oppression in the same way that the Ukrainians or the Lithuanians or the Estonians or the Latvians or the Georgians have had to. And these kinds of passions for keeping their nation free is what unites the people. And Russians never had to fight those battles. 

Röder: It's very impressive hearing you talk about your experience in Kiev. You're now based in Berlin as an Einstein Visiting Fellow. Why does Berlin feel like the right place to study Russian dissent? 

Lankina: Berlin is important for many reasons. Just reading a little bit German history makes you realise that even at the height of sort of Nazi rule, there were brave people who would challenge and paid for their lives and took a moral stand. Even when everybody would be telling them that you're wasting your time, you're not going to achieve anything. They didn't care. They just acted. So that was important. But also there is a large community of Ukrainians in Berlin whom we want to interview as part of the project, but also people from the German-speaking Russians who were there in the Russian Empire for centuries and then came back in the 1990s to Germany. So I want to understand how these people, different communities develop values historically that make them more or less prone to challenge political authority and to take a moral stand. So religion is very important for me, looking at different faith communities, but also different nations and looking at their histories and how they could shape dissent. Of course, it's very difficult to conduct interviews in either Russia or Ukraine. And so having these communities in Berlin and other parts of Germany where my research, my Ph.D. students and I will be talking to people here is going to be very, very important and hopefully illuminating for the research. 

Röder: If you could speak to Russians within Russia, what would you say to them? 

Lankina: I would say keep fighting. Those young people who are fighting, that they should keep fighting. And one thing I learned from looking at dissent across the centuries, whether Tsarist Russian dissent or Soviet or post-Soviet, is what makes a difference is numbers. Numbers of people who turn out on the main square to protest against injustice, number of days they stay on that square, number of weeks. The sheer force of numbers is what forces dictators to make compromises or to, in fact, leave office. And this would be my advice is to continue working on getting more people to go and talk to the villages, try to understand what those other, the less active people in these smaller towns. And there is very little dialogue or awareness of these other communities who might be Putin's supporters. But we don't really know much about them because the media usually cover protests that are high profile, Western, liberal in large cities. We know very little about the rest of Russia and what the Russians think and what they're up to. 

Röder: Professor Tomila Lankina, thank you so much for sharing your insights and your remarkable work with us.

Lankina: Thank you. It's been a great pleasure to talk to you. 

Röder: If you like this podcast, feel free to rate and share it. Thank you for listening. My name is Marie Röder and I'm looking forward to hosting you again. 

#AskDifferent, the podcast by the Einstein Foundation.