On February 24, 2022, a few hours after the Russian army began its invasion of Ukraine, anti-war petitions began circulating in Russia. In nine days, 91 separate petitions collected more than 1.5 million signatures, before laws criminalizing opposition to the war put an end to the movement on March 4.
However, most of the signatories knew full well that this would not change anything in the Kremlin's decision. Why did hundreds of thousands of people take the risk of openly associating themselves with a cause whose outcome they themselves considered improbable?
It is this paradox that Guillaume Sauvé and Maxime Duchâteau, political science researchers at the University of Montreal, set out to explain. Their study, the results of which appeared in the journalProblems of Post-Communism, is based on these petitions and on 10 semi-directed interviews conducted with initiators and signatories met in exile – in France, Armenia, Georgia, Kazakhstan – or remained in Russia but contacted remotely.
A risky move despite appearances
Even before the laws of March 4, pressure was quickly exerted on the signatories: summons by university administrations, warnings to journalists and teachers, injunctions to retract. An employee of a Moscow cinema was asked, the day after signing it, to choose between publishing a retraction or resigning.
A survey conducted in April 2022 by the authors of the Russian teachers' petition reveals that 28% of respondents have experienced pressure: conversations with management, instructions not to express political positions, threats of dismissal. After March 4, the risk changes in nature: sentences of up to 15 years in prison are planned for “discrediting” the army. More than half of the petitions (51 out of 91) were withdrawn in the days that followed.
“This is an unprecedented moment in the history of Russian petitioning,” underlines Maxime Duchâteau. Yet some continue to sign. Physicist Boris Shtern, initiator of a petition from researchers and science journalists, keeps his letter online, then migrates it to a mirror site hosted abroad, despite pressure from the FSB [the Russian intelligence service]. Dozens of new signatories are added while others demand its withdrawal.