Abstract

Russia’s full-fledged invasion of Ukraine has sparked a wave of protests in the country. Weakened by a twenty-year-long crackdown on civil society, popular dissent has consistently manifested through symbolic and performative actions, and has been systematically repressed. Nonetheless, the anti-war protests in Russia call for a reflection on the relationship between Russian civil society and pacifism. The substantial continuity in the evaluation of militarism between the Soviet and post-Soviet periods, and the hegemonic and identitarian militarism that was put at the core of Putin’s ideological apparatus in creating a new Russian identity, impeach the retrieval of a pacifist tradition. However, new stances come from the margins, which may challenge this situation