Russia cracked down hard on public displays of dissent after it invaded Ukraine last year, but many citizens have risked being imprisoned—or worse—with creative forms of protest since the Feb. 24, 2022, invasion. Activists write anti-war slogans on walls, bank notes, and even price tags in grocery stores, with the "The Russian army bombed an art school in Mariupol, in which 400 people were sheltering," written on the tag for a tub of sour cream, Russian journalist Filipp Dzyadko writes at the Economist. Green—the color of the blue and yellow of Ukraine's flag mixed together—is the color of the resistance, and activists put green ribbons in their hair or tie them to fences, he writes. Tinder profiles set up in Vladimir Putin's name offer information on war crimes, including the massacre of civilians in Bucha.
"They put on concerts of Ukrainian music. They kneel in the snow in front of a statue in Moscow of the Ukrainian poet, Lesya Ukrainka. They wear garlands of blue and yellow flowers," Dzyadko writes. "They create memorials for dead Ukrainians and place bouquets and toys at them. And not all protests are symbolic: trains, loaded with weapons, have been derailed on the way to the front." Dzyadko says he has corresponded with an activist who was sentenced to three years in prison for broadcasting anti-war content on a pirate radio station he set up as a hobby years before the war. The signal sent out was only strong enough to reach a few streets near his home in the southern Russian city of Vologda—but security services were listening.
Dzyadko says he communicated with Vladimir Rumyantsev, a factory worker in his early 60s, through his lawyer. Rumyantsev's life savings were confiscated, but he has no regrets about speaking out through his station. "The choice was to take the road that is disgusting to take or the road that is scary to take," he said. "The point is that I don't want to be on the side that is not only wrong, but will also lose. It is only a matter of time." Rumyantsev had the choice of house arrest instead of prison but he chose prison, fearing that he would starve under house arrest because his only living relative is his brother, who supports the war. "It is a family tragedy when brothers are on opposite sides of the barricades," the lawyer said.
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Russians' reading lists are another sign of dissent, Andrei Kolesnikov writes at Foreign Policy. Soon after the invasion, George Orwell's 1984 became a best-seller in Russia. As Putin's regime moved further toward totalitarianism, readers of nonfiction turned to books about life in Nazi Germany, including the newly translated Defying Hitler: A Memoir by Sebastian Haffner. Russian readers of the book about Germany in the 1930s will recognize parallels with "the persecution of dissenters; the progressive Gleichschaltung, or total coordination of public life with the regime; the willingness of ordinary people to obey; the temptations of self-isolation as people attempt to live a parallel, unnoticed life against the background of the unfolding nightmare; the feeling of a wasted life," Kolesnikov writes. (More Russia-Ukraine war stories.)
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