From Representation to Sabotage: The New Practices of Russian Antiwar Groups

Abstract

Since February 24, 2022, new oppositional groups—Feminist Antiwar Resistance (FAR), Stop the Wagons, Combat Organization of Anarcho‐Communists (BOAK), the Russian Freedom Legion, and others—have emerged in Russia. Politically, they range from socialist and anarchist to nationalist or fascist, and in their visual media present a range of anonymous protest subjectivities, from the young feminist female artist to the Molotov cocktail‐throwing anarchist to the army defector. Differences notwithstanding, antiwar groups resemble one another in their use of anonymity and sabotage, departing from the culture of the prewar Russian opposition to Putin. The new antiwar groups seek to demonstrate the existence of a broad decentralized movement, but one that continues, rather than disrupts, historical narratives. This article pays special attention to narratives produced by “railway partisans” currently operating in Russia and Belarus, analyzing how they challenge, through tactic as well as rhetoric, their regimes’ uses of World War II history for state‐building myths. I find that antiwar activists claim that sabotage, vandalism, and other forms of material damage represent continuity—rather than break or rupture—with historic forms of grassroots resistance.