Everyday Politics in Russia

What do Russians really want? Do they want authoritarianism and are they prepared to go along with a war of conquest and destruction? Or do they want something else? A landmark contribution to the field, Morris is the only social researcher to have carried out fieldwork in Russia since the invasion of Ukraine, engaging with communities in Moscow, regional cities, as well as rural areas to bring perspectives on Russian everyday lives that are now entirely inaccessible to the West. Everyday Politics in Russia uses the lens of micropolitics, defined not as politics in miniature but instead as taking seriously the political content of people's normal lives revealed in their practices, interactions and discussions. Based on decades-long interactions with people from a diverse cross-section of society in Russia - from security service officers to factory workers, from unemployed young men to citizen journalists and activists, this is the most comprehensive insight to date into the complexity of Russian attitudes toward war, their government and the post-1991 political trajectory.

Jeremy Morris is Professor in the Department of Global Studies at Aarhus University, Denmark. He is the author of Varieties of Russian Activism: State-Society Contestation in Everyday Life (2023), Everyday Postsocialism: Working-class Communities in the Russian Margins (2016), and co-editor of New Media in New Eurasia (2015); The Informal Postsocialist Economy: Embedded Practices and Livelihoods (2014), Identity and Nation Building in Everyday Post-Socialist Life (2017). His article entitled 'Beyond Coping? Alternatives to Consumption within Russian Worker Networks', in Ethnography, was shortlisted for the BBC's 'Thinking Allowed' prize for ethnography in 2014.

List of Figures Preface Acknowledgements Note on the Text Introduction: Rethinking the Meaning of the Political in Russia Part I - ABSENT PRESENCES Chapter 1. War and Society Response: Defensive Consolidation Chapter 2. Feeling for an Absent Presence: The Roots of Russian Ressentiment Chapter 3. Absurd Inhabitations: Portraits of Suffering and Striving PART II: LIINES OF CONTROL Chapter 4. Capitalist Realism: Russia's Laboratories of Hopelessness? Chapter 5. Incoherent State: On Co-Producing Governance from Below PART III: LINES OF FLIGHT Chapter 6. Nomads: An Intermezzo on Garages and Other Non-Places Chapter 7. Craft as Politics: From Salvage Economies to Mending the World Chapter 8. 'This Thing We Do': Wartime Entanglement of People in Politics Chapter 9. Peopling the Everyday Politics of Post-Socialism References Index