Rebel Russia: Dissent and Protest from the Tsars to Navalny

by Anna Arutunyan

Overview

Navalny. Lenin. Pugachev. The Russian rebel – in his epic battle against the Leviathan of the Russian state – has enthralled readers and writers for decades. The rebel’s story is almost always a sad one that ends in exile, imprisonment, or martyrdom, leaving but a seed for the future reform of the Leviathan which he or she had taken on.

Why do revolts – from the Decembrist uprising to the Snow Revolution that brought Alexei Navalny to the forefront of contemporary Russian politics – seem to end up failing or producing an even worse form of despotism? In reality, the brave words and deeds of dissidents have shaped the course of Russian history more often than we might think. Through the stories of prominent rebels from the time of Ivan the Terrible to the present day, as well as her own experiences reporting on her country’s decent into authoritarianism, Russian-American journalist Anna Arutunyan explores how the rebel and the Tsar defined each other through a centuries-long dance of dissent and repression. These characters and their lives not only reveal the true nature of the Russian state, they also offer hope for a future Russian democracy.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781509552290
Publisher:	Polity Press
Publication date:	07/29/2025
Pages:	224
Product dimensions:	5.70(w) x 8.60(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Anna Arutunyan is a Russian-American journalist, analyst and author. Born in Moscow, she was raised and educated in the United States before returning to Russia where she covered two decades of Russian politics, first as reporter and editor at The Moscow News, then as an independent journalist writing for USA Today, Foreign Affairs, and other publications around the world. She served as senior Russia analyst for the International Crisis Group before leaving Russia in 2022 and is the author of five books about the country, its politics, society and its wars. She is currently a Global Fellow at the Kennan Institute and lives in England.

Table of Contents

Contents

Preface

1.   The Optimists
2.   The Traitor and the Tsar
3.   The Rebel and the Tsar
4.   The Revolt of the Elites
5.   The Will of the People
6.   The Rebel as Tsar
7.   The Dissidents
8.   The Democrats
9.   The Russian Spring
10.  The Russian Winter

Notes

Editorial Reviews

"An engagingly written and deeply personal book that takes readers on a fascinating journey into dissent and protest over some 500 years of Russian history."
Graeme Gill, Professor Emeritus at the University of Sydney

“Thoughtful if unsettling insights into political opposition in Russia.”
Kirkus Reviews

"The real reason why Russians won’t rise up against Putin"
Edward Lucas, The Times

From the Publisher

2025-05-02
Standing up to oppression.

Arutunyan, author ofHybrid Warriors: Proxies, Freelancers and Moscow’s Struggle for Ukraine, reported for Russia’s oldest English-language weekly, theMoscow News, which regularly criticized the government with little interference—although attacking Vladimir Putin personally was off-limits. Opposition peaked around the disputed 2012 election. Often called the “Snow Revolution,” it featured widespread, largely peaceful demonstrations with only spotty police harassment. Arutunyan emphasizes that, like historical protests, most activists were the educated, liberal elite, a minority who succeeded only in exasperating the existing ruler, who turned against them. Today, reformers not in prison or the grave are in exile. Arutunyan emigrated in 2022. She reviews Russian rulers who have faced opposition over the centuries, including Ivan the Terrible, Catherine the Great, Joseph Stalin, Mikhail Gorbachev, and, of course, Putin. In 1991, when Gorbachev resigned and Boris Yeltsin took over, reformers mistakenly assumed that democracy had won. Despite his rhetoric, Yeltsin looked after his own interests, and since then, the average, patriotic Russian has enjoyed a rising income, thrilled to the 2014 takeover of Crimea, and believes that the 2022 invasion of Ukraine will make Russia great again. Arutunyan rejects the popular notion that Russians are backward, predestined to submit to autocrats—a notion shared by many Russian dissidents, Ukrainian nationalists, and, ironically, Putin himself. Her conclusion is that Russian reformers face the same challenge that advocates of democracy face worldwide: learning to get along with people they dislike. Plenty of nations (the U.S. included) are poor examples, but eventually “liberal opponents to Putin’s regime will have to sit down and have a conversation with the nationalists and the turbo-patriots” to find a common ground.

Thoughtful if unsettling insights into political opposition in Russia.

Kirkus Reviews