by Maria LakhinaJanuary 17, 2025
Check out Maria's first post, "Small Actions against an Angry Machine: Russian Anti-war Resistance Today", in a mini-series for REACT Research-in-Action, powered by ActionAid Denmark.
When I was 7, my mother took me to the polling station when she voted in the 2004 presidential elections. I asked her whom she wanted to vote for, and she said, “it really doesn’t matter, my vote doesn’t change anything”. I was confused about why we had come to this voting booth in the first place. But that was the general attitude toward politics and democracy in the place where I grew up.
Everything was happening in Moscow—3,753 kilometers away from my home—in practically another world. I used to see Putin as a character in a very long and extremely boring TV show that my parents would turn on instead of my favorite cartoons or teenage dramas.
What can I do about this?
However, the generally calm 2000s turned into early 2010s with the first anti-election fraud and anti-corruption rallies. The TV show called “the news” was getting more interesting. Yet, we remained mere viewers and spectators, never participants. Moscow was still very far away.
For me everything changed in 2013 with the introduction of the law against “LGBT propaganda among children”. As a minor who struggled with coming to terms with her own sexuality, I suddenly felt the real personal implications of political decisions I had no power to influence. “Oh no,” I thought, “what can I do about this?” Back then, as it turned out, nothing—except get in trouble at school for arguing with a teacher on the topic.
Russian society was (and still is) extremely scattered, spread out across a huge territory, and divided by different socio-economic statuses, generational gaps and cultural differences. This division could be felt in every kind of community: in schools, workplaces and even within families. Propaganda that painted any dissent or even dissatisfaction with the government as a marginalized position deepened those schisms, creating a sense of loneliness and doubt. It’s an extremely effective strategy that continues to benefit those in power to this day.
Finding my people
In a situation like this, it takes extraordinary courage and confidence to become an activist on your own and to start to speaking out about the issues you care about. I did not possess those qualities, and neither did the vast majority of people who shared my views, which is totally normal. We needed to see that there were other like-minded people and that we needed a community. Later, I was lucky enough to find such a community and become a part of it.
In 2015, I moved to Saint Petersburg to study, and the following May, I participated in my first-ever action—walking as part of the pro-LGBTQ+ rights column in the big May Day march, together with my friends from uni. I was finally building a sense of political participation—something I was deprived of my whole life. And it was not enough.
I joined the Youth Democratic Movement Vesna in April of 2017, following one of the first rallies of Alexei Navalny’s presidential campaign. Being among my peers seemed like the best way to satisfy my ambition for participation—and I was right.
Finding my voice
Later, everything snowballed—the rallies, street performances, new friendships, debates... and the first arrests. Nothing beats the euphoria when the voiceless find their voice for the first time. Our activism back then was a bit chaotic—we were trying to address every issue, whether local, federal or international. We were trying to react to every event and to be as loud as possible, despite being just a group of students and young people in a society where “young” often means “inexperienced” and “stupid”.
As the years passed, the regime grew stronger and the stakes increased exponentially. If in the beginning the main emotion that drove my activism was hope, five years later it was fear and rage. The full-scale invasion of Ukraine began just as I was at the peak of emotional burnout and contemplating taking a break to focus on my studies. I never got the chance.
In the first full weeks of the full-scale war, so much was happening in my personal life: I was arrested at a rally, questioned by an “anti-extremism” officer who threatened my whole family, lost my grandmother to Covid while I was still in detention, and had to leave the country immediately after being released from the detention center. But you become desensitized to your own fear and pain when all you see, feel and read about is fear and pain. Personal tragedies began to feel like mere nuances compared to the immense tragedy unfolding around me. It wasn’t a healthy way to cope, but it was effective.
A sense of belonging
I had to adjust to a new life in the country of Georgia while helping my colleagues to get out, and together we searched for ways to work from exile. We had to rethink our approach to activism. Almost three years later, after facing all the challenges imposed on us by the Russian government, I don’t think we’ve fully succeeded yet.
My journey to where I am now—an activist in exile, a wanted “extremist” and part of something greater, started in confusion and isolation but has led to a strong sense of belonging and responsibility. We still have a long way to go in laying the foundation for democracy in Russia, but at least we have started—and I am living proof of that.
Maria Lakhina is a Russian pro-democracy and anti-war activist. She has participated in Youth Democratic Movement Vesna since 2017, and has been one of its coordinators since 2018. She helped organize nonviolent actions all around Russia in the first months of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Now from exile, her movement works on getting the anti-war and anti-Putin voices from inside the country heard.
Read More