The Case of the DOXA Four: A Year in the School of Political Prisoners

Abstract This paper explores media strategies used by the four former editors of the Russian independent student‐run journal DOXA during their year of pre‐trial domestic confinement between April 2021 and April 2022. This high‐profile case ended only two months after the beginning of Russia’s full‐scale war in Ukraine and the intensification of repressions against the internal political opposition. It also concludes a decade‐long phase in the conflict between the Russian state and its increasingly politicized youth. By maintaining a public presence during their house arrest despite the official prohibition, the DOXA Four entered into a media competition with police: Both groups were trying to reach an audience of Russian youth and shape the public image of oppositional students. While the state strove to intimidate, infantilize, and isolate the young people, the DOXA editors promoted collectivist forms of feeling and imagination to encourage political mobilization. In doing so, they aimed to break with the prevailing culture of ironic aestheticization of state violence and to re‐articulate political aesthetics for its generation.