Facing the future at a time of crisis : Russian antiwar activism in London

The full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 was met with a rise of antiwar activism carried out by Russians who oppose it across the globe. This thesis is based on a year of fieldwork with three such antiwar organisations that have emerged in London – the Russian Democratic Society, Yurt Community, and Feminist Antiwar Resistance – London. I argue that the full-scale invasion of Ukraine has dislodged the sense of identity and the visions of the future of Russian antiwar activists. The experience of rupture and the witnessing of violence that followed posed challenging questions about the duty they had in relation to the actions of the state with which they disagreed, but which nonetheless spoke and acted in their name. These questions were complicated by the activists’ inability to predict what would happen next. Hopes, plans, and expectations were disrupted by global actors that seemed to be beyond any control ‘from below.’ I examine how, for the members of the organisations I worked with, collective action exercised through organised activism provided an opportunity to express their sense of civic duty and re-establish their relationship with the future, responding to doubt with a commitment to ‘doing what you can’.