Russia’s Online Opposition Communities Before and During the Special Military Operation

The authors mapped two clusters of communities that were most active in supporting the opposition discourse on VK, a Russian social network, in the spring of 2021 and the spring of 2024. This work was driven by the aspiration to reveal the ideological guidelines of opposition-minded netizens and measure the level of their political mobilization. A cross-temporal approach was instrumental in understanding how the historical and political context, including the Ukraine conflict, influenced the willingness and readiness of online communities to generate protests. The authors proposed a mobilization index based on self-organized criticality, a theory which has its origin in natural science. The 2021 cluster included 268 communities and consisted mainly of the liberal opposition, which, at that time, tried to urge its followers to take to the streets. Approximately 13% of the communities demonstrated a high level of mobilization. Over the next two years, the core of this liberal protest infrastructure ceased to exist online. Courts and prosecutors dismantled the majority of mobilized and influential communities. The 2024 cluster, which consisted of 200 communities, emerged as a reflection of the discussion about the strategic goals and tactics of the special military operation (SMO). The liberal segment still existed, though such communities demonstrated a minimal level of mobilization. Russian nationalists dominated the 2024 cluster. Many of their communities (approximately 27%) have mobilized and effectively influenced the opinions, views, and motivation of other users. The SMO has led to a change in the dominant ideas that shape the opposition discourse online. Liberal talking points have lost the initiative, and now that initiative has been seized by nationalist talking points, which are focused on winning the SMO, intensifying military operations, and “eradicating internal enemies” including pro-Western liberals and migrants.