Performing Resistance: Liminality, Infrapolitics, and Spatial Contestation in Contemporary Russia

This article explores protest tactics in Russian cities, stressing the liminality of spatial contestation practices. In this authoritarian context, spatial contestation typically has a liminal character, where citizens employ strategic ambiguity of their actions vis‐á‐vis (a) legal regulations, (b) official discourse, and (c) transcripts of legitimate behaviour. Showing how urbanites develop creative and subversive infrapolitical forms of resistance, the article contributes an analysis of the ways in which public space in the city can be appropriated from below, temporary protest communities formed and active citizenship claimed under non‐democratic regime conditions.