| Summary/Abstract |
The article examines the social movement of ethnic minorities in defence of republican state languages in ethnic regions of the Russian Federation in the context of politics of fear. In particular, the article focuses on how the repressive context shapes this social mobilisation both in offline and online domains. The article offers a detailed description of responsive as well as pre-emptive and visible as well as covert repressions aimed at ethnic activists and explains how these repressive practices change the nature of dissent, pushing it online and thus inadvertently leading to the development of grassroots activism. It also suggests that the repressive turn in Russia started long before the poisoning of Aleksei Naval’nyi in August 2020.
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