A recent study returns to the movement of Soldiers’ Mothers, NGO one of the oldest and most popular in Russia. Although it is little capable of acting in favor of social or political transformations, its functioning invites us to move the classic categories of collective action.
Anna Lebedev’s work on the movement of soldiers’ mothers in Russia must be welcomed on several grounds. Firstly because it is a striking picture, given the problems of military service, the conditions of poverty and inequity in which a large part of Russians are plunged. Then because, based on the analysis of the movement of soldiers’ mothers, it goes against the well-established stereotype of passive, submissive and docile Russians. Finally because, by showing the complexity of the links between the Mothers of Soldiers and the military institution, it does not fall into the media trap of black and white dichotomies between the camp of the good opponents and that of the evil power. Where Anna Lebedev’s thesis is disturbing is when she describes politics and “ social movement » the activity of the Soldiers’ Mothers.
A NGO anchored in deep Russia
The Committee of Soldiers’ Mothers is a NGO Russian ones among the oldest and most popular in Russia, on the one hand because they deal with one of the most painful problems affecting the vast majority of families in Russia: that of military service and the abuses and injustices which most often accompany. On the other hand, because they do not only invoke the supremacy of human rights, an unconvincing and unmotivating argument in today’s Russia, but also the figure of the mother, central in the configurations of daily life as well as in the myth of the Motherland (Rodina-mat’), both in the Soviet and post-Soviet times.
Also this NGO has been the subject of much research, both scientific and journalistic. But Anna Lebedev’s approach stands out in that it starts from those, by the thousands, who addressed the Soldiers’ Mothers by letter, anonymously, personally or collectively to obtain help, to cry out their pain or indignation or still demand reform of the army. And these letters allow him to paint the portrait of the applicants: the majority of women and mothers, people from the regions and the countryside, far from large urban centers and the capital, poor families subsisting on the verge of poverty, often weakened by the absence or carelessness of the father. This is deep Russia, that of the workers and peasants, the disinherited. It is a reflection of an unjust society in which those who have neither the financial means nor the contacts necessary to avoid military service end up in the army.
Despite all their handicaps, these people from deep Russia do not always passively accept their destiny. Anna Lebedev shows how taking the initiative to write a letter outlining a request and pointing out an injustice is already in itself an act of resistance. When following the letter, the applicant(s) initiate legal action on the advice of the Soldiers’ Mothers, when some end up participating for some time in the Mothers’ activity, even in the form of episodic visits, they enter in a dynamic of collective action.
An increase in generality then occurs, in particular through the processing of letters by the Committees of Soldiers’ Mothers (categorization, responses, advice, guide for legal action, intercession with military authorities, generalization of complaints for taking public positions…).
Personal relationships and collective action
We also see how theNGO plays on several registers to obtain satisfaction of its demands in favor of the applicants: far from positioning itself exclusively on the ground of the intransigent opposition, its leaders take care to forge interpersonal relations with representatives of the military authority in order to increase the effectiveness of their action. “ This ability to establish collaborations, some of which are lasting, with military authorities is one of the explanations for the longevity of the Committee of Soldiers’ Mothers, and its survival in the 2000s, which were more difficult for the organization. » (p. 31). Anna Lebedev is fighting to prove that personal relationships are not to be reduced to cronyism, nor to uncivil behavior or conduct contrary to the general interest. And she succeeds in large part, even if she neglects the other side of the problem: when the interpersonal links, between the mothers of soldiers and the military, but also within the group of “ experts ” And “ leaders » of the association, transform into publicly inexpressible connivance and come to obstruct the possibilities of other ways of acting together.
If questioning the classic categories of collective action, notably civic-mindedness and the general interest, is rather salutary and stimulating, reversing the reasoning by making close and intimate links (designed in the spirit of sociology French pragmatics of Laurent Thévenot) the primary basis of the commitment seems a little exaggerated. It is true that pragmatic sociology, used by researchers interested in movements grassroots in Russia, lends itself well to the exploration of Russian society, marked by the influence of personal relationships, everyday life and proximity. But Anna Lebedev goes further and places collective action in the space of personal relationships, loved ones and concern. Although collective action does not necessarily require detachment and individual autonomy, as Anna Lebedev shows, it nevertheless involves coming together to act together, it more simply involves the composition of a certain collective or community. to act together and cannot be reduced to individual action.
But Anna Lebedev considers the act – isolated and individual – of writing a letter to an authority (not clearly identified – the applicants are hesitant about the identity of the recipient: NGOstate authority, subsidiary of the Kremlin, all-powerful mothers…) as a commitment. If it is perhaps a commitment in the sense of the pragmatic sociology of L. Thévenot, it cannot be a commitment to collective action, which would have required showing how, from this first approach, largely individual, the applicant comes to associate himself and be associated with a collective enterprise. But this process of pooling is not analyzed by Anna Lebedev (at most we learn that an applicant became a collaborator of theNGO following the opening of a paid position, an argument that does little in favor of the thesis of a commitment through the logic of the close – see p.113), whose thesis would have benefited from being supported by the observation of interactions between applicants and volunteers of the organization, in order to make visible the mechanisms by which a dynamic of pooling and association is established (or not).
In general when Anna Lebedev criticizes the sociology of social movements with regard to its disinterest in close relationships and its overvaluation of the concepts of civics, awareness of interests or general projects (all aspects ultimately relating to the cognitive) , it misses a vast literature on the subject highlighting the emotional and relational processes accounting for the emergence and development of social movements, as well as the micro-experiences of interactions registered in everyday life which can lead to collective mobilizations.
A little emancipatory concern
The question ofempowerment collective, which is not that of individual autonomy or the breaking of personal bonds of attachment, but that of the acquisition, in the dynamics of mobilization, of a sense of holding a certain power to act collectively on the order of things. However, the activity of the Soldiers’ Mothers keeps the applicants in their situation of “ small » and, if the “ small » are sometimes the subject of knowledge sharing (notably legal) and concern (care) on the part of experts or mothers, they are hardly considered as bearers of a “ to be able to do together “. The Committees of Soldiers’ Mothers have carefully avoided street mobilizations since the little-attended demonstrations they organized against the first war in Chechnya at the end of 2004.
We will therefore conclude by declaring the characterization of the Mothers as soldiers of a social movement improper. It is indeed a NGOmore deeply rooted than many others in Russian society and culture, but not the bearer of a social movement and little capable of acting in favor of social or political transformations (Daucé, 2010). It is a shame that Anna Lebedev’s work, despite all the richness of its analysis, provides grist for the mill of researchers – too numerous, particularly in the field of the former Soviet space – confusing the flowering of NGO and development of social movements and collective mobilizations.