The Co-optation of Dissent in Hybrid States: Post-Soviet Graffiti in Moscow

Introduction

In 2014, street artist Stew Lus painted a legendary Russian phoenix rising from its ashes, a symbolic reference not lost on Muscovite passersby. ¹ Shown in Figure 1, the phoenix is painted in the socialist realist style prevalent in the Soviet Union, with a long neck that cranes diagonally toward the upper, right-hand corner of the six-story building’s façade. Its head is enveloped in a white halo of light, as were the folkloric icons of centuries before. Joining scores of patriotic murals dotting the city since President Vladimir Putin’s, 2012 election, Stew Lus’ artwork was paid for, and approved by, the Russian government. ²

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Figure 1.

Russian firebird rising from its ashes.

An authoritarian leader is an expert at controlling the public sphere (Habermas, 2006). Generally, this manifests through the elimination of activists from positions of power and the censorship of contentious and oppositional content in traditional media outlets. However, public control also refers to the physical regulation of public spaces, such as city squares and online fora, places traditionally reserved for free expression (Lefebvre, 1970, p. 19). Indeed, it is in the streets that citizens observe and join demonstrations, and on discussion boards and blogs that frank political sentiment can be shared. Autocrats are keenly aware of this fact and closely monitor or dismantle the political discourse cultivated in these informal gathering spaces by sending the police, military, or state intelligence forces to secure its boundaries and content (Lefebvre, 1970, p. 70; Gerschewski, 2013, p. 21).

Hybrid regimes, or states that adopt democratic institutions for autocratic ends and meet a minimum level of electoral competition (Diamond, 2002, p. 23; Levitsky and Way, 2002, p. 54), are subject to increased accountability and concerned with legitimacy. As such, for a hybrid leader, optics matter. To eliminate challengers and demonstrate a façade of political pluralism without resorting to repressive methods that may backfire, hybrid leaders have an expanded toolkit for the nuanced management of dissent. This toolkit includes co-optation, defined as a form of cooperation, in which the incumbent gives insider status or political benefits to a regime outsider in exchange for their loyalty. A leader that can co-opt, rather than repress discontent may avoid the high costs of asset destruction, reactionary violence, and international sanction (Acemoglu & Robinson, 2006, p. 29). ¹⁶ This avenue of dissent management can operate as a pressure valve: by permitting a curated version of political expression within a controlled environment, the state can reinforce the legitimacy of the ruling elite while placating—albeit temporarily—some dissenters.

The scholarship theorizing hybrid and authoritarian dissent management within the discipline of political science is robust and growing. And while many studies apply elegant formal models and research designs to the study of this topic, much of the extant empirical literature on dissent management emphasizes the management of social groups and civil society (Fu, 2018; Koesel, 2014; Teets, 2014) or regards dissent management within the context of elections (Cheeseman, 2018; Gandhi, 2008; Pepinsky, 2014; Schedler, 2002; Schmotz, 2015). This body of scholarship effectively debates the question of why particular hybrid leaders co-opt; however, the opaque nature of data on authoritarian and hybrid states make showing how these incumbents have co-opted individuals with social influence over time difficult (Malesky & Schuler, 2010, p. 482). ³

This article addresses that gap by presenting empirical evidence of co-optation in the case of Russia as it consolidates its power domestically in the 21st century. An archetype of a hybrid regime during the period in question, Russia is an excellent case for the study of dissent management. As such, the Russian capital demonstrates the control of public opinion by subtler instruments than mere repression. I argue that co-optation is utilized uniquely by a regime concerned with accountability and legitimacy, as this tool allows an incumbent to eliminate challengers and reinforce control without resorting to repressive methods that may backfire. Co-optation is useful if it can dispose of dissent while demonstrating a façade of political pluralism and helping to curate the state’s public image.

This turn to co-optation is particularly remarkable during the years between the 2012 and 2018 elections. These years mark a period of global unrest and the worsening of United States–Russia relations in the aftermath of the failed diplomatic “reset” initiated in 2009. At this time, Russian domestic policy was impacted by the cascading Arab Spring protests, which began in 2011, the conflict in East Ukraine and the 2014 annexation of Crimea that divided public opinion domestically, and Russian involvement in the ongoing Syrian Civil War that strained its struggling and sanctioned economy (McFaul, 2018). In light of these international events and domestic pressures—particularly, the mass demonstrations of 2011 and 2012 and the devalued ruble—President Putin’s administration promoted unity and consolidated power through campaigns of conservatism, patriotism, and nationalism (Putin, 2012).

For these reasons, 2012 and 2018 represent the lower and upper thresholds of a within-case comparison. As such, these two election years allow researchers to control for particular variables, such as institutional legacy, gross domestic product (GDP), and the demographic breakdown of society, while tracing continuous change on other variables, such as political behavior, over time. Through process tracing, scholars can develop hypotheses about the source of the uninterrupted change between two points (Bennett & Checkel, 2014, p. 22). For example, this article hypothesizes about how the movement of illegal and critical graffiti from the highly trafficked city center to its outskirts -simultaneous with the flooding of the city center’s public spaces with nationalist and Kremlin-sponsored murals -overlaps with changes in national policy and leadership.

As an anonymous and often illicit art, graffiti has long been used to circumvent state censorship, as individuals and groups use it to express political, social, and religious sentiment on their city’s walls. Not only can graffiti appear anywhere, but it is also accessible to all individuals—both as creators and viewers—regardless of literacy, income, political affiliation, or power. As such, graffiti as a tool, medium, and organizing principle takes on a uniquely effective and subversive role under autocratic and hybrid rule. As it consolidated power between 2012 and 2018, the Putin administration co-opted critical graffiti artists and flooded out those unwilling to cooperate, replacing subversive and anonymous anti-regime graffiti with Kremlin-curated murals, particularly in the city center.

The first election year, 2012, represents the transition from President Medvedev, an alleged modernizer who challenged corruption and reformed Russia’s police forces, to President Putin in his third term as President of the Russian Federation. During the 2012 election, political graffiti was ubiquitous in frequency, caustic in tone, and centrally located. The second election year, 2018, illustrates a post-Crimea, post-Arab Spring Moscow, in which the administration utilizes conservative ideology to control political sentiment and behavior. By the 2018 election, the most visible political graffiti murals, the previously subversive artists that painted them, and the public spaces that exhibited them became almost exclusively state-sponsored.

Based on a decade of fieldwork, data collection, and expert interviews related to political life and public art, I evidence the observable co-optation of dissent via the thematic, spatial, and material shifts that took place between the 2012 and 2018 Russian presidential elections. In particular, I examine the federal and local government’s co-optation of graffiti artists, the content of street art, and the spaces in which free speech has traditionally existed in post-Soviet Moscow. ⁴ This case in Russia provides empirical evidence of a theoretical phenomenon, thereby demonstrating how co-optation can operate. The unique way in which co-optation is implemented under these conditions provides scholarly insights on how a contemporary state harnesses symbols to unify its populace, on the most valued platforms for the dissemination of information, and on 21st century iterations of elite-subordinate conflict mitigation.

This article will be structured as follows: after discussing the history and importance of critical graffiti in Russia, I introduce a data-driven theory of co-optation in contemporary Russia. I argue that President Putin, as a hybrid leader concerned with accountability and legitimacy, must identify alternatives to repression when managing dissent. The co-optation of anti-state communication is one such observable alternative. The tool of co-optation can be used to reinforce control by rewarding shifted loyalties while barring access to dogmatic adversaries. After specifying details of my data collection and analysis methodologies, I provide evidence for my claims.

The History of Political Graffiti in Russia

The following section is the largely untold oral history of political graffiti in Russia, based on my interviews with leading Russian artists between 2009 and 2018. This section is critical for my reader to understand how graffiti has served as an unconstrained mouthpiece for dissent under autocratic conditions since the Soviet 1970s. In a censored state such as the Soviet Union or contemporary Russia, critical voices are generally excluded from the mainstream media. Therefore, graffiti’s greatest value is in its function as an alternative avenue for the unconstrained expression of political discontent. The artists that paint political graffiti threaten existing rules of censorship, as their anonymity permits them to write about themes and actors that their colleagues in traditional media fora cannot write about without negative consequence.

Through daily exposure to political graffiti, the public gains access to the anonymous publications of a city’s “hidden transcript” or information and the exposed opinions of subordinates about elites (Scott, 1985, p. 284). ⁵ And, much like in the case of James Scott’s “hidden transcript,” said elites have generally ignored political graffiti, invalidating it as a product of hooliganism (Scott, 1985, p. 288; Sukhodolsky, 2013), even though scholars argue that this type of political expression “represents the first buds of collective, public protest in repressive states” (Johnston, 2011, p.120). ⁶ This makes the state’s co-optation of this artform and community even more interesting, as it indicates not only a shift in policy but also in awareness of the potential held by this communication platform.

While the history of Russian graffiti likely dates prior to the formation of the 9th-century Rurik Dynasty (when graffiti largely served a labeling or basic advertising function; Bushnell, 1990, p. 113), graffiti by its modern definition—marking on public walls to convey a message—was first recorded in the early 1970s and credited to Soviet football fanatics. By the late 1970s, graffiti turned subversive in the Soviet Union, as it began incorporating anti-war, western rock, and fascism-related slogans.

Graffiti in its contemporary form—bright blasts of multi-colored tags and illegal murals—transmitted from the west during General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev’s infamous period of glasnost’ and perestroika, when the Soviet populace became able to discuss political and social problems in public settings. Most notably, graffiti reached Soviet artists via American hip-hop films like Beat Street (1984; Basket, personal communication, March 9, 2012; Misha Most, personal communication, August 16, 2011). The Soviet Union fell in 1991. By 1995, international companies like Nike and Nescafé began to sponsor Russia’s first graffiti festivals, in which they invited young artists to create promotional materials without compensation (Zimberg, 2012, p. 21). By the early 21st century, the street became cluttered with layers of stenciled advertisements and commercial art, reflecting the wholesale adoption of graffiti by commercial outlets (Ponosov, March 10, 2008; Light Graffiti, August 8, 2011).

From 2000, Presidents Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev increased state capacity in Russia and steered the country toward renewed conservatism (Fish, 2005; Lussier, 2016). While some liberalizing initiatives took place during this period—particularly under Medvedev—authoritarian practices intensified through increased state control over political institutions and the media. Unable to voice their discontent freely in the press, artists began using illicit murals and stencils to talk about controversial political themes, such as the murder of journalist Anna Politkovskaya or jailed opposition leaders. For example, in Figure 2, I show two illegal stencils that lament the country’s freedom of speech and independent courts, and in Figure 3, I show a sticker that contrasts the Strategy-31 opposition meetings—founded in Moscow in 2009—as “good” and Putin’s Edinaya Rossiya party as “very bad.”

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Figure 2.

Stencils reading “I Love Independent Courts” and “I Love the Free Press” poke fun at the state of individual and institutional freedoms in Russia.

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Figure 3.

Sticker comparing the political opposition’s strategy-31 meetings as “good” and Putin’s Edinaya Rossiya party as “very bad.”

When mass discontent spread in the winter of 2011 in response to perceived electoral fraud, street art mirrored its anti-corruption and pro-democratic sentiment. Following the example of Bristol-based Banksy, Muscovite graffiti writers turned to stencils as effective tools to spread slogans with high visibility and wide, repetitive coverage in a minimal amount of time. During the 2012 Presidential election, Moscow’s back alleys and underpasses were saturated with stencils and stickers calling for the end of President Putin and Edinaya Rossiya, his political party (Zimberg, 2012, p. 36). I provide an example of this kind of sticker in Figure 4, which shows the outline of Putin’s face beneath the text “Stop Stealing and Lying!”

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Figure 4.

Sticker reading “stop stealing and lying!” Atop a Photo of Vladimir Putin.

The authorities combated the anti-Putin sentiment of 2012 with pro-state initiatives, demonstrations, and even counter-subversive graffiti. However, the costs of engagement were high, as ever-elusive artists increased their production in high-traffic spaces while simultaneously adopting additional downtown sites for political expression. Following the 2012 Presidential election, the Putin administration pivoted in its approach to the management of political graffiti. Instead of ignoring this platform and its artists, or responding in kind as they had during the 2012 election, the state conceived of a way to harness the talent and public trust possessed by critical artists, while simultaneously shaping its public image.

Starting in March 2013, administrative bodies ranging from the City of Moscow to the Ministry of Culture and the Ministry of the Interior began to host their own graffiti festivals. Built on the corporate model outlined by Nike and Nescafé in the 1990s, state institutions invited artists to apply for the opportunity to paint large, public murals on the government’s dime. ⁷ Surely, cooperation with the authorities in these venues was synonymous with self-censorship, as artists were repeatedly told: “no politics and no porn” (N. Hopp, personal communication, August 7, 2011; I. Ponosov, personal communication, March 10, 2012), while also being guided to paint according to the Kremlin narrative of Russia’s proud Soviet legacy, cultural heroes, and military triumphs. Nevertheless, for those artists willing to abandon their criticisms, co-optation provided both the financial and institutional support necessary to create public art in present-day Russia. For example, cooperation with the state would dissipate the state-funded “buffers” that otherwise threatened the longevity of their creations (Basket, personal communication, March 9, 2012). ⁸ And so, motivated by regular paychecks and the promise of semi-permanence, the previously cloaked artists of the night came out of the shadows to register on the state’s terms (Zuk Club, personal communication, March 3, 2012; Zuk Club, personal communication, January 18, 2017).

In consequence, the public art that was critical, satirical, and anonymous in Moscow of 2012 became curated and pro-Kremlin by the subsequent presidential election in 2018. Co-opted artists were commissioned to leave behind their political opinions to paint large-scale murals in the city’s downtown core. Previously, the themes of their murals may have addressed fraudulent elections or corrupt candidates whereas, after co-optation, their murals would depict Crimean beaches, Russian military heroes, or national, cultural icons. This is the case, for example, with the graffiti crew Zuk Club, which, prior to 2012, painted illegal murals, such as one that critiqued the administration’s instigation in the Russo-Geogian war. Today, Zuk Club is one of the country’s most active graffiti crews, painting frequent murals conspicuously inscribed with the city or state’s logo. Meanwhile, critical artists such as Kirill Kto and Misha Most remain unaffiliated with state institutions and, as such, their work does not appear in downtown public spaces with the same frequency as before this initiative began. As I evidence, subversive artists that refused to be co-opted by the state were flooded out of Moscow’s heavily trafficked spaces and relegated to high-end galleries (Lerner, 2014b; Misha Most, personal communication, November 22, 2018), scholarly outlets (Lerner, 2013; Partizaning, personal communication, March 10, 2012; Ponosov, March 10, 2018), commissioned projects (Basket, personal communication, March 9, 2012), non-arts careers (Lerner, 2014a), or illegal works in the city’s so-called “sleeping” districts.

Theory

Authoritarian leaders seek job security. It may be intuitive that they respond to dissent with a heavy hand, as repression increases the costs of collective action and lowers the risk of overthrow in states with little or no electoral accountability (Wintrobe, 1998, p. 34). Common forms of repression in contemporary authoritarian states include pre-emptive attacks on political opportunity structures (Tilly, 1978, p. 100), economic liberalization motivated to neutralize dissent (Wong, 2006), or the archetypal, lethal crackdown. And while repression is costly and backfires if it radicalizes dissenters, empowers independent security and intelligence forces, or leads citizens to hide their true political sentiment (Wintrobe, 1998, p. 34; Robertson, 2010, p. 12; Way, 2015, p. 15), autocratic leaders continue to lean disproportionately on this dissent management tool.

While fully authoritarian leaders traditionally respond to political dissent with repression, hybrid incumbents retain a somewhat different arsenal of dissent management alternatives. In particular, these leaders demonstrate an increased use of co-optation, defined as a form of cooperation, in which the incumbent gives insider status or political benefits to a regime outsider in exchange for their loyalty. ⁹ Simply put, co-optation comprises the “carrots” of coercion—access to rents, resources, and public services—in a system of “carrots and sticks” (Gel’man, 2015, p. 2). A small but growing cohort of scholars has written on the topic of why hybrid leaders elect to co-opt, rather than repress, dissent: some suggest that the explanation lies in the strength of the opposition and their ability to mobilize (Gandhi, 2008; Gel’man, 2015; Schmotz, 2015), others look to the characteristics of the regime and its capacity to control anti-regime sentiment and actors (Brownlee, 2007; Bunce, 1999).

Still others posit that hybrid incumbents co-opt dissent to establish a façade of legitimacy and therefore to invest in their own durability (Gerschewski, 2013; Wedeen, 2009, p. 22; Robertson, 2010, p. 4). Indeed, hybrid leaders have been shown to “manage information flows” in the media to project desired narratives (Schatz, 2009, p. 207) and to “co-opt religious institutions (and leaders) as well as incorporate religious symbols, titles, and rituals into the regime to enhance their base of support and legitimize their position” (Koesel, 2014, p. 3). By permitting curated political mobilization and dissent, a hybrid leader loosens a metaphorical pressure valve, which in turn provides critical citizens with some outlets for political activism and prevents the private buildup of political discontent that could later emerge in a volatile manner (Teets, 2014; Wedeen, 2009). One recent study builds upon this notion of “loosening the pressure valve” in its finding that when autocrats permit protest unexpectedly, reported citizen trust toward said regime increases (Frye & Borisova, 2019, p. 820).

Regardless of why some autocrats co-opt, the consequences of co-optation are many: it limits the free expression and political engagement permitted to individuals, controls public spaces, motivates individuals to shift allegiances, and manipulates the dissemination of information (Guriev & Treisman, 2015; King, Pan, & Roberts, 2013). Furthermore, co-optation illustrates a viable alternative to repression, serving to neutralize dissent in a largely non-violent manner. By demonstrating control without wielding violence, an incumbent can also curate a preferred public narrative about their administration that signals state capacity, the toleration of limited pluralism, and increased legitimacy. In turn, greater legitimacy provides the incumbent and their party not only the appearance of strength and resourcefulness but also greater bargaining power (Acemoglu & Robinson, 2006; Simpser, 2013).

As a nation that uses democratic institutions for autocratic means, post-Soviet Russia is an exemplar of hybridity and therefore can provide generalizable insights for understanding the co-optation of dissent in other hybrid states. While opposition candidates are theoretically free to run in the regular elections held at local, regional, and federal levels, the “rules of the game” generally prevent them from making it to election day, let alone winning said elections. In Russia since 2000, President Putin has curated the country’s presidential candidate lists. The same is true of state–society relations in this typical hybrid regime, where single-issue or apolitical social movements (advocacy for bike lanes within the Ring Road or human rights protections for citizens with disabilities) generally outlast intersectional or explicitly political movements (advocacy for the environment or gay rights, for example; Gamson, 1990; Partizaning, personal communication, March 10, 2012). ¹⁰

Regarding Russia’s political graffiti, co-optation operates between the state and its regional vestiges on one end and previously critical artists on the other. ¹¹ In Supplementary Appendix 1, I illustrate exactly how mural sponsorship is attributed to formal political bodies, including institutions designed by the Kremlin to reframe political history in a way that helps to unify the Russian state in the present. State security entities are not actors in this process; ¹² this absence of security services indicates that co-optation cannot be used as a synonym for “soft” repression—such as the infringement of civil liberties via quasi-legal disruptions—as there is no punishment to the artists for their refusal to participate. Later in this section, I expand upon the professional trajectories of artists that refuse to be co-opted, including how the state has responded to their rejection. However, it is first necessary to discuss the political artist more generally: who are they and what costs and benefits are involved in co-optation?

While street artists are informal members, and even leaders, of underground groups, each maintains independent freedom over his or her creative and professional trajectory. Therefore, in this theoretical framework, I focus on the co-optation of the individual, rather than of civil society groups. ¹³ Namely, the young, risk-averse people who engage in tactical “hit and run” protests, in which they place symbolic renderings in symbolic places at midnight, to involve the public while circumventing the police (Johnston, 2011, pp. 120-121). It is these politically engaged writers who were once vocal opponents of the Putin administration now have the option of painting on behalf of the state.

From the artist’s perspective, the trade-off is simple: paint on Kremlin-approved themes (thereby forgoing artistic license) in exchange for remuneration and durability. The state incentivizes potential artists through two explicit offerings: money and unbuffed visibility. The state makes these benefits explicit to graffiti artists through the institution of the graffiti festival, as each competition and so-called “biennale” publicizes its requirements and inducements as the rules of participation and eligibility, which are publicly available through each festival’s website and social media accounts. Indeed, these sponsored competitions are the avenue through which artists reach the state’s payroll in exchange for creating Kremlin-curated content (Misha Most, personal communication, December 28, 2013; Ponosov, personal communication, March 10, 2012).

Secondary benefits to the writer are in reputation and security, as the co-opted gain some power and protection through their relationship with the state. Artists gain reputational benefits—as many state ego-driven motivations for their work—by placing a complicated piece in the “best” spot, where the highest number of passersby will engage with it, or where it will generate media attention for circumventing the police (e.g., near the Kremlin), or where it is inaccessible to state-contracted buffers who are responsible for erasing these temporary public works. By permitting the state to act as a patron, these artists gain a relative guarantee that their work will be centrally placed and will outlast otherwise illegal pieces.

The question of whether painting for the state is beneficial or detrimental to one’s reputation is of frequent debate. For example, Basket—a founder of the Soviet street art scene amid Gorbachev’s reforms—said,

There are many people that want to write only for art’s sake but we, too, need money. For the last three or four years, I have only done contracted jobs . . . Nobody looks down on you for it. I can call up any graffiti writing friends and say, “Hey I have twenty bucks if you come paint a wall.” That’s the human component. . . we are a part of a community that grew up together. Everybody needs money. Nobody looks down on you (Basket, personal communication, 2012).

Other artists disagree, stressing the responsibility to engage critically on political matters. For example, Kirill Kto (personal communication, February 17, 2012) suggests that self-censorship is as deleterious as explicit state control:

There is a tacit consent among writers that we have all the tools, and therefore the responsibility, to tell something as it truly is. Still, most continue to write their names, which—to me—only confirms their social lethargy and indifference to political change. To me, name graffiti and loyalty to the existing regime are one and the same. If you are quietly engaged in your own business and do not react in any way to an event in society, then you agree with the current political and social course of your society. The general right to expression in the street on any theme is fiction and voluntarism. You should be reliable for a place, and you should write there impudently.

While Kto may never accept the state as his patron, a large number of artists are willing to be co-opted, thereby gaining a stake in the regime’s survival. After all, an artist willing to paint Swallow’s Nest, a faux castle in Crimea that also appears on commemorative versions of the 100 ruble banknote (Flintoff, 2015), on Moscow’s downtown district signals tacit support or tolerance for the Putin administration and its policies at home and abroad. Compliant artists that paint thematically patriotic works like this signal the legitimacy of Putin as the protector and promoter of Russian national heritage.

Individuals unwilling to paint on behalf of the state are not punished for their rejection. Instead, those that refuse to cooperate lose valuable downtown “real estate” to their co-opted colleagues and can either paint anti-regime sentiment in Moscow’s outer, residential districts or find employment elsewhere, whether in private galleries, academic venues, or abroad. While their works will be physically dwarfed by well-funded, pro-Kremlin murals, and while post hoc buffing will inevitably erase unsanctioned pieces, artists are not prohibited from painting anti-regime pieces downtown (at least, not any more than they were in 2012). Perhaps this also explains why the state frequently outsources to foreign artists, who paint about nationally salient topics without a personal stake in the country’s domestic politics. This turn to non-Russian graffiti writers further serves to exclude those unwilling to cooperate.

In this section, I argued that co-optation is utilized uniquely by the Putin administration—a hybrid regime concerned with accountability and legitimacy—as co-optation allows it to eliminate challengers, demonstrate a façade of political pluralism, and reinforce control without resorting to repressive methods that may backfire. In Moscow, the downtown walls that were covered with direct criticisms of Putin in 2012—with slogans like “Putin, it’s Time to Go,” “Who, If Not Putin?” or opposition-leader Alexei Navalny’s popularized “Edinaya Rossiya Is the Party of Crooks and Thieves”—became saturated with six-story murals about wartime victories, national heroes, and Kremlin-approved cultural icons by 2018. Indeed, the Russian capital serves as a model of how a hybrid state can buy off critical voices with compensation and visibility, thereby guiding them to abandon their criticisms and aid the state in the curation of its public image.

Method

Methodology of Data Collection

With this understanding of what co-optation is and why it might be utilized, this article turns to a case study to illustrate how it can play out in hybrid states. On each of my fieldwork trips under the auspices of Post-Soviet Graffiti—approximately 5 months in Moscow between the years of 2009 and 2018, not including many months in other cities across the country and region during these years—I collected and coded my data systematically by district. Based on early interviews with graffiti artists, academics, and activists, I created a map of Moscow that identified five specific locations: (1) a student district, (2) an artist district, (3) the “end-of-the-line,” or sleeping, district, (4) a downtown district, and (5) “graffiti spot.” This mapping allowed me to more accurately compare and contrast my findings per their location over time. The specific boundaries of each district are color-coded over a map of Moscow in Figure 5 and further outlined in Supplementary Appendix 2 of this article.

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Figure 5.

Color-coded map of Moscow.

Data: Evidence of the Co-optation of Dissent in Moscow

As I show in Figure 6, large-scale and high-production state-sponsored murals emerged around 2014 within the Ring Road, pushing subversive graffiti to the city’s margins. The top two panels of Figure 6, showing the number of observations over time in Moscow’s artist and “end-of-the-line,” or residential, districts, demonstrates the greatest steady increase. The most interesting findings are in the bottom panel, the overall numbers of graffiti downtown. These empirics match the narrative that I share in this article: shortly after the 2012 election, there is a wide-scale policy shift that removes the majority of artists from the downtown space and replaces them with those few artists willing to paint according to a pro-Kremlin narrative.

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Figure 6.

Total number of observations in Moscow, charted by year (2011-2017) and across space in red.

From Figure 6, one also observes that a decrease in overall graffiti downtown from 2012 to 2015 corresponds with an increase in overall graffiti in Moscow’s residential districts, further validating that this practice of co-optation is specifically related to art in the city center. After all, while demonstrations have emerged in the outskirts of Moscow, it is the city’s downtown district—from the Kremlin to Bolotnaya Square and from the State Duma to Pushkinskaya Square—where civil unrest reaches critical mass.

Pushing critical public sentiment out of Moscow’s contentious public spaces results in a depoliticized and sterilized inner city, palatable to both the state and its tourists. Indeed, my fieldwork observations reinforce these empirics, as remaining downtown writers no longer paint to undermine corrupt leaders or dependent judges; instead they create six-story murals that depict Crimean beaches, Great Patriotic War parades, and decorated generals.

I argue that this is largely due to co-optation—whether of the artists, themselves, or of the space and medium using foreign artists—rather than repression. As there is no extra involvement of the security services or additional targeting for uncooperative artists, this is not a case of explicit repression in the same way as the infringement of civil liberties or further state censorship would be. Therefore, these artists are not being deterred by force or through explicit censorship, though they may be reticent to cooperate with the state, depending on how they view free speech and their creative independence. Nevertheless, there were no post-2012 increases in enforcement or amendments to the legal code that targeted uncooperative artists; instead, those who refused to cooperate were excluded from accessing financial benefits and visibility for their work.

Figure 7 helps to clarify Figure 6, as I subsect state-sanctioned (here, legal) from illegal graffiti in the artist, downtown, and residential districts of Moscow. ¹⁴ While observations of illegal, or extra-state, political works spike in the election years of 2011 and 2012 in all three panels, the trend of hosting more illegal than legal works only continues for the top and bottom panels. The middle panel, depicting the downtown district, instead shows more state-sponsored than illegal works, starting in 2015. This increase in curated murals downtown correlates with a sizable increase in illegal works observed in the artist and residential districts of Moscow.

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Figure 7.

While observations of illegal, or extra-state, political works correlate positively with the election years of 2011 and 2012, there is a jump in legal, or state-sponsored, works located downtown, starting in 2015.

Figure 8 further deconstructs this example of co-optation, as it focuses on graffiti-located downtown, organized by status and theme over time. Here, all three panels illustrate an increase in state-sponsored graffiti in this district between the two election years, indicating a clear post-Crimea shift in policy. These data support my fieldwork observations that, by 2015, downtown murals mostly lauded war heroes, celebrated Soviet victories, and broadcasted a collective nostalgia for an era when Russia was unequivocally powerful. The bottom panel in Figure 8 shows a sharp increase in socially themed graffiti downtown in 2011 and 2012, a trend that confirms anecdotal evidence shared by graffiti artist and activist interviewees, in their claims that political change results not from attacking the incumbent, but rather by inspiring the masses to take back control of their communities (Partizaning, personal communication, March 10, 2012).

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Figure 8.

Graffiti in the center of Moscow has been largely state-sponsored since 2015.

When viewed in succession, Figure 6, Figure 7, and Figure 8 tell a story of the changing public space in Moscow. The public sentiment that was once subversive and politically combative moved away from the high-traffic, downtown area. In its place are massive murals, quite literally stamped with state approval, as the artist’s affiliation with governmental institutions is regularly denoted in the corner of each mural. Even if a subversive artist does paint a critical, politically themed piece downtown—a common occurrence, as I show in Figure 8—it is likely to be physically overshadowed by the state’s well-funded and high-quality murals. Finally, in the case where local painters refuse to paint for the state, authorities outsource to foreign artists—for example, Brazilian-born Eduardo Kobra, the artist that painted Soviet cultural icon Maya Plisetskaya on Stoleshnikov Pereulok—thereby further alienating those unwilling to cooperate. A quintessential example of Moscow’s post-2014 state-sponsored murals, I show Kobra’s colorful tribute to Plisetskaya in Figure 9. Murals like Kobra’s result in a more beautiful and aesthetically unified Moscow, meant to inspire national pride and a certain collective memory, but at the cost of democratic speech and free public spaces.

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Figure 9.

Ballerina Maya Plisetskaya.

Analysis and Implications

The top-down control of public spaces—whether through public art initiatives, unpublicized excavations of public squares, or the expansion of state censorship via offerings like “free” public Internet access—serves two purposes simultaneously: beautification and dominance. While the installation of swings in the center of Triumfalnaya Square may increase the quality of life for local families, they also break up a public space that was previously used for political demonstrations. The same can be said of the city’s larger-than-life murals: by occupying the spaces previously home to controversial, political expression, the city has effectively pushed free discourse out of the public eye.

This effort to establish or reinforce state legitimacy by controlling public discourse is nothing new. If the public space, as Habermas (1964) suggests, is the place for the free sharing of ideas, then a central strategy among an autocrat’s menu of manipulation must address the control of information and interactions that take place publicly (p. 114). Not only is it critical that a leader concerned with their own durability control the public sphere, which “gains its legitimacy and strength by means of public participation” (Zimberg, 2012, p. 50), but an exceptionally forward-thinking leader will utilize prominent local leaders to increase public acceptance of said control, at least in early stages when an artist may still be remembered for their independence and subversion. This is precisely what is observable in contemporary Moscow, under its current leadership. Both online and in the streets, Russia post-2012 invites pro-Kremlin bots and previously critical opponents to abandon any discontents and flood public spaces traditionally used for free speech in exchange for state rewards (Sanovich, Stukal, & Tucker, 2018).

These findings lead to two further questions: first, how confident can we be about attribution? Even without a tag, it is relatively straightforward to attribute a work to an artist, based on a piece’s color scheme, style, and placement. This carries implications for the classification of certain artists as co-opted, as it would be plausible that an observer could quantify the output of both co-opted and non-co-opted artists. It is highly unlikely that co-opted artists would continue their illegal, anti-Kremlin work with underground tags, as this would negate their efforts to establish a reputation within the street art community. In this sense, political graffiti is different than Scott’s (1985; 1990) “hidden transcript” because these artists are not pretending to be one thing in the presence of the elite and another thing when communicating to the masses. According to this logic, observers can assess with confidence whether an artist has been fully co-opted or not, according to an artist’s measurable output. Furthermore, based on my interviews, artists are not painting both for the state and subversively through small flaws or intertextual references (as per Wedeen, 2009, p. 3). Artists either paint on behalf of the state or reject co-optation altogether. As a result, two phenomena took place during this period. First, previously critical artists were co-opted to paint pro-Kremlin content—as, for example, Zuk Club, discussed above. Second, those artists unwilling to paint murals that support a state narrative have been replaced by other artists that will, such as in the case of Brazilian artist Kobra, mentioned previously. As aforementioned, the latter category of artists have been almost exclusively from abroad. Thus, artists have been both co-opted and replaced.

The second question that arises regards causality. Do these changes in the streets indicate some kind of causal relationship with the state? Perhaps. By using a within-case comparison, this project controls for a number of variables that could explain variation in dissent management strategies, such as the ethnic divisions of society or historical reliance on repressive measures, thereby allowing scholars to focus on more nuanced political changes that occurred during this time period. Furthermore, infrequent leadership turnover in authoritarian and hybrid states allows scholars to compare subtler variations in political behavior over time. In this case, a possible causal theory proposes that Russia, as it consolidated power after 2012, was still vulnerable to the political change that can follow repression. As such, to stay in power, President Putin needed to not only eliminate challengers but to demonstrate his rule as legitimate. I argue that this is a unique dissent management problem for political leaders of hybrid states. To mitigate this problem, hybrid leaders can utilize co-optation to boost optics of political legitimacy under conditions of increased accountability and when resorting to repressive methods could backfire.

Alternatively, reverse causality would suggest that political murals, and the artists that created them, carry credible threat to the regime in their ability to effectively circumvent censorship (thereby influencing public sentiment or aiding mobilization). As such, a reverse causal theory would propose that when actors, like graffiti artists, are able to circumvent state control, then a hybrid state’s approach to dissent management changes in response to the threat posed. Both causal arguments are beyond the scope of this particular study but present fascinating avenues for future inquiry.

I propose to expand this project to autocratic and hybrid states beyond the Russian Federation. After all, censorship and its circumvention by societal actors extend beyond the borders of the Russian capital; around the globe, elites buy off social leaders and flood public spaces for otherwise free political expression. I have observed the co-optation of critical graffiti artists in other Russian cities, like Vladivostok and Saint Petersburg, as well as abroad in states like Kyrgyzstan and Belarus. ¹⁵ I began to build this dataset in 2009 and add to it annually under the scope of Post-Soviet Graffiti. In due course, I will have the data available to compare Russia and its neighboring states, such as Hungary and Ukraine, not only across space, but also over time. The expansion of this methodology and dataset beyond Russia and the post-Soviet region to other authoritarian and hybrid states would contribute to the validity of this hypothesis and likely add new theories to test.

The consequences of the co-optation of public discourse are many. First, by curating the public space and its main actors, states can more efficiently track the remaining political rhetoric—whether in support of, or against, a state and its leadership. In short, there is less noise to navigate or to censor. Second, hybrid incumbents can also use this technique to foster a façade of political pluralism, both domestically and internationally, to demonstrate insincere compliance with democratic norms (Hyde, 2015, p. 13). Third, hybrid leaders can use co-optation to monitor popular leaders to determine the threat that they pose to the political system or, alternatively, whether they can be groomed to hold larger leadership roles, such as the talented local artists willing to pivot from oppositional sentiment to paint pro-Kremlin murals.

Last, co-opted artists in Russia tend to be the most seasoned, as talent and experience influence their visibility and skill. By co-opting senior artists and pushing those unwilling to be co-opted into galleries or alternative professional ventures, the state creates a discontinuity in mentorship. For example, whereas in the 1990s graffiti artists like Basket organized workshops where senior artists taught novices the best techniques for painting subversive sentiment on a city’s public spaces, limited novices in the contemporary age must turn to YouTube and LiveJournal for self-instruction.

The proliferation of state-sponsored murals downtown, along with the recent bolstering of Moscow’s restaurant and craft beer scene, its re-visioning of public parks, and its subway system overhaul, has surely led to a more attractive, navigable, and picturesque city. Indeed, there is a sort of plausible deniability tied to co-optation as policy; by pushing top-down sentiment via trusted social actors slowly and over the course of several years, the state can distance itself from the act of co-opting and its implications. Therefore, co-optation—one “item” on the “menu of options” relating to hybrid dissent management—lacks a definitive pejorative quality. To co-opt controversial and subversive actors, while a variant on censorship or curation, also means identifying talent, beautifying neighborhoods, and choosing an alternative to violent repression—actions that boost popular support and keep incumbents in power.

Conclusion

It should come as no surprise that hybrid regimes utilize democratic institutions and tools for autocratic means, further blurring the line between democratic and authoritarian states. By adopting—and adapting—the democratic norm of opposition rights, hybrid leaders can build a robust façade of political pluralism. Co-optation is a cost-efficient hybrid tool; by co-opting a medium traditionally controlled by non-state actors, the state not only censors an otherwise unobstructed avenue of public communication but also reclaims trusted social leaders to disseminate top-down, political sentiment for the state’s benefit.

In this article, I argued that optics matter for hybrid leaders concerned with accountability and legitimacy. As such, these leaders must identify alternatives to repression when managing dissent. By co-opting a previously independent medium for communication, its leadership, and spaces for free expression, the state eliminates challengers, curates its public image through trusted social leaders, and reinforces control without resorting to repressive methods that may backfire.

Based on a decade of fieldwork, data collection, and expert interviews related to political life and public art, I evidence the observable co-optation of dissent via the thematic, spatial, and material shifts that took place between the 2012 and 2018 Russian Presidential elections. What was once critical, satirical, and anonymous became curated, pro-Kremlin, and state-sponsored; likewise, the illegal, political art that was small, quickly fashioned, and located downtown made way for vast, state-sponsored murals in the city center. Those political artists that were not co-opted either left the subversive practice for stability and safety or were pushed to the artist and sleeping districts of the city—out of sight for the majority of residents—or out of the country. While this article concerned post-2012 Moscow, the practice of co-opting dissidents and curating public spaces in this low-cost way is a global phenomenon among hybrid states.

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