On Nov. 17, Berlin hosted an anti-war march — one of the largest protests organized by Russians abroad since the war began. Bringing together people with diverse, often conflicting views was a significant achievement, notes journalist and cultural critic Andrei Arkhangelsky. Yet the event also revealed a deeper problem: the outdated demands and slogans that now sound out of place in the new reality of emigration.
As I rode the U-Bahn to the march, I found myself playing a familiar game from my days in Moscow — trying to guess who else in the carriage was heading to the same place, for the same purpose: Potsdamer Platz, 2:00 PM, the meeting point for the anti-war march. Back in Moscow, it was easy to spot fellow protesters — by their conversation, their handmade posters, or even just their facial expressions. In Berlin, it’s not as clear.
Since 2022, I’ve participated in many anti-war rallies and marches as a journalist and speaker. Berlin protests usually draw between 100 and 200 participants, with slightly larger turnouts — around 500 — on significant dates like the anniversary of the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion.
When Navalny died last February, a spontaneous rally outside the Russian embassy on Unter den Linden attracted 1,500 people. Berlin remains the unofficial capital of the new Russian emigration, with thousands of people fleeing there since 2022. Notably, even among the 1990s emigrants — many of whom are considered Putin sympathizers — there are voices opposing his war and his regime.
The recurring question — ”Where is everyone, and why don’t they show up to protests?” — has loomed large over the past three years. The recent march’s modest goal was to at least surpass the symbolic threshold of 1,500 participants, effectively setting a new record.
According to Berlin police, about 2,000 people attended. At its peak, as the procession moved through the city, the crowd may have swelled to 3,000 or even 4,000 participants.
And then comes another eternal Russian question: is this a lot or a little? How should the turnout be evaluated in terms of scale? On one hand, it’s not much, even if it is several times more than usual. I met dozens of people here who came from other German cities — Cologne, Frankfurt, and others. I met Mikhail Fishman, who traveled from Amsterdam. I met Aglaya Asheshova from the Turgenev Library in Paris; she and her colleagues rented a bus that brought 38 people to the Berlin march, including “a few French people.”
At the entrance to the rally, I noticed a group of men and women wearing foil hats shaped like the domes of Orthodox churches. This ironic touch — a nod to those who feared “radiation” in the 1990s but willingly succumbed to Putin’s propaganda in the 2000s — doesn’t diminish the tragic weight of their stories. “We’re from Warsaw. Millions of Ukrainian refugees passed through us in 2022. I literally saw the dead eyes of mothers,” one of the women told me in an interview.
This suggests that the organizers’ call — issued by Yulia Navalnaya, Ilya Yashin, and Vladimir Kara-Murza — to “come from other cities” was successful. People genuinely responded. In this context, it means that participants sacrificed money and personal time to travel, marching through Berlin’s drizzle for two hours to chant, “Down with the Chekist regime.”
Participants sacrificed money and personal time to travel, marching through Berlin’s drizzle for two hours to chant, “Down with the Chekist regime.”
2,000 people may not seem like a lot, but it is important to recognize that this represents a core group — a foundation that could potentially grow, perhaps turning 2,000 into, say, 20,000. A dispute regarding the flag — the march was first announced with the Russian tricolor, provoking rejection and irritation among many potential participants — was resolved on the spot in favor of the dominant white-blue-white banner. These flags, displayed on a slight elevation in the park near Potsdamer Platz, unintentionally evoked associations with historic battles — like Borodino.
In the crowd, I noticed a couple of Russian tricolors as well. Reports suggest these sparked conflict early in the march, with calls to remove them — some of the calls even voiced in Ukrainian. However, the organizers quickly clarified that the color of flags was not a condition for participation. During the procession, the dominant palette remained white-blue-white, accompanied by a significant number of Ukrainian flags.
It is also important to note that everyone gathered here has endured the hardships of emigration over the past two or three years. Apart from celebrities, most people’s lives consist of constant struggles — searching for housing, taking on odd jobs, and navigating endless paperwork for visas and recommendation letters. Despite such challenges, the willingness to set aside two hours — or even an entire day — for civic activity is commendable. Those unable to attend the Berlin march gathered in other cities, including London, Prague, and Warsaw. While attendance was modest in each location, the Nov. 17 protest can still be described as a pan-European action.
The Berlin march feels like a continuation of the last officially sanctioned march in Moscow (August 2019), after which all political protests in Putin’s Russia were effectively banned under the pretext of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Berlin march also carries forward the legacy of the final rallies in St. Petersburg, Novosibirsk, Yekaterinburg, Yaroslavl, and, of course, Khabarovsk in the summer of 2020, some of the most vibrant demonstrations of recent years.
Nearly four years later, the movement has shifted to Berlin, where from an improvised platform, St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly Deputy Maksim Reznik shouted, “Are there any Petersburgers here?” The crowd erupted with joyful shouts of “Yes!” If a similar roll call were conducted by city — ”Who’s from where?” — it would have undoubtedly revealed a cross-section of the anti-Putin community that began forming all across Russia after 2011-2012. Over the following decade, this community developed new practices and ideas, only to be swept away by the war.
The Berlin march feels like a continuation of the last officially sanctioned march in Moscow.
Every person here is a remnant of those marches, rallies, and massive protests of the “Snow Revolution” — a delegate of the unrealized “better” Russia. In a sense, this march serves as a parade of diminished regiments. We should also account for the presence of a small number of Belarusian political exiles, who could similarly trace a dotted line back to their protests of 2020.
Political scientist Kirill Rogov remarked during a conversation, “The state of civil society in Russia today is better than it was in 1985.” Noticing my surprised expression, he elaborated: “Back then, of course, there was energy and an unprecedented sense of freedom — it felt like spring, so to speak. But in terms of structure, habits, or even the concept itself, there was no ‘civil society’ even in 1988-89. Now, even taking 2022 into account, it does exist.”
It has gone underground, fled, or fallen silent — but it has already developed into a new practice, a culture, a way of life. For that reason, it cannot simply be eradicated. It lives on in millions of individual and collective experiences — from participating in elections to fundraising for good, important, and useful causes, as well as in countless other initiatives.
How do we recognize a society, and how does it demonstrate its agency? A critical marker occurs when a society begins to speak about itself. For Russia’s anti-Putin community, we can pinpoint the moment this articulation began a new stage: from the winter of 2011 to the spring of 2012. During that time, an entire cultural phenomenon emerged: hundreds of clever, original, organic protest signs carried at demonstrations. Slogans like “You can’t even imagine us” and “If not Putin, then a cat” originated from that era. A new language arose — playful, self-ironic, and absurdly humorous. We admired this awakened energy of popular creativity. These signs also conveyed a deliberate naïveté and a “belief in a better future,” reflecting the mood of the time.
Today, however, in light of the ongoing catastrophe, that naïveté feels deeply disheartening. Stylistically, those slogans, as publicist Igor Eidman aptly noted, now resemble children attempting to drive away a villain in a kindergarten play: “The children shout, ‘Barmaley, go away!’ — and, embarrassed, he leaves.” For instance, the phrase “Love is stronger than hate,” while inherently true, sounds, to put it mildly, naïve in the context of today’s war.
“Love is stronger than hate,” while inherently true, sounds, to put it mildly, naïve in the context of today’s war.
The same was heard at the Berlin march: “Down with the Chekist regime,” “Putin, skis, Magadan,” “One for all — and all for one,” “Russia will be free,” “No to war,” and so on. The only one missing — due to its complete irrelevance — was “We are the power here!” Each of these slogans still retains its meaning, but that’s not the main point. These words belong to another time — a time when there was still some historical crossroads up ahead, a point where it might have been possible to veer away from the abyss.
After Russian civil society fell into the abyss — and continued to fall for going on three years now — many of the old slogans can only be met with sardonic laughter from the afterlife: “So how’s it going with your power?” Through these old slogans, which were part of the purely formal agenda of the march, new chants began to emerge — “Freedom for political prisoners,” “Putin to The Hague,” and “Withdraw troops from Ukraine.”
For example, it was entirely logical to see placards calling on the German government to send long-range missiles to Ukraine (the issue of long-range weapons, in fact, led to the collapse of the ruling coalition in Germany). Calls for Russian soldiers to desert were also perfectly appropriate to the moment. These are undoubtedly new practices. However, the speeches by Yashin, Kara-Murza, and Navalnaya still adhered to the old “bombastic” style, akin to D'Artagnan.
“We are not afraid, we will not surrender” — those who said this certainly had every moral right to speak of themselves in such terms. But for the others — here, in the capital of Germany, where the peace of the demonstrators is guarded by Berlin’s police force — there was really nothing to fear.
On the eve of the march, Russian troops once again shelled Ukraine, launching a record number of missiles. This could not be ignored. It should have been reflected in the language of the speakers at the rally, at least in the form of a spontaneous human response — empathy, compassion — but it wasn’t. Due to this gap, the speakers seemed somewhat detached from reality. In theory, a new language should have emerged back in 2022, under the pressure of monstrous circumstances — a language that would “take into account” Ukraine and imply a sense of Russian guilt, a need for repentance before Ukraine and the world.
So why is this element still absent? I asked the former head of the Sakharov Center, Sergey Lukashevsky, during the march. He is convinced that “a new language of society” cannot be invented: it can only emerge on its own — as soon as new practices arise. Does this mean new practices have not yet appeared? On the other hand, if the current slogans were able to bring people together, this can be seen as a step towards laying the initial broad foundation for future consolidation.
The current slogans can be seen as a step towards laying the initial broad foundations for future consolidation.
And it fact, the march truly became a point of consolidation, drawing people from a range of political positions, including some radical ones. For example, one person held a sign that read, “I support Ukraine but do not support the participants of this march.” Yet he still joined in. There were also emigrants from the 1990s, now living entirely different lives.
I ran into an acquaintance who, along with her husband — a famous cellist — emigrated from the USSR in 1979. She could have ignored the event, yet she still attended. Ilya Azar, as always, frowned in disapproval — but he, too, walked along with everyone. On the side of the road, I noticed an elderly woman holding a sign that read, “For your freedom and ours” — a slogan from Soviet-era dissidents. Many of those present hadn’t participated in joint actions since 2022.
This march, as Sergey Lukashevsky put it, was a donation from society. People made their first contribution simply by showing up and participating. Now it’s up to the organizers and opposition leaders. Will they be able to make effective use of this donation? That’s the real question, and its answer will determine whether or not enough people gathered in Berlin that day.