Production of the research material

The research material for this book was produced ethnographically. The main materials on which I draw are semi-structured thematic interviews, observations of various feminist events and gatherings, internet and social media materials, and reflection on the research process documented in the field diary. The main research material, and most of the 42 interviews with self-identified feminists and activists functioning on the fringes of the movement, were collected during my stay of over three months in Russia during autumn 2015. Together with the preparatory visits during the previous spring and the follow-up visits in 2016–2018, the fieldwork amounted to a total of four months.

I conducted two preparatory field trips to Moscow and St Petersburg in May and June of 2015 in order to meet some of the first feminists interviewed. Although my preparatory trips armed me with an optimism that quite a lot was happening on the feminist front in Russia, I was still not sure how I would be received by the activists. Thus, when the fieldwork began, I was pleased to not only find out that many feminist events and festivals were organized, but also that most of the people I approached were willing to meet me. Looking back, I think the positive response I received can be explained by the good timing of the material production. Feminism was rising in the cities studied, and activists were thus looking for people with whom to talk to and cooperate. My presence sparked curiosity among many.

The meetings with feminists often took me to certain key locales: particular organizations, cafés and parks. For example, I noted how the activists in Moscow often suggested a certain canteen for our meeting as it was relatively cheap and always had tables available, around which one could sit and exchange ideas for hours without anyone interrupting. Also, a few important allies (universities, crisis centres, and some commercial organizations) supplied activists with spatial resources, sometimes free of charge. Those venues would be places I would visit time and again in order to participate in feminist activities.

Although feminist activism was most certainly about active individuals, I soon developed a sense of feminist collective, since everywhere I went, I was likely to end up meeting some of the same people I had already met several times before. The field notes reveal that, relatively soon, I came to embody knowledge of divisions in the field and groups that did not operate with each other. Although the internal feminist struggles were often highlighted during the interviews, I was also constantly reminded of the simultaneous external struggles the feminists were engaged in. For example, when meeting Russian people who had nothing to do with the movement, some would enquire as to the purpose of my stay in Russia. When I told them about my research, they would start to reflect on the theme of feminism, voicing jokingly sentences like ‘beats means he loves’ (b’et, znachit, liubit) – a Russian saying that taps into the mundane nature of gendered violence, revealing how feminism was still considered controversial and represented something extreme for those not engaged with it.

Aside from my excitement due to all the inventive feminist action I witnessed, the field notes also reveal my frequent exhaustion, perhaps speaking to the consuming nature of feminist activism in Russia and how it is flavoured with both deep personal engagement and fierce struggles. Thus, my respect goes to all the activists who tirelessly act and make an effort in these highly consuming settings, and who had the time to meet and share their views with me.

Research interviews

The first interviewees were chosen because I had received their contact details from mutual acquaintances, who were connected to Russian feminist activists or gender researchers. However, I used these contacts in order to settle only the very first meetings, as I soon acquired new names from the feminists I met, and also started to contact activists through the internet. In order to map feminism in Moscow and St Petersburg, I visited feminist social media pages regularly, and was soon able to identify a group of activists whom I considered key in the movement at that moment, based on their active participation and visibility. However, in addition to interviewing activists who were very visible at the time of the fieldwork, I interviewed individuals who were less visible or had only recently become feminists, as I was also curious to learn different and less vocal feminist views. In choosing the final group of interviewees, my aim was also to include activists from different schools of feminism in order to get as diverse a picture of feminism as possible.

Four-fifths of the individuals I approached granted me an interview, either because we had mutual acquaintances or because they were happy to discuss feminism with a feminist colleague. However, some activists never answered my messages, and others responded only to enquire what was in it for them. On these occasions, I told the enquirer that I could not promise any reward or outcome, but that I thought that the theme was important and was curious to know more.

Most interviews were conducted in public cafés, offices and parks. Some activists invited me to their homes which, while conducting the interviews, allowed me a glance into their private lives. The interviewee was always able to decide both the venue and the language of the interview. Most interviews were conducted in Russian, although some were carried out in English. They lasted between one and a half and three hours.

The thematic interviews were built loosely around various themes concerning the informants’ paths to feminism, as well as questions dealing with their activism, its goals, action, politics and the movement, and the overall social situation and attitudes towards feminist issues in the society. However, the question outline changed during the process, as I gradually started to pay more attention to specific themes. This is typical of ethnography. The researcher’s perception of the field and its relations evolves, so the difference between the first and last interviews is often significant (Tolonen and Palmu, 2007: 92).

Most interviews were conducted with one activist at a time, with two exceptions when I interviewed feminist colleagues together because their activism was based on close collaboration. A couple of interviews were conducted via Skype, in cases where the activists had moved away from the country or when I was out of the country myself. Following my fieldwork, the interviews were transcribed. All the feminists interviewed were given pseudonyms.

Observation off- and online

Participation in feminist events, gatherings and unofficial hangouts played a pivotal role in construing an overall perception of the feminist movement in the two cities studied. Indeed, as Huttunen (2010: 43) suggests, different materials, in this case the observations and interviews, allow the phenomenon to be observed from different angles, exposing its nuances and shades, and adding to an understanding of the complex whole. Observation also often helps to reveal, better than interviews, the actual norms and behaviour connected with a certain phenomenon (Grönfors, 2010: 157). Indeed, it is often beneficial for an ethnographer to ‘stumble’ into the norms of the community studied, in order to figure out what those norms are in the first place.

The observations I made during the fieldwork and wrote about in my field diary also enabled me to locate holes and silences in the research material, referring to things that appeared crucial even if they were not discussed in the interviews.

I took part in all the major feminist events in St Petersburg and Moscow during autumn 2015 and continued to take part in key events in St Petersburg in 2016–2018. Sometimes the field came to me: activist events were organized in Helsinki in 2016–2018, which brought Russian feminists to my hometown to discuss their recent work with local activists.

I felt that returning to the field while already writing and analysing the material was fruitful, especially as I was doing research on a movement that seemed to be continuously evolving, although some issues and struggles remained unchanged despite the passage of time.

Following the intensive fieldwork conducted in 2015, online observations and virtual ethnography became the focus of my work. This seemed natural, as the majority of feminist actions were documented on feminist and social media sites. Indeed, the analysis also draws on feminist actions that I was only able to observe online, since some had taken place before my actual fieldwork, or after it had finished. Thus, I accessed some of the materials analysed in this study only through internet documentation. Using materials published on social media raises issues to be aware of, as videos and photography are ‘produced’ rather than ‘reality’ as such, and should thus be viewed as products in which some issues are highlighted while others are intentionally left out. With this in mind, I nevertheless consider that use of social media materials immensely enriched the overall research material.

Analysing the material

The material for this book has been analysed by thematic close reading. Thematic analysis refers to looking for the typical and common in the research material. It thus often entails both the themes originally chosen for the interview, and new themes arising from them (Hirsjärvi and Hurme, 2000: 173). However, looking at exceptions in the material is often as fruitful as examining the typical when the two are conducted in dialogue (Hirsjärvi and Hurme, 2000).

Furthermore, my mind started to organize the material during the fieldwork in the form of key thematic threads. For example, the themes of resources and space both came to me during unofficial mingling and haunted my mind afterwards, as if insisting on being investigated further. Random phrases used by individual festival guests or feminists also sparked my curiosity and further functioned as analytical leads. For example, a woman at a feminist festival referred to feminism as ‘a shelter’, a term I decided to examine further. This called for both metaphorical and spatial analysis, with which I was already thinking of engaging. This is just one example, although a very vivid one, as it was based on a transitory moment of worry aired by the woman in front of a festival crowd. Many of the themes were inspired by ethnographic observation in dialogue with theoretical insights. They appeared either because they were repeated, or because they seemed to capture something I had not yet been able to verbalize. However, having been grasped, they started to further open up and speak to the material from a new angle (Huttunen, 2010: 59).

In order to analyse the activists’ processes of meaning making, in some chapters I engage in narrative analysis, as it offers useful tools especially when tracing how activists explain themselves and the social world around them. Narratives can be analysed as a way to construe a coherent sense of the self. In narrating ourselves, we also actively engage in narrative world-making and navigate different contemporary narrative cultures (Meretoja, 2014: 216). Thus, the act of narration can be seen as a way to assemble various memories, experiences, interpretations and episodes in order to ‘make the self up’ and creatively produce it with the help of various raw materials (Lawler, 2008: 11). However, culture and context also limit the narratives and identities on offer, so the self is always narratively assembled from the cultural ingredients available (Swidler, 1986; Somers, 1994). Furthermore, even when focusing on narrating the self, narratives are profoundly relational, as they position the self as part of a social world and relations (Somers, 1994; Lawler, 2008: 19). Indeed, the self is construed in dialogic relationship with ‘significant others’ (Meretoja, 2014: 19).

As a movement is something that constantly moves (Eyerman and Jamison, 1991), it was also important to reflect on analytical approaches that allow constant flux. It is highly challenging and yet necessary to analyse a movement without freezing it and its agents. I chose some of my analytical lenses with this constant movement in mind; for example, the spatial and relational analytical approach enabled me to highlight (or at least not to forget) the constant flux. Space as an analytic concept, I suggest, is something that not only allows acknowledgement of constant movement, but also allows analytical attention to be paid to relations between individuals and groups in and across space. Furthermore, the spatial approach enables analysis of the unspoken, that is, practices which are traced through observation. Spatial analysis may also help reveal silences in the interview material (Skeggs, 2001; Davis, 2014), and with this in mind, I sought to interrogate space in tandem with an awareness of issues that might have not been mentioned verbally. One example of these kinds of tacit aspects is the therapeutic role afforded to feminism through action rather than direct articulation.

In the research material, feminism was often articulated through spatial metaphors. As Lakoff and Johnson (2003: 160) point out, metaphors are ‘vehicles for understanding, and play a key role in the construction of social and political reality’. They are thus not simply matters of language, but in fact, take part in constituting the world. Indeed, the power of metaphors lies in how they help us create social realities, and they may serve as ‘guides for future action’ and even become ‘self-fulfilling prophecies’ (Lakoff and Johnson, 2003: 157). Following the lead of key metaphors used by interviewees may produce new interpretations of the world, as metaphors function as lenses that reveal some aspects of the social world, while possibly hiding others (Lakoff and Johnson, 2003: 157). Indeed, metaphors of feminism, such as understanding feminism as a lens or as a shelter should not only be analysed in relation to the power they resist, but also in relation to each other. Whereas some metaphors may suggest mutual coherence, others may conflict with each other. While a metaphor may be true for some, it may not be true for others, and while many metaphors seem to suggest similar kinds of interpretations of the world, some clash and are the opposite to each other, as social issues and interpretations are continuously negotiated (Lakoff and Johnson, 2003). Thus, while I consider, for example, the shelter metaphor attached to feminism as pivotal for understanding some practices of feminism, I do not claim that all feminists agree with this metaphor.

Furthermore, the analysis of this study was thoroughly informed by feminist epistemology. This means, among other things, that my analytical aim was to engage with feminist critique of how we often make sense of the world by construing binaries. I thus sought to engage in dismantling binaries and dichotomies, and to include their co-existence and ambivalence in the analysis, even when the binaries were presented as solid in the interviews. As is so often the case, dichotomies are ultimately blurry in everyday life. Finally, as the analysis was informed by an intersectional approach, attention was paid to simultaneous and overlapping social categories that situated individuals in different and hierarchical ways in social space, targeting analytical curiosity at the intersections of gender, sexuality, class, disability, ethnicity and race. However, since disability, ethnicity and race, apart from the prevailing Whiteness, are largely absent from (or at least not mentioned and thus silent in) the material, I suggest that their absence plays a pivotal role in the social formation of feminist space.

Ethical questions

In order to guarantee the ethical sustainability of this research, I consulted a research ethics specialist about my research plan. Consent to participate in this study was collected from the activists by explaining to them prior to the interview that the material would be used confidentially, and that they had the right not to answer any question they did not feel comfortable answering. When initially contacting the feminists, I had already described the process and aims of the research to them. I never collected names, addresses or other information that might help trace the activists’ identities. Interestingly, though, approximately half of my informants stated that their interviews need not be anonymized since they were keen for publicity rather than anonymity in their activism. Nevertheless, I decided to use pseudonyms. This was because the situation of activists, and especially activists of non-normative gender and sexuality, may be considered particularly vulnerable in contemporary Russia.

In order to protect my interviewees, I have tried to remove all points where an individual activist might be recognized, leaving out key identifiers, and in some cases splitting single activists in the analysis into two so as not to link information about them (hometown, age, form of activism) with other important information which, in combination, might reveal the person’s identity. Nevertheless, I am convinced that even if I were able to make the activists completely anonymous to individuals outside the movement, some activists would still be able (or would at least feel sure that they were able) to recognize some of their fellow feminists, as this is to some degree unavoidable. However, the decision to split activists between various different pseudonyms is, in my view, the best way to protect their identity, while remaining aware that protecting their anonymity from each other may be impossible, especially when talking about specific actions that I have chosen to discuss.

The ethical questions on which I had to reflect most in this study often centred around issues of the activists’ differing forms of vulnerability. Many can be defined as vulnerable subjects in the contemporary political context, both because of their activism and also because of their non-normative identifications and current laws relating to issues of non-normative sexuality. My research questions dealt with the feminist movement and broader Russian society. They also enquired about how my interviewees had become feminists, which sometimes took the research to a very personal level. However, with these vulnerabilities in mind, my most important principle was to portray the feminists as they were, as active agents who were acting in potentially highly challenging conditions, many of them aiming to maximize publicity for their cause. This is how I have chosen to respect those who took risks because of their activism, some of whom were even imprisoned during my work, because the conditions were at times repressive for certain individuals positioned in particular ways.

Finally, conducting virtual ethnography raises further ethical questions. According to Turtiainen and Östman (2013), the peculiarity of doing online ethnography is that in theory many online materials are easy to find, while in reality there are many ethical questions connected with the use of such materials. For example, understandings of public and private vary, as does how the publisher of any internet content might comprehend it. Furthermore, the publishing context and the reason for its existence must be taken into consideration, as these play a key role in evaluating the ethical use of internet materials. Being critical of sources and reflecting on their openness is therefore important in order to recognize where use of particular materials might be problematic. Materials that are freely available are, in principle, available for research use like any other published material. However, if an internet forum requires registration, the publicity is already quite relative (Turtiainen and Östman, 2013: 51–56). In order to guarantee the ethical use of online materials, I only drew on materials that have been published and are thus accessible to all, without requiring registration or permission to enter an online space, and have been targeted at audiences and public dissemination.

Reflections on the research process

As Pietilä has noted (2010), researchers should keep in mind that foreign visitors are not always met with similar honesty to those from one’s own country. Talking to a foreign researcher may put interviewees under pressure to represent their country favourably, and thus sugar-coat their answers, or conversely slander the issues observed (Pietilä, 2010: 415–416). At the same time, it has been pointed out that the ‘culture’ studied need not be connected with nationality alone (Rastas, 2005).

The issue of nationality is interesting in the context of this book. My aim as a feminist researcher was to bring down walls rather than build them up. When entering the field, I believed that feminism could be as uniting an experience as having been born in a certain country or local context. In retrospect, my project of bringing down borders was both successful and unsuccessful. While many of the activists welcomed me, a feminist from Finland, like a colleague, a few feminists, especially some of those whom I met only briefly during feminist events, adopted a more suspicious attitude towards me. For example, a couple of the activists I met analysed the power relations between us, airing the idea that our different nationalities made us unequal and gave me power as someone coming from the ‘West’. This concept does not have entirely positive connotations in recent history in Russia, since some foreign organizations came to Russia in the 1990s with an attitude of ‘teaching locals how to achieve democracy’ in order to ‘instil’ the democratic system in Russia, a project that has for good reason been criticized heavily in retrospect (see, for example, Henderson, 2003; Hemment, 2007). Indeed, this may explain why I was sometimes regarded as powerful simply based on ‘coming from the West’, although at the same time, for some, I may have appeared less powerful, as I came from a smaller neighbouring country and repeatedly stumbled over my Russian. Furthermore, I suggest that the suspicion voiced by some individuals about me accumulating my own resources is instructive in terms of the analysis, as it reveals the central role of resources in the field of feminism and the overall repressive and challenging conditions in which activism is conducted.

In navigating these questions, I came to agree with Nagar (2014: 12), who has suggested that we must complicate the frequently invoked division between ‘inside’ and ‘outside’. Indeed, these kinds of divisions based on who is ‘local’ or an ‘insider’ may be dangerous. This was also a driver in the context of this study. As the analysis in this book suggests, the different feminist groups partially drew from different cultures, and thus regularly also produced other differently positioned local feminists as ‘outsiders’.

My aim as a researcher was to always form non-hierarchical and reciprocal relations with the activists, meaning that while they gave me their time and shared their thoughts, I offered my help if there was something with which I could help them or volunteer to do. Mostly this meant sharing ideas of feminism, and how action around it was proceeding in Finland. Furthermore, I took part in voluntary work, sharing knowledge with the activists or cooperated with them in various ways, took part in organizing events and sometimes helped them to apply for foreign grants in order to make their work more enduring.

However, taking the role of researcher while participating in feminist actions sometimes demanded a balancing act. A key decision I made was not to take sides between the different groups, but rather stay neutral in relation to the feminists’ internal struggles. In the course of the research, and as the field ultimately opened up to me as fragmented and at times conflictual, I realized that my position in relation to feminism and the movement enabled me to take a broader look than would have been possible for someone situated in a very specific realm of the movement. My position thus enabled me to move between different feminist spaces and build an understanding of the movement as a whole. I was interested in understanding the different groups and the activism in which they engaged. It was not my place to make moral judgements, but rather to understand the rationales of the variously situated activists themselves.

The question of navigating the terrain of feminism with unequally distributed resources puzzled me throughout the research process. Whose stories did I want to tell? Ultimately, I chose to bring to the fore individuals who often functioned at the fringes of the movement, as in my view they played a pivotal role with regard to the future of the movement as activists who aimed to go against the grain and break the fragmented nature of the movement. Another key choice was to focus not only on the loudest of activists, but also on those who were less visible and vocal.