THE SILENT MIDDLE
Why the lack of mass protest in Russia says more about fear than about loyalty
Dmitry Rudenkin, sociologist and FRF Research Fellow
Why the Absence of Mass Protest in Russia Does Not Prove That Society Has Rallied Around the Authorities
One of the most persistent questions in discussions of contemporary Russia is simple: if many Russians do not support the war, why has there been no mass protest?
At first glance, the answer may seem obvious. If people do not take to the streets or create a visible anti-war movement, they must either support what is happening or, at the very least, have resigned themselves to it.
This logic is emotionally and politically understandable. But as an explanation, it is too simple. It reduces society’s behavior to two options: support for the authorities or resistance to them. In contemporary Russia, that is a false binary.
The absence of mass protest can be explained not only by support, indifference, or consent. One key factor is the environment in which Russians now make political choices: public dissent has become dangerous, while silence has become a rational strategy of self-preservation.
When Silence Becomes Rational
To understand what is happening in Russian society, it is important to take into account how the conditions in which it operates have changed in recent years.
Since February 2022, legal and relatively safe channels for expressing dissent in Russia have been almost entirely dismantled. Street protest carries high risks, and public criticism of the war can bring administrative, criminal, professional, and social consequences.
Repression is also selective and unpredictable. Its deterrent power lies not only in punishment itself, but in the uncertainty around when it will be applied. People often do not know where the line is, or which statement may become dangerous.
Russia has therefore become a place where active loyalty is not always demanded, but even minimal disloyalty can be costly. Such an environment does more than restrict political behavior; it changes how people think about public action.
When loyalty is optional but disloyalty is risky, public behavior is shaped not only by beliefs, but also by fears of possible consequences. People may have their own views, doubts, or disagreements, yet choose not to turn them into public action if the potential cost seems too high.
Between Support and Protest
Prolonged life under these conditions creates the basis for the spread of a particular public posture. This posture can be described as the “silent middle.”
It is “silent” because risk reduction pushes people to avoid openly expressing their political position. It is the “middle” not because it implies moderate views, but because it describes a position between two publicly visible poles: open disagreement with the authorities and active support for the regime.
This position is based not on shared beliefs or political sympathies, but on staying out of sight as a way to stay safe: not standing out, not stating one’s position publicly, and not entering into conflict with the system unless necessary. People with very different views and social positions may gravitate toward it: those who disagree with the authorities, those who depend on employers or the state, residents of small towns, and many others. This suggests that the “silent middle” is not marginal, but a relatively widespread mode of adaptation to current conditions.
This does not mean that support for the authorities or the war is absent from Russian society. Such support exists and must be taken seriously. But if many people are pushed toward this model, the absence of mass protest can no longer be treated as evidence of mass support or deep consolidation around the authorities. It may point not to mass consent, but to the spread of caution and political silence.
The Limits of Visible Consensus
This perspective changes how we understand Russian stability.
The visible cohesion of Russian society around the authorities may be overstated. The current system effectively suppresses public manifestations of dissent, but this should not automatically be interpreted as evidence of deep societal consensus.
This is because the current system shapes behavior less through conviction than through risk. Contemporary Russian society increasingly operates according to the logic of risk minimization: pragmatic calculations often outweigh political convictions, and involvement in politics is shaped primarily by the assessment of possible consequences. As a result, silence becomes one of the dominant behavioral strategies.
But silence produced by risk should not be mistaken for stable loyalty. It is an adaptive strategy shaped by current constraints. If the rules, risks, and available forms of action change, such patterns may change as well.
Nor does this silence necessarily mean apoliticism in the classical sense. Rather, political attitudes are pushed into the private sphere. A latent potential for disagreement may persist in Russian society and, if safe opportunities appear, may turn into visible public activity.
The campaign to nominate Boris Nadezhdin for the Russian presidency offered a glimpse of this dynamic: even a brief and limited opportunity for relatively safe political expression generated visible public engagement from individuals who had previously remained politically inactive.
That is why the key question is not only whether this part of Russian society — whose position currently remains invisible — supports or condemns the authorities. It is just as important to understand under what conditions this invisibility will persist, and under what conditions it may turn into cautious public activity.
The re-emergence of these people in public life could challenge the perceptions of monolithic social support that the regime has constructed, and become one of the factors shaping Russia’s future and the long-term security challenges it poses to Europe.
Why It Matters
The absence of mass protest in Russia reveals a great deal about the current state of society. But it does not prove that society has consolidated around support for the authorities and the war.
Rather, it shows how effectively a system of institutions, incentives, and constraints has accustomed many people to assessing risks and minimizing public activity. In this system, political silence often becomes the safest and most reasonable strategy.
People do not necessarily become convinced supporters of the authorities. They learn to live under conditions where visibility is dangerous and staying out of sight reduces risks.
Their visible silence may conceal very different realities: support, fear, fatigue, calculation, cautious disagreement, or the inability to imagine a safe form of action. Understanding these different motivations is essential for assessing not only Russia’s present, but also how Russian society may respond if political conditions change. This visibility may become one of the factors shaping the future of Russian society, the trajectory of the war, Russia’s policy toward Ukraine, and the long-term security challenges facing Europe.
To understand contemporary Russia, it is therefore important not to reduce this silence to a single meaning.