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Two tales of Kushtau Hill movement:
ethnic environmental mobilisation and perceived costs of neopatrimonialism

Snarski Ya.A.,

HSE University, Moscow, Russia, yaroslaw1861@gmail.com

elibrary_id: 1174887 | ORCID: 0000-0002-6769-9472 |

Article received: 2022.04.17. Accepted: 2023.10.20


DOI: 10.17976/jpps/2024.03.11
EDN: BDRLHY

Rubric: Russia today

For citation:

Snarski Ya.A. Two tales of Kushtau Hill movement: ethnic environmental mobilisation and perceived costs of neopatrimonialism. – Polis. Political Studies. 2024. No. 3. P. 162-176. (In Russ.). https://doi.org/10.17976/jpps/2024.03.11. EDN: BDRLHY

The study was supported by a grant from the Russian Science Foundation No. 23-18-00661, https:// rscf.ru/project/23-18-00661/ “Regional and ethnic identities as a factor of grassroots politicization and the formation of environmental culture: cross-regional analysis of value attitudes and behavior strategies”.

Abstract

In recent years the number of environmental protests in Russian regions has been on the rise, despite the shrinking political opportunity structure. In the Bashkortostan republic, the Bashkir Soda Company's (BSC) decision to develop the Kushtau Hill for soda ash provoked an environmental campaign to save the mountain. The Kushtau Hill movement succeeded, despite the highly repressive response from regional government and its tight patrimonial link to the BSC - two conditions identified in the literature as unfavorable to protesters. How is environmental discontent successfully mobilised under a repressive government and embedded extractive practices? Drawing on semi-structured interviews with activists, I trace two interlinked pathways to successful mobilisation. The first one testifies to the role played by national organisations in sustaining environmental collective action. Under a shrinking opportunity structure for formal ENGOs, the Bashkir national organisation “Bashkort” provided the emerging movement with its experience of informal organisation. Its leadership successfully linked ethnic grievances to environmental mobilisation by claiming the Bashkirs' special relation to the mountain. However, ethnic and neighbour ties did not prevent a repressive response from the regional government due to a limited scale of the mobilisation. The second story deals with framing processes that expand the scope of potential supporters beyond particularistic ties. Protesters highlighted the perceived costs of neopatrimonialism to justify their demands. This framing put the republic head as a scapegoat who secured interests of the federal centre and BSC, compromising the residents' ecological well-being. Therefore, Kushtau Hill activists attracted new members, not putting themselves into danger of being perceived as extremists that targeted a regime-dimension.

Keywords

environmental protest, neopatrimonialism, Bashkortostan, environmental mobilisation, national organisations, framing.

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