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Organized by the Johns Hopkins University SAIS Europe Student Government Association

The event will be held in hybrid mode. SAIS Europe students, faculty, and staff are allowed to attend in person in the Auditorium. External guests are welcome to participate by registering for the online webinar using the link below.

Russian societal response to Putin's war with Ukraine is hard to gauge. Anecdotal evidence and livestreams of pro-regime rallies suggests a consolidation around the state and President Putin, while evidence from protest, polling, and everyday resistance suggests growing opposition. How do we interpret these conflicting signals in a closed system? This talk will address the question in the context of Spring 2021 data on protest capacity and the factors that shape action and inaction in the face of the war.

REGINA SMYTH

Regina Smyth is Professor of Political Science at Indiana University. Her primary research interest is in the dynamics of state-society relations in transitional and electoral authoritarian regimes. Smyth has written extensively on political development in the Russian Federation and recently published Elections, Protest, and Authoritarian Regime Stability: Russia 2008–2020 (Cambridge University Press, 2020). Her research, largely based on original data collection and analysis, has been funded by the National Science Foundation, International Research and Exchanges Board, US–Russia Foundation, National Council for Eurasian and East European Research, the National Security Education Program, the Smith Richardson Foundation, and the Russian and East European Center, Ostrom Workshop, Department of Political Science, and College of Arts and Sciences at Indiana University. Smyth teaches graduate and undergraduate classes on comparative politics, protest movements, and Russian politics at Indiana University. She received a PhD from Duke University in 1997.