“Pomor’e ne Pomoika” : Framing the Protest Campaign against the Landfill Project at Shies Station in Russia’s Arkhangelsk Region

• Main Author: Gorbacheva, Elena
• Other Authors: Hristova, Maria, DeBlasio, Alyssa, Anisimova, Irina, Aleksanteri Institute - Finnish Centre for Russian and East European Studies
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: 2023
• Subjects: 1172 Environmental sciences; waste; Russia; protest; Arkhangelsk; North-Western Russia
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10138/564378

This chapter studies the protest movement against the proposed Shies landfill for Moscow's waste, intended to be built in the Arkhangelsk region of North-Western Russia. The focus of the analysis is on the "Pomor'e ne pomoika" movement, the largest organized protest group that actively mobilized against the landfill. The Shies protest campaign, which began in the summer of 2018, culminated in the eventual cancellation of the construction project and the activists' triumph in 2020. The author employs a qualitative research approach, incorporating fieldwork conducted in Arkhangelsk in October 2019 and online interviews with the coordinators of the movement, to study the tactics employed by the movement coordinators to advocate their cause and bring the issue to the forefront of national and international attention. The data collected through these methods is used to illustrate how the campaign became one of the most significant environmental protests in modern-day Russia. Peer reviewed