“Stop the war!”: the paradox of "pressure petitions"

One distinctive feature of the petitions was that 86 per cent originated from specific communities: journalists, psychologists, economists, tour guides, chess players, university staff and students. 

The working class was almost entirely absent, whereas it usually figures prominently in protests over specific local issues.

“There’s a long tradition dating back to the 19th century of the Russian intelligentsia asserting its political views,” Duchâteau explained. “This social class believes it has a right to scrutinize government policies. It’s something you don’t see among workers.”

Such petitions have an impact not because of the number of signers but rather the signers’ influence within their communities.

A few petitions in the early days of the war did cast a wider net. Human-rights activist Lev Ponomarev’s “Stop the War on Ukraine!” petition on Change.org—launched on the day of the invasion—garnered over a million signatures within a week.

In the 16 months after March 4, the situation reversed: 29 of the 32 petitions from this period appealed to the general public, not specific groups.

Signaling shared values

Sauvé and Duchâteau found that the petitions and open letters were not meant to persuade the government but rather to unite ordinary citizens and to signal shared values in a time of moral crisis.

As one study participant put it, “We sign so that people in our country understand they’re not alone. We don’t do it for the regime; we do it for ourselves.”

The lists of signatures also became what the researchers call a “technology of judgment”—a tool for mutual evaluation within professional communities that allows citizens to signal moral stances and identify like-minded peers.

“It made me really happy to see that the researchers we’d worked with all these years turned out to be not only good researchers, but also good people,” said one signer interviewed for the study. 

The petitions served other purposes as well. Shtern’s open letter for scientists and science journalists, which was published in prestigious international journals such as Nature and Science, helped preserve ties with Western institutions that were considering a total boycott of Russian universities.

Likewise, Ponomarev’s massive Change.org initiative served a vital recruitment function, allowing him to stay in touch with supporters for future actions.

The UdeM study challenges a central premise of collective mobilization theory, popularized by political scientist Mancur Olson: rational individuals will not act collectively if they believe their participation cannot change the outcome.

Sauvé and Duchâteau suggest that another form of rationality is at work—one that is relational and independent of any expectation of a response from authorities.

They point out that in authoritarian regimes, “complaint petitions” are often institutionalized and encouraged by the state to placate the public and channel discontent without granting any actual demands.

However, Russia’s wave of petitions in 2022 belonged to a different category: public “pressure petitions” that protest government policies and are suppressed by authoritarian regimes.

The researchers believe this analytic framework could be applied to other authoritarian states such as China, Iran and Türkiye, and even to democracies. But it also raises a dilemma.

“Could documenting dissent be harmful if current trends toward increased surveillance continue?” Duchâteau asked.