You must register by 5pm on November 11, 2024 in order to attend this event.

Please join the Harriman Institute for a lecture by Olena Nikolayenko. Moderated by Elise Giuliano.

Thousands of Belarusian workers at major state enterprises protested against gross violations of democratic procedures during the 2020 presidential election and the disproportionate use of force against participants in peaceful post-election protests. Using the case of labor mobilization in Belarus, the study examines cross-sector variation in civil resistance. It is hypothesized that the degree of the spatial concentration of employees and a prior record of labor activism in certain industries shapes the choice of the methods of resistance to the regime. Data for this study come from in-depth interviews with Belarusian labor activists and social media. A close analysis of labor mobilization in Belarus contributes to the political science literature by demonstrating diverse ways in which industrial workers might engage in resistance to the authoritarian regime.

Olena Nikolayenko is a Professor of Political Science at Fordham University and a Visiting Scholar at the Harriman Institute at Columbia University. She received her Ph.D. in political science from the University of Toronto and was a post-doctoral fellow at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law before joining Fordham. She also held visiting appointments at the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University, the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies at Princeton University, the Institute for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies at George Washington University, the Project House Europe at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (Germany), the Slavic-Eurasian Research Center at Hokkaido University (Japan), the Institute for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Uppsala University (Sweden), and the Department of Sociology at the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy (Ukraine). Her research interests include comparative democratization, contentious politics, women’s activism, labor, and youth, with a regional focus on Eastern Europe. Her forthcoming book, Invisible Revolutionaries: Women’s Participation in Ukraine’s Euromaidan (Cambridge University Press, 2025), examines women’s engagement in a contemporary revolution.

Image: Rufina Bazlova