St. PETERSBURG, Russia—Russians are protesting over everything from garbage disposal to hospital closures, voicing grievances about deteriorating public services as President Vladimir Putin tries to manage an economy beset by falling oil prices and international sanctions.
Over the last year alone, there have been hundreds of mass rallies, flash mobs and other demonstrations, a marked shift from less than a decade ago when publicly challenging authority over social concerns would have been nearly unthinkable for average people.
“There are more protests not by activists, not by political parties, but by just ordinary citizens,” said Anna Ochkina, head of a group that tracks protest movements at Moscow’s Center of Social and Labor Rights.
Oksana Gunker, a 38-year-old homemaker, was angry to realize one of her five children would have to travel an hour to school because of overcrowding at the one in her neighborhood. For years, local authorities that serve her sprawling apartment complex have failed to deliver on promises to build new schools.
On a chilly December morning, Ms. Gunker, who had never protested in her life, brandished a sign in front of the St. Petersburg city government building demanding to know “who is responsible” for her neighborhood’s dearth of schools.
“Many people are talking, scolding the authorities, but what’s this changing?” she said. “We need to act.”
The failure of authorities to improve Russia’s decaying services is largely fueling the frustration. The country’s hospitals are plagued by a shortage of doctors, creating long waiting times, while many health facilities haven’t been renovated since being built during the Soviet era. At least 370 Russia local hospitals and clinics should be demolished, the country’s health minister said last year.
Meanwhile, 80% of Russia schools suffer from unsafe or poorly maintained buildings, according to a survey of 500 schools in 85 regions conducted last year by the All-Russian Popular Front, a coalition of political and civil society established by Mr. Putin.
These social problems, a flagging economy and the state’s increasing authoritarianism have contributed to eroding Mr. Putin’s popularity, according to some local surveys. The Russian Public Opinion Research Center in Moscow found that Mr. Putin’s overall popularity has dropped to 65% from almost 90% in 2015, a year after Moscow seized neighboring Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula.
There has been little tradition of social protests in Russia. During Soviet times, Russians complained through Communist Party committees, trade unions, newspapers and official “complaint books” in stores and government facilities to which managers were required to respond.
According to research by Ms. Ochkina, there were nearly 1,600 protests across Russia in 2016, when she began keeping track, rising to nearly 2,200 in 2018. Through September of this year, there have been 1,444 protests, according to her research.
Analysts say that while public-service protests don’t pose an imminent threat to the Russian president’s rule, social activism could galvanize average Russians with limited experience of protest into broader political activism. Last year saw Russia’s biggest political protests in almost a decade.
Mikhail Matveyev, editor of Activatica, a nonprofit civic activism project, said he believes grass-roots action will become politicized in Russia. People “don’t see any possibility to protect their interests within the system, so they have to try to change the system,” he says.
The Kremlin denies that there has been a rise in social activism. Presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists in November that the Kremlin hadn’t noticed an increase in protests this year.
Earlier this month, Mr. Putin said that “everyone has the right to express their point of view and express their position by all possible available, but legal, means.” Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev warned recently that “unsanctioned mass action could lead to senseless and merciless revolt.”
Russia’s parliament will take up discussion of a draft bill requiring protesters to give more detailed justification for holding a demonstration, a move that could constrict protests.
“The Kremlin and Putin himself are afraid of the protest movements increasing and expanding,” says Valery Solovei, a Moscow-based political analyst. “Putin is afraid of local protests being turned into national protests.”
Activists report pressure from authorities aimed at stifling dissent.
Krasimir Vranski, 38, leads a group called Beautiful Petersburg, which organizes mass rallies for social causes and helps residents file complaints to local government. His group’s membership has swelled from 150 people to 60,000 over the past eight years. The longtime activist wanted to run for governor of St. Petersburg in September but failed to garner the required 155 signatures from municipal deputies to get on the ballot.
He says he was followed by police and security personnel last summer, including by investigators from the local prosecutor’s office, who came to his home almost every other day to check up on him. Articles appeared online attacking his credibility and in June he was detained for two days, the maximum allowed without being charged.
Other activists complain of their social media and email accounts being blocked and of harassment on the street. Some have been physically assaulted.
For Dmitry Povolokin, a turning point came when he saw police manhandling women demonstrating against construction of a 5,000-acre landfill near the village of Shiyes in Russia’s northern Arkhangelsk region. In May, he joined hundreds to oppose the dump, which would receive half a million tons of unsorted waste from the Moscow region every year, but has for now been put on hold.
The 38-year-old businessman says authorities have claimed he is a foreign agent.
“The authorities here think that we are protesting not because we want to defend our land from Moscow’s rubbish, but because [President] Trump pays us,” he said. “All security personnel are being fed that protesters receive money from the West. Of course, no one pays us.”
Marianna Bakan, a St. Petersburg pediatrician who blogs about social issues, has been accused of being “a manipulator, a chameleon and an agent of the [U.S.] State Department” in online publications. The 40-year-old mother said she became the target of a smear campaign after first organizing several dozen neighborhood residents in 2015 to protest the felling of trees in a nearby park to make way for a sports complex.
Today more than 3,300 people have joined the movement to preserve the park, according to an online social media page established in support of the cause. Ms. Bakan has since run unsuccessful bids for a seat on her neighborhood council.
Small victories have emboldened protesters.
In May, local officials scrapped plans to build a church on a park square in Yekaterinburg after hundreds of people demonstrated and Mr. Putin himself urged the sides to compromise.
The Shiyes landfill project was suspended in June following protests and the erection of a tent camp near the construction site. Public hearings are scheduled on the project for next spring.
In a meeting with residents of Ms. Gunker’s neighborhood this month , St. Petersburg’s vice governor, Nikolai Linchenko, promised that a school and kindergarten would be built starting next year. Residents remain skeptical and have continued their single pickets.
“People have simply mastered social protest as an instrument of pressure,” said Ms. Ochkina, the researcher.
Write to Ann M. Simmons at ann.simmons@wsj.com
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