The so-called Parents' Movement is a Russian conservative grassroots mobilization defending “traditional Russian family values” against Western moral “pollutants.” The primary target is an ongoing legal implementation of the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child, which is conceived of as as an attack on Russian “tradition” and its presumed core, the family, by hostile global agencies and dishonest Russian NGOs and state administrators.
 
The movement considers itself to be an authentic “voice of the people, and in this pursuit the notion of civil society is vital. Rejecting Western conceptions of liberal democracy, activists instead endorse President Putin’s vision of a “patriotic civil society”.
 
Despite their loyalty to Putin’s vision, they criticize many government policies on the assumption that the state administration and other elites are corrupt and infiltrated by “liberal”, Western ideas. Thus they are caught in the dilemma that their attempts to influence the despised political elite also imply the risk of becoming usurped by it.
 
Since the movement’s campaigns to a large extent take place on-line, this study is based on Internet sources as well as interviews with activists. Exploring how concepts such as civil society and civic activism are translated and operationalized into the contemporary Russian sociopolitical context, it contributes to the understanding of contemporary popular nationalisms and how these are shaped by a simultaneous negotiation of local tradition and global discursive flows.
 
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