Ksenia, 27, was born in Perm but spent most of her life in Moscow, where she worked at Starbucks for five years and for two years at KFC. She started a campaign to get elected to the State Duma in 2021 as an independent candidate but didn’t collect enough signatures from the voters in her district. After February 24, 2022, the young politician had to flee to Germany, where she worked at an Amazon warehouse.

— What brought you to activism and politics?

— I became radicalized in 2019 during the so-called summer protests. There were also several ongoing high-profile feminist campaigns, which I joined and went to various events, for example, in support of the Khachaturian sisters [three teenagers from Moscow who were tried in court for the murder of their violently abusive father; they were acquitted after a massive support campaign]. In the summer of 2020, the Socialist Feminist Alternative [a wing of the Russian section of the Socialist Alternative] was actively campaigning, for example, against the domestic violence law [that decriminalized domestic violence], against Covid restrictions and their consequences, against the sterilization of women in psychoneurological boarding schools. At the same time there were protests in Belarus, Navalny was poisoned, and much more. Activists of Socialist Alternative approached me at a demonstration dedicated to the 8th of March in 2020. That was how I started joining the activities of my comrades and got myself a company to run away from the cops together.

— Do you identify as a socialist? How do you usually describe your political views?

— I usually say that I am a communist. In Russia, however, this description requires clarification, and so I usually describe myself as a socialist feminist activist, a socialist, or a Trotskyist. This is an accurate characterization, with communism being quite consistent with my political identity.

— In 2021, you ran for the State Duma elections as an independent candidate with the slogan “Putin’s government [must] resign!” How did you come to this decision?

— The Socialist Alternative members decided to nominate me. The Russian section of the Socialist Alternative has always tried to use legal ways of agitation and propaganda, even realizing all the limitations of electoral campaigns. We had a fairly broad election agenda covering many areas, including things like socialist feminism and the minimum wage. The idea was that once I was elected, we would fight together to fulfill these demands. However, we knew very well the reality that we were living in.

— How many voters and volunteers did you manage to attract during that campaign?

— We started receiving messages from people who wanted to help free of charge, for example, collecting signatures and putting up posters. About thirty people participated, a large part of whom were Socialist Alternative and Socialist Feminist Alternative activists. We even had a separate group for minors who helped with posting ads, although we tried to minimize risks, knowing how the laws work in Russia. Many people came to the campaign rallies to talk to voters.

We had two canvassing spots where “cubes” were installed [the “cubes” are a format of pop-up spots for electoral advertising and canvassing, introduced by Alexey Navalny’s campaign for mayor of Moscow in 2013]. One was stolen by the police. I was fined for breaching protesting laws: I was allegedly an organizer of an illegal rally, although it was obviously a pre-election point for collecting signatures for a candidate. The cube was created in accordance with the law; we sent its layouts to the election commission in advance and received approval. The police took me to the station, and while I was there, a second patrol came and took the cube itself. I responded by filing a theft report with the police. Then we commissioned a second cube, with which we constantly moved around the neighborhood and talked to citizens. One day, libertarians came to our cube to discuss economics and Lenin.

— What difficulties did you face during the campaign?

— The police and the far-right, acting in concert, were giving us the most trouble. The lack of budget to pay the signature collectors was also a problem, because people were working in their free time for five to six hours at a time. In addition, it was difficult to convince people that we could win, although in the first weeks of campaigning there were no problems attracting supporters: we campaigned and organized meetings and gathered crowds.

According to the law, a candidate for a district seat needs to present a certain number of signatures from people who live and are registered in the district, in order to get on the ballot. But the difficulty is that many people in Moscow live in rented housing, but are registered in other cities.

It is difficult as a non-professional politician. You can’t fully engage in politics because you have to work a job at the same time to make a living. The only way is to join a strong and independent political movement. At the same time, I was very independent in my campaign: no one was imposing their agenda on me. It meant a lot. It is one thing to set yourself the task of being elected to the State Duma, Moscow City Duma or a municipal council. Quite another thing is running for election as a way to build up a movement.

— What was it like to run as a woman?

— It was interesting. Of course, during the campaign I faced insults on the street. But in general, people responded very well when they saw a female candidate to talk to at the cube. Especially a young female candidate who is 1.58 meters tall. I have very fond memories of the campaign. I gained valuable skills in communicating with my fellow citizens and participating in discussions. For example, we had a debate with Alyona Popova, who was campaigning in the same district, about the approach to fighting for a law against domestic violence.

“The only way is to join a strong and independent political movement”

There was a transphobic incident against one of our activists: a man was gathering a crowd to go fight near one of the cubes, but found no supporters. At some moments we were ready that a physical confrontation could start, but I think this is just the cost of political work in Russia.

— As you were preparing for the election, you also launched the “Fast Food Labor” campaign to protect labor rights at KFC restaurants. Was it somehow connected with your election campaign?

— No, they were different things. “Fast Food Labor” was a spontaneous initiative. I saw what was happening at my workplace and I wasn’t happy with it [Ksenia was working at KFC herself at the time]. The situation with labor rights is difficult in the fast food industry, especially for migrants. They are usually employed through shady intermediate companies; they work overtime, sometimes as many as 170 hours a month, without days off, dying on the job. We tried to build a campaign inside KFC, interacting with managers, workers and restaurant directors. No one was happy with the working conditions, and the three people who stayed on their jobs were employed semi-officially, working without days off, not getting good sleep or nutrition, on small salaries. Unfortunately, a long-term and successful campaign was impossible to maintain at the time.

— Why do you think it failed?

— There were many factors involved. I understand a lot of things better now that I have experience at Amazon. You are severely depressed: the job may be your only way to pay for simple food and a roof over your head, that is, to cover the minimum necessities of life, and you hold on to this job, no matter how bad it is. It is very difficult to fight for your rights from a position where you don’t have any guarantees or a union to join. KFC ran on the labor of workers who were in a position that made it difficult for them to start acting politically. It is always easier to join those who are already fighting for better working conditions — to join a union, for example — than to do something from scratch.

When organizing the KFC campaign, we tried to be aware of the bigger picture: we considered the situation of workers in connection with the problems of Putin’s regime, including xenophobia and migrantophobia. Of course, a lot depends on the way a company operates, and on the approaches it uses in recruiting. Jobs that involve unskilled labor are often a revolving door, and workers burn out quickly. My comrades and I did a video about this — interviews about labor conditions with workers and managers at various fast food restaurants like McDonald’s and Burger King. Their situation is appalling.

— Moscow is about to hold elections to the City Duma. What do you think about electoral and municipal politics during the war?

— It depends on the election campaign and how it is organized. The main goal is to understand what is going on and to attract new supporters. In 2021, we campaigned for the State Duma under the slogans of fighting xenophobia, homophobia, sexism, as well as demanding the resignation of Putin’s government and advocating for the release of political prisoners. Now, after new repressive laws have come into force, it would be suicidal to campaign in the same way. But there are ways to do things differently: just talk to people and express your position to the extent that it is safe for the candidate and the campaigners.

“It is very difficult to fight for your rights from a position where you don’t have any guarantees or a union to join”

I know that there are now in Russia clandestine campaigns of this kind. Candidates, including anti-war candidates, are doing political work by talking to people in different regions of the country, keeping up their efforts to build a movement, to engage in the struggle. That is incredibly important.

— You didn’t manage to get on the ballot in 2021. If you had won then, what would have been the first thing you would have done as a Duma representative?

— I would have used parliament as an opportunity to speak out against the war, for example. But that is exactly the reason why the authorities blocked independent candidates from participating in the Duma elections at that time. The experience of Kshama Sawant [Indian-born American socialist, economist, and computer programmer] feels kindred to me, although there is much to criticize her for. She is a Socialist Alternative activist in the US who was elected a few years ago to the Seattle City Council, which isn’t a legislative authority but still has some powers. For example, during the BLM protests, she let protesters into the City Hall and joined the Occupy Autonomous Zone downtown. She encouraged people to come to the Seattle City Council to fight police brutality not only on the streets, but also from inside the administrative offices.

After Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022 [the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision, which ruled that a woman has the right to terminate a pregnancy], Sawant took it upon herself to make Seattle a sanctuary city: no extradition of doctors or women subject to anti-abortion laws. She used the City Council as a platform, but more importantly, she used her power and resources in institutions, on the streets, and in workplaces to support union, city, and community campaigns.

— In 2021, you were fined 200,000 rubles for picketing in solidarity with the women of Afghanistan. What consequences did you face after trying to run in the elections?

— I don’t think that everything that happened next had to do specifically with the Duma elections, but here’s what happened. In 2021, I went to a demonstration to protest against election fraud. I wasn’t there for a long time, but a police agent caught me on camera. The next morning at 7 in the morning I was dragged out of my house and locked for seven days in a detention center. In the fall of the same year, the Interior Ministry’s Center for Combating Extremism started actively working against Socialist Alternative. I had to deal with the police every week at the time. They would come to my house and raid our meetings. The “Male State” [radical right, anti-feminist group with unofficial ties to Russian authorities] also joined in. For example, one of the activists of SocFemAlternative was assaulted in the street at night by the far right. They have always been targeting the most vulnerable, motivated by transphobia and xenophobia. By the winter of 2022 things calmed down and the attacks stopped, but then the war began, which in turn launched a wave of new attacks on activists. 

— How did you react to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine?

— I quit my job because I thought I needed to focus on politics. I was involved in anti-war activism throughout 2022. Together with comrades, supporters, and other initiatives, I tried to organize a nationwide demonstration on March 6, 2022. A week before that, right-wingers started attacking the apartments of Socialist Alternative activists, painting Z signs on their doors. The rally itself eventually failed as mass detentions spiked and police violence escalated. A week after the rallies, I left the country. In exile, I have been working on texts as well as on communication within our campaign.

— Do you follow Russian politics and the elections now? What has changed?

— The war changed everything. There are now many political prisoners who could participate in election campaigns. There has been a mass emigration of activists. In 2021, we were probing the limits of what was tolerated by the regime. But now there are no limits whatsoever, people being put to prison for very different and often very trivial actions. At that time, I thought I would manage a prison term of two or three years for protesting. Getting eight or nine years, as people do now, is a different thing. The stakes have been greatly raised for those who want to be politically active, to be able to act without censorship. Those who are taking those risks now are true heroes. I may not agree with all of them on political issues, but they make me respectful and proud. You probably have to act covertly in Russia these days; otherwise it might be too dangerous.

—You worked as a sorter for Amazon in Germany. How did that come about?

— After I arrived in Germany, I had to find a job as soon as possible. Those who receive German humanitarian visas, like myself, are usually distributed to small towns across the country to live and learn the language. I opted for residing in Cologne, a large city, which meant I had to refuse the temporary allowance and support myself on my own. Amazon was the only employer that would take me without having skills or knowing German and speaking just a bit of English.

“The war changed everything”

I met many people in similar circumstances at this job: teachers, nurses, chemists. I worked at a sorting facility that redistributes boxes, packages, envelopes, and parcels. Those could be postcards but they also could be refrigerators and washing machines. The task of sorting center workers is to arrange all this by type and size, distribute parcels on conveyors to different parts of the warehouse, sort them into groups and addresses for further dispatch, and unload the trucks. I did that for six months.

— How did this job affect you?

— It is hard physical labor. A coworker of mine from Brazil, who had worked in the warehouse for two years, once told me that during the peak of the holidays and its heavy workload you can choose what is going to hurt you today: your legs, your arms, or your back. So, I would change stations to rest my back, but then my arms or legs would start hurting, and in the end, all of my body hurt.

— What were the general working conditions like?

— First of all, Amazon employs mostly temporary workers. There’s always a huge turnover because people are hired for peak seasons, holidays, and marketing promotions. Few employees work there on a permanent basis. Secondly, Amazon often does not offer permanent employment contracts or hire the workers directly. For example, I was employed through a recruiting firm. According to the labor contract, I was paid 13 euros per hour (just above the minimum wage, which is 12 euros per hour here) by the recruiting firm and one euro per hour by Amazon. The recruiting firm provides vacations, as labor laws are respected in Germany.

Even temporary employers are entitled to medical insurance coverage. However, both the employee and the employer pay 200 euros a month for it. You can also go on sick leave, but once you’ve had too many of those, you can be fired as an inefficient worker, so no one takes sick leave. Vacation is 28 days a year, the work day is eight hours, and the work week is forty. Overtime is paid as well as downtime.

Amazon watches how you work, whether you meet KPIs, and may someday offer a direct and long-term work contract. However, there are no rules or metrics that guarantee you’ll get it. An employee has to work hard and long hours to simply get that chance.

Thirdly, an employment contract made directly with the employer has to be renewed every year, and only after some more time the company may offer an indefinite contract. Only then you are able to officially rent housing, as landlords want to see a permanent contract.

All these circumstances severely limit the worker’s opportunities. Most of the warehouse employees are migrants. For example, before Christmas, there was a huge intake of young women from Indonesia on student visas. Each of them was given a bed in a shared room for 10 people, for which they had 600 euros a month deducted from their salaries.

It seems to me that this situation is very similar to what is happening at Wildberries [major online retail company] in Russia. Everything in the warehouse is strictly regulated, and you are entitled to just one thirty-minute lunch break, during which you have to walk a huge distance from the sorting area to the canteen or the smoking room.

— How did the workers at the sorting center feel about protecting their labor rights and women’s labor rights in particular?

— There are a lot of women working there, mostly with refugee or migration backgrounds. There was, of course, anger and resentment, especially when we had to take evening and night shifts under compulsion. We were constantly talking to each other about how angry we were, discussing the new rules the company was constantly introducing, the poor work of management and logistics. But this dissatisfaction never developed into action. Many are afraid that if they are fired, they will not find another job. Without knowing the language, you can only work in sorting or delivery. I had to take a break from activism while working in the warehouse, because I had to hold onto this job and knew that I’d get fired if I did anything else.

You have to learn to communicate with your coworkers and be acceptive, because everyone there comes from different cultural and religious backgrounds. But everyone works hard and everyone has the same grievances: your back and legs hurt, you hate your work. You bond with your coworkers over these difficulties, and something like class solidarity emerges from it. I made friends with a girl named Farah from Iran who moved to Germany a year and a half ago. I would talk to her. She told me that her departure from Iran was her way to protest against Iran’s policies and to express solidarity with the protest movement in the country in recent years. One day I also had a conversation with a coworker from Pakistan. We talked about the war in Gaza and she shared her worries about Palestine; and I told her about the war in Ukraine, and how people in Russia are being harassed for their views. Even though she wore a headscarf and I have shaved temples, we found a common language.

I had always considered myself working class, but now something else has emerged. The experience of labor solidarity gave me a lot of hope, not only for the political struggle and the movement, but for the workers as a whole and for humanity.

— What was the most important thing you learned in the warehouse about political work and labor?

— If you are a political activist, especially on the left, you need to have experience with workers. When you do activism remotely, you get disconnected from people and their daily concerns. That’s why it is important to have conversations with different people: even if you don’t always agree, you can still find something in common.

“But everyone works hard and everyone has the same grievances: your back and legs hurt, you hate your work”

From this point of view, the most memorable was my interaction with a girl from North Macedonia. At first, she wasn’t particularly sympathetic with Ukraine because her country, as in the case of most warehouse workers, has suffered from NATO and US actions, imperialism and colonialism. When she mentioned that she liked Putin, I told her that he only defends his own interests, those of the elite and the siloviki. She disagreed. But when I told her that the right to abortion was under attack in Russia, that changed something for her. And so, the issue of the right to abortion and the status of women became a common ground from which we were able to start a meaningful conversation.

All of us need more simple conversations of this kind where you don’t get into conflict about all the issues at once. A lot of people live in an information bubble, so we need to pursue the opportunities to communicate.

— Do you plan to return to Russia? And if so, will you be involved in politics?

— I would really like to live in Russia. I would like everyone to have the opportunity to live where they want to live without having to flee. I think that pretty soon there will be a lot of work waiting for us in Russia and everyone will be able to find something they like. In the meantime, we can expand our political experience. In emigration, it is important to join local movements, also because we are responsible for what is happening in our country of residence. Those of us from Russia have a political responsibility to stop the war in Ukraine, but also to support the progressive civil society in the countries we are currently living in, be that participation in demonstrations in Georgia or expressing your opinion on the events in Gaza. Working at Amazon makes you realize that the problem is much broader than Putin’s regime, that there is a whole set of global political and economic problems. So, we need to support existing movements, to organize and self-organize. We need to gain experience that we will eventually be able to apply to Russian politics. We need strength to cope with everything we face in these difficult historical times. I believe that a democratic and socialist revolution can happen in Russia. A political revolution is a good start for the coming changes for the better.

“Those of us from Russia have a political responsibility to stop the war in Ukraine, but also to support the progressive civil society in the countries we are currently living in, be that participation in demonstrations in Georgia or expressing your opinion on the events in Gaza”