How and to what extent do defense actors use publicity in trials of protesters in contemporary Russia? Why do they fight over strategic uses of publicity if “everything is decided in advance”? Drawing on original ethnographic research, this article finds, first, that publicity accompanies legal resistance to politicized prosecutions and is inventively used by the defense. Second, mobilization of publicity creates opportunities for the defense to bargain with and keep the prosecution in check. Third, the relationship between publicity and legal resistance in repressive settings is ambiguous. Some human rights lawyers embrace publicity and others avoid it. I argue that this divergence should be interpreted in relation to lawyers' embeddedness in different professional ecologies. At the same time, lawyers' publicity strategies are altered by the interactional dimension of the trial. The latter manifests itself on two levels: at the micro-level of a courtroom and in the public sphere where different publics engage in debates that interfere with lawyers' defense strategies. This paper has broader implications for the analysis of defensive legal mobilization in dual legal systems beyond the Russian case.

中文翻译：

---

开灯？俄罗斯抗议相关审判中的宣传和防御性法律动员

在当代俄罗斯，国防演员如何以及在多大程度上利用宣传来审判抗议者？如果“一切都是事先决定的”，他们为什么要争夺宣传的战略用途？借鉴原始民族志研究，本文首先发现，宣传伴随着对政治化起诉的法律抵制，并被辩方创造性地利用。其次，宣传动员为辩方创造了与控方讨价还价和制约控方的机会。第三，在镇压环境中公开与法律抵抗之间的关系是模糊的。一些人权律师欣然接受宣传，而另一些则避免宣传。我认为，这种分歧应该根据律师在不同职业生态中的嵌入情况来解释。同时，律师的 宣传策略会因试验的互动维度而改变。后者体现在两个层面：法庭的微观层面和公共领域，不同公众参与的辩论会干扰律师的辩护策略。除了俄罗斯案例之外，本文对双重法律体系中防御性法律动员的分析具有更广泛的意义。