Since 1950s, the USA and Europe have been hit by a flash of protests and demonstrations against the government, state policy and social practices existing yet. At that moment several civil - rights, feminist and green or ecologymovements and movements against the Vietnam War and so on were originating in the USA alone. Social movements and political protests set off a new wave of greatresearch interestinprotest behaviortopic. Sociologists tried to develop theories to understand the origin of protest movements to predict their future. For example, the concept of collective behavior (G. LeBon, F. Allport, R. Turner, L. Killian, N. Smelser) explaining the aspects of collective behavior, theresource mobilization theory (J. McCarthy, M. Zald, D. McAdam, A. ObersСЃhall), revealing the importance of having appropriate resources for the emergence of a social movement, as well as the concept of relative deprivation (S. Stouffer, M. Merton, V. Ruinsiman). Theoretical insights of foreign sociologists have become a research base for domestic scientists who considered protest movements in the USA at the first stage (K. G. Myalo, V. V. Bolshakov, E. Ya. Batalov), and started to consider the protests in Russia at the second stage (Yu. A. Levada, A. V. Kinsburskiy, V. V. Safronov and others). It should be noted that political protest is formable, and its forms differ in the manner: nonviolent (public petitions, economic boycott, newspaper and magazine articles, sit - ins and peaceful demonstrations) and violent, which can spiral into property and public facilities destruction, physical abuse to political opponents, stepping into conflict with policeand acts of terrorism, including suicide. For example, the heavy coverage of the self - immolation of Buddhist monks in the Western news outlets in the mid - twentieth century has confirmed this practice as a type of political protest in the mindset of Western societies.
