What happens to authority under duress, when individual and collective habits are severely disrupted and individual interests (including survival) can offset sanctions for disobedience? World War II, and especially the Blockade of Leningrad, challenged Soviet institutions and authority. To what extent did ingrained habits of obedience and discipline (a Soviet “subjectivity”) buttress authority and order, and to what extent did disruption and duress contribute to agency that could potentially undermine authority and order? To explore Soviet power under assault, we investigate variation in authority, obedience, and agency of Leningrad civilians in two contexts in the period leading up to the Blockade: defensive labor and civilian evacuations. For defensive labor (constructing defensive fortifications), civilians were more likely to obey because such work was better aligned with pre-existing habit and routines, did not disrupt private space and relations, and were relatively more subject to state capacity to reward or punish. For civilian evacuations, obedience was more tenuous because the regime had less capacity to reward and punish, because there were no relevant pre-existing routines, and because evacuations disrupted private autonomy, so that civilians’ incentives and regime policies did not align. © Jeffrey K. Hass and Nikita A. Lomagin, 2025.