Crowding Out Civil Society: State Management of Social Organisations in Putin’s Russia

Abstract

There is considerable debate about the impact of the 2006 NGO Law and related Kremlin policies on social organisations in Russia. This article uses interviews with members of organisations focusing on human rights, women, and youth to assess the effects of these policies on civil society. It finds that groups that are critical of the regime have been systematically pushed out of the public sphere and supplanted by groups that are either neutral to, or in favour of, the regime. This finding has implications for the future development of Russian civil society and demonstrates a way that non-democratic rule has been ‘upgraded’ in Russia.

Notes

¹ This article employs a broad understanding of the concept of civil society. Following the argument advanced by Gilbert and Balzer, this article: ‘focuses on non-commercial voluntary organisations oriented towards public ends that are independent of the state. We also consider an alternative tradition, going back to Hegel and Marx, emphasising the state’s role. State-led civil society may offer a potential short-cut to creating civil society, but it poses a serious danger of co-optation or state domination’ (Gilbert & Balzer 2011, p. 364).

² For additional analysis on this topic, see Gilbert and Balzer (2011).

³ This article focuses on registered non-commercial, non-government, or public organisations.

⁴ Additionally, I conducted ten expert interviews. The specific dates and locations of the interviews are not provided in order to ensure the anonymity of respondents.

⁵ This section draws significantly on material I have previously published on Russian civil society. See Gilbert and Balzer (2011), Gilbert (2009).

⁶ ‘NGO Monitor: Russia’, International Center for Not-for-Profit Law, 2014, available at: http://www.icnl.org/research/monitor/russia.html, accessed 24 January 2015.

⁷ ‘Putin Attacks “Jackal” Opponents’, BBC News, 21 November 2007, available at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7105467.stm, accessed 26 January 2015.

⁸ See http://www.oprf.ru/ru/about/.

⁹ ‘Medvedev Approves Simpler Rules for NGOs’, RIA-Novosti, 20 July 2009.

¹⁰ Fish (1995, pp. 138–39) asserts that Ekaterinburg and Volgograd (as well as the omitted cities Tula and Orel) represent typical Russian provincial cities. In these cities, ethnic Russians are the majority, there are significant cultural and educational institutions, and there is not a history of powerful organised labour movements.

¹¹ In contrast, some youth organisations (particularly the youth wings of opposition parties) are directly connected to the political opposition and therefore critical of the regime. These groups are highly threatening and are viewed as key opponents by the Russian government. For comparability reasons, youth groups that are directly affiliated with political parties are excluded from the analysis. This is because this study focuses on social organisations that are not wings of political parties, but rather are their own stand-alone organisation. Social groups may of course be affiliated with certain political parties, but those considered in my analysis will not be directly associated with Russian political parties.

¹² I conducted all but three of these interviews in Russian. I also conducted all but three interviews face to face. The duration of the interviews ranged from 30 minutes to four hours. Most interviews lasted approximately 90 minutes. Unless otherwise indicated, all translations from the Russian into English are my own. Approximately 56% of interview respondents from youth groups were female and 44% were male; from human rights groups 57% were female and 43% were male; and from women's groups 95% were female and 5% were male.

¹³ The issue areas are membership, media coverage, public events, experience with the NGO Law, and relationship with federal and local public chambers.

¹⁴ As I did not ask respondents specifically about their group’s online exposure, the category ‘media’ is used here in reference to newspapers, radio, and television. At the time of the study, the use of the internet for independent views and social networking was growing in importance, but was not as widely used as it is today. In 2009, the year when I conducted my study, 29% of Russians used the internet. This number increased to 43% in 2010 (‘Percentage of Individuals Using the Internet’, International Telecommunications Union, December 2011, available at: http://www.itu.int/ITU-D/ict/statistics/, accessed 20 June 2012). According to a Pew Research Center survey, 33% of adult respondents in Russia used social media in 2010 but this number grew to 43% in 2011 (Kohut et al. 2011). The internet, and social media in particular, has helped facilitate protests after the 2011 Duma elections (Greene 2013), and future studies of the crowding out hypothesis must include questions about groups’ online presence.

¹⁵ The respondent did, however, mention that public gatherings that consist of standing pickets are generally allowed.

¹⁶ There may be a slight bias when applying this statement to Moscow’s women’s groups. When I began my interviews, I asked an open-ended question about the effects of the NGO Law. It was not until after I interviewed representatives of human rights organisations, and learned about the issues surrounding the audits, that I began to explicitly ask about them.

¹⁷ See ‘Ob Obshchestvennoi Palate Volgogradskoi Oblasti’, Official Website of Legal Information, available at: http://pravo.gov.ru/proxy/ips/?doc_itself=&backlink=1&&nd=143014058&&page=1&rdk=0#I0, accessed 7 October 2016.

¹⁸ See ‘Initsiativa Prezidenta-Ne Ukaz. Sverdlovskaya Duma Otklonila Zakonoproekt O Regional’noi Obshchestvennoi Palate’, Kommersant’, 19 April 2006, available at: http://www.kommersant.ru/doc/667870, accessed 7 October 2016.

¹⁹ See ‘Ob Obrazovanii Obshcestvennoi Palaty Volgograda’, archive of documents of Volgograd Oblast', available at: http://vlg-gov.ru/doc/17973, accessed 7 October 2016.

²⁰ See ‘Obshchestvennaya Palata Ekaterinburga’, City of Ekaterinburg's official website, available at: http://палата.екатеринбург.рф/, accessed 7 October 2016.

²¹ See http://www.nko-ural.ru/?forumnko&item=11, accessed 24 January 2015.

²² While highlighting these patterns, it is important to note that this study does not suggest by extension that the operating environment for NGOs was excellent during the Yel’tsin years. In the 1990s, and especially during the first Chechen War, human rights groups experienced various forms of government pressure. However, the main difference with the situation examined in this article is represented by the systematic nature and scale of this pressure.

²³ Thus, this study also finds support for Sundstrom’s hypothesis about the trajectory of Putin’s reforms. Although Sundstrom’s work mainly detailed the visible differences in the atmosphere for NGOs operating in various Russian cities and regions, she hypothesised that this situation may not continue in the future, as ‘increased central government vigilance in limiting the ability of civil society to question the state suggests that this more homogenous environment will also be less supportive of democratic civil society’ (Sundstrom 2006, p. 181).

²⁴ For detailed information see ‘Crackdown on NGOs in Russia’, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 2015, available at: http://www.rferl.org/section/crackdown-on-ngos-in-russia/3272.html, accessed 26 January 2015.

²⁵ ‘Svedeniya Reestra NKO, Bypolnyayushchikh Funktsii Inostrannogo Agenta’, Ministerstvo Yustitsii Rossiiskoi Federatsii, available at: http://unro.minjust.ru/NKOForeignAgent.aspx, accessed 26 January 2015.

²⁶ ‘USA: Law on “Undesirable Organizations” Leads to Russia’s International Isolation’, TASS, 24 May 2015, available at: http://tass.ru/en/world/796446, accessed 12 June 2015.

²⁷ ‘Russia’s Putin Signs Law Against “Undesirable” NGOs’, BBC News, 24 May 2015, available at: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-32860526, accessed 12 June 2015.