The Russian Non-Profit Sector: 1997 captures the dynamic growth and effectiveness of the non-profit sector in Russia, which comprises tens of thousands of civic groups. In only six or seven years a tradition of private charity has been renewed in Russia—assisting youth, the disabled, the homeless, and others in need, or conducting public advocacy on issues related to the environment, women, AIDS, etc. In some cases groups have engaged in capital improvements as in Nizhnii Novgorod where the Rostropovich Fund completed construction of a hospital in 1997. One of the most interesting observations to emerge from this publication is the degree to which the Russian non-profit sector has begun to resemble older civil societies in Western Europe and North America.

The Russian Non-Profit Sector: 1997 is a compilation of stories from the weekly bulletin published by the Agency for Social Information in Moscow. ASI issues weekly news bulletins about third sector activities in Moscow, St. Petersburg and other large Russian cities. For the past year Center for Civil Society International in Seattle has selected and translated four or five news briefs from each bulletin and posted them to the Internet. This publication is a collection of all the excerpts translated during 1997. It contains hundreds of vignettes of non-profit work in Russia, including a soup kitchen in St. Petersburg, the Army of Charity in the Urals, and a seminar organized by the Russian Believers Aid Foundation to discuss how the clergy can more effectively serve prisoners in Russian jails. The publication includes a full organizational index.