Ford Foundation Report
Winter 2001 

"The Big Chill. Civil Society in Russia in a New Political Season"

By Mary McAuley, former professor of Soviet politics at the University of Oxford in England and current Ford Foundation representative in Moscow.
www.fordfound.org
(Johnson's Russia List, March 17, 2001, Issue #5156)

Moscow, Russia. It's minus 10 degrees outside and it will be May before any color brightens the black and white landscape. Inside, the temperature in my apartment is falling as the huge radiators turn cold. I have walls that are
two feet thick, which will keep the heat for a while, and double windows all pasted up. I still have electricity and one oil-filled radiator. As long as you can keep one room warm and heat water, you are all right.

But there are towns and villages that have been without heat or light for days and where the temperature drops to minus 25. Most people are more concerned about the creaking electricity network than about world affairs, and there have been frequent pictures on the TV news of unheated maternity wards or elderly pensioners feeding their last sticks into home-made stoves.

The U.S. election provided short-lived interest and amusement. The Kursk submarine disaster is still a painful subject, made worse by a deep pessimism that we shall never know the truth and no one will be held responsible. The
Chechen war drags on. But the cold affects everyone. Who is to blame?

A hard-hitting TV debate had the deputy energy minister, the head of the Unified Energy Systems (the electricity monopoly), and the commissioner for human rights leveling charges and countercharges, which ranged from years of
neglect by the Communist Party and Soviet government to misguided market approaches, corruption, poor management, rising prices. "Electricity is a human right," declared the commissioner for human rights, who is a former
Communist.

The real scandal lies in the fact that most individual consumers pay their monthly bills, but local authorities and intermediaries fail to pay their bills to U.E.S., the provider, which has occasionally taken the drastic step of cutting off supplies. What can the consumer do? Take the intermediary or local authority to court, suggested a young spokesman for the Consumers' Association, one of the new nongovernmental organizations that has become active in the public arena. Correct, and many have started to do so, but it may be summer before the case comes up and the children are sick now. Form a line across the main street, halt all traffic, force local officials to appear and make promises before the cameras. But the victories may be short-lived. It's difficult to organize over issues such as these, and political strategies, and muscle, are not yet there. The whole situation is very much a symptom of a society struggling to shed the structures of the past. But there are other, more hopeful signs.

There is now a very lively community of nongovernmental organizations in Russia, with over 100,000 active groups in a country where, 10 years ago, engaging in nongovernmental activity was the equivalent of making a political protest. In October, representatives of 250 such organizations from across the country met in Moscow for the first National Conference of Nongovernmental Organizations. The event, organized by a group of leading NGO's, was intended to provide a forum for the nonprofit sector to discuss its role and to strengthen the ties of this new "third sector" with business and government. The voices of the early 1990's, which championed freedom of speech, a memorial to the repressed and environmental protection, are now part of a chorus that includes those advocating the rights of consumers,
invalids, medical patients, refugees and women; those campaigning for penal reform or the introduction of community service as an alternative to the military; and those working on issues ranging from child abuse and other domestic violence to drug and alcohol addiction and ethnic conflict. In 1998 organizations from 30 of Russia's 89 regions monitored the human rights situation in their regions; in 1999 there were organizations in 60 regions monitoring human rights.

The growth, vitality and increasing professionalism of the third sector, particularly over the past five years, is remarkable. There are NGO trainers in management, fund raising and accounting; young lawyers with expertise working in legal aid centers; and experimental programs of charitable giving. Ecojuris, an environmental law group, has won key decisions before the Supreme Court and, in a striking reversal of an earlier position, the Federal Prison Administration has joined forces with the Moscow Center of Prison Reform to persuade the Parliament to adopt measures that have substantially
reduced the size of the prison population.

Yet a story of straightforward movement toward a strong civil society in Russia today would be overly simple. Invitations to the National NGO Conference were sent to all the major political parties represented in the Parliament, yet only one deputy appeared. He came from Unity, the party created in support of President Putin. He gave a bland statement and very general responses to questions from the floor on why his party had voted against environmental protection measures, and on his views on the clauses in the projected tax code, which will penalize charitable activity. Press coverage was minimal. Television ignored the event. In contrast, two weeks later, when Unity held its congress, all the major TV channels, even those not controlled by the government, gave it major coverage.

Despite a well-organized campaign involving NGO's from all over the country, the parliamentary majority appears unconcerned about the consequences of the tax code for charitable activity. The Ministry of Justice, even before Putin's accession, introduced reregistration procedures for nongovernmental organizations. Environmental and human rights groups have had a particularly rough ride in the process. The government, not private groups, officials repeatedly explain, is responsible for defending human rights. The media
 

The idea of civil society presupposes that both state and society accept nongovernmental organizations as legitimate institutions in their own right. The notion that there should be intermediaries between state and society, be
they political parties, representatives responsible to their electors or NGO's, is still very new in Russia. It is unfamiliar to NGO activists themselves. Not surprisingly in a society where state regulation is still so strong, yet often arbitrary and corrupt, and where financial resources are so inadequate for society's needs, nongovernmental organizations struggle to define their role. Should they stay out of politics or become involved? Should they seek partnerships with governmental institutions or keep their distance?

The Yeltsin decade offered a more advantageous political environment: a much freer media, a state apparatus unsure of its powers, a division of powers at the center that sometimes paralyzed decision making but also provided safeguards. It was a decade of experimentation and without it today's nongovernmental sector would not exist. Fragmented, weak on horizontal links, it is still dependent on Western funding, which plays a minor but critical role. Whether its various organizations will manage to sink solid roots, tap the sources of new wealth, maintain their independence from government and learn how to exert political influence, are the questions for the coming decade. I suspect there will be some surprises.

Last updated:    April 2001

A print version of much of the information contained in this NIS Third Sector Organizations section can be found in the The Post-Soviet Handbook (Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 1999).

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