A quest for democratic citizenship: agendas, practices, and ideals of six Russian grass-roots organizations and movements.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
A NOTE ON THE METHODOLOGY AND THE LIMITATIONS OF APPLICABILITY
BACKGROUND
US Policy
Russia's "New" Middle-Class Protesters
A Literature Review: Civil Society and Grass-Roots Organizations and
Movements in Vladimir Putin's Russia
THE STUDY
Design and Selection Criteria
The Respondents and the Interviews
FINDINGS 1: DEMOGRAPHY, STRUCTURES, AGENDAS, PRACTICE, REGIME
From "Intelligentsia" to Young Middle Class?
Causes
Governance
Resources: Symbolic Dues, Ad Hoc Funding, Wary Businesses,
and In-Kind Donations
Virtual Membership and Ad Hoc, Issue-Driven Mobilization
The Internet
A Bridge to "Mainstream Media"
The Uses of "Mainstream Media"
The "Traditional" Means of Outreach and Mobilization
The State: An Uneasy "Partnership"
Public Politics
The "Ship Rats" and Their Occasional Victories
Sanctions
FINDINGS 2: A QUEST FOR DEMOCRATIC CITIZENSHIP
The "Spillover" into Politics
FAR's "Political" Evolution
A Surprising Culprit: Civil Society
The Metagoal: "Changing People's Mentality"
The "Cells" and the "Molecules": The Moral Contagion of Citizenship
Toward "Peacefully Changing [People's] Conscience"
A Civil Rights Movement
CONCLUSION
Building on Earlier Research
And Noting New and Potentially Momentous Developments
APPENDIX
Questionnaire: The English Translation and the Russian Original
NOTES
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Acknowledgments
This study would not have been possible without generous support from the Smith Richardson Foundation and the attention of its senior program officer, Dr. Nadia Schadlow. I am grateful to Danielle Pletka, AEI's vice president for Foreign and Defense Policy Studies, for her unfailing encouragement and advice.
I am most grateful to Leonard Benardo, Timothy Frye, Andrew Kuchins, Blair Ruble, Daniel Treisman, and Andrew Weiss for taking the time to read this paper and give me their generous and insightful comments. My thanks go also to Nicholas Eberstadt for moderating a panel where Lenny, Andy, Andy, and I discussed these findings.
My thanks are also to Daniel Vajdic for his invaluable assistance and companionship during our three weeks in Russia and for his editorial suggestions in the preparation of this essay; to Vera Zimmerman and Valentina Lukin, who listened to and transcribed over forty hours of recorded interviews on over three hundred pages; to Lara Johnson, who researched dozens of Russian grass-roots organizations; to Lauren Kimaid and Julia Friedlander for their help in shepherding the grant proposal to successful conclusion; and to Laura Drinkwine, Katie Earle, Claude Aubert, and Christy Sadler for their assistance with production of the report.
Most of all, I am hugely indebted to the respondents of this study for the wonderful conversations we had. Without a doubt, they are among the finest, most remarkable men and women I have had the privilege of knowing.
Executive Summary
Although limited in scope, inductive, and most decidedly qualitative, this study nevertheless suggests several important tendencies in the development of Russian civil society and its potential impact on the country's politics. Our exploration of the agendas and ideals of these mostly young and mostly middle-class leaders and activists of six grassroots organizations and movements provides considerable evidence that a proactive civil society might be emerging.
Vastly different in the causes they advocate and activities they engage in, the groups' leaders and activists were remarkably similar in their conviction that the meaningful and lasting liberalization of the country may be ensured only by a mature, self-aware civil society, able and willing to control the executive. The main venue for such a change would not be a political revolution in the conventional sense. Nor would it be brought "from above" by a good czar or a hero. Instead, their hopes were predicated on a deeply moral transformation "from within." Effecting such an evolution toward enlightened and morally anchored democratic citizenship appeared to be the overarching metagoal of the organizations, above and beyond their daily agendas.
The formation of such a cohesive and effective Russian civil society will undoubtedly be a gradual and long process, overlapping with but distinct from traditional political developments. Rather, emerging from the interviews (1) was something similar to the moral sensibility of a civil rights movement. Thus, the men and women we interviewed were striving to effect vast political and social change through personal and deeply moral efforts. They established no time limits for the achievement of their goals, displaying quiet but unyielding determination and patience as long as necessary. They rejected violence in principle. Instead, their key strategy was the moral and civic education of fellow citizens as the main precondition for the emergence of a democratic state.
Although, as we discovered a few months after the interviews were conducted, key elements of the respondents' political and moral sensibilities were echoed by the participants in the mass protests of winter 2011-spring 2012, the groups and movements under study, on the one hand, and the protesters, on the other, represent closely related, often overlapping, but distinct manifestations of the moral, civic, and political awakening of the Russian middle class in the second decade of the twenty-first century. Aimed not just, and even not so much, at the change of political regime but at the establishment of a powerful civil society capable of supervising any regime, the organizations and movements like the ones we have explored are bound to continue their work long after the Putin regime is no more.
A free, democratic, and prosperous Russia, at peace, finally, with its own people, its neighbors, and the world, is among the most important geostrategic objectives of the United States. Thus, America's stakes in the consolidation and further expansion of a vibrant civil society, the emergence of which we may have observed and recorded in this study, are undeniable and high. Ultimately, it is the only assured way of securing the attainment of this objective, so obviously and immensely beneficial to the peoples of Russia and the United States.
A Note on the Methodology and the Limitations of Applicability
This project is an explicitly inductive exploration. We did not seek to confirm any theory, and such generalizations as are ventured here have been prompted solely by the findings. This is also a qualitative study: a mostly interview-based, * in-depth probe into the modus operandi and Weltanschauung of leaders and activists of geographically diverse organizations and movements with equally diverse day-to-day agendas. Selected by a priori criteria (listed below), rather than randomly, the subjects cannot be considered methodologically "typical," further limiting the findings' applicability. Thus, any patterns and themes described below should be interpreted only as preliminary insights. It is my hope, however, that, as good qualitative studies sometimes do, this one may stimulate and supply a framework for quantitative research that will enable us to generalize.
Background
US Policy
Both before and after the glasnost revolution and the fall of the Soviet Union, the US government has encouraged the development of human rights, civil society, and pluralist political culture through diplomacy and foreign aid. By encouraging political parties, human rights organizations, nongovernmental organizations, and political activists, the United States has traditionally played an active role in promoting the reform of political culture in modern Russia. Beginning in 1989, the "Support for East European Democracy (SEED) Act ... has sought to promote democratic and free market transitions in the former communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe, enabling them to overcome their past and become reliable, productive members of the Euro-Atlantic community of Western democracies." (2) In addition to promoting domestic economic development and confronting domestic challenges such as law enforcement, AIDS prevention, and human trafficking, the US government, in the words of the State Department's performance report on its fiscal year 2009 activities in Russia, also "continued to focus on promoting human rights, democracy, civil society, and rule of law through support to organizations that encourage the adoption of policies and practices consistent with the responsibilities of a democratic state." (3)
Protest and the growth of civil society in Russia have gained immediacy for American diplomacy and developmental assistance. The Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor at the Department of State issued its Russia country report in May 2010, stating that "a new generation of activists is starting to use 21st century methods to raise awareness of the role that civil activism can play in improving living conditions for average people....The United States has sent a delegation of leaders in the technology to Russia to explore how technological advances can help enhance civil society in Russia." (4) Secretary of State Hillary Clinton voiced her support of "creative ways to use technology" to disseminate information employed by activists at the US-Russia "Civil Society to Civil Society" Summit on June 24,2010. (5) Philip H. Gordon, assistant secretary of the Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs, announced that the United States spends $33.6 million annually on funding for democracy promotion and civil society in Russia. (6)
The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) sponsors dozens of programs to promote civil society and human rights in Russia. Among them are Promoting Civic and Political Engagement in Russia; Strengthening Democratic Institutions in Russia; Young Human Rights Activists and Social Marketing in Russia; and I've Got Rights: Mainstreaming Human, Social, and Civil Rights. (7) Many of these projects have been introduced over the past year and will receive long-term funding. Promoting human rights and civic activism is of increasing importance for the US government and has received significant attention and resources.
Several new protest groups in Russia have an environmental and ecological focus, which may indicate the growth of a well-developed protest culture. The environment is a well-practiced form of public protest. Concerns over ecological conditions stress the human need for basic living standards. In addition, they provide an avenue to voice concerns for citizen welfare without overt opposition to an autocratic state and with less fear of political retribution or punishment. Engaged Russian citizens are following a long-standing and successful tactic employed under authoritarian regimes as a means of "safe protest." (a) In the 1980s, protesters used environmental concerns to target regimes that paid no attention to citizen welfare, neither in working and living conditions, nor in civil society and political life. The complete absence of response to Chernobyl in 1986 epitomized this sentiment and fueled protests across Eastern and Central Europe. These groups started small but grew in size and reputation to effect momentous change in Europe. Twenty years later under Vladimir Putin and Dmitri Medvedev, the Russian citizenry has begun to follow suit.
Today, in the aftermath of mass protests, what historian Tracy Lee Simmons called the "conflict between the power of the state and conscience of the citizen" (8) has acquired additional urgency. Having closely monitored the progress of democratic governance and civic activism in Russia, the US government stands to benefit from new studies of grassroots organizations and movements in various important ways. First, a deeper and more comprehensive understanding of their goals, structures, activities, and needs is indispensable for US diplomats and those responsible for the disbursement of foreign aid. Second, the success and challenges of grass-roots movements and political opposition provide a vivid sense of the political climate and conditions on the ground in Russia. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, such research provides important clues regarding the direction of Russian politics, allowing for better planning and preparedness in US policy toward Russia.
Russia's "New" Middle-Class Protesters
The Russian middle class seems to have emerged from the sharp economic growth of 2000-2008 with higher expectations of state institutions and new means of engagement with the authorities at both national and local levels. No longer burdened with providing for the basic needs of their families and now enjoying perhaps unprecedented, for Russia, personal freedoms and prosperity, the middle class's more socially active members appear to believe they are entitled to become stakeholders in a functioning, fair, and less corrupt state. (b)
As the authors of the 2010 study (despite its qualitative character, likely the most representative to date) of "political values and behavior" of the Russian middle class after the 2008 crisis found out from dozens of in-depth interviews, this segment is relatively "welloff" and "largely young," liberal, "critically thinking," and exhibiting "a certain degree of self-organization." (9) Perhaps most important for our purposes, the study revealed the "level of civic activity" to be "relatively high" by national standards and the "attraction to democracy" above that of the population at large. (10) Specifically, their "shared values and ideals" have led the members of this group to be dissatisfied with "nontransparent" governance, the "erosion" of representation in elections, the "uncontrollable government corruption," and the cancelation of gubernatorial elections. (11) The respondents' support for democratization stems from their desire to "restrain bureaucracy, corruption, and lawlessness." (12)
Some of these characteristics and attitudes became evident between December 2009 and March 2010, when rallies, meetings, and picketing took place in several dozen Russian cities, culminating in the national Day of Wrath in forty-eight cities on March 20. As described at the time, the protests were innovative in both their organization and communication strategies. (13) Two factors made these protests intriguing and potentially politically significant: the size of the middle-class component and the "middle-class" values reflected in their demands. Most importantly, those whom I called "Russia's new protesters" appeared to embody a quest for a mature, organized, enlightened, strong, self-aware civil society, willing and able to take on the executive at both the national and local levels--Russia's only hope for the resumption of nonauthoritarian modernization. Thus, the "new protesters" movement appeared to have momentous implications for Russia's near future, as the political and economic model of the Putin restoration seemed to be running out of steam.
Thus, car owners (who by definition are middle class in Russia) and small-business owners were among the most visible of the protesters. Furthermore, unlike previous protests that were dominated by groups (mostly pensioners) who wanted more from the state, these demonstrators wanted less government intrusion in their lives and businesses. They demanded fewer taxes and tariffs, less corruption, less incompetence, and less police brutality. In a recent paper that draws on a series of roundtable discussions and interviews with "public activists" conducted in summer 2010, Maria Lipman of the Carnegie-Moscow Center described their dominant message as "leave us alone, don't interfere with our lives, we want to live ... the way we think is right and fair." (14) Furthermore, the demonstrators' disapproval of the Kremlin, as an astute Russian journalist noted, stemmed from the "systemic flaws of the authorities themselves." (15)
The protests included demonstrations against taxes and import tariffs in Vladivostok and Kaliningrad, the industrial contamination of Lake Baikal in Irkutsk, and the dominance of the Kremlin-created "party of power," United Russia. Among their immediate results were the defeat of United Russia's candidate for mayor in Irkutsk at the eleventh hour and, eventually, the dismissal of the governor of the Kaliningrad province. These were authentic, grassroots civil society movements, both passionate and self-organized but also fluid and often with unclear management structures. Although these movements have focused mainly on local political, economic, and environmental causes, they have also addressed national political issues. For example, protesters demanded the return to electing provincial governors, which Putin canceled in 2004, and have featured this demand prominently in their slogans.
It was fascination with this putative trend that prompted me in the fall of 2010 to seek an opportunity to assess the movement's staying power by exploring the attitudes and goals of the leaders and activists of at least some of the organizations that participated in the protests. In late June 2011, Daniel Vajdic and I left for Russia to interview them. In three weeks, we traversed the country from the far east to the westernmost city of Kaliningrad, 4,600 miles away, over nine time zones and twelve takeoffs and landings. Starting with a flight from Washington, DC, to Seoul and concluding with one from Moscow to DC, we circumnavigated the globe.
A Literature Review: Civil Society and Grass-Roots Organizations and Movements in Vladimir Putin's Russia
Although rather sparse, the literature on civil society and grass-roots movements in Putin's Russia has proved adequate to frame this study and suggest broad research themes. If the development of civil society is often used as a metric to judge the effectiveness of communication between citizens and the state, (16) then, judging by the reviewed literature, Russian voluntary civic associations in the 2000s have not been a particularly effective or especially notable mediator. Thus, the authors in the Evans, Henry, and Sundstrom collection trace the passivity and apathy within Russian society from the revolutionary activity in the late 1980s and early 1990s to the national political culture and the state's monopoly or nearmonopoly on policymaking and its near-total control of the public sphere. (17) Both the czarist and the Soviet legacy are to blame, yet, as McFaul and Treyger point out, the latter was especially devastating, as "no political system has ever been more hostile to civil society than the totalitarian communist regime erected by Stalin," (18) which survived until the second half of the 1980s.
Most postcommunist nations evince disillusionment with government attempts at privatization and democratization, and a majority have lower levels of membership in voluntary associations than other postauthoritarian societies. (19) In Russia, in addition, the obstacles to public grass-roots activity and particularly public protests have become more formidable under Putin's regime, when compared to the 1990s. The Putin Kremlin appeared to set out to construct institutions that "control civil society rather than engage it," (20) and to "cultivate" "civic groups that unswervingly support it" and co-opt others, while "shunning," "curbing," or even "eliminating" those the Kremlin considers incorrigibly oppositional.
(21)
The regime's control of media, especially television, prevents voluntary associations from playing a vital role as a "facilitator of civil society" (22) and thus further weakens the ability of civil society to be informed and to self-organize. Nongovernmental organizations lack financial and human resources and are thus incapable of "institutionalization," that is, of becoming reliable venues where interest groups can make their demands known to the state and society at large. (23) Finally, organized crime, which allegedly penetrates "all levels of government," further constricts channels of "healthy contact" between state and civil society. (24)
In addition to the constraints discussed above, at least some Russian grass-roots organizations have failed in their "classic" role of mediating between state and society because of their self-limiting (and occasionally self-defeating) tactics and strategies. Thus, after investigating environmental groups in the Samara region, Jo Crotty concluded that these groups relied largely on personal friendships and elite connections and were "uninterested in forming a mass movement" or in "actively engaging with the Russian public." (25) As a result, these organizations were said to have "contributed very little" to the development of Russian civil society and, by extension, Russian democracy. Instead of bridging the gap between state and society, the Samara environmentalists "fell into" it. (26) Similarly, a study of protests against the second Chechen war found that the movement proved incapable of influencing the policy of the regime due less to institutionalized repression than to the "movement's own culture," which dictated the use of tactics and slogans that had "little mass appeal." (27)
However, while uncovering and analyzing structural impediments to the development of Russian civil society, some researchers are also careful to point out that while they face serious obstacles, they have not been silenced. Thus, summarizing the essays in their edited volume, Sundstrom and Henry conclude "that the challenges of navigating life in postcommunist Russia have led a strong minority of citizens to band together to resolve their problems collectively." (28) Similarly, McFaul and Treyger point to several national environmental campaigns against government policies as a sign that "the potential for Russian society to acquire traits closer to the Western paradigm has not disappeared." (29) Drawing on a case study of the provincial capital of Tver, Salmenniemi concluded that while both the Russian state and the older civic organizations favor a "paternalist" (or "state-centered") model of citizenship, in which "citizen-subjects" work to help the state implement government policies, activists in more recently formed organizations advocate "a participatory conception": they aim not merely to implement government policies but to actively participate in shaping them. (c) For these men and women, the "ideal" citizen is "active, self-reliant, and responsible," orienting himself or herself to "society" instead of the state. (30)
Having survived the privations, wrenching changes, and disappointments of the 1990s; the economic crisis of 1998-99; and the state-imposed constrictions of the first half of the 2000s, how have Russia's voluntary movements and nongovernmental organizations evolved? In addition to expanding our knowledge of Russian civil society and singleissue protest movements, the existing research inspires further exploration and analysis of at least some of the structural factors that shape grass-roots associations in Russia.
For instance, one such factor has been "insufficient resources" that allegedly hamper the "institutionalization" of such associations. (31) Yet the economic restructuring of the 1990s, coupled with rising oil prices from 2000 to 2008, has resulted in a steady and at times sharp increase in middle-class incomes in Russia. As a recent study of "protest moods" in one relatively poor Russian province (Vologda) has shown, incomes more than doubled between 2000 and 2006. (32) Similarly, government ownership or control of national mass media has been found to impair the ability of grassroots movements and organizations to "cultivate public awareness and support" of their activities, thus impeding their "institutionalization." (33) Yet the explosive growth of Internet access in the past decade, especially among the urban middle class, may eliminate this obstacle. (d) Indeed, the already-cited recent study of public activists found that "the increasing penetration of the Internet is a highly important factor" in sustaining the nonstate "public sphere" that has "dramatically contracted in the previous years." (34) The Internet is "increasingly used" as "a venue for public campaigns," and, although it does not "create the activism ... it [becomes] very useful wherever there [is] an organizational or community-building drive." (35)
The regime's cultivation of loyal organizations and its disdain for (and efforts to defend and repress) oppositional or even nonpolitical groups may hamper the progress of civil society for the time being. Yet by blocking the institutional channels of societal feedback, the Kremlin is almost certain to deepen the gap between the regime and society in the long run and to radicalize grass-roots opposition. Indeed, as a researcher of the popular "Soldiers' Mothers" national movement has concluded, after being shunned by the government, the group has adopted a much more adversarial stance. (36) As far as specifically public protests are concerned, a prominent Russian political analyst traces their increasing incidence to a situation where "all institutions are eviscerated, when referenda, elections, independent judiciary, and parliament exist only formally"--in short, where society cannot use the normal, institutionalized "channels of interaction with the state." (37)
In 2006, the editors of the definitive monograph on Russian civil society concluded that "demonstrations by NGOs or protest movements, which are aimed at the public as well as at the state, are exceedingly rare." (38) Four years later, the Day of Wrath and other protests of the winter and spring 2010 evinced a dramatic multiplication, expansion, and radicalization of such movements, (39) suggesting a possible renaissance within Russian civil society. This phenomenon underscores the need for new field research into the movements' and organizations' modes of outreach, the changing (and thus, possibly, increasing) appeal of their causes and slogans, and their material and human resources. It is precisely such updating and augmentation that this study was intended to undertake. (e)
The Study
Design and Selection Criteria
Aqualitative study, this project attempts to provide a snapshot of Russian grass-roots civic-political and quasi-political opposition through in-depth research into several representative movements and organizations. The study is comprised of three distinct but overlapping phases:
I. Extensive background research of the more visible organizations and movements using mostly Russian media and websites;
II. Selection of the final group of organizations and movements; and
III. Field research/observation and face-to-face interviews with the leaders of these organizations and movements.
Prior to the field research phase, nearly two dozen organizations and movements were investigated with respect to the following criteria: [1] protest visibility, determined by the size of their rallies and/or their resonance in the Russian cyberspace and their sites' traffic; and [2] level of "attention getting," as indicated by the authorities' response and the achievement of the stated objectives. An organization's eligibility was enhanced if it contributed to the diversity of causes and agendas (taxation, environmental protection, corruption, law enforcement), diversity in scope ("single-issue" as opposed to more general and broader agendas, local versus national), and diversity of the size and geography of the urban centers where organizations and movements operated (large versus medium, central Russia versus Siberia and regions far east). Other things equal, preference was given to organizations and movements outside Moscow and St. Petersburg.
Yet the weightiest factor in the final choice of organizations was the explicitness, intensity, and persuasiveness of what I have come to consider the defining themes in the new protesters' moral and civic sensibilities: self-reliance, personal responsibility, and informed citizenship. Within this framework, the following six organizations and movements have been selected (in alphabetical order):
Baikal Ecological Wave ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]). One of the oldest Russian grass-roots organizations, and part of the international "Save Baikal!" Coalition, Baikal Ecological Wave has been engaged in civic outreach, informed citizenship, and activism since 1990. Although its primary goal is to shut down the Baikal Pulp and Paper Plant (BPPP), which dumps toxic waste into Lake Baikal, the movement has evolved into a kind of ecological watchdog for the entire region and has advanced sophisticated and practical suggestions for the emergence of "clean" industries in the area, as well as retraining and alternative employment for the workers of the BPPP.
The most salient eligibility features: High local visibility and effective political mobilization as evidenced, most recently, by the organization's contribution to the defeat of United Russia's candidate for mayor of Irkutsk in spring 2010; national and international visibility and support; the website's language of civic activism and informed citizenship; and very specific, constructive, and practical alternatives to existing government policies.
Causes, objectives, and mission statements: "Annul the government decision to allow the BPPP to dump toxic waste into Lake Baikal"; "conduct a technological audit of the BPPP"; "pass a law to create a national parklike zone in the area"; create ecologically friendly "clean" industries in the area (with the proposed projects detailed, complete with workforce and investment requirements); "support and development of ecological education"; "active ecological lobbying at the national and regional levels"; "support the growth in social activity of the population" (emphasis added).
Bashne.net! [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]. In 2007-2010, the organization led protests against the construction of the seventy-seven story, 403-meter (1,322-foot) headquarters (the Okhta Center) of Gazprom Neft--the oil division of the country's largest company, Gazprom. Bashne.net! organized several large rallies, including one on October 9, 2010, attended by three to five thousand people--at the time, one of the single largest protest gatherings. In mid-October 2010, the group collected 48,412 signatures on its Internet petition.
The most salient eligibility features: Solidly middleclass demographics (especially creative intelligentsia, teachers, and college students); visibility; large national and international target audience; very active blogging community; excellent educational outreach (at the time the site was getting an average of 4,141 page views per day); national and international support; and very specific, constructive, and practical alternatives to existing government practices and actions.
Causes and objectives: "Annul all the real estate development decision in the area around the estuary of the Okhta River.... Preserve a unique archeological monument in the Okhta estuary and create there an archeological park to exhibit unique memorials of our history and culture.... Prosecute the officials who have broken laws [in approving the tower construction]. If officials do not guarantee that laws will be obeyed, a new danger may loom over the city at any moment."
On December 8, 2010, the government of St. Petersburg withdrew its permission to Gazprom to build the "Tower." Proud of fomenting "public opinion," under the "pressure of which" the authorities have "stopped this barbarity," Bashne.net! had no plans to disband. On the contrary, the movement seemed to want to establish itself as a kind of permanent preservationist watchdog. A post on its site called on its members and supporters to continue to "defend our city together!" The movement was especially concerned about the quick erosion of archeological digs that uncovered an ancient Russian town and two Swedish fortresses that preceded St. Petersburg by several centuries.
Examples of relevant site posts and mission statements: "Petersburg needs our protection. The Gazprom Neft company is going to build a 403-meter high 'Okhta Center' [which] will not only destroy Petersburg but also its history. According to public opinion polls, over half of the city's population is against the skyscraper. But the opinion of the city-dwellers is not being taken into consideration. Our voice must be heard. This is not a question of taste but a choice between legality and crime. Let's together defend our city!" "Hands-off Petersburg. It is sickening to watch how scum, which is temporarily in power, is trying to get into history with all its might." "Isn't it time to change the governor [Valentina Matvienko] and send her packing?"
ECMO ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], or ECological Defense of the MOscow Region). One of the most visible protest movements in Russia today, ECMO leads protests against the destruction of the Khimki forest in Moscow and of many other ecological and historical sites along the Moscow-St. Petersburg "superhighway." ECMO activists, who literally put their bodies between the trees and the bulldozers, have been (and continue to be) subjected to sanctions more brutal than those meted out to any other group selected for this study: beatings, arrests, fines, and hacker attacks on their website.
The most salient eligibility features: Very high visibility; frequent pickets and rallies, including those in the center of Moscow; pronounced middle-class tonality of self-reliance and civic activism in its website posts; successful national civic coalition building (including website hosting of ECMO's "banners" by at least twelve opposition and environmental groups and movements).
Causes and objectives: "Our objective is protecting forests, parks, and green zones around Moscow from destruction.... Our objective is to DEFEND NATURE.... Our objective is to avert an ecological disaster, to uphold our right and the right of our children to breathe clean air, to walk among trees instead of concrete boxes--in short, to live a NORMAL LIFE."
Examples of relevant site posts and mission statements: "We must defend our nature for one simple reason: EXCEPT FOR US, THERE IS NO ONE ELSE TO DO IT." "It seems to me that our problem is not Putin but the [Russian] people. For [we should be]... more demanding with respect to our own lives, with respect to what we see out of our windows, and resisted every time when the government functionaries offend us. ... [As regards elections] I myself have been an entirely apolitical person until recently and thus understand very well why people don't bother to vote. To go into the booth, to fill in the ballot--all that seems very far removed [from people's everyday life]. But such themes as 'this is my forest and they are taking it away from me'--this is very easy to understand and close to one's heart. And it seems to me that the [Russian] people will understand, although maybe not now.... [But] this is already a rather high level of understanding of oneself as a citizen." (40)
Federation of the Automobile Owners of Russia ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII.], or FAR). Since 2001, FAR has championed better roads, traffic safety, and lower gasoline prices. One of FAR's most popular campaigns has been against Article 3.1 of the Traffic Regulations Code, which permits vast and ill-defined categories of government officials to drive with blue flashing lights (migalki).
The most salient eligibility features: Likely one of the largest, if not the largest, nongovernmental organization in Russia; (f) protest visibility; strong middleclass presence, closely correlated with car ownership; geographic diversity; very specific, constructive, and practical alternatives to existing government laws and regulations.
Causes and objectives: Lower the transportation tax; reform the transportation police (GIBDD, the acronym for State Inspection of the Security of the Road Transportation), aiming to ensure "safety and equal rights for all participants"; organize "public control over the actions of authorities"; defend the "rights of the car owners through legislation, struggle against corruption, and control over the disbursement of the tax revenue"; eliminate the neglect of laws ("legal nihilism") and spread knowledge about laws ("legal education") among people; repeal the increased tariffs for imported cars.
Examples of relevant site posts and mission statements: "I am for the 'FAR party,' which could defend the interests of a majority of Russia's population. And not only with respect to car owners but along the entire spectrum of problems.... For those who sit in the Duma are nothing but the Soviet nomenklatura, be they 'United Russia,' the Communists, or the [pro-Kremlin, nationalist] LDPR [Liberal Democratic Party of Russia]. All the laws adopted by these 'deputies' are against 90 percent of the country's population. And our D. Medvedev has said that [regional] 'governors' will continue to be appointed [as opposed to being elected] for a HUNDRED years, just as under the czars. And these 'governors' and their families will be ruling us.... In its latest program 'United Russia' has written that it is for a Russian 'conservatism.' To me, this means the continuation of the policies of the czars and Bolsheviks." "The federation of automobile owners of Russia is a fellowship of free people, for whom the rule of law, justice, and equality are not an empty sound but a part of life's path; for whom public interests are above personal ones and who understand that the responsibility for one's freedom rests on their own shoulders....For FAR, equality and respect on the roads is one of the key priorities of its activity, along with lowering the cost of car ownership."
Spravedlivost ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], or Justice). Organized by Konstantin Doroshok in May 2007 and officially registered in early 2008, Spravedlivost is an umbrella advocacy group for honest elections and the end of economic injustice, against the sharp rise of import duties on cars, and against the real estate piracy of the so-called point construction (tochechnaya zastroyka) that destroys schools, hospitals, and parks.
Save for the 2005 pensioners' rallies against the "monetization" of formerly in-kind benefits and until the Russian Spring protests of December 10, 2011, the Spravedlivost-led rally of ten to twelve thousand people on Central Square in Kaliningrad on January 30, 2010, was the single largest demonstration in Putin's Russia. Along with various regional movements and organizations, every opposition party in the Kaliningrad region marched under Spravedlivost's banners: Solidarity, Yabloko, Patriots of Russia, the Communist Party, the Liberal Democratic Party, and A Just Russia.
The rally was followed by two firsts for Putin's Russia: the firing of a regional governor, Georgy Boos, in direct response to public protests; and the March 2011 election of the protest organizer Konstantin Doroshok, who ran as an independent ("self-nominating") candidate (samovidvizhenetz), to the regional Duma.
The most salient eligibility features: Protest visibility; strong middle-class presence and issues; blend of civic and political causes.
Causes and objectives: Lower taxes (especially on imported cars); eliminate corruption (especially in the ranks of the traffic police); health care and education; veterans' benefits; preservation of urban "green spaces"; honest elections.
Examples of relevant site posts: "The rose-tinted glasses fell off and smashed against the hard reality into which the party of power has thrown us: corruption ... and lawlessness, the absence of rights and liberties of a citizen, and much else now associated with the United Russia party, which in [our] region is represented by a pack of mercenary, greedy, and talentless functionaries and deputies."
TIGR ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], or Fellowship of Active Citizens of Russia). Founded in Vladivostok in December 2008 to protest the sharp increase (up to 54 percent) in import duties on Japanese cars, (41) TIGR has evolved into a nationwide populist movement that aims to encourage and sustain civic activism by exposing and opposing corruption, bureaucratic malfeasance, and the curtailment of democratic liberties, self-rule, and popular sovereignty.
The most salient eligibility features: Powerful and well-articulated moral protest sensibility; high protest visibility; geographic diversity (including such regional capitals as Barnaul, Bryansk, Vladivostok, Kaliningrad, Kaluga, Kazan, Kirov, Moscow, Novosibirsk, Omsk, Pskov, St. Petersburg, Tomsk, Chelyabinsk, Khabarovsk, and Yaroslavl); strong civic-education program, including detailed instruction on "how to self-organize a legal protest action" and a Wikipedia-like "Encyclopedia of a Citizen," or [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]; minimal foreign media coverage.
Causes and objectives: To "awaken" civic activism and radically reform the regime; "Authorities must serve the people, yes to serve because they are nothing more than our employees, whom we entrusted to manage the country. Instead, it is we who are forced to serve the authorities! No one but we ourselves will be able to win justice and to force government officials to work for the good of the people and the state"; "People are not organized and lack initiative ... we lack solidarity and fellowship. This is what we aim to correct."
Examples of relevant site posts and mission statements: "Democracy is nowhere to be found; we have been deprived of the right to elect and be elected [because] every possibility of realizing this right has been extirpated! We are saddled with [local] authorities that are convenient [for the powers that be] and that are absolutely indifferent to the people and their problems. We are saddled with draconian taxes and tariffs.... Having reached the peak of one's impunity, the authorities became virtually untouchable by laws. Instead of serving the people, they treat them like cattle. [Government functionaries are] remaking the Constitution to suit themselves, they are making laws that push people into a real slavery, the slavery of a police state, a slavery of an authoritarian regime, which borders on totalitarianism." "[The authorities are] afraid of us, which means that we are on the right path, that the defense barrier built by the regime will soon crumble and people's wrath will come down on the heads of those who illegally and illegitimately seized power in Russia." "We have a choice: to continue to tolerate lawlessness or not.... We invite to join us all those who are ready to participate in our work and to make more proximate the moment when Russia becomes a country of happy, strong, and free people."
The Respondents and the Interviews
An extensive questionnaire was developed (see the original and English translations in the appendix) and interviews were agreed on with the leaders of the selected organizations and movements via persistent e-mailing and phone calls, using contact information on the organizations' sites. (g) In addition, at least half a dozen of the activists we met were interviewed using the same questionnaire on an ad hoc basis. Listed alphabetically below, all respondents were interviewed individually and, unless noted otherwise, face-to-face:
The Leaders
* Evgenia Chirikova, ECMO, Khimki, Moscow (h)
* Konstantin Doroshok, Chairman, Spravedlivost, Kaliningrad
* Sergei Kanaev, President, FAR
* Dmitry Mozhegov, Coordinator, TIGR, St. Petersburg
* Marina Rikhvanova, Baikal Ecological Wave, Irkutsk
* Dmitry Shpeytelshpakher, Coordinator, TIGR, St. Petersburg; Regional Representative, FAR, St. Petersburg
* Maxim Vedenev, Chairman, the Far Eastern (Maritime) Region (Primorsky), TIGR, Vladivostok (i)
* Natalia Vvedenskaya, Bashne.net!, St. Petersburg
* Anastasiya Zagoruyko, Regional Representative (Coordinator), the Far Eastern (Maritime) Region, FAR, Vladivostok (j)
The Activists
* Irina Abdulova, Baikal Ecological Wave
* Sergei Ageev, ECMO
* Oleg Mel'nikov, ECMO
* Yaroslav Nikitenko, ECMO
* Daniil Beilinson, ECMO
* Dmitry Linov, Bashne.net!
* Vitaly Lavrinovich, Spravedlivost
* Oleg Nikiforov, TIGR, Kaliningrad
* Natalia Sivokhina, Bashne.net!/Zhivoy gorod
* Maxim Vorontsov, Baikal Ecological Wave
* Petr Zaborokhin, Bashne.net!/Zhivoy gorod
Findings 1: Demography, Structures, Agendas, Practice, Regime
From "Intelligentsia" to Young Middle Class?
At the time of the interviews, the oldest leader was fifty, the youngest twenty-seven, and the rest between twenty-nine and forty-three. The average age was thirty-seven. Without exception, the leaders belonged to the middle class as defined by traditional national criteria, which emphasize not only--and perhaps not so much--economic status, but also education and profession. All were professionals with college or postgraduate degrees. In addition, three leaders had earned (or had begun to earn) second university degrees in business or law. (All the younger activists we met were full-time college students.)
Perhaps indicative of a deeper socioeconomic metamorphosis of the Russian middle class in the past decade, all but two of the nine leaders were (or had been) self-employed entrepreneurs, and five would be classified as upper-middle class, since they had had profitable midsize [4] or small [1] businesses. (With one exception, all had abandoned business for full-time activism. In the cases of Maxim Vedenev and Konstantin Doroshok, the businesses had been destroyed by the economic and legal pressure applied by the authorities.)
Although the methodology precludes generalizations, these data may suggest an evolution of the Russian middle class from state- to self-employment and entrepreneurship. More importantly for our purposes, the change may also indicate a shift in the national political tradition of civic leadership from the intelligentsia (largely state-employed intellectuals in "liberal" professions--the university professor; the journalist; the writer; the editor; and, later, the environmentalist) to middle class as defined by the universal criteria of higher-than-average income and self-employment or business ownership.
Causes
With the exception of Baikal Ecological Wave, which began to coalesce in 1990, all the organizations and movements were founded in Putin's Russia after 2005. At their inception, three of the six could be classified as "single issue" (ECMO, Baikal Ecological Wave, and Bashne.net!); FAR and Spravedlivost are engaged in a wide range of issues; and TIGR is perhaps best described as a wide-ranging human, political, social, and economic rights watchdog. (Seeking a more precise description of TIGR's fluid and events-driven agenda, I suggested in an interview that the organization's key function was "providing protest infrastructure" to a multiplicity of causes: from the organization of rallies against increases in the price of gas and the transportation tax, to opposition to Kremlin-sponsored educational reform, to helping other grass-roots organizations with membership and resources. The respondents heartily agreed. (42)) (k)
Economic concerns have been prominent but far from dominant. Even among the three organizations (Spravedlivost, FAR, and TIGR) born out of or energized by economic demands (lower import duties on imported cars, the transportation tax, and gas prices), over time these issues started to be increasingly overshadowed by equality before the law, anticorruption measures, and a broad range of human, civic, and economic rights. Thus, these organizations are engaged in finding and publicizing "traps" set up by the traffic police in order to extort fines; conducting independent investigations of some fatal traffic accidents (FAR); protesting the destruction of green spaces and the closing and destruction of schools and hospitals to make room for expensive "point construction" (tochechnaya zastroyka) (Spravedlivost); and monitoring local and national elections to make them "more transparent and fairer" and to preclude the local authorities from ballot stuffing (TIGR, Spravedlivost). (43) In addition, FAR, Spravedlivost, and TIGR attach great importance to providing legal advice on a broad range of topics.
The most fluid and multicentered of the organizations, with its agenda shaped by events almost in real time, TIGR is particularly omnivorous. Its causes range from helping victims of business takeovers (rayderstvo) abetted by corrupt local administrations, police, and judges, to protesting against the alleged introduction of fees for high school education outside the core subjects. (44) TIGR also joins or helps organize protest rallies of other groups and movements. (Indeed, one of the two TIGR coordinators in St. Petersburg, Dmitry Shpeytelshpakher, was also the FAR representative in the city and region.)
Governance
The organizational structures range from loose and almost ad hoc to fairly rigid and elaborate. For instance, while national in scope, TIGR is a confederation, with de facto regional chapters registered as autonomous organizations. There is no national leadership, and each of the regional chapters sets its own agendas and rules. In the words of Maxim Vedenev, "We are [officially] 'Maritime Human Rights Regional Organization.' We send our statute (ustav) to Kaliningrad [to help set up] the Kaliningrad Human Rights Regional Organization. But all are known as 'TIGR.' These are separate organizations. We have no [national] chiefs.... All regions are absolutely independent in their region, but they must support the sister organization in another region.... So when a good idea [emerges] that should be implemented nationally, we all work on it."
By contrast, FAR annually convokes a national congress, which elects a president and the Consultative Council. The Far Eastern (Maritime) TIGR and Spravedlivost hold annual meetings to elect a chairman, and Baikal Ecological Wave holds an annual meeting and reelects its three cochairs every two years. (45) ECMO began to elect a six-member Coordinating Committee in 2010, (46) and, although she is still the undisputed leader, Evgenia Chirikova is formally "first among the equals." Finally, Bashne.net! is almost completely informal. "We are not an 'organization,'" an activist insisted. "We are more like a 'club,' a group of like-minded individuals who were opposed to the tower." (47)
Resources: Symbolic Dues, Ad Hoc Funding, Wary Businesses, and In-Kind Donations
As with most grass-roots organizations, members' personal time and effort are by far the most important resource. Membership dues are collected by only two (Spravedlivost and Baikal Ecological Wave). The amounts are symbolic--five hundred rubles (around $18) per year--and dues-paying members do not exceed a few dozen at most. By contrast, most funding in all the organizations comes from ad hoc donations. Sbrasyvaemsya ("we [the leaders] chip in") is the dominant method. "The FAR office in Moscow exists on the personal money of Kanaev," FAR's president told an interviewer. "And the office in Novosibirsk exists on personal money of [the local chapter's president] Koval." The same is true for Maxim Vedenev and Konstantin Doroshok. (All three had been successful entrepreneurs and owners of midsize businesses.) In the words of Vedenev, "We have accumulated some subcutaneous fat [podkozhnyy zhir], and that's what we live off now." The only exception to the ad hoc or leaders' donations is Baikal Ecological Wave: it receives occasional grants, all from abroad, from an extensive international network of ecologically minded foundations. (l)
The absence of anything like reliable and sizable outside donations is perhaps the key structural problem of these groups. "Private business would not give," Sergei Kanaev said. "Private business is very afraid." Protecting a business donor, the regional representative of FAR in Vladivostok would not name an auto club that contributed every now and then. (m) Most outside donations are in-kind, including volunteer work. Thus, both TIGR and Spravedlivost rely on pro bono work by lawyers, who provide free consultations to members and nonmembers alike. (48) In addition, a publishing house in Vladivostok, where Zagoruyko has "close friends," occasionally printed FAR's materials for free or "with substantial discounts." (49)
Virtual Membership and Ad Hoc, Issue-Driven Mobilization
Card-holding and dues-paying membership appears to be largely a thing of the past. Indeed, only the leader of Baikal Ecological Wave knew how many "traditional" members the group had (twenty). (50) Instead, the organizations are loose, Internet-based communities of the like-minded. They coalesce around issues, swell before and during successfully organized events, and melt away afterward, leaving only the core leaders and activists to deal with day-today organization. It is a fluid, mostly virtual membership capable of rapid, Internet-based mobilization.
Tellingly, Sergei Kanaev defined FAR's "base"not as "members [but] supporters" (ne chleny, a storonniki). A supporter is someone who "registers" by filling in the "questionnaire (anketa) of the FAR supporter" on the organization's site, avtofe.ru. (51) According to Kanaev, FAR had 132,000 "supporters" in July 2011. "When the supporters register," continued Kanaev, "they indicate how they can help and which [events] they are ready to organize or participate in.... That is, a person is ... [asked], what do you want to do? Do you want to participate [in the Internet] forum, [or] want to come to events [aksii]?" Or, as the regional leader of FAR, Anastasia Zagoruyko put it, "We don't have that many members in the regional chapter. When there is a need to attract the attention of many automobile owners, we do so through the [national] automobile forum drom.ru."
And attention they do get. "It is possible [via the Internet] to get in touch with as many as a hundred fifty organizations," a respondent said. "And we, too, always participate if [a fellow organization] needs help, needs signatures. We disseminate information [telling people]: please help, please sign this." (52) Similarly, the March 2011 FAR letter to Prime Minister Putin (in which the organization demanded that he either dramatically improve the economic and political situation in the country or step down) collected 89,000 signatures. (53)
In the case of the January 30, 2010, rally in Kaliningrad, the Internet was instrumental in producing the single largest protest turnout in Putin's Russia outside the pensioners' protests in 2005, which remained the record until the December 2011 demonstrations in Moscow. The organizers created "groups" on such popular social networking sites as V Kontakte (In Contact, roughly the equivalent of Facebook) and Odnoklassniki (Classmates). (54) After the rally, the number of visitors on Spravedlivost's site reached twenty thousand per day--a very large number for a local political site in Russia at the time. (55)
The Internet helps not only nationalize, but also, in some cases, internationalize the issues. For instance, many of the tens of thousands of notes of support on the Bashne.net! site were not only from outside St. Petersburg, but also from abroad. Perhaps the most spectacular evidence of Internet mobilization was Baikal Ecological Wave's petition drive, which garnered thirty thousand signatures in 2006, to prevent the construction of a Transneft oil pipeline that would have run just eight hundred meters from the northern shore of Lake Baikal. When Rikhvanova counted the signatures collected as well as the participants in protest "rallies and other actions in many cities," the number was around two hundred thousand. (56) The Internet has enabled the organizers to make the "pipe removal" into a national and even international cause. In the words of Rikhvanova:
There was even a protest action near the Russian Embassy in Tashkent, organized by our colleagues from the Social Ecological Union. [It] consists of many organizations ... and people support each other's organizations very actively.... Even the Union of Bird Watchers has made a truly remarkable contribution to the campaign. It is a very well-organized international group. So when we posted the information in English, [other such] organizations, specializing in global [environmental] efforts, responded immediately and supplied lots of signatures.
The Internet
As these examples make clear, the Internet is central to ad hoc mobilization, which, in turn, is the preferred method of collective action organization. Equally if not more critical is the Web's utility in routine outreach and intraorganizational communication. Thus, how-to postings and legal advice are permanent features on the TIGR, FAR, and Spravedlivost sites, while Skype is the prevalent method of consultations and deliberation among leaders. (57) To quote Rikhvanova:
From the very beginning we've recognized that the Net was very important. We were among the first organizations that gained Internet access in the 1990s. There was a man, whose name I cannot recall, an American, who helped nongovernment organizations to get access by distributing modems.... We've used [Internet] communication very actively and continue to do so: [we use] Skype to conduct all manner of meetings, allowing us not to get together [physically] but still discuss issues with Moscow, St. Petersburg--and anyone anywhere.... It is via our site that we disseminate information about what we do, what responses were received [from the authorities], what documents we have acquired [in the course of investigation], so that people have the same information that we do.
Indeed, Bashne.net! started out as a website. "We needed a site," recalled Natalia Vvedenskaya, "that would express our opinion [and where] we could refer people who wanted to understand what it was that we were saying." The three people who worked on the site became the "initial group" of the movement. (n) So in that sense, Vvedenskaya continued, Bashne.net! started not as an organization but as an "informational resource," a "kind of brain." (58) (The Internet origin, of course, is immediately recognizable in the organization's name, which was readily accepted as permanent by the followers.) "It is the Net that allows us to function (za schyot setevoy sistemy tol'ko I zhivyom)" as Sergei Kanaev put it. I doubt that any of the leaders and activists interviewed would have disagreed with this description of the Internet's role.
A Bridge to "Mainstream Media"
The Internet is also central to another critical activity: outreach to "mainstream" media, mostly local newspapers and television. In Kanaev's words, "For me, [mainstream media are] the most effective way [of outreach], and the Internet [delivers] 80 percent here." The Far Eastern (Maritime) TIGR has used the Internet to publicize in local media the plight of the Svetlogorie "monotown," as Russian sociologists call them, (59) at the northern edge of the Primorskiy Krai, about six hundred kilometers from Vladivostok. The city's sole major enterprise, the Lermontovsky tungsten (volfram) ore-dressing (gorno-obagatiteVniy) plant had been taken over by crooks abetted by local authorities, dooming the inhabitants to unemployment, penury, and eventual starvation. (60) The story was picked up by local newspapers and, most importantly, television, forcing the region's governor, Sergei Darkin, to, as Vedenev put it, "tear off" (sorvat'sya) to Svetlogorie (where he was "pelted" with rocks, the potatoes, even rotten, being too precious to waste in this way). (61)
The Uses of "Mainstream Media"
There is a well-known symbiosis in a democracy between activists and the media, each using the other for their purposes, and the organizations studied are no exception. Although, for obvious reasons, deviating from this norm in a multitude of particulars, the pattern is recognizable in the way these organizations interact with the media.
Local and, occasionally, national print and broadcast media are particularly active in soliciting views and comments from Baikal Ecological Wave and FAR--both because they are the least "political" of the organizations and because of their profound expertise in environmental protection and road safety. For instance, while we were in Irkutsk, Marina Rikhvanova was quoted in the Siberian edition of a leading national daily, Kommersant, to the effect that the laws are not sufficiently demanding of industrial enterprises where ecology is concerned and the fines "for damage to ecology" are too small. "Regardless of whether I am on vacation or not," Rikhvanova said to us, "I am always ready to talk to [the media] and, if I can, give a comment." For their part, the organization relies on the media to publicize instances of harassment (naezdy) by the authorities and thus to create a public opinion "downside" for the former: "We have had several such cases, and getting quickly in touch with media has always saved us."
The "Traditional" Means of Outreach and Mobilization
For all its importance, the Internet is far from the only means of mobilization and publicity. Another method is "live" petition signatures (as Rikhvanova called them) collected at rallies--something all the organizations are engaged in. Yet the tried-and-true newspapers and leaflets emerge as the most effective tools. This is particularly true in the periphery. Our interlocutors in Vladivostok and Kaliningrad estimated the Internet's penetration in their cities at only 20-25 percent of the population. (62)
In Kaliningrad, the Spravedlivost-led opposition relies heavily on a free newspaper, Dvornik (a yard keeper). Privately owned, financed by advertisements, and distributed free of charge, it has a huge circulation, by local standards, of 110,000. (63) (It is also published virtually at rugrad.ru.) Although not political by design, it is something of a muckraking sheet, with frequent exposes of the authorities' incompetence and corruption. Dvornik is also the only local print medium not afraid of publicizing the activities and agendas of the opposition, becoming, in Doroshok's words, its rupor, or loudspeaker. The paper was most helpful to Spravedlivost during the January 2010 protests and played the same role a year later during local elections, when, to everyone's surprise, Doroshok was elected to the regional Duma as an independent.
The Vladivostok TIGR publishes a dedicated "party" newspaper, Internet Vestnik (or Internet Herald). In addition to stuffing mailboxes, TIGR activists leave issues wherever people "spend hours in lines": hospitals, outpatient clinics (polikliniki), courts, district attorney offices (prokuratura), welfare offices, or real estate firms. (64) Vedenev explained:
People ... have problems but no one to share them with. And here they see a newspaper to which they can send information, or go to the site, if you have the Internet, or simply get in touch with and say: I have a problem. We published a lot of materials there directly from the Web. (The newspaper's subtitle was "What the Press Is Silent About" [O choym molchit pressa].) The first issue was published during the [summer] fires, and what people were publishing on the Net was not at all what they saw on TV or read in newspapers. So the first issue was thirtysix pages long! And people started to contact us and tell us about their problems.
Leaflets, too, remain a valuable means of outreach. ECMO periodically "blankets" Khimki with leaflets. (65) As a book designer, Natalia Vvedenskaya (o) herself produced "all kinds of posters and leaflets." (66) In advance of the crucial January 30, 2010, rally, (p) Doroshok had "printed around 40,000 leaflets. I knew that people treat leaflets under the windshield wipers of their cars as spam, so I distributed them deep into the night personally, by hand (some stores were open till midnight, and I handed the leaflets to the shoppers), telling the people: 'Please read this. This is very important.'" (67)
The State: An Uneasy "Partnership"
In one of many breaks with the national political tradition, the respondents viewed the state pragmatically as an equal partner--without awe or fear, adoration or hatred. The leader of the Vladivostok chapter (predstavitel'stvo) of FAR, Anastasiya Zagoruyko, encapsulated this attitude about the relationship with the authorities: "Sometimes it is partnership, sometimes competition. We do not shy away from criticizing the authorities when they deserve it. I have never been part of any government or pro-government structures and don't plan to [be]. Our views on many issues and those of the government are quite different." (68)
With the exception of ECMO, all the movements and organizations have, with various degrees of collegiality and effectiveness, cooperated with local authorities. For instance, FAR regularly supplies data on road hazards and disrepair and suggests ways to lower child mortality in car accidents. (q) Some leaders and activists have even been invited to join "expert groups" or "consultation committees" advising mayors and governors. (69)
For over two decades, while advocating the closure of the BPPP, Baikal Ecological Wave has been active in helping the city authorities of Baikalsk, a "monotown," where the plant is located and where virtually everyone in one way or another depends on it for employment or services. The organization has worked closely with the mayor's office to provide expertise and occasional funding for job diversification and retraining for the former plant workers. Among their success stories have been pastry making and strawberry growing, including a wholesale fair known as the Strawberry Festival, which since 2009 has attracted buyers from all over Siberia. (r) Rikhvanova said:
We used to be opponents [of the plant's administration] at all kinds of hearings about BTsBK [the BPPP], but when BTsBK was [temporarily] closed, the city administration accepted most of our suggestions with much enthusiasm. For our part we tried, and continue trying, to attract some private commercial interests, some [development] progress.... We have participated in all kinds of public hearings, we have written letters to officials, and sometimes what we've written crops up in the speeches of government officials.
Although all of the organizations in this study have been targets of harassing "investigations" by the local prokuratura, responsible for law abidance and law enforcement, they all use prokuratura to expose violations of law in the hope of putting pressure on the companies or government agencies. TIGR and Baikal Ecological Wave tend to provide especially voluminous materials. "We support the actions of prokuratura," said Rikhvanova. "Whatever its goals are, if it manages to advance ecological security, that's good enough for us."
Public Politics
While formally "apolitical," all organizations are very attuned to local and national politics. Their actual involvement ranges from public criticism of local and national authorities to entering alliances with the "systemic" parties (that is, those permitted by the Kremlin to register and thus "legal") to advance a common agenda, supporting parties friendly to their agendas in local elections, or even fielding candidates of their own. Thus, Bashne.net! endorsed and campaigned for the liberal Yabloko party in city elections, while Spravedlivost and TIGR formed alliances with systemic parties in their regions and fielded candidates to run for office in 2011 and 2012. In "extra systemic" (vnesystemnye) public politics, four months after we had interviewed her, ECMO's leader Evgenia Chirikova became one of the most popular figures among the winter 2011-12 protesters.
Due to its popularity, FAR has been courted by virtually all the "establishment" parties seeking the organization's endorsement. For its part, the FAR leadership aims to safeguard the organization's political independence by not allowing it to be "hijacked" and "used" by the parties. (70) Instead, FAR seeks to use the national parties to advance its agenda. In a tacit quid pro quo, FAR submitted its wish list (khotelki) to all political parties, and "if they support [the planks] they may include them in their platforms. For our part, we write our supporters [that] we have sent the list to all the parties and are now watching for their reaction." (71) While every regional office (predstavitel'stvo) of FAR is allowed to decide which political party or parties they should work with in their region, at the national level, the organization is prohibited by its statute to endorse any political party. (72) "Yes, freedom for all, and equality for all [regional branches]," said Kanaev. "But on the national level our platform is not to join anyone, not to be associated with any [single] political party." (73)
The "Ship Rats" and Their Occasional Victories
Kanaev suggested two reasons for the regime's relatively lenient attitude toward these groups: First, they are tolerated simply because the state lacks either the ability or the resolve (or both) to reintroduce the sort of mass terror that would be necessary to permanently put them out of business:
Yes, they can arrest everyone. It is not a problem for them. Although it is in the past, 1937 [the height of Stalin's great purge] can be easily and quickly returned. They can grab everyone and shove them somewhere. But there are lots of people [in addition to those belonging to these organizations]. It is like a cancer tumor [for the regime]: they are not certain that even if they decide to cut it out, they will be able to cut out all of it.
The second reason has to do with the organizations' bellwether function in the absence of normal channels and institutions of societal feedback. Kanaev compared his organization and others like FAR to steam valves that "let the regime know about the rising temperature before the [pot] boils over." (74) In a more elaborate metaphor, FAR was one of the rats on the ship of the Russian State--the rats that,
as sailors say, must never all be exterminated because if the ship begins to sink gradually, then without rats [jumping off the ship] it will sink quietly. FAR is like those rats--an indicator of what is happening in the country. And the regime would be in a tough spot without this indicator. When media are [acting] in the interests of the regime, they [the regime] understand that we are an excellent gauge for what is happening among the car owners--and there are 30 million of them [driving] 36,400,000 cars. They have to cooperate with us. People like [former deputy chief of staff for both Presidents Putin and Medvedev and the former chief "political technologist" of the Kremlin Vladislav] Surkov know that the authorities have completely detached themselves [from the people] and that they need some means of communication with society. [When] they don't allow [us] to create [truly independent] political parties or other [independent] societal structures, then, yes, the organizations like ours are an indicator.
It seems plausible that such rare major victories as the organizations have achieved are due in large measure to their "warning" function as described by Kanaev. Thus, following the 2009 protests in Vladivostok, in which TIGR was born, and in Kaliningrad a year later, the draconian taxes on imported cars (along with the ban on the right-hand steering wheel) were "suspended." Similarly, after a national protest campaign led by Baikal Ecological Wave, in 2006 Putin ordered that Transneft's planned oil pipeline be moved at least forty kilometers away from Lake Baikal, instead of eight hundred meters.
As mentioned above, national authorities have stopped the construction of the Gazprom Tower in St. Petersburg and, following the January 30, 2010, rally in Kaliningrad, Moscow, fired the regional governor. In 2011, the year of national Duma elections, President Medvedev met one of FAR's key demands by announcing changes in the notoriously corrupt and inefficient annual "safety inspections," which henceforth were to be entrusted to gas stations, shops, and car dealers instead of the traffic police. Bowing to the FAR-supported "blue buckets" campaign (s) while running for president in February 2012, Prime Minister Putin promised to limit the number of officials entitled to cars with sirens and flashing lights (migalki), and in one of his first post-election decrees reduced the number of "privileged" cars from 968 to 569.75 (In response, Kanaev vowed that FAR would continue to campaign for the "equality of all people on the road," until flashing lights are left only for emergency services. (76)) (t)
Sanctions
The regime's tolerance of the organization "rats" is punctured by sanctions with varying degrees of severity and duration. They range from the confiscation of equipment to pressure on leaders' businesses, harassment, and even (although brief) incarcerations.
In one of the better-publicized cases, acting ostensibly on the prokuratura's "request for evidence," following an alleged complaint that Baikal Ecological Wave violated intellectual property laws by using "unlicensed" Microsoft software, the Irkutsk police raided the organization's headquarters in January 2010 and confiscated all its computers. It took eight months to get the equipment back. (u)
Likely because of wariness of negative publicity, such frontal assaults on organizations are a relatively rare tactic compared to selective harassment of leaders and activists. For example, Anastasia Zagoruyko's wedding cortege was trailed by cars belonging to the regional Center for the Battling of Extremism, the FSB [Federal Security Service], and the GIBDD. (77) A Baikal Ecological Wave activist and a former member of the National Bolshevik Party, Maxim Vorontsov was routinely detained by police when he traveled through Eastern Siberia to deliver presentations in schools and community centers. Although he had not been affiliated with the National Bolsheviks for years, the authorities used that connection as an excuse for detention. "We know you are a radical!" Vorontsov was told on such occasions. (78)
Even if they did not instigate them, the authorities condoned brutal physical assaults on ECMO activists in the Khimki forest. These activists, mostly young men and women, are set upon not just by uniformed private security guards (ChOP, or Private Security of an Enterprise), but by thugs in civilian clothes, who tend to attack those walking alone in the forest. Both activists interviewed in the Khimki forest camp had been injured: one had a broken nose and the other had been taken to the hospital with a broken jaw. (79) Invariably, the police were slow to arrive, never arrested the assailants, and did not bother even to look at the evidence or interview the victims. With a few exceptions, courts, too, have sided with the construction companies.
Three of the six leaders have been singled out for particularly severe harassment. Evgenia Chirikova was the subject of an "investigation" by social services, which alleged that she "neglected" her two children--a charge that could have resulted in the removal of her children to institutional care. (80) In addition, an electrical engineering firm owned by her husband, Mikhail Matveev, was raided, its employees interrogated, and many documents seized.
In the case of Maxim Vedenev, the authorities have gone beyond harassment:
I was director of a shipping company. A great enterprise, with a lot of ships and good business, including in the United States. When I am told that I started to get involved [in TIGR] because my enterprise died, this is a mistake. It died because I got involved in TIGR. My company was killed in six months. I simply could not get fuel, could not get cargo. Half a year later the company stopped to exist. There were also physical threats.
The leader of Spravedlivost, Konstantin Doroshok, was first harassed in January 2009, when he decided to run for a seat on the Kaliningrad City Council against a United Russia candidate, "a millionaire, a former KGB officer," and protege of the governor, who had "serious business" stakes in the election:
There was a huge influence [involved], huge
amounts of money. At first, my friends began
telling me that they were stopped on the street
and told to tell me to withdraw my candidacy.
Then I was stopped in the car by GIBDD, and
they begin to ask me questions like: "Where is
your first-aid kit? Where is your fire extinguisher?
Why are your windows tinted? Can
you open the hood? Aha, this car is listed as
stolen!" They take me to a police station. The
GIBDD people leave and another team comes
in, whom I did not see before, and they write
a violation report (protokol) to the effect that I
was verbally abusing GIBDD officers.
For three days I was in the KPZ [prehearing
detention cell], and they staged all sorts of
"shows" for my benefit [to intimidate me]. For
instance, beatings of [ethnic] non-Russians or
sending in a tattooed thug. There were 12-15
people in our cell. And, by the way, it is minus
two Celsius [28 Fahrenheit] in the cell. You
could see steam coming out of people's
mouths when they talked. When there were
enough people in the cell, it got a bit warmer
and one can doze off a bit. I came over to the
sink to have a drink but it was full of blood
and [excrement]. And, of course, the toilet
looks the same. And they [the guards] were
saying to me: "Why aren't you drinking. Aren't
you thirsty?" ...Meanwhile, my pregnant wife
was sobbing at the entrance to the police station:
they had told her that I was not there and
they never heard of me.
They held me until a protest rally we
organized on January 29 took place without
me. At the rally, people talked about my detention
and, if they didn't release me, people
would come to the police station with posters.
So they let me go that night and ordered me to
be in the court the next morning.
One by one, the police pulled in for questioning as "witnesses" all Doroshok's close relatives: mother, father, and finally his brother:
And all the while the police continued to "dig
under me" looking to find out how much
money I had, what sort of property [I had], what
sort of property my relatives had.... Until finally
they got to my younger brother [who was] a co-owner
of a construction company. At that point
it got serious: masked police with machine guns,
ordering everyone on the floor, requisitioned all
the records--the whole shebang.
So my brother's entire company came to
see me at home to beg me to cancel my candidacy.
Naturally, I tried to explain to them:
guys, you are not just interfering with my life.
If you have to, go and defend your business. If
what they do to you is against the law, go and
fight them and I will help you. And you should
help me with my campaign instead of asking
me not to run.
But then [the police] essentially took my
brother and his colleagues hostage. Everyone 's
lying on the floor, with a Kalashnikov barrel to
the back of the head and a boot on their spines.
They also took them out, one by one, and beat
them. So while they are held hostage, I go to
the election commission and hand in a statement
withdrawing my candidacy. I barely was
out of the building when [my brother's firm]
called to say thank you: the police were gone. (v)
Findings 2: A Quest for Democratic Citizenship
The "Spillover" into Politics
At first blush, there is little that is overtly political in the agendas of all six groups and movements. "We are nonpolitical," one of the leaders told us, (81) and, if asked directly, most of the leaders and activists would likely agree. Indeed, national politics, not to mention regime change, seems to be completely outside their daily goals and activities.
Yet the interviews made clear that, in the end, none of them could avoid grappling with nationwide issues and confronting key aspects of the regime. It is as if, having resolved to clean a small apartment, one is immediately confounded by far bigger problems--faulty designs, leaking ceilings, lack of heat and hot water, crumbling walls--that are beyond one's control and require a capital repair of the entire building. (82) For instance, Rikhvanova fulminated at the "merger of power and property" as the key obstacle to environmental progress. (83) Chirikova denounced the absence of a normal judicial system and pointed out that "for the first time in Russian history we have in power people whose sole goal is personal enrichment at the country's expense." (84) Bashne.net! and Zhivoy gorod activist Dmitry Linov called this process "a spillover into politics" (peretekanie vpolitiku). (85) Or, as Chirikova told an interviewer in 2010, (86) "I have no intentions of going into politics. It is the regime functionaries that make me into an opposition leader." (w)
To the Bashne.net! activists, the Gazprom Tower epitomized general lawlessness (bespredel). "They build what they want, however they want and wherever they want," read an October 2009 Bashne.net! leaflet. "They deface Petersburg and violate laws.
They think that money and power give them the right to do all this." (87)
"Do you know why people protested against the Tower?" Natalia Vvedenskaya asked in our interview.
Most of all, because [the construction] was [a] visualization of violence [vizualizatsiya nasiliya]. We have corruption, of course ... but it is not always easy to see how people are daily humiliated--and to become outraged. But here, people had something onto which they could concentrate all their hatred [of the system]. And all the more so because [the culprit was] the very same company that is turning the country into a senseless oil-producing appendage [of the world economy]. And this, subconsciously realized, truly was a stronger motivation than the struggle for the purity of the skyline.... Because you [the state], without asking our opinion, tell us that your model of life, which you are foisting on the country, is the only correct one--and we are not asking you [the people]! (88)
A TIGR coordinator in St. Petersburg and the representative of FAR in the city and region, Dmitry Shpeytelshpakher, described his political "conversion" in his blog:
I had never been a member of any political party but one day I opened my eyes. Being an active participant in the [Internet] forum of the admirers of Japanese cars (Drom.ru), I began my struggle with the system, starting with the GIBDD. I read [the information posted on] legal sites, I studied in detail ... laws and orders of the MVD [Ministry of Internal Affairs] and tried to prevent the violation of my rights as a driver. My victories gave me energy and then fate brought me in touch with the "Freedom of Choice" movement of car owners. I took part in rallies against rutted roads and high gasoline prices, was confronted with unlawful actions of the MVD (they threatened me physically) and I understood that this was my struggle. Being in touch with rank-and-file car owners from Vladivostok to Kaliningrad, I UNDERSTOOD the true scale of the degradation of our society and, as a result, of the AUTHORITIES (the problems of car owners were only a drop in the ocean). Inaction and silence is not my style--I created an Internet group [by the name of] "Exchange the government for a canister of gas." Then a thunder struck: Putin's oligarchic-financial corporation-gang has made an attempt (pokusilas') at the [key] property of the middle class--the car. The indignation was swelling at our Web forums at the authorities' inaction at the time of the world [2008 financial] crisis; the lying statements on television that there is no crisis and we are the best protected country [from the crisis] in the world; [and] tax-free disbursement from the Stabilization Fund to those close to the Kremlin. (89)
As usual, TIGR cast its economic demands in terms broader and more radical than any other organization in the sample. Thus, at a rally in St. Petersburg in support of the December 2008 Vladivostok protests against the ban on the right-hand steering wheel and the increase of import duties on cars, TIGR featured this poster: "Say 'No' to the anti-people politics of the government! Enough robbery of the people!! Raise the standard of living, not the prices!" (90) In March 2010, a TIGR bumper sticker read: "We can't take anymore [dostali] [of] the traffic police, taxes, [the state of the] armed forces, elections, customs [tariffs and duties], health care, bureaucracy. Come to the March 20 meeting against the irresponsibility of the government functionaries [chinovnikov]" (91) In February 2010, a TIGR poster read: "Don't wake up the Egypt in us!" (x)
The Far Eastern (Maritime) TIGR's involvement in politics is spurred by the already-noted defense of local entrepreneurs and public organizations from reyderstvo--a takeover of companies or organizations by crooked entrepreneurs or local politicians, abetted by the police, prokuratura, and courts, usually bribed by the perpetrators. (y) To the organization's leader, Maxim Vedenev, "working against the stranglehold (zasil'e) of corruption and the rampant bespredel of state bureaucracy" is of great importance. (At the time of the interview, Vedenev and his colleagues were preparing "huge [documentary] evidence" for a suit in the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation, charging President Medvedev with "violating his own laws." (92))
FAR's "Political" Evolution
Perhaps the least "political" of the groups under study, FAR's agenda includes redressing two major gripes of millions of Russian car owners: gasoline prices, which are almost as high as those in the United States with salaries orders of magnitude lower, and the so-called transportation tax levied on every car in Russia. "Where does all this money go?" FAR began to ask--and instantly was confronted with two structural defects of the regime: lack of transparency and rampant corruption.
Officially, taxes and duties collected at the pump are supposed to be spent mostly on improving highway safety and building more and better highways. Yet FAR has established that these claims are largely bogus: the length of new roads constructed since 2000 has been minuscule, and Russia's traffic fatalities per 100,000 vehicles [70] remain the highest in Europe (except for Albania) and almost five times the US rate [15]. FAR's investigation concluded that the price of gasoline is inflated by the "corruption component": the 20 and 30 percent (and sometimes as high as 50 percent) of the price of goods and services known as "administrative rent" and "kickbacks" (otkaty). This component is particularly large in such heavily regulated industries as oil production. (z)
Furthermore, as FAR's homepage pointed out, 1 trillion rubles (over $30 billion or 12 percent of the Russian state budget) are stolen from the Russian treasury every year according to President Medvedev--twice as much as the transportation tax and the gasoline tax combined. Hence, FAR's demand: "The end of corruption, transparency, and public control over everything that is connected to the formation of monopolistic prices, state regulation, and duties. It is not just the price of gasoline that will determine how we act but to what extent the authorities will take into consideration our interests in the future." (93)
Similarly, highway safety has been found compromised, often fatally, by another hallmark of Putin's regime: flagrant inequality before the law. In this instance, it is the law that permits vast and ill-defined categories of government officials and what might be called "friends of the government" to drive with blue flashing lights (migalki) and violate the rules, including driving on the wrong side of the road against traffic. A source of many accidents, a few of them fatal, the law has been targeted by FAR's national campaign for repeal. As previously detailed, the organization has sought to strictly limit the use of the lights and allowable traffic pattern violations to sharply reduced and precisely defined categories of officials and eventually to confine them solely to fire and medical rescue vehicles. In Kanaev's words, "Until the law is on the books, we are saying that a government functionary has the right to kill people on the roads." (94)
FAR has also been very active in the "blue buckets" "equality on the roads" campaign, in which children's beach toys are placed on cars' antennas and racks or on the heads of protesters to mock the lights of the Russian mandarins' corteges. Popular bumper stickers that we saw at FAR's headquarters in Moscow told the story: "For Equality and Security," "I don't give bribes!" and "Flashing Lights are Russia's Shame!" Shortly before the interview with Kanaev, FAR had released a letter to Putin, demanding his resignation if he is unable to meet FAR's demands and improve the country's economic conditions in general.
A Surprising Culprit: Civil Society
Although confronted almost daily by the regime's structural problems and inequities, for virtually all the respondents the regime was not the main culprit. Instead, most of the blame for the country's state of affairs was laid at the door of civil society, which allowed the present regime to be established, to consolidate, and to continue. In the words of TIGR's statement, "We have no civil society that would keep politicians to their promises ...and would make government functionaries remember that they are servants of people who pay their salaries." (95) Natalia Vvedenskaya's diagnosis was similar: "When I got involved in Bashne.net! I had a sense that it would be possible to win. But the habit of submissiveness is so [widespread] that no one resists. And for most of our compatriots, unfortunately, motivation is something like this: 'Nothing depends on us anyway.' It is a phrase that everyone mouths. 'They will decide on their own. We don't matter here.'" (96)
A 2010 TIGR leaflet expressed the same sentiment graphically and in no uncertain terms. It featured a photo of a cow with a caption in bold capital letters: "YOU THINK THIS IS A COW? NO, IT'S YOU. And they will milk you forever if you continue to support the powers-that-be with your mooing. October 24 [2010] is your chance to become a human being [by protesting] against ... the transportation tax, duties [poshliny], and gasoline prices." (97)
"Why should we know," exhorted another TIGR leaflet,
that we have no justice, no freedom of speech, no honest elections,
[that] our rights are violated and the Constitution is not abided by,
[that] we are not free in our country? WHY SHOULD WE KNOW ALL OF THIS?
THESE ARE NOT OUR PROBLEMS, ARE THEY???
Now they've really got to us [dostali]. THE
TIME HAS COME TO ANSWER FOR
EVERYTHING. Come to participate in the protest action on March 20 [2011] at 1 o'clock. Come participate if you can't take any more the LIES and CORRUPTION of the current regime. (98)
The shortage of a mature, self-aware, and self-organized civil society, able and willing to manage executives on every level, emerged from the interviews as the key obstacle to the country's progress toward democracy. This theme was articulated with remarkable clarity, passion, and consistency. "Where does the regime's impunity [beznakazannost] come from?" asked Maxim Vedenev. "It is a function of our indifference. Indifference breeds impunity, and impunity destroys everything. If people respected themselves more, we would have never had such impunity." (99)
"Public control [over the executive] is the key," said Sergei Kanaev. "The system we want to construct is a system of public control that would work no matter who is in power. Without this, nothing will change in the country. Everyone thinks that if only they come to power everything will change. But I tell them: by the time you get to power, you will already be just as the 'system' wants you to be.... It seems to us that if we manage to work out a [new] system of control not by the state but by society, everything will fall into place. We say: so long as there is no such control, no matter how many elections we hold, the power system will always remain the same [as it is now]." (100)
For Doroshok, too, the main obstacle is the structure of power rather than individual leaders. "State power has always existed and will exist. [But] which party is in power is not as important as the framework in which people put that power. The content is less important because without people's control, those in power, even the finest men, could become scoundrels."
Evgenia Chirikova's diagnosis was similar. One state (the Soviet Union) collapsed because it was founded on violence, she said, but it has been replaced by "a veritable kleptocracy," the "regime of swindlers and thieves":
This is scary. I think the only way [out] is for our citizens to become real citizens. And in that case, we will be able to change the regime. At the moment, it would be useless to exchange Putin for someone else, no matter who that person might be. Only when people develop political will, if they are not indifferent to their fate, if they actively participate in the life of their country--only then will we have an entirely different regime in power. (101)
The Metagoal: "Changing People's Mentality"
Thus, the key objective is not change of regime but an enlightened, active, and informed citizenry, capable of effecting such a change and of remaining vigilant to prevent a relapse into authoritarianism. In the words of a TIGR manifesto:
There are no mechanisms for the defense of common people in Russia.... We have no civil society that would keep politicians to their promises, that would force businesses to be socially responsible, and that would make government functionaries remember that they are servants of people who pay their salaries. We are aware that the situation is like an illness that is not treated for many years. It is impossible to create a party and win an election. It is impossible to field a candidate for mayor of a city, it is impossible even to find such a candidate. The authorities change the constitution at will, completely ignoring people's wishes. Under these circumstances, a political agenda makes no sense since there are no mechanisms for its realization. To create such a mechanism is precisely what constitutes our agenda. And this mechanism is called "civil society." (102)
Respondents had no illusion about the tall obstacles that must be overcome on the road to a mature democratic citizenship. For instance, calling on its members and supporters to participate in the March 2011 national protest against high gasoline prices, FAR's homepage declared, "Nothing [provokes] the authorities [toward] lawlessness and impunity [sic] as the silence of society.... The parasite inside [us] thwarts all the attempts at civic activity....Despair and laziness have shackled our society." (103) The same reasons, according to Chirikova, account for the difficulty in mobilizing people for the defense of the Khimki forest. "People are not ready to fight for their rights," she claimed. "Why do we have a situation where the [United Russia] 'party of thieves and swindlers' has a majority in the parliament? Because people cannot tear themselves from their sofas to vote in the right way, or to [help] register a new party." (104)
In the end, permanent change for the better can come only from within society. Nothing short of an evolution in people's attitudes--and, through it, of the country's political culture--will do. "The change of political regime is possible only through the change in people's mentality," (105) said a respondent. "The main thing is that people who come to us begin to think differently, begin to believe that everything is possible and the key is not to be afraid," another leader told us. "For Russia to become the country I dream of... the Russian people must wake up and begin to think within a different mental framework, to be guided ... by such notions as honor, conscience, camaraderie, duty ... and, most importantly, free will. Don't confuse [free will] with freedom. Freedom can be taken away, delimited, but [free] will either exists or does not. It can be subverted only by its owner himself." (106)
Regardless of their daily activities and short-term goals, it was in the inculcation of a new "mentality" that respondents saw the essence of their effort and its ultimate moral justification. "We are no longer fighting just for the forest," said Chirikova. "Our struggle is a struggle for people's minds.... We are trying to change the most difficult thing of all: people's mentality. We are making [real] citizens out of citizens. Which is why we publish newspapers, blanket the town with leaflets.... This is more important than any seizure of power, because this is the foundation for serious and long-term changes in the country." (107) Many [like-minded people] "gathered in one place can change a great deal," said another respondent. "If people begin to self-organize, we won't need any revolutions. This will be the most peaceful revolution of all: people will simply stop submitting and begin to demand." (108)
The new civic "mentality" is defined, first and foremost, as self-respect and personal responsibility--"responsibility for what is happening in the country." (109) A citizen is someone who "to the best of his abilities does everything he can to ameliorate the situation in the country, in his yard, in his town, in his country--as far as he can reach." (110)
Among several strategies to promote these attitudes, self-organization and self-help were judged by respondents to be the most effective. "Self" was the operational term. All respondents were vehemently opposed to what one of them described as "dragging people along" (111) toward a particular political or social order, no matter how progressive. Instead, they were determined to inculcate citizenship through actual participation. Above and beyond any advance in their organizational agendas, this citizenship-by-action and citizenship-by-example was an ever-present objective.
"[The question is] how to make people who decide at least something out of people who decide nothing?" said Natalia Vvedenskaya. "This makes a huge difference! People don't understand that it is not somebody who has to act but it is they--they must control [the affairs in the country]." People come to his organization and ask for help, explained Maxim Vedenev. "I say: no, we can't help you. They don't understand [and say], 'We know that you help people!' And I say: I help you to help yourself ... I can explain what can be done and how we can help you do it. But it is you who must help yourself!" (112) Similarly, according to Anastasia Zagoruyko, by increasing car owners' "legal literacy" (knowledge of laws) "we teach people how to defend their rights and to achieve justice." (113) Doroshok, too, felt that people's
own participation [is] essential. As soon as they begin seeing some "Uncle Vasya" who will do everything for them, this society becomes stagnant. That is why it is so important to build a self-conscious civil society [which] not only develops likes or dislikes with respect to this or that party. A party's name does not change the nature of people in power. People must be explained the necessity of their own participation in the life of their area, their city. (114)
Far more than the development of skills for informed citizenship, important as they are, was to be achieved by these efforts. Examples of voluntary collective action in pursuit of moral objectives were seen as the key to building confidence and cohesion--and to facilitating mobilization.
"Often there is a situation when people are 'a little angry' and this is enough. It is enough to feel dignity in oneself" said Vvedenskaya:
Among other things, the [Bashne.net!] victory is so important because people may react differently [next time]. They see that they've signed [letters of protest]--and it has worked! That they've gone to a protest rally--and it has worked! The levers begin to work and people begin to behave differently.... I understood this. I've felt the responsibility. Because [for us] it was a struggle of the cultural capital of the country [St. Petersburg] with the country's richest company [Gazprom]. It was like a model of the struggles that take place throughout the country: if the cultural capital cannot win, then [in the provinces] they don't have a prayer. But if goodness wins, then we have a chance. Which is why they followed our fight so closely in the provinces. It was a model for them. (115)
Demonstrating that "the banding together of citizens can have a real impact on the fate of their district, city, country" was seen as "giving people faith": (zx) if [the organization or movement] achieved something here, why couldn't we try it somewhere else? "Someone must do something to demonstrate that we are citizens." (116)
The "Cells" and the "Molecules": The Moral Contagion of Citizenship
Tellingly, several respondents (or their organizations' Internet posts) described their organizations as "cells" (yacheykas) out of which a new civil society springs. If everything that his organization did made it a "cell of civil society," said Sergei Kanaev, he would be very pleased. "I cannot say that by our actions we are changing the system," Kanaev continued. "We are not there yet. Instead we are creating a situation in which people understand that, having defended their rights even in a small way, they need to go further." (117) TIGR described its role in very similar terms:
We are not aiming at the instant transformation of the entire society. We are beginning with the defense of our rights. We will stand up for our rights and our dignity. We will involve more and more people in this process. We want to construct a "small civil society" and gradually expand it to all of Russia. And then either the civil society will force the regime to heed its demands--or it will change the irresponsible regime. (118)
Most of all, respondents saw--or wished to see--their organizations ("cells") becoming magnets for the like-minded, a kind of laboratory of civil society, where values and convictions were strengthened and ideas developed for dissemination. "The organization is to become a cell around which coalesce those who are not indifferent to the fate of their city, their country," a TIGR leader wrote in response to the questionnaire. "[It] is an association in which a person stops feeling himself alone, where he finds likeminded people, acts on and implements his plans. And most importantly, he feels an active, real support when he starts to battle rampant lawlessness (bespredel) of police, procuracy, and bureaucrats." (119)
To illustrate this process, another respondent likened it to "the effect of water crystallization," which occurs when a particle of dust is introduced into sterilized, "absolutely clean" water. "It creates the point of unification" of molecules, with the extent and the pace of crystallization depending "on what we do next." (120) Another leader compared the process to organic chemistry, in which new materials are created and "go on engaging new molecules ad infinitum'" He contrasted this practice with the nonorganic chemistry of "regular politics of interests," in which coalitions come and go, without making the society richer and more complex. (121) He also pointed to an important advantage of the former method over the latter: the organically created societal "molecules" will continue to exist even if the initial element (the organizer) is detached; the nonorganic units are likely to fall apart if the regime manages to "take [the leader] out of the chain." (122)
Toward "Peacefully Changing [People's] Conscience"
By far the most gratifying effect for most respondents was the change in their compatriots' attitudes. "I feel huge satisfaction when a man begins to talk seriously about the things that he considered foolish and impossible only not long time ago," said one respondent. "The organization is only an instrument. The key is to forge a circle of people with a similar perspective on life, mentality, and understanding." (123)
Such change does not happen overnight and requires patience and steadiness of purpose. "It is paramount not to relax, to understand that this struggle may last our entire life," said Evgenia Chirikova. "Such changes don't happen in five seconds. We must resolve to be patient." A mother of two young children, she added, "It's like pregnancy. It will last nine months. No matter what you do, the baby will be born only in nine months. Laws of nature cannot be changed--and neither can the laws of societal development. We cannot skip over some processes, this is physically impossible. So all these quick, enthusiasm-fueled revolutionary transformations that many are dreaming of today, they will come to nothing. Only gradual change--and only work with individuals on every level can [bring results]." (124)
In advocating this peaceful revolution, Chirikova was very concerned about "frightful historical parallels," with the current political regime becoming, as she put it, "so deaf [to the needs of society], so incapable of meeting its demands, that the society could blow up." (125) Such an outcome, she continued, "would not be good either for the people or the country.... We've made this mistake once [in the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917], but we are more experienced now. Our condition is different. The world has changed, and so have our modes of communication, which is why I think that the key element of [political] change consists of citizens themselves changing. I think the chances are good to be able to change the regime's power structures by peacefully changing the conscience of our citizens." (126)
A Civil Rights Movement
Although the leaders and activists of these organizations could be described as political opposition, a more precise definition might be a civil rights movement. In stark contrast with the national political culture that for centuries has prized quick, usually illusory results and what Stalin called "great ruptures" (velikie perelomy) imposed from above, most respondents were convinced that needed change would come only through a sustained moral and civic education. It is in educating their fellow citizens, through self-organization and self-help, that they see their most important contribution to the emergence of a new, dignified, and prosperous Russia.
The respondents' common, overarching goal could be described as dignity in democratic citizenship, with equality before the law and the end of de facto disenfranchisement as the most urgently needed building blocks. (zy) Led, like other civil rights movements, by the middle class, the Russian civic effort rejects violence in principle. Instead, the respondents seek to effect vast political and social change through a personal and deeply moral effort. In one instance, after he had poured out his immense frustration with "the system" and evinced a seemingly complete lack of hope for any change in the short term, I asked the deputy chairman of Spravedlivost, Vitaly Lavrinovich, why then he was continuing the struggle. He answered, "How can one live otherwise?" (127) Similarly, as she took us to some of the Bashne.net! and Zhivoy gorod "battle sites," a young female activist spotted a watchman who in the past had harassed the protesters at one of the construction sites. "How can you live with your conscience?" she asked him.
Evgenia Chirikova summarized this persistent, deeply personal, but utterly nonviolent effort:
I think we look more like the Gandhi movement in India.... We lead many ordinary people, who understand that, to continue the parallel, we are not worse than the British, we are not worse than our authorities, that we are not slaves and that, although the empire humiliates us we continue to resist and do not respond with violence. ... We consciously avoid violence, never resort [to] violent means in our struggle [because] when you don't respond to violence with violence you avoid multiplying evil.... If some of the people whom we support begin to resort to violence, of course we sympathize with their [personal plight] after they are repressed. But ... I always tell them: Guys, I am very sorry that you are being punished like this, but our way is a way of peaceful resistance and it is the only way to change anything in the world. (128)
Again, like civil rights movements before them, the respondents eschew time limits or deadlines for the achievement of their goals, displaying quiet but unyielding determination and patience to persevere as long as necessary. "For us to have what you have [in the United States] we will have to devote our lives to it and then perhaps something will change during the life of our children," said Sergei Kanaev. Natalia Vvedenskaya sounded the same motif of personal responsibility before posterity:
I get very tired from all of this. Truth be told, I am not at all a public person. It all comes from a sense of duty.... I understand sufficiently clearly that for some time--perhaps a long time, perhaps as long as twenty years and maybe longer still--all that can be preserved [of the historical and cultural legacy] is what we manage to preserve, because a normal system of cultural preservation in our country is not working and not likely to start working soon. It is understood. And that means that I personally will be asked: "And where were you when all this was happening?" (129)
Harassment appeared only to add to their resolve. "So I told the [regional] administration," said Maxim Vedenev,
Guys, you thought I would be afraid because of [my] business, but I don't have it anymore. You've tried [to intimidate] through the family. I don't have it anymore either. So all you can do now is to kill me. And I am not afraid of that either because I'll finally rest. So when [now] I am ordered to come to the prokuratura, I go and sit there calmly. When I am ordered to the UVD (Internal Affairs Administration), I sit there calmly.
Konstantin Doroshok, too, remained defiant:
When my brother and his friends came to see me to say thank you, I told them that I would definitely run again.... And then, I told them, go on vacation, do what you want but I would not do for you again what I just did. And, of course, there was a great deal of anger in me, anger and determination. I'd gone through all this and I was not afraid of anything anymore. And I began to think seriously how to expand our ranks, how we could attract and unite political parties because it would be more difficult to harass them than an individual.
Conclusion
Building on Earlier Research ...
By establishing continuity, evolution, or discontinuity with the earlier findings, this study supplies correctives and updates to some of the patterns, tendencies, and themes suggested by earlier research and highlighted in the literature review above. For instance, while the regime's persistent control of television continues to hinder associations in their role as "facilitators of civil society" and to impede civil society's ability to self-inform and self-organize, the data collected confirm the Internet's ability to breach this monopoly and dramatically expand the "public sphere" into the virtual realm. The Internet's transformation into a public venue and its contribution to civic activism appear to have progressed dramatically. In the case of all the organizations under study, their websites serve as indispensable forums for the elucidation of their agendas, education of their members and supporters, and outreach to "mainstream media." Most importantly for our purposes, the Internet has evolved into an indispensable tool of mobilization, be it public events (picketing, rallies) or petition drives. The Web helps not only "nationalize" but also, in some cases, "internationalize" the issues, drawing supporters from the country at large and abroad.
Another previously noted tendency confirmed by this research is the lack of financial predictability (and "institutionalization") as a key structural problem of grass-roots organizations in Russia. With dues symbolic and even then rarely collected, what might be called a "post-Khodorkovsky" resource environment is characterized by the absence of anything like systematic and sizable outside donations. Such assistance as they manage to get from local businesses is meager, surreptitious, and often in-kind rather than money. At the same time, the economic boom of 2000-2008 has resulted in steady and at times remarkably high increases in middle-class incomes, enabling the leaders and activists, many of them current or former business owners, to keep the organizations alive through ad hoc funding.
Most significantly, we have found that, despite severe structural limitations, Sundstrom and Henry's "strong minority of citizens" continue to "band together" in Putin's Russia. Similarly, McFaul and Treyger's belief in "the potential for Russian society to acquire traits close to the Western paradigm" clearly has been borne out, with citizens not merely implementing government policies but actively participating in shaping them. As described by Salmenniemi, the concept of the "ideal" citizen--"active, self-reliant, and responsible," orienting himself or herself to "society" instead of the state--has been found to be very much alive.
... And Noting New and Potentially Momentous Developments
Supplementing or perhaps even challenging the traditional civic leadership of the intelligentsia (mostly) from liberal professions and (mostly) in the state's employ, the organizations and movements are led by what might be called Russia's "new" middle class of self-employed, relatively well-off, entrepreneurial and/or business-owning individuals. More like loose, broad, Internet-based, issue-driven, and ad hoc mobilized communities of the like-minded than traditional groups with a fairly well-defined membership and hierarchy, the organizations swell during successfully organized public events or petition drives. The members (or, rather, "supporters," as a respondent called them) seem to melt away into cyberspace afterward, only to reemerge again, often on very short notice.
Yet perhaps the most portentous findings are the two overlapping but distinct phenomena: the seemingly spontaneous but apparently inevitable "spill-over into politics" (peretekanie v politiku), on the one hand, and long-term goals that extend far outside the day-to-day agendas, on the other. Conveyed to the interviewers by remarkable self-awareness and articulated with equally notable clarity and determination, both processes deviated from the destination suggested by the national political culture. Instead of a political change "at" and "from" the top, with remarkable unanimity, the respondents described their ultimate goal as something that might be described as democratic citizenship--a civil society able and motivated to supervise the executive. Hence, no matter what their "routine," day-to-day objectives were, all of the respondents saw their most important mission as the education of their fellow citizens in self-organization, self-help, competence, courage, and confidence.
Both in their ultimate aims and in the highly moral personal example of civic responsibility and nonviolence by which they advance toward them, these organizations and movements resemble civil rights movements much more than political associations. If borne out, this tentative parallel may help predict the behavior of these groups--and that of hundreds of organizations and movements like them--thus helping US policymakers chart more effective engagement with, and assistance to, the pro-democratic segment of Russia's reviving civil society.
Appendix
Self-Organization of Civil Society in Today's Russia: Goals, Strategies, and Tactics of Six Movements and Organizations
Translated from Russian by the author, with the Russian original follwing. In each case, the questionnaires were augmented by references to the organizations' activities; materials found on the organizations' sites (programs, posts, statutes, and so forth); and, in the case of the leaders, quotes from their previously published interviews.
The Questionnaire
1. Biography and personal motivation
* How old are you?
* Education?
* Profession/occupation?
* How/under what circumstances did you organize/ start to participate in the organization?
* Why do you continue to invest time and energy in this work? Where, for you, is the moral "compensation"?
2. The organization's "biography"
* Where and by whom organized?
* What are the circumstances? What served as the "spark"?
3. Strategic goals
* What are the strategic, long-term goals of your organization/movement (as opposed to tactical objectives that will be discussed below)?
* How does its activities help the emergence of or make more proximate a Russia about which you dream and which you would like to bequeath to your children?
4. Tactical goals and tactics; current work; relations with the authorities
* What are your short-term objectives? What would you like to achieve in, say, the next one to two years?
* Which political, social, economic problems of your city, region, country do you consider "your own" in terms of your organization's activities?
* What projects/objectives are you currently working on/seeking to attain? What approaches/ actions are you planning for their realization?
* In your experience, which actions seem to you tactically most effective in terms of reaching the organization's goals?
* What are the relations with the authorities? Do they combine protest "from the outside" with work "from within" (for instance, elections to/ participation in the local legislative, executive, or consultative bodies)? Is it more competition or partnership? Both? Then where is the emphasis?
* Have the authorities asked you to "help" them? What is the organization's position with regard to such requests? Are you concerned about the "cooptation" of the organization by the authorities?
5. The role of the Internet
* What are the main uses of the site and its effect (for example, an alternative to the censored mass media; a key means of connecting with the members and "sympathizers"; practical or legal advice; mobilization for a particular action)?
6. Structure, membership, resources
* How is your organization structured: informally or "formally" (regular meetings, elections of leadership, leadership's reports to the members)?
* How is the membership maintained and expanded?
* Do you collect membership dues? Donations? Do you have regular sponsors/supporters/ contributors? Of course, we are interested not in the names but in the types of support/funding.
7. The future
* Ideally, how do you see your organization in two, three, five years in terms of structure, membership (demographics, numbers), and influence?
[TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]
* Altogether, nineteen one-on-one interviews were conducted in five cities. On average, they lasted about an hour and a half, although some took two, three, and even four hours.
(a) To name just a few examples, the Solidarity movement in Poland began with protests of working conditions, and the Green League and Society for Nature and Environment in East Germany brought together dissidents to voice their discontent with pollution, destruction of natural resources, and industrial conditions.
(b) Maria Lipman defines the social stratum that contributes heavily to the ranks of the "new protesters" not as "middle class" but as "the new urban class," which she describes as "young, well-educated professionals and entrepreneurs who have learned to rely on themselves and make their own decisions." They are also "mobile and flexible" and at home in the "world of new media and global communications." See Maria Lipman, "Civil Society and the Nonparticipation Act" (paper presented at the 42nd National Convention of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies, Los Angeles, CA, November 17, 2010), 4. Cited with the author's permission.
(c) For a theoretical interpretation of these opposing views on civil society's role vis-a-vis the state, see, for example, Henry Hale, "Civil Society from Above? Statist and Liberal Models of State-Building in Russia," Demokratizatsiya 10, no. 3 (Summer 2002): 306-21. Hale identifies "the statist conception of state-society relations" as one in which the state and society are perceived as "integrally related" and "part of the same organic whole," and contrasts it with a situation in which civil society plays an independent role and orients its activists toward society as a whole and not just the state. He labels the latter "the liberal model of state-society relations" (Ibid., 309, 307).
(d) For a pioneering study of the immensely benign impact of e-mail communications on grass-roots organizations in Russia (in this case, an environmental activist group in Kaliningrad in the mid-1990s), see Shannon O'Lear, "Networks of Engagement: Electronic Communication and Grassroots Environmental Activism in Kaliningrad," Geografiska Annaler; Series B, Human Geography 81, no. 3 (1999): 165-78.
(e) The Levada-Center study Perspektivy grazhdanskovo obshchestva v Rossii [The Prospects for Civil Society in Russia] came to my attention too late to inform the design of this research or stimulate the analysis of the findings, but the two projects are remarkably similar in the initial impulse, methodology (selection criteria), and even some of the key conclusions. Seeking to explore the objectives and modus operandi of grass-roots organizations and movements, the Levada researchers, led by Denis Volkov, conducted 103 in-depth interviews in six of the largest Russian cities (of which three, Vladivostok, Kaliningrad, and Moscow, overlapped with our final choices). Noting severe shortages of funding, the authors nevertheless noted "growth of civic activity," the central role of the Internet, a degree of cooperation with the state and its institutions, and the "forced politicization" of the organizations and movements that began as apolitical. Study available in Russian at www.levada.ru/press/ 2011040402.html (accessed October 25, 2011).
(f) According to an interview with FAR president Sergei Kanaev, there were 36 million cars in Russia as of summer 2011 and 30 million car owners. While far from every owner is a member and car ownership is not a requirement for membership, the self-selection is apparently strong enough to account for the organization's popularity and the size of the Internet community it spawned.
(g) The questionnaire was e-mailed to the respondents long before we set out for the trip. With one exception, however, we received no response. Similarly, our efforts to agree on the time of the interview were met with the virtually universal response of "call me when you are in town." The indeterminacy caused the author a few sleepless nights--until the deeply buried but apparently still intact native sense of resignation took over. In the end, we managed to interview everyone on the original list of respondents--and several others, to boot--albeit not without glitches. One respondent's child was sick; she canceled the meeting at the last minute, yet made up for it by responding to the questionnaire in writing and then again in response to my follow-up. Another leader was too discomfited by severe back pain to meet us in the office, yet invited us to her home, where we found her with a thick woolen shawl around her waist, constantly changing her position in the chair to ease the pain or getting up to walk around during the interview. ECMO's Evgenia Chirikova and Yaroslav Nikitenko were to be contacted by phone on the eve of our last full weekday in Moscow (even civil society activists disappear to their dachas in mid-July). Yet no one answered our phone and Skype calls and e-mails. I continued to call every few minutes until late afternoon when Nikitenko suddenly picked up. Both he and Chirikova turned out to be in Paris, promoting their cause. (The general contractor for highway construction is the French multinational Vinci). I interviewed Nikitenko via Skype from St. Petersburg, where we went after Moscow. Chirikova, who seemed to spend her days leading protest rallies, getting arrested, or throwing herself in front of bulldozers in the Khimki forest, was harder to catch up to. She was interviewed by phone after our return to Washington.
(h) The interview was recorded from a speakerphone.
(i) By written responses to the questionnaire (via e-mail) and a face-to-face recorded interview.
(j) By written responses to the questionnaire and to written follow-up questions.
(k) For example, TIGR helped organize rallies for the dismissal of St. Petersburg governor Valentina Matvienko and led protests against the transportation tax (calculated according to the size of a car's engine) and for lowering the price of gasoline. In December 2008, it demonstrated in solidarity with the car owners of Vladivostok, who protested the ban on the right-hand steering wheel and a sharp increase on import duties for used Japanese cars. (Materials in the author's possession.)
(l) Among the past funders, Marina Rikhvanova listed the Ford Foundation, the Eurasia Foundation, and the Institute of US-Russian Relations. In 2008, after receiving the Goldman Prize for her efforts to protect the environment around Lake Baikal from harmful industries, Rikhvanova used it to "support the organization for several years." (The Goldman Prize, $150,000, is awarded annually by a San Francisco-based foundation to six grass-roots environmental activists from around the world.) Contrary to popular belief, Baikal Ecological Wave is not a Greenpeace affiliate, although the organization is "always very interested" in cooperating with Greenpeace on the issues to which it cannot find solutions on its own. (Interview with Marina Rikhvanova. See also www.goldmanprize.org/2008/asia.) Evgenia Chirikova received the Goldman Prize in 2012. See www.goldmanprize.org/recipient/evgenia-chirikova.
(m) "There is an auto club that supports us, but I cannot name as confidentiality is their main condition of working with us," Anastasia Zagoruyko explained.
(n) Two of them have been interviewed for this study: Natalia Vvedenskaya and Dmitry Lynov.
(o) Vvedenskaya also designed blue ribbons as the movement's symbol.
(p) In preparation for the same rally, Doroshok also used in-person advertisement he had seen "in Europe": "It was commercial advertising, but I liked the way it was done. In Germany, where traffic lights turned, I saw how girls run across a giant autobahn and just stood there [with their ads] along the pedestrian crossing in view of hundreds of cars. Then lights changed and they were gone. We did the same here, in Kaliningrad. We made posters, addressed very personally to each driver: 'Help us! Nothing will happen without you! The car tax has been increased six-fold! Is that fair?!' So we walked onto a highway and stood there while the cars stopped for the light. And we did it for several hours until police came and took us away."
(q) Alone among the organizations under study, FAR has received a government grant as part of a federal project to lower the rate of children's injuries in traffic accidents.
(r) Although we were in Irkutsk two weeks before the festival, we liberally sampled strawberries and were amazed at how good they tasted--in Southeastern Siberia. The pastries were delicious as well.
(s) See the Findings 2 section.
(t) The regime's responsiveness must not be exaggerated even in the areas where it has made concessions. Thus, the BPPP continues to operate and pollute Lake Baikal. After yielding to a FAR-led campaign to reexamine the evidence, the authorities again concluded that the victims were to blame for the traffic accident on Moscow's Leninsky Prospekt in February 2010, in which two women physicians were killed when the Mercedes of a Lukoil vice president smashed into their Peugeot. And, of course, Spravedlivost's and TIGR's demands for greater election transparency were met by the worse-than-ever manipulation in the December 4, 2011, Duma election.
(u) By then, Microsoft had licensed its software for free use by nonprofit organizations. Baikal Ecological Wave brought a suit against the police, but the court ruled that the police "acted in accordance with law." Lacking "qualified lawyers," the organization has given up on appeals. (Interview with Marina Rikhvanova.)
(v) Although he was not a leader of Spravedlivost, Areseny Makhlov's newspaper, Dvornik, described above, was central to the organization's outreach. As a result, he too has been an object of what is known as naezd--literally, a "run-over," a term used for a corrupt legal procedure initiated against a political foe or a business competitor. According to Doroshok, the naezd was initiated by Governor Georgy Boos, when the latter attempted "to establish control over all the media [in the region]." Makhlov was accused of taking bribes, with "proof furnished by a video. Fortunately, a well-off man, Makhlov was able to hire "top-notch" experts and lawyers, who proved that the video was fake and that the alleged participants in the "transaction" were ex-criminals hired by the police. (Interview with Konstantin Doroshok.)
(w) In the same interview, Chirikova accused Vladimir Putin of "blatantly violat[ing] and continuing to violate the laws of the Russian Federation," and in December 2010, she announced that "we are starting [a] political struggle and will be insisting on the change of the current regime."
(x) Below the caption was a picture of a gasoline gauge, with "war" instead of "empty" and "peace" instead of "full." (A photocopy in the author's possession.)
(y) Among the successes of its anti-reyderstvo operations, TIGR listed the successful recovery of a local quarry to its owner and the defense of the Ussuriysk Cossack Society. (Interview with Maxim Vedenev.)
(z) As a December 2009 leaflet distributed by FAR's close ally, TIGR, put it: "They increase the transportation tax, but they don't build new roads! We buy gasoline but only 30 percent of our cost is the price of gas, the rest is tariffs and taxes--and we don't know where this revenue goes!... STOP MILKING US!" (A photocopy is in the author's possession.) "All transportation taxes--for bridges and roads!" (Vse avtonalogi--na mosty i dorogi!) is another of TIGR's slogans, in this case a rhyming one.
(zx) Three weeks later and 4,500 miles away, Sergei Kanaev put this in almost identical words: "When people see that we've succeeded in something, it gives them faith: why not try this and that now? Someone has to do something to show that we are citizens here! But when we just sit and wait for civil activity to fall from the sky, it will never happen. It cannot appear out of nowhere." (Interview with Sergei Kanaev.)
(zy) Four months after the interviews were conducted, the realization that their votes did not count after the December 4 parliamentary election triggered the largest mass protests in Putin's Russia.
Notes
(1.) For long excerpts from the interviews with the six leaders, see Leon Aron, "Putin Is Already Dead," Foreign Policy, January 2012, www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012 /02/07/putin_is_already_dead (accessed June 28, 2012).
(2.) US Department of State, "US Government Assistance to Eastern Europe under the Support for East European Democracy Act," www.state.gov/p/eur/rls/rpt/c10247.htm (accessed January 5, 2011).
(3.) US Department of State, "FY 2009 Foreign Operations Appropriated Assistance: Russia," www.state.gov/p/eur /rls/rpt/eurasiafy09/136829.htm (accessed January 5, 2011).
(4.) US Department of State, Russia: Advancing Freedom and Democracy Reports (Washington, DC, May 2010), www.state.gov/j7drl/rls/afdr/2010/eur/129785.htm (accessed June 24, 2012).
(5.) Hillary Rodham Clinton, "Remarks at the US-Russia 'Civil Society to Civil Society' Summit" (Washington, DC, June 24, 2010).
(6.) Philip H. Gordon, "US-Russia Relations under the Obama Administration" (remarks, German Marshall Fund, Washington, DC, June 16, 2010).
(7.) Titles of USAID-funded civil society projects retrieved from www.usaid.gov on December 6, 2010.
(8.) Tracy Lee Simmons, "God's Law and the Power of the State," Washington Post, February 5, 2012.
(9.) L. M. Grigoriev, B. I. Makarenko, A. A. Salmina, and A. E. Shastitko, Sredniy klass posle krizisa: ekspress-analiz vzglyadov na politiku i ekonomiku [Middle Class after the Crisis: An Express Analysis of Its Opinions on Politics and the Economy], 134-38, http://viperson.ru/data/201011 /Middlefinal2010.pdf (accessed January 4, 2011).
(10.) Ibid., 138.
(11.) Ibid., 139-41.
(12.) Ibid., 142.
(13.) Leon Aron, "Russia's New Protesters," AEI Russian Outlook (Spring 2010), www.aei.org/outlook/foreign-and-defensepolicy/regional/ europe/russias-new-protesters-outlook.
(14.) Maria Lipman, "Civil Society and the Nonparticipation Pact" (paper presented at the 42nd National Convention of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies, Los Angeles, CA, November 17, 2010). Cited with the author's permission.
(15.) Oleg Kashin, "Shtorm na Baltike" [Storm on the Baltic], Vlast, March 15, 2010, available in Russian at www.kommersant.ru/doc.aspx?DocsID=1334515&ThemesID= 366 (accessed May 28, 2010).
(16.) Frederick Power, The Politics of Civil Society: Neoliberalism or Social Left? (Bristol, UK: Policy Press, 2007), vii.
(17.) Alfred B. Evans Jr., Laura A. Henry, and Lisa McIntosh Sundstrom, eds., Russian Civil Society: A Critical Assessment (New York: M. E. Sharpe, 2006).
(18.) Michael McFaul and Elina Treyger, "Civil Society," in Michael McFaul, Nikolai Petrov, and Andrei Ryabov, eds., Between Dictatorship and Democracy (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2004), 142.
(19.) Lisa McIntosh Sundstrom and Laura A. Henry, "Russian Civil Society: Tensions and Trajectories," in Evans, Henry, and Sundstrom, eds., Russian Civil Society, 306. Marc Morje Howard, similarly, has found postcommunist civil society "weak" and did not foresee "dramatic changes in the pattern of nonparticipation throughout postcommunist Europe." See Marc Morje Howard, "Postcommunist Civil Society in Comparative Perspective," Demokratizatsiya 10, no. 3 (2002): 285-86.
(20.) Sundstrom and Henry, "Russian Civil Society," 318.
(21.) Ibid., and McFaul and Treyger, "Civil Society," 159-66. For details, see Alfred B. Evans Jr., "Vladimir Putin's Design for Civil Society," in Evans, Henry, and Sundstrom, eds., Russian Civil Society.
(22.) Sara Oates, "Media, Civil Society, and the Future of the Fourth Estate in Russia," in Evans, Henry, and Sundstrom, eds., Russian Civil Society, chapter 4.
(23.) Sundstrom and Henry, "Russian Civil Society," 311.
(24.) Louise Shelley, "Organized Crime Groups: 'Uncivil Society,'" in Evans, Henry, and Sundstrom, eds., Russian Civil Society, chapter 6.
(25.) Jo Crotty, "Reshaping the Hourglass? The Environmental Movement and Civil Society Development in the Russian Federation," Organizational Studies 27, no. 9 (2006): 1319.
(26.) Ibid., 1334-35.
(27.) Jason M. K. Lyall, "Pocket Protests: Rhetorical Coercion and the Micropolitics of Collective Action in Semiauthoritarian Regimes," World Politics 58, no. 3 (April 2006): 379, 411.
(28.) Sundstrom and Henry, "Russian Civil Society," 307.
(29.) McFaul and Treyger, "Civil Society," 171.
(30.) Suvi Salmenniemi, "Struggling for Citizenship: Civic Participation and the State in Russia," Demokratizatsiya (Fall 2010): 336.
(31.) Sundstrom and Henry, "Russian Civil Society," 311.
(32.) K. A. Gulin and I. N. Dement'eva, "Main Trends of Protest Moods in Vologda Oblast," Sociological Research 49, no. 2 (March/April 2010): 50 and table 1.
(33.) Sundstrom and Henry, "Russian Civil Society," 314, 311.
(34.) Lipman, "Civil Society and the Nonparticipation Pact," 5.
(35.) Ibid.
(36.) Lisa Sundstrom, "Soldiers' Rights Groups in Russia: Civil Society through Russian and Western Eyes," in Evans, Henry, and Sundstrom, eds., Russian Civil Society, chapter 11.
(37.) Lipman, "Civil Society and the Nonparticipation Pact," 6.
(38.) Sundstrom and Henry, "Russian Civil Society," 311.
(39.) Aron, "Russia's New Protesters."
(40.) Evgenia Chirikova (movement leader), interview to the Ekho Moskvy radio network, August 10, 2010. Emphasis added.
(41.) "About TIGR," Tigr, February 14, 2009, 1 (copy of the leaflet in the author's possession).
(42.) Interview with Dmitri Mozhegov and Dmitry Shpeytelshpakher.
(43.) The sites' posts, as well as leaflets and newspapers in the author's possession; and interviews with Anastasia Zagoruyko and Maxim Vedenev in Vladivostok, Dmitry Shpeytelshpakher in St. Petersburg, and Konstantin Doroshok in Kaliningrad.
(44.) Interviews with Maxim Vedenev, Dmitry Shpeytelshpakher, and Dmitri Mozhegov.
(45.) Interviews with Maxim Vedenev, Konstantin Doroshok, and Marina Rikhvanova. In preparation for the biennial meeting, Baikal Ecological Wave posts on its site all the expenses and contributions within the period.
(46.) Interview with Yaroslav Nikitenko.
(47.) Interview with Dmitry Linov.
(48.) Interviews with Maxim Vedenev, Anastasiya Zagoruyko, and Konstantin Doroshok.
(49.) Interview with Anastasiya Zagoruyko.
(50.) Interview with Marina Rikhvanova.
(51.) Interview with Sergei Kanaev.
(52.) Interview with Marina Rikhvanova.
(53.) Interview with Sergei Kanaev.
(54.) Interview with Konstantin Doroshok.
(55.) Ibid.
(56.) Interview with Marina Rikhvanova.
(57.) Interviews with Anastasiya Zagoruyko, Maxim Vedenev, and Konstantin Doroshok.
(58.) Interview with Natalia Vvedenskaya and Dmitry Lynov.
(59.) For more on "monotowns," see Leon Aron, "Russia's 'Monotowns' Time Bomb," AEI Russian Outlook (Fall 2009), www.aei.org/outlook/foreign-and-defense-policy /regional/europe/russias-monotowns-time-bomb. See also, Leon Aron, "Darkness on the Edge of Monotown," New York Times, October 16, 2009, www.nytimes.com/2009 /10/17/opinion/17aron.html (accessed July 27, 2012).
(60.) Interview with Maxim Vedenev.
(61.) Ibid.
(62.) Interviews with Maxim Vedenev and Konstantin Doroshok.
(63.) Interview with Konstantin Doroshok.
(64.) Interview with Maxim Vedenev.
(65.) Interview with Evgenia Chirikova.
(66.) Interview with Natalia Vvedenskaya.
(67.) Interview with Konstantin Doroshok.
(68.) Anastasiya Zagoruyko, written responses to the questionnaire.
(69.) These include Marina Rikhvanova (Baikal Ecological Wave), Maxim Vedenev (TIGR), Konstantin Doroshok (Spravedlivost), and Sergei Kanaev (FAR). Following the January 2010 demonstrations, Konstantin Doroshok was invited to join the "advisory commission" under Governor Georgy Boos. When we interviewed him, Maxim Vedenev was the head of the department of consumer affairs of the state-owned Regional Unified Enterprise responsible for heat supplies to apartments. He had been invited, Vedenev explained, "to look at the situation from within" because the federal subsidies were drying up and the regional authorities were seeking ways to make the corporations [Enterprise] profitable."
(70.) Interview with Sergei Kanaev.
(71.) Ibid.
(72.) Ibid.
(73.) Ibid.
(74.) Ibid.
(75.) Anatoly Medetsky, "The President Slashes Numbers of Cars with Blue Lights," Moscow Times, May 21, 2012.
(76.) Ibid.
(77.) Anastasia Zagoruyko's written answers to the questionnaire.
(78.) Interview with Maxim Vorontsov.
(79.) Interviews with Sergei Ageev and Oleg Mel'nikov.
(80.) Boris Vishnevsky and Charles Digges, "New Tactics against Khimki Activists--Target Their Children," Bellona, February 25, 2011, www.bellona.org/articles/articles_2011 /Khmki_children (accessed April 15, 2012).
(81.) Interview with FAR president Sergei Kanaev.
(82.) Interview with Evgenia Chirikova.
(83.) In the interview, I quoted to Rikhvanova her own statement found on her organization's site: "The merger of state and business engenders conflicts of interest. And no matter how prettily the environmental policy is formulated, the state functionaries will not be interested in defending and expanding our common natural [and] cultural treasures." Rikhvanova replied: "When I've tried to delve deeply into this, I understood that the merger ( sliyanie) of [political] power and business is a real and serious conflict of interests."
(84.) Interview with Evgenia Chirikova.
(85.) Interview with Dmitry Lynov.
(86.) "Ulichnye aktsii: naskol'ko i komu oni nuzhny?" [Street protests: How Much and for Whom Are They Needed?] Ekho Moskvy, August 23, 2010, www.echo.msk.ru/programs/albac/706566-echo/ (accessed January 19, 2012).
(87.) A copy in the author's possession.
(88.) Interview with Natalia Vvedenskaya.
(89.) Undertakerspb, December 15, 2009. Bolding and capitalization are in the original, the printout of which is in the author's possession.
(90.) A photocopy in the author's possession.
(91.) A bumper sticker in the author's possession.
(92.) Interview with Maxim Vedenev.
(93.) FAR's homepage, www.autofed.ru (accessed January 19, 2012).
(94.) Interview with Sergei Kanaev.
(95.) A printout in the author's possession.
(96.) Interview with Natalia Vvedenskaya.
(97.) A photocopy in the author's possession. Capitalization and bold type are in the original.
(98.) A photocopy in the author's possession. Capitalization and bold type are in the original.
(99.) Interview with Maxim Vedenev.
(100.) Interview with Sergei Kanaev.
(101.) Interview with Evgenia Chirikova.
(102.) "About TIGR."
(103.) Federation of Automobile Owners of Russia, "20 marta--Vserossiyskaya aktsiya protesta protiv tsen na toplivo" [March 20--Is the All-Russian Protest Event against the Prices of Gas], www.autofed.ru/?p=3863 (accessed May 15, 2011).
(104.) Interview with Evgenia Chirikova.
(105.) Ibid.
(106.) Interview with Maxim Vedenev.
(107.) Interview with Evgenia Chirikova.
(108.) Interview with Maxim Vedenev.
(109.) Interview with Maxim Vedenev and Evgenia Chirikova. "If people had even a little bit of self-respect, then we would not have the impunity," said Vedenev.
(110.) Interview with Evgenia Chirikova.
(111.) Interview with Maxim Vedenev.
(112.) Ibid.
(113.) Interview with Anastasia Zagoruyko.
(114.) Interview with Konstantin Doroshok.
(115.) Interview with Natalia Vvedenskaya. The emphasis is added.
(116.) Maxim Vedenev, written responses to the questionnaire and interview.
(117.) Interview with Sergei Kanaev.
(118.) "Prinuzhdenie k otvetsvennosti" [Forcing to Act Responsibly], Tigr, February 14, 2009, 1 (copy in the author's possession). Emphasis added.
(119.) Maxim Vedenev, written responses to the questionnaire.
(120.) Interview with Maxim Vedenev.
(121.) Interview with Sergei Kanaev.
(122.) Ibid. "[Alexei] Navalny is the sole master of [the anticorruption investigative site] Rosyama, he has [the anticorruption investigative site] Rospil," Kanaev added. "And 100,000 people who visit his site say, 'Atta boy, Lyosha, what a great guy [you are]!' But there is no expansion of the system [he created]. And it is always easier to wring the neck of one person than to do it to everyone."
(123.) Interview with Maxim Vedenev.
(124.) Interview with Evgenia Chirikova.
(125.) Ibid.
(126.) Ibid.
(127.) Interview with Vitaly Lavrinovich.
(128.) Interview with Evgenia Chirikova.
(129.) Interview with Natalia Vvedenskaya.
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| Author: | Aron, Leon |
|---|---|
| Publication: | AEI Paper & Studies |
| Article Type: | Report |
| Geographic Code: | 4EXRU |
| Date: | Sep 1, 2012 |
| Words: | 22221 |
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