Making a Difference? NGOs and Civil Society Development in Russia

The role of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in the development of Russia's civil society has been the focus of academic study since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. In light of this literature, this article aims to assess the impact of the movement that has most often been seen as very promising for Russia's future civil society development—the environmental movement—by utilising research undertaken in Samara Oblast’ of the Russian Federation. While the results do reveal some positive contributions to civil society development in Russia, they also exhibit many similarities with other studies in the extant literature, illustrating the relative weakness of Russia's social movements in the area of civil society development.     

Criminalisation of Free Speech in Russia

Abstract

The essay addresses the current trends in the criminalisation of free speech in Russia. It critically discusses the amendments to the Russian Criminal Code, criminalising various forms of public expression of opinions, adopted in the years following the presidential elections in March 2012, and questions their compliance with international human rights law. Seeking to identify the motives behind the new provisions, the article argues that the amendments are intended to cause a ‘chilling effect’, to control public dissent by selective or random criminal prosecution. Two of the new criminal law provisions—‘Public Calls for Separatism’ and ‘Rehabilitation of Nazism’—are considered in detail to illustrate the author’s conclusions.     

Corruption,the power of state and big business in Soviet and post-Soviet regimes

The growth of corruption after 1991 was probably unavoidable. The privatization of the state economy created favorable conditions for corruption, which did not exist before. The feudalization of a society, with its weakening of the state and the high autonomy of its office holders, was another major factor behind the outburst of corruption. However, while these “objective” factors account for a great part of corruption's growth, the transformation of the leaders of the country to people who encouraged corruption for their own benefit—one of the major elements of feudalization—also played an extremely large role in spreading corruption inside the country.Corruption poses greater concerns to society in the long term. Russian corruption undermines labor ethics, particularly among younger generations. Russian youths firmly believe that bribes and connections are the best and perhaps only way to become successful. Widespread corruption creates a parallel, semi-feudal chain of command that competes with the official hierarchy. The weakness of law enforcement agencies, as well as the army—now almost totally demoralized—is, to a great extent, the product of corruption.     

Civil–Military Relations and Institutional Decay: Explaining Russian Military Politics

The Russian military's extraordinary decline is widely known. The changing political role of high-ranking officers and the different treatment they have been subjected to by Russian presidents has received relatively little scholarly attention, however. This article analyses this phenomenon—including the military elites' electoral participation, relationship to the executive, and opposition to state policy—and offers a method for explaining it. To generate a more penetrating understanding of Russian particularities while expanding our theoretical reach, the article combines the civil–military relations literature with that of the institutionalist approach, and more specifically, the concepts of path dependence and institutional decay.     

The Critical Movement Against the 2010–2012 Education Reform in Russia: Networks,Organisations and Parties

Abstract

In 2010, Russian authorities presented a new draft law on education, which immediately became controversial. The essay examines whether user groups (parents) and low-ranking sector employees (teachers) were active in the movement critical of the reform, and how the state responded to the anti-reform movement. The movement consisted of several networks and organisations with no central node. It included teachers, parents and activists from both non-systemic groups and systemic opposition parties. Pressure from below by networks and organisations was combined with pressure from actors situated above in the political system, that is, in the Duma. Since the movement was welfare-oriented rather than fundamentally regime-critical, the Russian authorities tolerated open criticism both from civil society and inside the Duma. Some gains for teachers were won, but the movement’s proposed amendments and demands were generally rejected or only introduced in revised form.     

LOCAL ADMINISTRATION OF SOCIAL ASSISTANCE PROGRAMS IN RUSSIA

Competent administration is fundamental to successful reform of social assistance programs in transition economies. Only with such administration is there assurance that benefits are being delivered as intended in enabling legislation. Moreover, the perceived efficiency and fairness of administration influences the public's views of the new programs. In the Russian Federation local governments have primary responsibility for the administration of social assistance programs enacted by all levels of government.

This paper presents the results of surveying nine offices charged with administering social assistance programs in four Russian municipalities. The accent is on the basics of program administration and management. Topics studied include client flow, eligibility verification procedures, the presence of a procedures manual for in-take workers, quality control procedures, and training. The findings are sobering and emphasize the need for the Russian government to assist municipalities to strengthen their administrative capacity through a combination of exhortation and leadership, provision of written guidance materials—on good administrative practices and program-specific regulations and procedures—and a national program of seminars for supervisors of various programs.     

A Very Ambiguous Empire: Russia’s Hybrid Exceptionalism

This article will widen existing analyses of Russian imperial narratives through the introduction of the concept of ‘hybrid exceptionalism’, referring to discourses and practices of hierarchy emanating from the country’s liminal position between East and West. In its various—Tsarist, Soviet, contemporary—guises, Russia is posited to have reproduced narratives of hierarchy by formulating civilising missions within a distinct sphere of interest. Transcending political discontinuities, such hierarchical civilising missions have been a defining feature of various Russian worldviews for centuries, and are poised to remain so in the absence of a major redefinition of Russian national identity.     

Keynes and the Non-neutrality of Russian War Finance during World War One

This article examines the particular methods of war finance that were used by Russia during World War One in relation to the total cost of the war, and evaluates them against a theoretical ideal that was outlined by the Cambridge economist J. M. Keynes. It then asks whether there were any consequences of two particular chosen means of financing the war—the issue of large amounts of paper currency and short-term treasury bills—for maintaining Russian economic stability. The evaluations of a number of Russian and British economists are used as gauges of Keynes's advice, and also as more general comparison in relation to the equivalent policies pursued by other Allied countries.     

Dugin,Eurasianism, and Central Asia

Eurasianism as a concept emerged among Russian émigrés in the 1920s, with the premise that Russia is a unique ethnic blend, primarily of Slavic and Turkic peoples. Its geopolitical implications for Russia include gravitation toward mostly Turkic Central Asia. Alexander Dugin, one of its best-known proponents, believes that the demise of the Soviet Union was simply a tragic incident. The people of the former USSR should again be united in a grand Eurasian empire, with Russia a benign and generous patron, providing its “younger brothers” clients economic largesse and defense, mostly against the predatory USA. The “orange revolutions” and the rise of Russian nationalism, for whose proponents a restored imperial presence is rather marginal, indicate that Eurasianism—along with the dream of the resurrection of the USSR—is becoming less viable.     

Demobilisation and its Consequences: After the Russian Movement Za chestnye vybory

The aftermath of the 2011–2012 Russian social movement Za chestnye vybory (For Fair Elections) challenges the common assumption that sees mass mobilisation as leading to positive outcomes for civil society. This article argues that the movement, by failing to institutionalise cooperative ties and secure popular support, had ambiguous outcomes for civil society. While repression surely played a role in this outcome, choices made by movement leaders during demobilisation should not be overlooked: one part of the movement became radicalised while another made a premature attempt to enter formal politics, thus hindering the movement’s later attempt to institutionalise.     

Evaluating Nashi's Sustainability: Autonomy,Agency and Activism

This article explores the development of the Russian youth movement Nashi and its relationship with the state with the purpose of assessing the movement's long-term sustainability. Establishing a link between activists' political autonomy and their potential ability to sustain the movement without state support, this article examines the validity of the assumption that Nashi is simply an extension of the state, which the state can unilaterally direct as it sees fit. It contends that despite the movement's allegiance to the incumbent regime and its utilisation of state resources, Nashi activists have become increasingly politically autonomous and therefore capable of sustaining the movement in their own right.     

‘I never had a political career’: Russian political actors on politics and morality

This article explores the question of moral discourse among Russian political elites. Morality is reflected in elite narratives in various forms—as an espousal of abstract principles, as a moral–pragmatic hybrid, and as loyalty to one's associates. Proximity to political power correlates with the various versions of moral discourse employed by elite members. Each version, respectively, offers an index of social relations through the prism of morality: in some instances, negatively, as that which prevents the attainment of the good; in others, problematically, as that which makes difficult that attainment; and in a third version, that which contributes to securing the good itself.     

Militant Recruitment in Pakistan: Implications for Al Qaeda and Other Organizations

A considerable body of unchallenged literature describes al-Takfir wa'l Hijra and its followers—“takfiris”—as a contemporary and highly dangerous trend within the global jihadi movement. Variously described as a network, movement, or group, its members are portrayed monolithically as ultra-secretive, highly skilled militants who easily blend into Western societies and specialize in “quality” operations against Western targets. This article critically assesses these claims using analytical approaches grounded in social movement theory and Netwar, and data drawn from historical and Islamist sources.     

Transfiguring the golem: technicism,human relations technology,and the human project

The original Minnowbrook perspective is described as part of a broader human relations technology movement in which the organization of human activity could be accomplished without the negative features of bureaucracy—routinization, rationalization, depersonalization, mechanization, computerization. But, the problem is really not bureaucracy, it is technicism—the technological imperative. The article contrasts masculine and feminine perspectives on organizations and the implications of this contrast for wars between nation-states, human and organizational communication, and human relations technology. In this technicism era, public administered institutions are the best bet to hold together the fabric of society.     

From the Cradle of the Nation to the Most Expensive Serbian Word: Changes in Serbian Public Language in the Last Decade of the Twentieth Century

Russian National Unity (Russkoe Natsionalnoe Edinstvo—RNE) is the largest militant fascist group in Russia today. The founder and leader of the RNE, Aleksandr P. Barkashov, speaks of himself as a national‐socialist, and praises Hitler's deeds for Germany. The RNE has pledged to establish a system of ethnic segregation in Russia were it to come to power.     

Rethinking the Economic Relationship between Kazakhstan and Russia

According to their governments, economic relations between Kazakhstan and Russia—the two largest post-Soviet countries—have been exceptionally solid and robust. However, statistical data demonstrate that Russian investments in Kazakhstan's economy have been weak, and that Kazakhstan has only recently increased investment in the Russian economy. This raises the question of whether relations between the two countries have been more uneven than has been claimed officially. The article also explores the influence of off-shore investments via third countries and other aspects of the bilateral relationship between Kazakhstan and Russia and the involvement of each country in the other's economy.     

The Ukrainian–Russian Linguistic Dyad and its Impact on National Identity in Ukraine

Abstract

This essay asks what place language holds in the composition of Ukrainian national identity and whether the use of Ukrainian and Russian across Ukraine indicates a split in identity. Despite acknowledging the potential of these two languages to generate political cleavages, the essay shows that language controversies have not necessarily impeded the population’s attachment and loyalty to the Ukrainian state. Moreover, the increasingly civic nature of Ukrainian national identity—particularly since Euromaidan—appears to be an important factor that allows people to speak Russian and still identify strongly with the Ukrainian nation.     

The Euromaidan and the crisis of Russian nationalism

This article examines the reverberations in Russia of the Euromaidan protests and the fall of the Yanukovych regime in Ukraine. It shows how the events in Kyiv provoked a major crisis in the Russian nationalist movement, which was riven by vituperative denunciations, the ostracism of prominent activists, the breakdown of friendships, the rupture of alliances, and schisms within organizations. Focusing on pro-Kremlin nationalists and several tendencies of opposition nationalists, it argues that this turmoil was shaped by three factors. First, the Euromaidan provoked clashes between pro-Kremlin nationalists, who became standard-bearers of official anti-Euromaidan propaganda, and anti-Putin nationalists, who extolled the Euromaidan as a model for a revolution in Russia itself. Second, the events in Ukraine provoked ideological contention around issues of particular sensitivity to Russian nationalists, such as the competing claims of imperialism and ethnic homogeneity, and of Soviet nationalism and Russian traditionalism. And third, many nationalists were unprepared for the pace of events, which shifted rapidly from an anti-oligarchic uprising in Kyiv to a push for the self-determination of ethnic Russians in Crimean and southeast Ukraine. As a result, they were left in the uncomfortable position of appearing to collaborate with the oppressors of their compatriots.     

The Alash movement and the question of Kazakh ethnicity

This paper considers how the Alash movement, the Kazakh national movement led by Russian-educated Kazakh intellectuals in the Russian Empire at the beginning of the twentieth century, redefined Kazakh ethnicity into the Kazakh nation. Aimed at modernizing Kazakh society by declaring itself a nation, the movement used the myth of common descent. It is not surprising, then, that the movement took on the name of Alash, a mythical figure believed to have been the father of all three Kazakh zhuz (tribal confederations). This paper examines the discourse around Kazakhness and its distinction from its Muslim neighbors with respect to five factors; the “true” myth of common descent of Kazakhs, Kazakh history as one of common fate, a nomadic way of life, the weak links to Islam among Kazakhs, and, finally, the legitimization of the Alash leaders as the legitimate speakers for the Kazakh nation. This analysis, in turn, may provide a better understanding of the ways in which social and intellectual movements can redefine belonging, depending on historical circumstances and opportunities and constraints in the social sphere.     

Ethnofederalism and ethnonationalism in the separatist politics of chechnya and tatarstan: sources or resources?

Common explanations of the recent war in Chechnya add up to an astonishingly overdetermined picture. The conflict between Russia's central government and its separatist ethnic autonomy was blamed on several grand factors: oil interests, resurgent Islam, imperial collapse, international terrorism, organized crime. Superficially, Chechnya shares most of these features with Tatarstan — another defiant republic of the Russian Federation which has oil, notorious gangsters, and a native population of Islamic heritage. A more detailed account shows, however, that the two state entities have little in common except the Soviet-made institutional framework. Tatarstan is a rare example of an ethnically non-Russian republic within the very urban industrial core of the former USSR, while Chechnya was patently peripheral. Differences in historical legacies and present-day social compositions conditioned very different outcomes of multifaceted political struggles that accompanied the demise of Soviet empire. In Tatarstan, local ethnically-colored nomenklatura exploited the chaotic transition to claim property rights over the local economy. The new rhetoric of national revival which the nationally-minded wing of Tatar intelligentsia advanced during Gorbachev's relaxation of censorship, was used by the Tatar nomenklatura to justify its struggle for economic property rights and exclusive political jurisdiction in its territory. By contrast, the Communist patronage network which ruled Chechnya until 1991 was too dependent on the central government for subsidies and coercive resources to follow the Tatarstan example. In the aftermath of August 1991 hardliner coup, when the Chechen apparatchiks misplaced their bets in Moscow's politics and momentarily lost support of the central government, they were swept away by the social movement of rural masses and urban marginal intellectuals. In its turn revolution, the only such outcome among the republics of the Russian Federation (but not the USSR), created an inherently unstable regime in Chechnya which could legitimate itself only with the idea of national independence and, once Moscow attempted to destabilize it, through the patriotic war.