NGO-Government Relationships in the Russia of Vladimir Putin

By Yuri Dzhibladze

Presentation at the 3d Baltic Region NGO Forum
Turku, Finland, 8 May, 2003

I would like to thank the Organising Committee for the opportunity to address this important forum. This is an honour, and I look forward to learning from experiences of different countries of the Baltic region. One of the outcomes of the meeting that I believe we need to aim at is discussing ways and models of establishing effective and equal dialogue between NGOs and the state, looking into ways to bring active citizens back into the centre of the democratic process to overcome growing disappointment in and mistrust among the public towards democratic institutions that is typical for many our countries, and making our governments more transparent and accountable to the public. We are so many here coming from different countries, walks of life and with different concerns, and this diversity is our true benefit that will allow us to work out here at the Forum a sound joint strategy, an action plan to be implemented in solidarity between civil society actors and to be hopefully taken seriously by CBSS and our respective governments so that they do not see NGOs as fashionable household pets that it is important to have to be considered civilised but not necessary to listen to even if they bite sometimes. We need to convince our governments to accept us as partners on equal footing, to work seriously with us in addressing social and many other policy issues on the level of Baltic region and inside the countries.

In order to develop models of such effective dialogue we first need to analyse the status quo, look at what is going on now. I will address the relationships between NGOs and the state in Russia in my presentation.

Relationships between Russian non-governmental organizations and the state of Vladimir Putin have rapidly evolved during the last three and a half years of his presidential term and represent a clash of two contradictory trends: high-level political declarations about importance of equal dialogue and cooperation between the state and civil society institutes combined with timid attempts to establish different forms of such dialogue, on the one hand, and adoption of repressive legislation, dramatically limiting the work of NGOs and undermining their very existence combined with direct attacks on non-profit organisations by local authorities in some conservative regions, on the other.

We may say that in the last three years, the Russian NGO sector has increasingly encountered challenges as it searches for ways to interact with the stronger, more authoritarian and less sensitive to public influence state established by Vladimir Putin. Character of these changing interaction nature and role of NGOs and state in modern Russia. I will try to illustrate these developments in my presentation.

Russian non-governmental organizations have emerged in the last decade throughout the country in numbers of dozens of thousands, growing far beyond the handful of dissident groups of the Soviet era, and working on many issues besides basic civil rights and liberties. Throughout the 1990s, most Russian NGOs focused not on civil and political liberties but almost exclusively on provision of social services to vulnerable groups. Many of them became quite professional in their fields and often filled the gaps in the areas where the state could not or would not respond to new challenges and difficulties of transition to the market. Examples of this innovative and vital work include crisis centres for survivors of domestic violence, assistance to the homeless, self-help groups of the disabled, rehabilitation of drug addicts, integration of migrants, etc.

In fact, these groups, constituting about 80 percent of all Russian NGOs, resisted the efforts of a minority of NGOs - primarily human rights and environmental groups - to engage them in advocacy campaigns and other forms of influencing the state and public policy participation. The main argument of these social NGOs was "do not involve us in politics, we are social organizations and do not want to become political." In Russia where political parties are weak, small, and do not enjoy popular support, advocacy type NGOs have emerged to take some of the roles traditionally played by parties - even if sometimes unwillingly - to represent rights and interests of their constituencies before the state and lobby for change in legislation and policy.

As social and other NGOs witnessed growing weakness and inefficiency of Yeltsin government, and saw how infected it was by widespread corruption, most of NGOs came to realize the importance of becoming involved in the policy making process, attempting to influence drafting and enforcing legislation directly affecting interests of their client groups or public at large. Starting in 1999 at the end of Yeltsin era, Russian NGOs began to consolidate themselves and form cross-sectoral nationwide and regional coalitions and networks, and grew more willing and able to campaign and lobby the government and engage in dialogue with decision-makers.

Today, in addition to providing vital social services, Russian NGO activists have acquired the skills needed for monitoring, policy analysis, public relations, campaigning, and negotiations with authorities, thus strengthening both their public role and their democratic participation in the governance. They also actively engage in international cooperation, developing joint projects with partners from abroad and interacting with international institutions such as the Council of Europe, United Nations, OSCE and the World Bank. All of this resulted in the development of stronger, more influential and consolidated NGO sector in Russia, ready and willing to play a new role of an active participant in the process of reforms and transformation of the country.

Meanwhile, the state itself has changed dramatically under Vladimir Putin since the year 2000, growing much more centralized and authoritarian, in the name of the ambitious goal of quickly modernizing the Russian economy and catching up with developed post-industrial nations. To govern effectively, Putin's administration is building the so-called "verticals of authority," essentially establishing direct control over the parliament, regional governments, political parties, media, business associations, and so on, and making the decision-making process much more insulated from public influence.

The term "controlled democracy" is used by the Kremlin administration itself to characterize this system, leading some to call it a "corporate state." Putin and his allies are true believers in the central role of the state and generally see autonomy and diversity in politics as a threat to political stability rather than a necessary condition for healthy and dynamic society.

At the same time as pragmatic politicians, in early 2001 members of Putin administration started to look at the NGO sector as a resource to be tapped for their own political interests, to mobilize public support for the president and his team as they make painful reforms in areas of housing, energy, local government, health care, army, and so on, reforms that may generate public concern and criticism.

Most of public officials in Russia, including the President himself, are not genuine believers in NGOs as independent actors in policy process and in their important role in Russian reforms and modern democratic society in general. When they make declarations to this end, it is rather part of public relations exercise for domestic and mostly international consumption.

Presidential administration in the Kremlin is today the sole political decision-making body in Russia, while the federal government is left with economic management and implementation of the decisions made in the Kremlin. Very little if anything depends on the State Duma where the Kremlin has established effective and obedient majority of the so-called "centrist parties." Members of pro-presidential factions are popularly called "answering machines" for their automatic support to any instructions and orders coming from the Kremlin. Unfortunately, much of the domestic politics of the Kremlin is built on public relations process and tactical political maneuvering rather than strategic policy planning and consolidating of democratic institutions. Kremlin works hard - and quite successfully - on building public support for the President. As you know, the level of public approval of President Putin has remained at the high level of around 70% for more than two years.

In order to be able to use the NGO sector as political resource, the Kremlin needed to establish some sort of control over multitude of NGOs and at the same time marginalize those who would not agree to play by the new rules. The original intention of the Kremlin in 2001 was to orchestrate a major nation-wide expression of support by NGOs for the president and his chosen course at a Civic Forum, a single plenary meeting of 5,000 participants from across the country at the Kremlin Palace of Congresses. At this event, Putin and his advisers had hoped to create, via elections, a quasi-legitimate "representative" body, a sort of a national NGO council that would "represent" the whole NGO sector of Russia in a dialogue with the President and other authorities, thus creating another "vertical of power."

Fortunately, leading NGOs successfully resisted these attempts of subordination and co-optation and were able to convince the Kremlin that such an approach would be a failure and lead to a confrontation rather than desired support because the NGO sector is horizontal and pluralistic by nature and cannot be "governed" by a single hierarchical body. NGOs insisted that the Forum be converted to an actual experiment in testing and establishing a number of parallel dialogue mechanisms between NGOs and public officials.

It worked out quite successfully. Not only the Kremlin accepted these conditions but took an active part in preparations of the re-designed event. From a government-sponsored rally of docile NGOs, the forum was converted by activists to a more substantive debate, involving 21 thematic discussions, 84 round table meetings and 42 "negotiations" on issues ranging from Chechen conflict to legal reform to the education system, and resulting in a more genuine dialogue between citizens and the state, a real achievement in a country known for its paternalistic and authoritarian traditions.

The follow up to the Civic Forum has been a very mixed picture, however. Early in 2002, after a special cabinet meeting analyzing Civic Forum results, Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov signed a decree creating more than a dozen permanent NGO-ministerial working groups and ordering all ministries to report him quarterly about their cooperation with NGOs. A number of NGO experts councils and working groups with various ministries were organised and started working with various degree of success. Regrettably, many of these top-down arranged dialogues on the federal level have become formalities, and NGOs often feel as if they are being exploited for political gain. Few federal officials genuinely see the benefit of cooperating with NGOs and addressing jointly with them difficult topics like stopping the war in Chechnya and the impunity for atrocities there, changing migration policy, reducing NGO taxation, combating racism and xenophobia, developing sustainable environmental policy, reforming local government, and so on. However, on the regional level some efforts to establish meaningful dialogue on equal footing have been more successful, and NGOs generally are still determined to use this window of opportunity to promote public interests and the issues they work on, regardless of motivations of their interlocutors in the government bodies. Sometimes these attempts bring new hope such as with a reformed presidential commission on human rights where NGO leaders work closely and efficiently with administration of the president. Efforts to work out effective ways of NGO-state dialogue continue. This is the first important trend which makes the situation quite different from Yeltsin times when government did not interfere in the work of NGOs and did not pay much attention to their demands or positions, basically ignoring them.

Unfortunately, there is a second troubling trend totally contradicting the proclaimed policy of the president to establish dialogue with civil society. In a number of Russia's regions, especially in the conservative South, public authorities have moved to frontal attack against NGOs, denying groups registration, closing them on technicalities or under the new restrictive law on combating extremism. Tax agents or criminal police have stormed NGO offices on a number of occasions, sometimes beating or detaining people, and some activists have been convicted on administrative or even criminal charges.

The federal government does not do anything to stop it. Inaction and passive position of the federal authorities in this respect is at times bordering with complicity. This federal level inaction is combined with recent repressive changes in legislation concerning NGOs, civil society and democratic institutions in general.

Since 1999 until June last year a series of truly draconian tax laws have been adopted putting NGOs in a situation when they will have either to pay profit tax on their grants, value added tax on their free services and free delivery of goods to individuals and organizations, and personal income tax on reimbursement of travel and other expenses of participants of their seminars, conferences and other activities, or break the law. New tax regulations of 2002 do not include social assistance, civil society development and human rights work among the areas that can be supported by tax-exempted grants. This puts NGOs and their donors in a very difficult situation. Some of them consider closing their organisations. Concerted efforts of many groups within a national campaign for fair taxation of NGOs have lead to only a limited success, and the protracted battle goes on with no clear prospects.

A mandatory re-registration of membership-based NGOs in 1999-2000 lead to numerous denials of registration based on illegitimate demands to take out the words "protection of human rights" from the names of NGOs and their charters on the pretext that according to the Constitution protection of human rights is allegedly the state's responsibility and NGOs can only "assist the state" in doing this. In some regions more than 20 per cent of NGOs ceased to exist as a result of this process.

Changes in the Code of Criminal Procedures and the Code of Administrative Procedures adopted in 2001 and 2002 took away from NGOs a right to represent people in court. Only professional lawyers, members of the bar, are allowed to work in court while lay defenders are not permitted there anymore. This is a major retreat from previous practice.

A new law "On Combating Extremist Activities" from 2002 and the most recent changes to the media law give the state excessive power and will easily enable the state to close any NGO or media outlet in disfavour, that is allegedly engaged "in planning, preparation or execution of activity undermining security of the Russian Federation" as specified in the new legislation. It is quite easy to characterize as a "threat to security" such activities as protests against the war in Chechnya, calls for more official accountability and an end to impunity of police officers engaged in torture in detention centres, or demands to stop corruption and speed up reform of the Russian army. Already some groups in the South of Russia have fallen victims of the new anti-extremist law's provision giving authorities the right to suspend the work of an NGO without a court decision.

These legislative changes are accompanied with other ones that are more generally aimed at curbing public participation in the political process or dismantling democratic institutions. To name just a few recent ones adopted since the start of Putin's presidency, they are the new law on political parties which makes it very difficult to create and register a new national party and forbids regional parties and such a form of grassroots activity as political movements; amendments to the law on referenda, forbidding organizations of a referendum a year before any federal elections, which means that for almost half of the time this important mechanism of democracy cannot be used in Russia anymore; and recent changes to the law on electoral rights which prevent mass media from publishing or broadcasting any assessment of or comments about candidates, any editorial position on them, any information about possible consequences of candidates' being elected to the office, etc., effectively shutting down any public dialogue during election campaigns.

There are other examples of strangulating legal limits put by the state on mass media, trade unions, ethnic minority organizations, religious groups, and so on. Along with recently adopted repressive laws on citizenship, legal status of foreign citizens, and alternative civil service for conscientious objectors against the military draft, the picture appears quite gloomy for political and NGO activists. It happens that only laws which restrict political activities have been adopted recently along with anti-NGO tax laws, while any attempt to initiate legislation promoting civil society and democracy are blocked including such bills as "On Public Gatherings, Meetings, Demonstrations, Marches and Pickets," "On the Right to Information," "On Citizens' Petitions," "On Public Review of Human Rights in Prisons and on Assistance to Such Institutions by Voluntary Associations," and so on, which have been stalled in the Duma for years.

For some NGOs, the situation is so bad they will simply not survive before they can make any substantial difference in Russia. Still, a significant number have not lost hope, and realize that they are addressing the inertia of centuries of authoritarian rule as well as the recent decades of Soviet totalitarian tradition and understand that great persistence and patience are needed to change the mentality of public officials and affect the political process in Russia to make it less state-centric and based on political autonomy and civic initiative. Most Russian NGOs are torn between defeat and hope, struggling with the debate over establishing a strong civic sector versus a strong state or, rather, establishing dialogue between equal partners - a strong state and a strong NGO sector, but continue to work hard for the public interest in Russia.

I would like to conclude my remarks with a quote for a late Russian human rights leader, Nobel Peace Prize winner Dr. Andrey Sakharov who in the most difficult times when there seemed to be no hope at sight, used to say "Do what you ought to do, regardless of circumstances" ("Delai, chto dolzhno, i bud', chto budet"). This kind of moral conviction is what helps Russian NGO activists move ahead.

I am looking forward to our debates and development of solidarity trans-boundary actions to promote civil society in the Baltic region and establish our effective interaction with public authorities on the national and regional level.

Yuri Dzhibladze is president of the Centre for Development of Democracy and Human Rights in Moscow, dzhib@yandex.ru, dzhib@demokratia.ru.