The Institute for Modern Russia has prepared a
detailed report on the state of civil society in Russia during the rule of Vladimir Putin in this country. During his two decades in power, he created an authoritarian system with powerful propaganda that allowed him to compete in Russia and abroad. The report is titled "Russia under Putin" and focuses on political and social developments. This report is the second in a series titled "Russia under Putin".The IMR report helps to understand the true picture that Putin's propaganda machinery is skillfully trying to hide. Although on paper civil society in Russia seems to have developed as in other post-communist countries, in reality official statistics do not provide accurate information on the number of civil society organizations. Using regulation, funding schemes, and integration with state agencies, the Putin regime divides the civil society sector into "
good" and "
bad" actors, with some being accepted as allies and others as security threats.This report focuses on CSOs, due to their important role in protecting privacies and personal freedoms against intrusions by the state, which aims to create mistrust among the people.Analyzing the situation, IMR points to an increasingly noticeable trend in the last decade, which shows the intensification of state control over civil society organizations, which are suspected of having a negative impact on society.
Creating regulations in order to establish control over civil society organizationsRussia's political system for the last twenty years has been characterized as centralized, with no political competition and aggressive foreign policy. These features of the political system significantly influence the development of civil society organizations in Russia.Increased regulation is the first step in exercising a kind of control over CSOs. For example, the federal law regulating nonprofit organizations, originally passed by the State Duma in 1995, has been amended 90 times by 2020, of which only 10 changes were made in the first decade, 67 changes were made between 2007 and 2016, and 13 more changes have been made from 2017 to today. The purpose of the frequent changes to the rules is to create such criteria that will favor organizations that share Putin's enthusiasm for a strong state, nationalist themes, and traditional Russian values.In that time frame, CSOs that focus on human rights, political freedom advocacy, and other similar issues become subject to penal regulation, which prevents them from funding and integrating into society.The Kremlin creates a system of central authority, enabling a vertical system of power distribution. This makes it possible to create new intermediary institutions such as the Civil Chamber and other civil society organizations that offer official social assistance services. The implementation of such policies has resulted in the division of the civil sector into those supported by the state and those marginalized. The essence of such policies is to control the impact on the public.
Worsened Russia-West relations, a well-thought-out scenario for setting up a control systemThe Freedom House report, used as a data source in this report, ranks Russia as a "non-free country" in terms of political rights and civil liberties. The Kremlin-run political system, deemed authoritarian, tolerates only superficial competition from the dominant United Russia party."Foreign agent" and "undesirable organization" are the coinages used in propaganda to describe foreign aid to civil society, making most forms of international cooperation dangerous to civil society.While preparing this report, IMR faced a lack of publicly available information on the civil society sector. This is problematic in terms of the fact that the lack of sufficient data or their inaccuracy makes it impossible to monitor the development of civil society. Even
the 2014 Civic Chamber report highlights this problem: "
There is no single, comprehensive and up-to-date annual statistical picture for this sector ... There is no system for assessing activities." There are three interrelated reasons for the lack of such data, as follows:
The manner in which non-profit organizations are classified according to the legislation;
Overlap of the supervision by the state bodies; and
Absence of unified accountability guidelines.
According to the legislation, too many organizations are contained in the term "non-profit", which makes it unsuitable for the assessment of civil society. Legal entities are classified as either commercial or non-profit organizations. Under this division, non-profit organizations include state educational institutions, political parties, bar associations, and even large state-owned companies. This indicates a lack of differentiation that could help define different types of nonprofits.Oversight is performed by various ministries and bodies at the local, regional, and federal levels. This further exacerbates the situation with responsibility and accountability. The report states that there is evidence to suggest that information on CSOs is sometimes made inaccessible to the public by the Ministry of Justice for political reasons, further obscuring the statistical picture. For example, in 2017, all annual reports from the civil society sector as of 2014 were removed from the ministry's website.
It was speculated that the reason for this decision was that these reports were used in the investigation into the property of Dmitry Medvedev, as well as the investigation into the assets of the Anti-Corruption Fund Alexei Navalny. When publicly available information became dangerous to the government, it was withdrawn.In the second decade, the regulation of the civil society sector becomes more ambitious and intensifies. The civil society sector is already becoming a serious political threat to the regime in Russia. That prompted the Kremlin to act quickly. The strategy consists of three parts: regulation, financing and integration with state agencies. The consequence of this strategy is the division of civil society into "good" and "bad". "Good" organizations work in health, education, sports and culture. The "bad guys" deal with issues such as the environment, the rights of vulnerable groups, women and human rights, and their activities, access to finance and communication, are severely restricted.In order to establish control over civil society, the state begins
to regulate the funding of civil society organizations. In 2012, Russian legislation explicitly equated foreign funding with "political interference", severely hampering access to and use of foreign funds. The so-called
Law on "Foreign Agents" was adopted. Commenting on the law, Putin
noted: "
No one has the right to speak for the whole of Russian society, especially those who are directed or financed from abroad and thus serve the interests of others." CSOs working on issues related to the political system or human rights, such as the election observation organization GOLOS, were among the first to be targeted by the new law.In 2015, the Law on Undesirable Organizations was adopted, which further reinforced the country's message that foreign organizations are harmful to Russia, i.e. that they pose a threat to the constitutional order, security and defense of the country. Such legislation has allowed the Putin regime to equate foreign funding with foreign interference in state affairs, while asserting itself as the sole arbiter allowed to participate in politics. The label "foreign agent" has become increasingly easy to use whenever one's legitimacy needs to be publicly challenged. This has led many organizations, such as USAID and the Open Society Foundations, to be expelled or to leave the country. In parallel with this process, there was the encouragement of "good" organizations that were supported by the state. Practically, the state creates organizations that work unilaterally and for the benefit of the state, giving preference to those who use military and patriotic language, which is an echo of the state conservative discourse.The rise of state control over civil society is one of the most important trends in Putin's rule in Russia over the past two decades.Addictions and domestic violence, mental illness, the rights of people with disabilities, people suffering from HIV / AIDS, are issues that have gained visibility in Russian society, thanks to the work and efforts of socially-oriented civil society organizations. Unfortunately, this cannot be said for those civil society organizations operating in the field of political rights and civil liberties. They are simply "labeled" by the state as bad or foreign agents, i.e. organizations that can disrupt the security situation in the country.Source:
Report of the Institute for Modern Russia
