Russia's democracy activists are surely an unimpeachable cause, deserving all the moral and financial support they can get. They face all manner of obstacles.
Mary Dejevsky is a columnist and chief
editorial writer for the Independent.
Also
by Mary Dejevsky in openDemocracy:
"The west gets
Putin wrong" (2 March 2005)
"Kyrgyzstan
questions" (30 March 2005)
"Germany's
travesty of democracy" (10 October 2005)
"Russia's NGO
law: the wrong target" (15 December 2005)
"The new class
society" (22 February 2006)
"Russia: what
demographic crisis?" (27 September 2006)
"After Putin..." (21 September
2007)Western observers know, and not just from the
parliamentary and presidential elections of December 2007 and March 2008, that
for opposition politicians access to the establishment media is nigh
impossible. As for street protests, forget it. If the likes of Mikhail Kasyanov or Garry Kasparov try to organise a march,
the Kremlin ranges a completely disproportionate show of force against them.
Outspoken Russian journalists have been murdered or otherwise silenced. And people in the west
instinctively dislike Russia's
restrictions on foreign NGOs (the country's NGO law of 2006 may have helped to make the British
Council's operation in Russia
vulnerable).
But there is another way of approaching this issue.
I have just spent ten days in Russia, covering the presidential elections. And after meeting people representing many strands of opinion in Moscow, St Petersburg and Voronezh, I just wonder whether we foreigners are really helping Russia by being so supportive of its democracy activists. To put it another way, I wonder whether the money and effort that goes into preaching our brand of democracy is very usefully spent.
This is not an attack on the generosity of George Soros, whose funds offer a durable, Carnegie-like contribution to all manner of ventures across what used to be the eastern bloc. What I observed on this visit, though, was a sort of dependency culture that we well-meaning non-Russian benefactors are largely responsible for creating.
Whenever I met people - courageous people - involved in activities critical of the regime from a western democratic perspective, sooner or later the conversation turned to pleas for publicity and/or money. They needed funds for another issue of their paper, to refurbish their buildings, to employ another assistant.
Among openDemocracy's
many articles on Russia politics and society:
Ivan Krastev, "'Sovereign democracy',
Russian-style"
(16 November 2006)
Oksana Chelysheva, "Russia's iceberg: a Nizhny
Novgorod report"
(25 April 2007)
Tanya Lokshina, "Russian civil society: an appeal
to Europe" (30 April
2007)
George Schöpflin, "Russia's
reinvented empire" (2 May 2007)
Zygmunt Dzieciolowski, "Russia's unequal struggle" (18 May 2007)
Armine Ishkanian, "Nashi: Russia's youth
counter-movement"
(30 August 2007)
Ivan Krastev, "Russia vs Europe: the sovereignty
wars" (5 September
2007)
Zygmunt Dzieciolowski, "Vladimir Putin for ever" (2 October 2007)
Anna Sevortian, "Russia: seeds of change" (20 November 2007)
Zygmunt Dzieciolowski, "The future is ours: Russia's
youth activists in dialogue" (19 January 2008)
George Schöpflin, "The new Russia: a model state" (26 February 2008)
Nicolai N Petro, "The Medvedev moment" (28 February 2008)
Andrew Wilson, "Russia's post-election balance" (3 March 2008)
Rebecca Kay, "'Being a man' in contemporary
Russia" (10 March 2008) It was hard to explain that in making such
requests they were not doing themselves any favours, beyond what the money
would buy. Indeed, by soliciting western funds, they were exposing themselves
to the charge - at best - of being unpatriotic, and - at worst - of being in
the pay of a foreign government. Some clearly knew this, but felt the risk
worth taking, because it was in the higher cause of bringing democracy in Russia.
Between here and there
I am not convinced they are right. My misgivings surfaced first in the provincial city of Voronezh, where I met a local opposition activist whose group published a newspaper as and when. That we met was at my instigation. That we met in the coffee bar right in the reception of the city's main hotel, was at his suggestion. Notwithstanding that such a meeting would have been extreme folly until the 1990s, he regaled me with a lurid account of how Russia was on a fast track back to Brezhnevism.
Now, I am sure his complaints of being harassed were absolutely true. But he has a job; he agreed to meet me in full view of whatever cameras the authorities have at their disposal, and handed over copies of his pre-election issue in broad daylight. This, surely, is not Brezhnevism, or even Andropovism or Chernenkoism. In those years, meeting a foreigner like this would have meant the sack, a charge of anti-Soviet activity before a politicised court, and a closed carriage to the gulag.
What struck me more than the contrast between then and now, however, was that when I had exhausted my questions about opposition activity, he said he had something to say to me. Fair's fair; I was happy to listen, but less happy with what I heard - which was essentially a plea for foreign money and foreign trips. Why was it that only businesspeople were able to travel to the west? A more productive course, my Voronezh interlocutor implied, would be for western groups or governments to invite Russian professionals: doctors to see how a free health service worked, teachers to see foreign schools, cultural figures.
I would not entirely dissent from that. The opportunity for Russian professionals - the new middle class, after all, in whom the west has invested such hopes - to see how other systems work would be a useful exercise for both sides. The idea that western countries should do more to fund Russia's democracy campaign groups and literature, however, I am less sure about. It is not just that the recipients will necessarily be regarded as a fifth column in their own country. It is more that, if a higher quality of democracy is to take root in Russia and other countries, it is not us, but their compatriots they have to convince.
At the grassroots
Both this meeting, and similar ones in St Petersburg evoked memories of reading Turgenev novels as an undergraduate, and the recurrent complaints of Russia's 19th-century westernisers about their country's backwardness. The more idealistic or committed went off into the Russian provinces to preach their message, then despaired of making conversions. Others went abroad to learn how western democracy was done, in the hope of implanting it back home. This was not successful either. Or rather, if it was, the result was the Bolshevik revolution!
The lesson, however, may be the same. If today's Russian westernisers want Russia to be a recognisable democracy, then they will have to learn to talk to their own people in a language they understand and take part in their own domestic politics. This is what happened in the late 1980s, when Mikhail Gorbachev opened up political discussion and former dissidents, including Andrei Sakharov and Dmitri Likhachev, joined the new political centre. Under Vladimir Putin, however - perhaps through his fault, but perhaps also through ours - the intellectual elite has once again turned to sip the nectar of the western gods.
This is not good for them and it is certainly not good for Russia. Some of the country's brightest and best are lavishing their time on potential western benefactors, when they might be better employing their persuasive skills on their fellow-citizens. It is not the west, but Russia's grassroots that need to be convinced about the merits of more democracy.
But if the country's pro-democracy activists still cannot make converts, they will have to draw the same conclusion as their 19th-century counterparts. Russia is not ready for, or not amenable to, their message. They will need to forge new links with the Russian people and polity, and learn a new language of campaigning.
Cathy Fitzpatrick said:
Wed, 2008-03-12 23:50
I have been supporting Russian democrats and human rights advocates for more than 30 years. Over the decades, I've heard this argument of Mary Dejevsky's trotted out by certain sophisticated English-speakers from the Soviet government; from leftist pro-Soviet peace organizations; from New Age foundations seeking citizens' diplomacy; from lefty new media journalists; from foundations more concerned with social and economic rights than civil liberties because they just find them easier to do and less "confrontational".
I've always helped Russians out a simple principle: because they asked, and if I had help to give, I would give it. I figured they were the best judges of the danger level, the level of discrediting they might suffer in their domestic press; the dangers of dependency.
To be sure, if I found a "grantosos" (sucker-up of grants) I would give them a pass. If the project involved some ridiculous expenditure of the US taxpayer's money or a private foundation's money on a huge billboard to deliver a public service announcement of some dubious value, for example, I'd pick something else. Obviously there are a wide variety of people and projects and you can be selective. But to posit that you give up just because it's not only criminalized by the regime but now deemed to be ineffective in reaching the Russian hinterlands goes against the principles of non-profit work to begin with. The questions being asked about Russia would then have to be put to all civic work and all social movements that often don't live to see the fruition of their efforts and often cannot realize their dreams and *especially* can't seem to make themselves "relevant to the masses". You would then have to say, why have opendemocracy.net when you can't free Burma or stop the war in Iraq?
There's an inherently fallacious argument contained here that is very easy to turn inside out. You certainly wouldn't advocate not helping a Western intellectual, let's say a U.S. dissident opposing the war in Iraq, by telling him he shouldn't get dependent on Eastern foundation grants; that he should try to get in touch with his own fellow citizens and convince them better; that he was in danger of discrediting the cause of peace by taking "Moscow gold". But in fact, that's exactly what might have been said about the Soviet-sponsored elements of the international peace movement decades ago.
If you are going to question the right of Russian democrats to take foreign aid, you'd have to question the wisdom of Dutch democrats or British democrats who get Ford Foundation grants even as their Eastern counterparts get Soros grants, and who grow dependent on their U.S.-based grants, consulting fees, conference per diems. Would you be attacking the international justice jet-set on these grounds, that they wouldn't exist if they weren't funded from outside? Perhaps you should, so they can go back home and learn how to talk to their own people!
The Russian regime now is working overtime to use every liberal's argument in the book to try to turn any lingering vestige of Western support (and there is precious little) on its ear -- the most sophisticated KGB-style arguments are always those that exploit the target's own sincerely-held liberal sympathies -- the argument that outside aid endangers an individual is, of course, the most effective argument (and was spread as a meme constantly in the old days and still is today); a modern version of that same dynamic is merely to say "it's not effective" or "it discredits the figure" or "it doesn't reach the people".
If we are to uphold the ideal of an international civil society (and aren't we doing that here on opendemocracy.net?) we can't pick and chose and say some people get to be discredited by a Soros or Ford grant and others don't. If it's ok for a British intellectual or journal to get private US foundation money, or if it's ok for an American to accept EU funds, then why discriminate against a Russian? They're possibly even more deserving, with less opportunity for funding and greater danger.
As for their supposed ineffectiveness, the problem of liberal democrats right now in Russia isn't that they are funded from outside. Even those not funded who never travel or publish broad can't get into parliament with an overall shift to a conservative, and some would say even fascistic public mood everywhere, incited by the Kremlin at every turn.
The lament of the Russian intelligentsia has always been that they must "idti v narod" (go out to the people) but when they get there, they can't convert them. Are they really any different than the typical moveon.org meetup.org promoter out in the sticks of the U.S.? Doesn't everybody have to figure out how to promote a liberal message in a hostile climate?
What I found particularly distorted in Dejevsky's concept, was a compression of two different phenomenon: "learning to talk to your own government" and "learning to talk to your own people" and a rewriting of history to suggest that Andrei Sakharov or Dmitry Likhachev, neither of whom are alive to disprove the rewrite, somehow were "combed" enough to now be acceptable for "dialogue with the government" -- and were successful because they weren't supported from outside. Of course, they *were*, morally first of all, although in those days, Western grants were far less prevalent then because there wasn't a practical and safe way to deliver funds. Scientific colleagues found small ways to support their counterparts, of course, and there were human rights groups who sent food and medicine packages or books to those in prison or exile.
Sakharov, of course, went through very brutal mistreatment and forced exile for years before the changes that Gorbachev was compelled to make from pressure from below brought about his "rehabilitation." When Gorbachev came to power, he telephoned Sakharov in his exile in Gorky. He said "Come back to Moscow and resume your scientific work for the country". And basically what Sakharov said was, "My friend Anatoly Marchenko just died in a labour camp on a hunger strike pleading for the release of the political prisoners, free all the political prisoners". So often people recall Gorbachev's "magnanimity" and forgot the pressure to be a real democrat he faced from the dissidents. Sakharov prepared an annotated list of all those who remained, and to his credit, Gorbachev began to release them -- although many still remained imprisoned into the Yeltsin era (and then under Putin the authorities began filling up the list again).
Dialogue didn't come because Sakharov, an outspoken dissenter punished for his questioning of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and many other policies related to human rights, learned how to talk to his government! It was because his government itself was pressured into becoming more open to dialogue and because a more liberal figure like Gorbachev came to power. There is no shortage of interlocutors for the current Russian regime who are "groomed" enough and even went to school with the same people in power and have a common language, but the regime is interested even in managing democracy any more, they're interested in eliminating it.
I had to chuckle at the idea that you are going to get trickle-down liberal democracy by having Voronezh health care workers visit free medical care facilities in Europe or Canada or even managed care in the U.S. Such exchanges have waxed and waned over the years, and they can sometimes provide life-changing experiences for all involved, but they are not the same as principled and dedicated support for very specific and necessary human rights programs. A Voronezh doctor learning a skill or getting a donation of equipment is an important fulfillment of social and economic rights, but you can't place that as a false appositive to dedicated support to civil and political rights, such as that of the Russian-wide movement Memorial Society which seeks to research and publish the crimes of the totalitarian regime to prevent their recurrence and also to work on current human rights problems such as in Chechnya.
What's sad about this call from Dejevsky is that it comes at a time when in fact funding for Russian democracy is at an all time low for reasons unrelated to the argumentation in this essay. The U.S. State Department has reduced the budget for Russian democracy age dramatically from it was at its peak in the 1990s, as it shifts funds to other areas like the Middle East, no doubt. There aren't that many private foundations that sustain regular programming with Russia, but those that do have tended to wind down their once ambitious presences. Those that stay have been forced to take a very low profile and engage in very "vegetarian" programs favouring focus on subjects not likely to serve as irritants, like social welfare or environmentalism, rather than civil rights litigation and human rights work. Promoting Dejevsky's line will no doubt convince some foundations already tilting to "social justice" rather than "civil liberties" that they're taking the right course.
Yet all you have to do to see the fallacy -- and poverty of thinking -- of this position, is to turn around the coda of this article:
"But if European and US anti-war activists still cannot make converts, they will have to draw the same conclusion as their 1960s and 1980s counterparts. America is not ready for, or not amenable to, their message. They will need to forge new links with the American people and polity, and learn a new language of campaigning."
Frankly, I find this position disgraceful, and I think it runs against values of international solidarity and universality of human rights. It could be, however, that Mary Dejevsky does not share those values, if she advocates "benevolent authoritarianism".