open Democracy News Analysis - How to help Russia’s democrats?, Mary Dejevsky - Comments

esb34 on "How to help Russia’s democrats?"

esb34 — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 19:53:08 +0000

While I am sympathetic to Ms. Dejevsky’s article, there is a lot of wisdom in Cathy Fitzpatrick’s observations. The “West” (however defined”) is presently dealing with the consequences with its largely failed policies towards Russia following the Soviet Union’s economic/political collapse and subsequent break-up.

It is a generally-accepted principle of international law that foreign states are not to interfere in the domestic affairs of a sovereign country (although many contend that human rights and humanitarian law provides for certain exceptions, usually established by custom or treaty). Nonetheless, this principle was largely ignored by the Cold War’s “victors” in the 1990s. The resulting situation, however, was unusual and not analogous to the post-WW II period since the losing side was not physically occupied by foreign troops for an extended period while new institutions were created.

Yet, the West was eager to achieve rapidly its agenda – the establishment of a market economy in Russia and a regime in the Kremlin that saw its own policy goals as being consistent with that of the West. Unfortunately, Russia’s economic and political transition was fraught with problems. The Soviet-era structures (and attitudes) remained largely in place. New effective governmental and legal structures were not created.

Another key factor was that the world price for oil and natural gas fell to low levels. This contributed to a drop in Russian GDP by approximately 25% -- a depression by any standard (combined with the psychological cost of having lost superpower status. This led to great emotional upheaval in the country. Middle-aged persons lost their entire life savings. Such is the legacy of the pro-Western Democratic reformers in the eyes of a majority of the Russian population.

While some Western technical assistance projects produced positive results, its focus was in the economic area. The West (and the multinational organizations dominated by it) promoted the expedited privatization of major state enterprises – few people understood the process, which was fraught with corruption – with insiders benefiting the most. Speed was of the essence since the West wanted to destroy the possibility of the restoration of central planning and potentially a return to power of the Communists (or equivalent group of persons). The West saw in Boris Yeltsin, Yegor Gaidar, Anatoli Chubais, Alfred Koch and others persons capable and willing to carry out its plans. Janine Wedel in her award winning book “Collision and Collusion” describes this process with great skill.

Unfortunately, the policies promoted by the West and its Russian implementers largely ignored the country’s political culture and the goals of existing interest groups. In the process, the social safety net for the Russian people largely disappeared -- leading to the impoverishment of a large portion of the population. It also enriched a small group of politically well-connected individuals. In addition, from a legal standpoint, the privatization process was illegal since it was the Soviet people and not the State that owned the country’s wealth. Hence, it may have been preferable to corporatize the country’s largest enterprises and giving one share in each enterprise to the population – creating in essence a national mutual fund.

Since the early 21st century (and President Putin’s assumption of the power, the Russian economy from the macro standpoint benefited from the dramatic increase in the price of energy. Most people are willing to tolerate increased political repression if they feel that their standard of living is increasing, and indeed this seemed to be occurring.

President Putin and his political allies have benefited from this situation and the State’s control over television and the major newspapers ensures that the Russian people are not exposed to criticism of their government. This has resulted in Mr. Putin’s apparent popularity, which has created the conditions for a consolidation of power in the President and his principal allies. This situation is likely to continue unless the people’s expectations for a better future materially are not met or the country embarks in a costly and unpopular war.

Thus, I believe that Western aid to the “Democratic Opposition” is unlikely to achieve any tangible benefits, unless aid recipients undertake projects aimed at improving people’s life. At present, the Russian people seem to value abstractions like free speech, an independent press, and the rule of law far less than tangible things such as better housing, improved healthcare and quality schools. The West should encourage the Democratic Opposition to focus on activities that are relevant. Not only are they tainted by their association with the West, which is largely blamed for the hardship of the Yeltsin years, their support is unlikely to become a majority of the electorate for quite some time.

In conclusion, assistance should not be abandoned, but should be carefully targeted and fine-tuned. It should be technical aid of a technical nature. The Democratic Opposition must learn to develop its own roots in the Russian population and wait for the Russian economy to falter and generational change. It must become better organized and discard its dissident mentality. Its focus should not be on winning grants from foreign donors. Otherwise, Western aid will function like methadone. Western money dedicated to the region should focus on promoting long-term change through professional exchanges (not short visits) and increased funding for broadcasting news free of political taint directly to the Russian people.

mossy on "How to help Russia’s democrats?"

mossy — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 18:42:35 +0000

I’m glad Cathy Fitzpatrick replied so eloquently and comprehensively to this piece. I only wanted to add that I was struck by Ms Deyevsky’s apparent disconnection with reality. If she just traveled around Russia for 10 days, surely she noticed that it is an expensive place these days, and even out there in the boondocks you have to pay for office space, for electricity, for phone lines, not to mention paper and pens or even a desk or two. How are people going to be “employing their persuasive skills on their fellow-citizens” and “taking part in their own domestic politics” without funding? How does she imagine they will “learn to talk with their own people in a language they understand” without a kopek? Are they going to hold meetings around a campfire in the woods? And if they are, how are they going to let people know about the meeting without money to buy paper, markers and tape to put up announcements? How are they going to take part in domestic politics without funding to rent halls to have meetings, advertise in the media, or pay for phone lines so activists can make phone calls? How are they going to reach their own people without money to pay writers and layout artists and publishing houses to print flyers and brochures? Or produce and air television and radio ads (where it’s still possible)? Or hire specialists to help them hone their message so it is understandable, accessible and attractive?

And how did Ms Deyevsky fail to notice in 10 days that human rights and other activists in Russian “lavish their time on potential Western benefactors” because those are just about the only benefactors on whom they can lavish their attention? State funding for NGOs is not going to groups fighting racial and ethnic discrimination, militia brutality or corruption. Corporate funders are providing billions of rubles, but only to “politically safe” NGOs and organizations, like orphanages, schools, arts groups, and social service organizations. Private funders virtually do not exist, nor does direct mail solicitation or, for that matter, bake sales and car washes.

This article isn’t only disgraceful; it’s just plain silly.

Cathy Fitzpatrick on "How to help Russia’s democrats?"

Cathy Fitzpatrick — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 23:50:00 +0000

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".

How to help Russia’s democrats?, Mary Dejevsky

Tue, 11 Mar 2008 15:18:03 +0000

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).

Read the rest of this post...