In May 2013, as Russia was craving positive international publicity before the Sochi Olympic Games, the secretary general of the Council of Europe, Thorbjorn Jagland, criticized Russia’s “foreign agents” law for the “chilling effect” it could have on the country’s civil society. After meeting with President Vladimir Putin, Jagland told the media: “I have expressed concerns about this [law], and I think it is very important... how political activity is being defined.”
Vladimir Putin, who had been back in the Kremlin for a year and had already unleashed a vicious campaign against critics of the government, did not disagree that the definition in question could benefit from some improvement. Almost three years later, the saga seems to be drawing to a close, and not in a good way.
Vague definitions
Defining “political activity” may seem like an academic exercise, but in Russia, it is an existential one. The definition is crucial to the law, which has become the centre piece of the government’s sweeping crackdown on free expression. Non-governmental groups are branded as “foreign agents”, which in Russia is the equivalent of “spy” or “traitor”, if they engage in “political activity” while receiving foreign funding.
