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A Quest for Democratic Citizenship A Quest for Democratic Citizenship Agendas, Practices, and Ideals of Six Russian Grass-Roots Organizations and Movements Leon Aron 1150 Seventeenth Street, NW Washington, DC 20036 202.862.5800 www.aei.org Cover image by Mikhail Reznikov AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE A Quest for Democratic Citizenship Agendas, Practices, and Ideals of Six Russian Grass-Roots Organizations and Movements By Leon Aron September 2012 A PROJECT OF THE AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE Cover photo: Protesters in Bolotnaya Square, Moscow, on December 10, 2011. Photo by Mikhail Reznikov. Contents ACKNOWLEDGMENTS . V EXECUTIVE SUMMARY . 1 A NOTE ON THE METHODOLOGY AND THE LIMITATIONS OF APPLICABILITY . 2 BACKGROUND . 3 US Policy . 3 Russia’s “New” Middle-Class Protesters . 4 A Literature Review: Civil Society and Grass-Roots Organizations and Movements in Vladimir Putin’s Russia . 5 THE STUDY . 9 Design and Selection Criteria . 9 The Respondents and the Interviews . 13 FINDINGS 1: DEMOGRAPHY, STRUCTURES, AGENDAS, PRACTICE, REGIME . 15 From “Intelligentsia” to Young Middle Class? . 15 Causes . 15 Governance . 16 Resources: Symbolic Dues, Ad Hoc Funding, Wary Businesses, and In-Kind Donations . 16 Virtual Membership and Ad Hoc, Issue-Driven Mobilization . 17 The Internet . 18 A Bridge to “Mainstream Media” . 19 The Uses of “Mainstream Media” . 19 The “Traditional” Means of Outreach and Mobilization . 20 The State: An Uneasy “Partnership” . 20 Public Politics . 21 The “Ship Rats” and Their Occasional Victories . 22 Sanctions . 23 FINDINGS 2: A QUEST FOR DEMOCRATIC CITIZENSHIP . 26 The “Spillover” into Politics . 26 FAR’s “Political” Evolution . 27 A Surprising Culprit: Civil Society . 28 The Metagoal: “Changing People’s Mentality” . 30 The “Cells” and the “Molecules”: The Moral Contagion of Citizenship . 32 Toward “Peacefully Changing [People’s] Conscience” . 33 A Civil Rights Movement . 33 iii A QUEST FOR DEMOCRATIC CITIZENSHIP CONCLUSION . 35 Building on Earlier Research . 35 . And Noting New and Potentially Momentous Developments . 35 APPENDIX . 37 Questionnaire: The English Translation and the Russian Original . .37 NOTES . 40 ABOUT THE AUTHOR . 45 iv Acknowledgments This study would not have been possible without generous support from the Smith Richardson Foundation and the attention of its senior program officer, Dr. Nadia Schadlow. I am grateful to Danielle Pletka, AEI’s vice president for Foreign and Defense Policy Studies, for her unfailing encouragement and advice. I am most grateful to Leonard Benardo, Timothy Frye, Andrew Kuchins, Blair Ruble, Daniel Treisman, and Andrew Weiss for taking the time to read this paper and give me their generous and insightful comments. My thanks go also to Nicholas Eber- stadt for moderating a panel where Lenny, Andy, Andy, and I discussed these findings. My thanks are also to Daniel Vajdic for his invaluable assistance and companion- ship during our three weeks in Russia and for his editorial suggestions in the prepa- ration of this essay; to Vera Zimmerman and Valentina Lukin, who listened to and transcribed over forty hours of recorded interviews on over three hundred pages; to Lara Johnson, who researched dozens of Russian grass-roots organizations; to Lauren Kimaid and Julia Friedlander for their help in shepherding the grant proposal to successful conclusion; and to Laura Drinkwine, Katie Earle, Claude Aubert, and Christy Sadler for their assistance with production of the report. Most of all, I am hugely indebted to the respondents of this study for the wonder- ful conversations we had. Without a doubt, they are among the finest, most remark- able men and women I have had the privilege of knowing. v Executive Summary lthough limited in scope, inductive, and most time limits for the achievement of their goals, dis- Adecidedly qualitative, this study nevertheless playing quiet but unyielding determination and suggests several important tendencies in the devel- patience as long as necessary. They rejected violence opment of Russian civil society and its potential in principle. Instead, their key strategy was the moral impact on the country’s politics. Our exploration of and civic education of fellow citizens as the main pre- the agendas and ideals of these mostly young and condition for the emergence of a democratic state. mostly middle-class leaders and activists of six grass- Although, as we discovered a few months after roots organizations and movements provides con- the interviews were conducted, key elements of the siderable evidence that a proactive civil society respondents’ political and moral sensibilities were might be emerging. echoed by the participants in the mass protests of Vastly different in the causes they advocate and winter 2011–spring 2012, the groups and move- activities they engage in, the groups’ leaders and ments under study, on the one hand, and the pro- activists were remarkably similar in their conviction testers, on the other, represent closely related, often that the meaningful and lasting liberalization of the overlapping, but distinct manifestations of the country may be ensured only by a mature, self-aware moral, civic, and political awakening of the Russian civil society, able and willing to control the execu- middle class in the second decade of the twenty- tive. The main venue for such a change would not be first century. Aimed not just, and even not so a political revolution in the conventional sense. Nor much, at the change of political regime but at the would it be brought “from above” by a good czar or establishment of a powerful civil society capable of a hero. Instead, their hopes were predicated on a supervising any regime, the organizations and deeply moral transformation “from within.” Effect- movements like the ones we have explored are ing such an evolution toward enlightened and bound to continue their work long after the Putin morally anchored democratic citizenship appeared regime is no more. to be the overarching metagoal of the organizations, A free, democratic, and prosperous Russia, at above and beyond their daily agendas. peace, finally, with its own people, its neighbors, and The formation of such a cohesive and effective the world, is among the most important geostrategic Russian civil society will undoubtedly be a gradual objectives of the United States. Thus, America’s and long process, overlapping with but distinct from stakes in the consolidation and further expansion of traditional political developments. Rather, emerging a vibrant civil society, the emergence of which we from the interviews1 was something similar to the may have observed and recorded in this study, are moral sensibility of a civil rights movement. Thus, undeniable and high. Ultimately, it is the only the men and women we interviewed were striving to assured way of securing the attainment of this objec- effect vast political and social change through per- tive, so obviously and immensely beneficial to the sonal and deeply moral efforts. They established no peoples of Russia and the United States. 1 A Note on the Methodology and the Limitations of Applicability This project is an explicitly inductive exploration. (listed below), rather than randomly, the subjects We did not seek to confirm any theory, and such cannot be considered methodologically “typical,” generalizations as are ventured here have been further limiting the findings’ applicability. Thus, any prompted solely by the findings. This is also a quali- patterns and themes described below should be tative study: a mostly interview-based,* in-depth interpreted only as preliminary insights. It is my probe into the modus operandi and Weltanschauung hope, however, that, as good qualitative studies of leaders and activists of geographically diverse sometimes do, this one may stimulate and supply a organizations and movements with equally diverse framework for quantitative research that will enable day-to-day agendas. Selected by a priori criteria us to generalize. * Altogether, nineteen one-on-one interviews were conducted in five cities. On average, they lasted about an hour and a half, although some took two, three, and even four hours. 2 Background US Policy conditions for average people....The United States has sent a delegation of leaders in the technology to oth before and after the glasnost revolution and Russia to explore how technological advances can Bthe fall of the Soviet Union, the US government help enhance civil society in Russia.”4 Secretary of has encouraged the development of human rights, State Hillary Clinton voiced her support of “creative civil society, and pluralist political culture through ways to use technology” to disseminate information diplomacy and foreign aid. By encouraging political employed by activists at the US-Russia “Civil Society parties, human rights organizations, nongovern- to Civil Society” Summit on June 24, 2010.5 Philip H. mental organizations, and political activists, the Gordon, assistant secretary of the Bureau of Euro- United States has traditionally played an active role pean and Eurasian Affairs, announced that the in promoting the reform of political culture in mod- United States spends $33.6 million annually on ern Russia. Beginning in 1989, the “Support for East funding for democracy promotion and civil society European Democracy (SEED) Act . has sought to in Russia.6 promote democratic and free market transitions in The United States Agency for International Devel- the former communist countries of Central and opment (USAID) sponsors dozens of programs to Eastern Europe,
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