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EAST-WEST-RESEARCH  August 2004

EAST-WEST-RESEARCH August 2004

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Subject:

Alexander N. Domrin: What Do NGOs Have to Do with Development of Civil Society in Russia?

From:

"Serguei Alex. Oushakine" <[log in to unmask]>

Reply-To:

Serguei Alex. Oushakine

Date:

Thu, 5 Aug 2004 00:02:26 -0400

Content-Type:

text/plain

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Parts/Attachments

text/plain (166 lines)

Untimely Thoughts
http://www.untimely-thoughts.com
August 3, 2004

Controls over Foreign Funding of NGOs
What Do They Have to Do with Development of Civil Society in Russia?
By Alexander N. Domrin

Alexander Domrin has an academic degree of Doctor of Juridical Science
(S.J.D.) from the University of Pennsylvania Law School. He is a Senior
Associate of the Institute of Legislation and Comparative Law (under the
Russian Government), a member of the Council on Constitutional Legislation
under the State Duma Chairman, and currently a Visiting Professor at the
University of Iowa College of Law.

Stricter controls over grants and donations to Russian NGOs from foreign
organizations have been long anticipated. It's certainly a positive
development. There is nothing "draconian" about it. Among other experts in
the country, scholars at the Russian Government's Institute of Legislation
and Comparative Law have been speaking (and not only speaking) about the
necessity of imposing such controls since the mid-1990s.

There is hardly any visible correlation between foreign grants to NGOs and
development of civil society in Russia. Although foreign inputs can support
the creation of infrastructure to nurture fledgling democratic
institutions, a truly democratic and civil society is to be founded on a
solid domestic ground. Democratic institutions derive their legitimacy from
people and not from foreign sponsors of "regime change". The current
situation in Russia, where the non-governmental sector «is still dependent
on Western funding» (as admitted in the 2001 Ford Foundation Report), is
utterly unhealthy. For instance, NGOs working in collaboration with the
(now defunct) Russian Foundation for Legal Reform revealed that on average
they used to have eight main sources of funding of their activities with
"foreign foundations" constituting the largest source among all of them -
22.7%. Actual foreign support is even bigger, because the additional 12.6%
of the budget coming from "sponsor dues" does not necessarily mean that
such sponsors are "domestic".

Russian NGOs cannot be accused of being too prude and selective with
respect to their sponsors. Not many other things could damage the
reputation of the Sakharov Center or the Moscow-based International
Foundation for Civil Liberties more in the eyes of common Russian folks
than generous financial support (to be precise, 3 million U.S. dollars in
the first case, and one million in the other) to the Sakharov Center from a
robber baron in exile, Boris Berezovsky.

A recent proposal by two American scholars (Timothy J. Colton & Michael
McFaul) to replace the "old formula for democracy 'Get the institutions
right, and the people will follow'", with a new one "'Represent the will of
the people within the state, and the institutions will follow'", can be
right only when the "will of the people" is voiced by the people and not by
their foreign mentors. In reality, Colton-McFaul's proposed change of
strategy of foreign aid from "technical assistance for the crafting of
democratic institutions, be it democratic electoral laws, constitutions,
courts, or political parties" to, in their words, "pro-democratic elements
in Russia's society" and "those brave people in Russia still fighting for
democracy", is a sly attempt to keep providing foreign money to the same
small clique of corrupt and morally bankrupt pro-Western "reformers", the
main recipients of American "aid" in the 1990s, who were thrown by the
Russian voters from the Duma to the ditch of "educational" NGOs (like
Gaidar's Institute of Transitional Economy) or "public" associations (like
dwarf organizations of Filatov, Shumeiko, Rybkin, and other survivors of
Yeltsin's cleptocratic regime).

What American aid to the non-governmental sector actually means can also be
illustrated by a Belarussian example. Although the main (if not the only)
reason for Washington's dissatisfaction with the current regime in Belarus
is President Lukashenko's pro-Russian policy, the U.S. authorities put
pressure on the Belarussian government for its alleged "campaign against
civil society and independent voices in Belarus" (the U.S. State Department
statement of July 26, 2004) or because it "blatantly and repeatedly
violated basic freedoms of speech, expression, assembly, association and
religion" (from U.S. Congressman Christopher H. Smith's statement on
Belarus of July 15, 2003). Surprisingly, we in Russia never heard similar
criticism from the U.S. officials either when Yeltsin (an "explicitly
pro-American, pro-Western, pro-market" president, who kept Russia "on a
pro-Western track", as he was characterized in the U.S. Congress) shelled
the Russian parliament and suspended the activities of the Constitutional
Court, or when Russia's «dream team» (with support of American consultants
and foreign money) staged the 1996 presidential election farce. In a truly
amazing admission, Michael G. Kozak, a former U.S. Ambassador to Belarus,
bluntly stated in a letter to The Guardian that America's "objective and to
some degree methodology are the same" in Belarus as in Nicaragua, where the
U.S. backed the Contras against the left-wing Sandinista Government.

A spokesman for the U.S. Embassy in Minsk told The Times that the embassy
helped to fund 300 non-governmental organizations and admitted that «some»
of them were linked to those who were "seeking political change". "Helped"
is certainly an understatement here. Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty was
more precise: "Many groups in Belarus rely on foreign money for their
activities". Christian Science Monitor revealed that Washington spent $24
million in 2000 to support NGOs and opposition groups in Belarus, and was
going to spend even more next year. According to Russian press, support to
Belarussian opposition through the Eurasia Foundation, for instance, grew
from $340,000 in 1996 to $1.5 million in 1998, and to about $4 million in
2001. That's in a country where National Bank reserves do not exceed $200
million!

To what extent such groups in Belarus, created and funded by the U.S., can
be considered "independent" (i.e. "not governed by a foreign power;
self-governing; free from the influence, guidance, or control of another or
others; self-reliant") is certainly a big question. To look at this from a
more concrete perspective, 300 Washington-funded NGOs is one organization
for every 34,000 citizens of a 10-million person republic. What would be
the reaction of American people and the Bush Administration if some foreign
country (for instance, Saudi Arabia, North Korea or Russia) would set up
and provide multibillion funding to some 8,250 "civil society" groups (one
for every 34,000 Americans) aimed at "seeking political change" (read:
"overthrowing the President", "changing the political regime") in the U.S.?

The Belarussian experience with foreign interference into the internal
affairs of that republic under the disguise of Western "aid" to "civil
society" groups is not much different than the Russian experience. As
stated in the Russian Democracy Act, "United States Government democratic
reform programs. have led to the establishment of more than 65,000
non-governmental organizations. and numerous political parties"
(Sec.2(a)(3)(A)). In other words, the U.S. law-makers openly admit that the
U.S. Government and American money are behind every fifth out of 300,000
registered NGOs in Russia. The figures are even more impressive than those
in Belarus. For every 2,100 citizens of Russia, we've got one "public"
association "established" and at least partly, if not fully, funded by
Washington.

It's hardly an excuse that the real number of U.S.-funded NGOs in Russia is
certainly smaller. Many such organizations exist on paper only and were
established by clever Russians with the only purpose of milking the rich
cows of the U.S. Agency for International Development and various Western
foundations. It only corroborates my final observation. The continuation of
U.S. reliance on a narrow circle of pro-Western liberal intelligentsia and
"agents of democratic change" (mainly concentrated in Moscow and half a
dozen other urban centers) proves to be wasteful, eventually unproductive
for the U.S. interests (if those interests are not aimed at the ultimate
subordination of Russia and further aggravation of her socio-economic
problems) and detrimental to the interests of long-term institutional legal
and democratic development of Russia, including development of her civil
society.

What Western governments and experts should do, instead of continuing their
futile and ridiculous attempts to «pull Russia into the West» (Michael
McFaul), threatening Russia with «negative consequences», and frightening
themselves and their communities with horror stories that if Russia does
not continue "reforms" "following strategies developed in Western
capitals», then "it most likely will have become a dictatorship and a
threat to Europe" (McFaul again), is to agree with Charles H. Fairbanks,
Jr. (of Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International
Studies) that the failure of American "reform strategy" "has probably
destroyed Russians' trust in the West for generations to come" and follow
his advice: "Those of us who care about the advance of democracy in the
world should make it our foremost intellectual and practical task to find
out why our reform strategy went wrong in so much of the former Soviet
bloc".

Back in 2001, I wrote in Nezavisimaya gazeta that "U.S. aid to Russian
'reformers' should be stopped by the U.S. Administration before it's
interrupted by the Russian Government" (NG-Dipkurier, 22.03.2001). Adoption
in 2002 by the U.S. Congress of the notorious Russian Democracy Act
(pledging an additional 50 million dollars a year to pro-American
"political parties and coalitions" in Russia, "democratic activists",
"democratic forces", "reform-minded politicians", and the like) became just
another confirmation of the unwillingness of U.S. authorities to stop
America's interference into Russian domestic affairs. The Russian
Government finally decided to react. It should have done so long before.

Comments should be forwarded to The Untimely Thoughts:
[log in to unmask]

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