_general_ci Controls over Foreign Funding of NGOs: What Do They Have to Do with Development of Civil Society in Russia? 

Alexander N. Domrin

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  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 0,000 in 1996 to .5 million in 1998, and to about  million in  2001.  That’s in a country where National  Bank reserves do not exceed 0 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.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.

   
       Àëåêñàíäð Äîìðèí. Êîíòðîëü çà ôèíàíñèðîâàíèåì íåïðàâèòåëüñòâåííûõ îðãàíèçàöèé èç-çà  ðóáåæà. Îïóáëèêîâàíî â: The Untimely Thoughts, Vol.2, No.101, August 3, 2004: http://www.untimely-thoughts.com/index.html?cat=3&type=3&art=779; Johnson's  Russia List, No.8315, August 4, 2004.

 

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