"So What?" Making Russians Care About Civil Society

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Apr 06, 2014
by Louise Hallman and Alex Jackson
"So What?" Making Russians Care About Civil Society

Russian civil society has stalled. So what? Civil society actors - young and old - took part in the Salzburg Global Russian Civil Society Symposium

Russian civil society has stalled. So what? If anyone bothers to ask the next question: ‘Why has civic progress in Russia stalled?’ the answer isn’t simply that civil society is stifled by the state; the much bigger problem is the near universal public apathy. Ordinary Russians should be enraged at the scandals that present themselves almost daily in their communities, in their region, and across the country; instead there seems to be a collective shrug. 

Russians do need to ask: ‘so what?’, but not in a passive sense. Not in a way that suggests ‘so why should we be bothered? It’s normal!’ People need to shout the phrase with force and conviction. ‘He cheated, so what happens now?!’ ‘He broke the rules, so what?!’ ‘He didn’t do what he was supposed to, so what?!’ There needs to be a greater number of people who ask ‘so what?’ all the time.

The phrase needs to become a mantra by which to promote action, an abbreviation of ‘So what can and should we do about this?’

Russians urgently need to start voicing their questions and emoting their discontent.  

Prior to the current stagnation – thanks in part to tighter legislation that prohibits protests without certain licences – there had been a surge in Russian political engagement and activism in the early 2000s. There was a brief period of thriving investment, political progression, and media diversity. Protests were a more common sight, and these campaigns were openly reacting to social inequality. 

But then came the protests of 2011-12 – the biggest protests Russia had seen since the early 1990s. Following the allegedly fraudulent elections in December 2011 that saw huge wins for the ruling United Russia party and Putin’s declaration of his intention to run again for president in 2012, tens of thousands of (primarily middle class, well-educated) Russians gathered for mass demonstrations of varying sizes in Moscow, St Petersburg, Vladivostok and numerous other cities (despite public officials’ best efforts to scare them off with warnings of SARS and flu outbreaks and special exam schedules for the cities’ students), demanding free elections and the release of political prisoners. Sympathy protests were organised in cities around the world, including London and New York.

These demonstrations prompted counter protests in support of Putin and United Russia – the ‘anti-Orange’ protesters fearing a similar ‘color’ revolution as seen in neighboring Ukraine and Georgia.Further protests were held at Putin’s inauguration in May 2012. This time reportedly 400 protesters were arrested with 80 injured.  Following this round of protests, stricter laws were introduced, dramatically increasing the fines protesters could face from 1,000 roubles to 300,000 roubles – more than the average Russian annual salary. Putin claimed this wasn’t an effort to quash protests, but to deter peaceful protesters from turning into looting rioters, and thus protecting the majority of Russians. As a consequence, this emergent activism has now all but dried up.There is a sense that whilst the people and their motives remain, they have been incorporated and fused into a system where swathes of society simply do not care to talk about this need for systematic change. ‘So what?’ they shrug.

Or, as one former Russian protester remarked in the New York Times, the protesters ‘took part because it was fashionable, nothing more. They felt strongly about the anti-Putin rallies, but “they also feel strong emotions about their iPhones.”’ 

With limited cooperation and integration between different groups, it’s difficult to know by just how much the field of active civic and political activists has shrunk. But there remain hundreds of regular citizens who are willing to participate by donating money, providing access to internet (to people such as protest leader and blogger Alexei Navalny, who is under house arrest and banned from getting online), and helping with community projects and work. These supporters, though localised and small, are more important than ever because they are contributing to an important yet fragile infrastructure of the wider civic society. But, is this small committed group’s participation worthwhile if there are not enough other people active in the sphere to maintain or boost progress?

Many young Russians who have only just recently been exposed to the possibility and opportunity for political activism are now losing heart. Since the protests in 2011-12, many have gone on to launch their own civic or political initiatives but often lack the training or networks needed to maintain them long-term. The lack of immediate progress is even leading some young activists to complain of depression, explained two of the younger participants at Salzburg Global Seminar’s Russian Civil Society Symposium in April. They feel excluded and belittled by the more established activists, complained another young Salzburg Global Fellow.

One possible method of reinvigorating the protest movement would be by inducing a form of ‘civic trauma’ such that would leave the victim forever impressed by the reasons for continued commitment to social development, and thus would always remain active in the field, promoting its further outreach. Initiating such a movement would eventually force a change in general consensus, so the argument goes. This approach might seem extreme, but as these young Salzburg Global Fellows explained; many young Russians consider it necessary to counterbalance the unrelenting attacks from the state on civic institutions.

The most unrelenting systematic and deliberate exertion of pressure on civic institutions is focused on the media. 

The media played a key role in anti-Putin campaigns of 2011-12. Now it is facing a backlash; the protests presented a list of people that were opposed to his ideals, and now Putin and his government is slowly eradicating these views, starting with the most powerful asset that free speech has in its arsenal. 

Many media outlets now face a stark choice: shutdown or represent the view of the government, which in turn provides the only source of funding to keep the paper in circulation. Advertisers are easily scared off by government pressure, so too are the cable network service providers, leaving a resources vacuum in their wake that essentially ensures the collapse of independent media outlets. That is not to say that advertisers and cable networks are not interested in the target audiences of these websites, newspapers and television stations; rather, they anticipate problems from higher up their corporations, and the potential risk weighs greater than the monetary loss in revenue from withdrawing support.  

Russia’s only independent news channel, Dozhd, is on the verge of shutting down after cable networks suddenly stopped carrying it. And the chief editor of Lenta.ru – Russia’s most popular news site – was recently fired by the publication’s owner, a Kremlin-friendly oligarch. ‘This isn’t just media pressure, it’s a mop-up operation,’ said Galina Timchenko told USA Today after her dismissal. 

This media crackdown means there is a gap between what people can talk about and which civic issues they are willing to work on in their communities. Civic activists now have to find a new, more accessible language and a new medium in which to express their intentions; there is a desperate need for a new civic literacy. Without this they risk losing even further support from an already apathetic or even distrusting public. 

This need for new language is appreciated and recognized by especially younger Russians, who are increasingly civically engaged – but also increasingly aware and influenced by world trends. (Some analysts cited the Arab Spring as a possible spark of the attempted ‘Snow Revolutions’ of 2011-12.) Having travelled abroad, these young Russians have been exposed to European and American ideas, activities and philanthropic models and they have returned home with the noble intentions of practicing these alternative methods of fostering human rights and sustain their efforts. They are more social media savvy, giving them new means of mobilising that older, more experienced civic and political activists have yet to adopt. However, such worldly youths are thus discredited as promoting views that do not conform to the Russian standard and are thereby seen as suspicious ‘foreign agents’ themselves. 

Breaking down these barriers between the young, recently protest-exposed, tech-savvy, yet naïve and easily disheartened and the more experienced, yet still distrusted older generations of civic and political activists would be important bridge to a brighter and stronger future for Russian civil society.

Together, young and old activists need to more loudly shout ‘so what?’ and convince their nonchalant compatriots that it is worth their while adding their voices to this call.