Window on Eurasia: Rights Activists in Russia Being Forced to Work as They Did in Soviet Times, Alekseyeva Says

Paul Goble

 

            Staunton, January 4 – Lyudmila Alekseyeva, the founder of the Moscow Helsinki Group in Soviet times, says that the current Russian government is creating such impossible conditions for NGOS that “it would be better if we closed and worked again as in Soviet times – without registration and those opportunities which it gives.”

 

            Unfortunately, she said yesterday, “not everyone will be able to work only on a volunteer basis, without offices and money,” and consequently, the number of non-governmental organizations in the Russian Federation, already falling, will continue to decline in 2015 (lenta.ru/news/2015/01/03/alekseeva/).

 

            The Russian government has used many tools to restrict or close such groups, she said, but none has been as effective as the requirement introduced by Russian law in 2012 that any of them who receive any foreign funding must declare themselves to be “foreign agents.”  Thirty-two NGOs have been included in this list by the end of 2014.

 

            The most recent groups to be so classified are the Sakharov Center and the For Human Rights Movement. None of these groups deserved to be described in this way, and none can function effectively in Russia today if that epithet is applied to them, Alekseyeva said. As a result, the future of Russian NGOs is likely to be that of the Soviet past of their predecessors.