One of the major changes to the laws is denial of registration. The law expands the grounds upon which an organization's application to register can be denied by the registration authority, known as Rosregistration. The provisions relating to denial of registration for branches of FNNOs are of special concern: They provide that the authority may deny registration to a branch if its "goals and objectives & create a threat to the sovereignty, political independence, territorial integrity, national unity, unique character, cultural heritage and national interests of the Russian Federation." The European Court of Human Rights has specifically held that it violates a country's obligations, under Article 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights, to deny registration on grounds almost identical to these.

In addition, the law prohibits certain categories of persons from founding, joining or participating in PAs or NCOs. Among these are foreign nationals whose presence in the Russian Federation is found to be "undesirable." This designation can be conferred by certain federal agencies, each of which has complete discretion to establish criteria for making that determination.

In sum, several provisions of the law appear to be inconsistent with the Russian Federation's obligations under international agreements. This is particularly so in the case of the European Convention of Human Rights, which, under Article 11, requires a nation to protect the right of association and to interfere with the exercise of that right only when "necessary in a democratic society for compelling state reasons."

Despite the new regulations making the work of NGOs harder, citizens still have a legal right to form CSOs.

See more about it here: "The Russian NGO Law: Potential Conflicts with International, National and Foreign Legislation," by Alison Kamhi, International Journal of Not-for-Profit Law, Volume 9, Issue 1, December 2006. See also [ LINK ].

References: "Some Issues Related to Russia's New NGO Law," by Natalia Bourjaily, International Journal of Not-for-Profit Law, Volume 8, Issue 3, May 2006

Federal law On Nonprofit Organizations, passed in December 1995, with amendments in December 2002

In addition, senior management of any CSO now has to report to the proper state body all funding provided by foreign and international bodies (as well as foreign individuals), how the CSO plans to use the funding (and any donated property) and how it was used in fact (Article 29). There is no ban on accepting foreign funding, unless otherwise prohibited by law (terrorism, etc.).

Once sponsors of the Russian human rights community, Western donor organizations rapidly lost interest in Russia. Figures are quite telling: European and American funds gave nearly $80 million to Russian organizations within the framework of all sorts of democracy-promotion programs in 2006. In 2007, the total amounted to only about $20 million, and this money went only to prominent organizations like the Moscow Helsinki Group and Memorial.

The exodus of activists awaits the human rights community in Russia in the near future. "Absence of funding will first and foremost hurt human rights structures in the regions," said Alekseyeva. Almost 100 autonomous human rights organizations  partners of the Moscow Helsinki Group, Memorial, Journalist Union, and so on ¬¬ closed down in late 2007. However, Gorevoi reported that no right-to-protection human rights organizations closed down in Russia for lack of funding.

The Russian government is tightening its grip on Russias nongovernmental sector. On July 2, 2008, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin issued a decree that dramatically rolled back the number of foreign-based nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that will enjoy tax-exempt status in Russia. The chief targets of the decree appeared to be NGOs active in areas deemed nettlesome by the Russian government, such as human rights and the environment. NGOs that no longer qualify for exemptions will have to pay a 24 percent tax on all grants made inside Russia, starting Jan. 1, 2009.

The 24 percent tax rate is deemed prohibitive by many civil society activists, who believe the new rules are designed to force Western NGOs to pull out, thereby throttling the spirit of liberalization in Russia. Lokshina said Putins decree was "certainly a demonstrative political gesture that is very illustrative of the climate foreign-funded NGOs and their donors have to deal with in Russia today."

Among the 89 NGOs impacted by the decree are the International Red Cross, the World Wildlife Fund, the Ford Foundation and the Eurasia Foundation. Of the 101 NGOs that enjoyed tax-free status prior to Putins July 2 decree, only 12 stand to retain the privilege in 2009. The new qualifications for tax-exempt status were arbitrarily established by the government. NGOs themselves had no role in the outcome.

Although the governments methodology in refining the tax-exempt list was anything but transparent, a pattern can be detected in the outcome. Those organizations that will continue to enjoy the exemption tend to be intergovernmental groups, such as the Commission of the European Communities and the Council of the Baltic Sea States, along with several United Nationsrelated entities, including the International Atomic Energy Agency.

"The Russian government likely feels that it can largely trust intergovernmental organizations, such as councils of government ministers or UN agencies, because it has a voice in those organizations and because other governments tend to understand Russias wish to protect sovereignty, " said Sundstrom. The Kremlin tends "not to trust private foundations, which are less in dialogue with the government and are also the biggest funders of NGOs critical of the government," she added.

Motives become clearer, however, when the tax-exempt move is viewed within the context of another government initiative to encourage the NGO sectors Russification. President Dmitry Medvedev has spoken repeatedly of the Russian governments desire to promote NGO activity. He has also plainly indicated that his administration views foreign NGO activity in Russia as meddlesome.

"I doubt that any developed Western country would tolerate such an overwhelming flood of foreign capital into its own third sector, " Medvedev told German political and civil society leaders in Berlin in June. The Russian leader went on to indicate that the Russian government would increase the share of state funds used to support local NGO activity.

Medvedev also has been urging Russian corporations to become more active in philanthropic activity. Observers fully expect Russian businesses to step up. But under current circumstances in Russia, even if corporate donors provide most of the funding for local NGOs, the government would still be in position to call the shots. That is because the Kremlin effectively controls Russias private sector, via the willingness of the political leadership to selectively apply taxation and criminal codes. Thus, it would be reasonable to expect that corporate support for the NGO sector would adhere strictly to the governments wishes. That means that any NGO that carries out work deemed detrimental or irksome by the Kremlin would likely be starved of funds.

Others, however, hold different opinions. Pamfilova believes that leaders of state structures and businesses in Russia have begun to realize to a greater extent the significance of NGOs. Pamfilova stressed that according to the data of Rosregistratsiya (Federal Registration Service), of the 36 percent of organizations that had reported on their activity as required by the new legislation, foreign funding currently amounts to less than 5 percent.

References: Federal Law On Introducing Amendments to Certain Legislative Acts of the Russian Federation, passed in December 2005

[ LINK ]

Lyudmila Alekseyeva, Moscow Helsinki Group

Ruslan Gorevoi, Versia, No. 1, January 2008

Tanya Lokshina, researcher, Human Rights Watch Russia, Moscow

"Russia: No Country for Charitable Souls," by Svetla Marinova, EurasiaNet, Aug. 1, 2008, [ LINK ]

Lisa Sundstrom, professor, University of British Columbia, Canada, and an expert on Russian civil society developments

Ella Pamfilova, head of the Council for Promoting the Development of the Institutions of a Civil Society and Human Rights, addressing a meeting of the St. Petersburg government on Feb. 12.

Russian human rights official notes increased domestic funding of NGOs," Interfax, Feb. 12, 2008

References: Federal Law On Introducing Amendments to Certain Legislative Acts of the Russian Federation, Article 39, passed in December 2005

The following is an overview of the situation once Russian CSOs began living under new legislation passed in 2006. There is no specific information on Russian anti-corruption NGOs and problems they encountered under the new legislation, which does not cover anti-corruption as a special field of non-profit activity.

NGOs NGO representatives say up to three-quarters of more than 200,000 officially registered noncommercial organizations could face closure.

Critics say that doing everything necessary to comply itself amounts to punishment.

Jens Siegert, head of the Heinrich Boll Foundation's Moscow office, said his organization, which is affiliated with the German Green Party, had to hire one extra staff member solely to cope with the workload. Part of that workload came from a stipulation in the law requiring every organization to submit new accounting forms to the Federal Registration Service, a sprawling government body with roughly 40,000 employees that reports to the Justice Ministry. In addition, foreign-run organizations must report quarterly financial reports and, by Oct. 31 each year, a plan of their activities for the coming year that includes the amount of money allotted for each project. Authorities must be notified of any new program at least one month in advance and of any essential change of plans within 10 business days of the decision.

Recipients see the additional requirements as proof of what they believe is the regulation's real purpose: to eliminate the possibility that foreign organizations could provoke public unrest in the way the Kremlin believes happened in Georgia and Ukraine. The new regulations prevented small organizations in particular from focusing on their real activities, said Inara Gulpe-Laganovska, NGO liaison officer for Human Rights Watch in Russia. She also said the law contained disproportionate punishment for violations. "Only two types exist: suspension or liquidation," she said.

Aside from the burdens, critics say the law allows the authorities to engage in excessive interference.

"The worst thing is that the reporting makes NGOs vulnerable by giving registration officials an unprecedented level of discretion in deciding which projects comply with Russia's national interest," Gulpe-Laganovska said.

If an organization receives two warnings within a year, it faces the threat of termination of its activity.

Meanwhile the tax service behaves perfectly properly toward noncommercial organizations, and its staffers are less harsh.

Human rights campaigners also point to the fact that authorities have arbitrarily targeted some organizations with seemingly ludicrous demands. The St. Petersburg-based NGO Citizens' Watch, for instance, has been asked to disclose the entirety of its written correspondence with anyone or any organization outside the office over a three-year period, including e-mails.

"The registration service came to us in July and showed us a screening warrant," the organization's chairman, Boris Pustintsev, said in a telephone interview. "They then suddenly demanded that we produce all outgoing correspondence from July 2004 to July 2007."

Pustintsev said he initially refused because he believed the request exceeded the agency's competence. After a board meeting, however, the NGO did grudgingly agree to comply, "because otherwise the authorities could freeze our bank accounts," he said.

CSOs have already been officially closed under dubious circumstances. Others are trying to fight back. Agora, an interregional association of Russian human rights groups, said in a memorandum that it found 33 cases of unlawful actions by the Federal Registration Service (FRS) against NGOs from April 2006 to May 2007. Agora provided legal assistance to those concerned in 20 of them.

The cases demonstrated the FRS's "unfriendly bias against NGOs," excessive demands on their operations and, in some cases, an unwillingness to maintain constructive relations, the memorandum said.

Another consequence is that setting up an NGO has become a daunting task. A study prepared under the presidential Human Rights Council found that the cost of legal procedures was 33 percent higher than setting up a business and requires more time. "It takes a minimum of six to eight weeks to register an NGO, while registering a commercial company takes from seven to 10 days," said Anton Zolotov of the Institute of Civil Analysis.

The Agora Association monitors relations between noncommercial organizations and the FRS. According to Agora figures, even professional lawyers, who are a minority among the activists in noncommercial organizations, cannot register an organization on the first try.

In 2001, all non-profit and public organizations were entered into the Unified State Register of Legal Entities. Once registered, they are to confirm by each April 15 that they are proceeding with activities. But after the NGO Act was toughened in 2006, only 216,000 of roughly 500,000 registered NGOs proved able to meet the deadline in 2008. In the next move, territorial branches of FRS set to filing legal suits to exclude NGOs from that register.

Of the 210,000 NGOs that met the deadline, only 36 percent have reported to the FRS the results of their work, Sergei Vasiliev, FRS head, said at a briefing published in Rossiiskaya Gazeta. Less than 20 percent submitted their report by April 15. The deadline was then moved to June 1 (28 percent of NGOs submitted reports by that date) and then to Sept. 1, by which date 36 percent of NGOs had filed reports, Vasiliev said. Some 64 percent of NGOs just ignore the legislation.

According to Vasiliev, there are several reasons why NGOs fail to submit reports. First, many of the registered NGOs exist only on paper and actually do not work at all. Second, some NGOs are trying to conceal the results of their work, primarily the spending of money.

Vasiliev emphasized that, according to the reports the FRS received, financial resources from abroad spent on NGOs work amounted to 20 billion rubles (US$643 million). NGOs that failed to submit reports received much of their money from abroad, and it is not known how the money was spent. This is the problem to be tackled by the national security services, Vasiliev said.

Also, according to his information, the number of newly registered NGOs is growing. Some 32,000 NGOs were registered in the whole of 2006, while the figure for the first half of 2007 is 31,000. With figures like that, how can anyone raise the question of oppression?

There is no oppression at all, Vasiliev stressed. But the FRS itself has no idea how many noncommercial organizations it has registered. Its leader, Sergey Vasilyev, in an interview to Rossiyskaya Gazeta, estimated the number of noncommercial organizations at between 182,000 and 203,000.

Some organizations were registered and were on the books of the tax inspection, and by the end of the year they should be registered with the FRS. That is, by the end of the year, the total number of noncommercial organizations will come to around 300,000. I would say that 80 percent  some 240,000  do not meet the requirements laid down by legislation for the activities of noncommercial organizations. If the legislation is not relaxed by 2008, not more than 60,000 organizations will remain.

However, experts of the Voronezh Interregional Group of Right Defenders studied statistics of NGOs closed by court decision in 2007. In the eight regions the survey covered, more than 600 NGOs were crossed out of the Unified State Register of Legal Entities, which meant near complete termination of their activities.

In many cases, the experts concluded, the FRSs actions could be viewed as a crackdown on NGOs that were working but were unwanted by local authorities. Russian statistics havent been compiled yet, said Lyudmila Alekseeva, chief of the Moscow Helsinki Group, but it is already clear that a lot of public organizations are being dissolved in Russia under the current procedures.

Amendments to NGO Act were targeted at destroying any unwanted organization, Alekseeva emphasized.

The writer does not think there is a frontal attack on noncommercial organizations. It is more likely that the objective was to substantially raise the threshold for activity by noncommercial organizations, and to such a high level that 70 to 80 percent of organizations would be unable to cross that threshold. When amendments imposing a more difficult accounting procedure and adding a substantial bureaucratic element to noncommercial organizations activities of were adopted, the proportion that would pass through the sieve was only 20 percent.

The objective, the writer believes, is to make it impossible to register noncommercial organizations in the first place. Registration takes six to nine months. The FRS is turning into a punitive body. Specialists are learning how to monitor, find and identify infringements, and regions are exchanging positive practices. At the same time, regional FRS employees are highly unprofessional. For instance, during an audit of our organization, five infringements were found, but we found 50 infringements committed by them in the course of the investigations. I am afraid that before the end of the year, we can expect thousands of lawsuits for ending activities of and liquidating noncommercial organizations.

It is possible for NGOs to survive: Hire two bookkeepers instead of one, hire an office manager and hire a lawyer three times a year, but that takes resources. There is no longer an economic foundation for noncommercial organizations in Russia. Established organizations are funded either by near-state structures or by business that is loyal to the state. There is no other way. Even high-ranking public officials are for amending the law on non-profits. On Oct. 10, 2006, Russian President Vladimir Putin said at the Russian-German St. Petersburg Dialogue forum in Dresden that Russian registration authorities have denied registration to only two NGOs out of the 400 that filed applications. He maintains his stand almost a year later. Putin has said that the advent of a new law regulating NGOs "did not result in a catastrophe" in civic society and that, if need be, the law can be amended.

"As far as I understand, there was no catastrophe in Russia after the adoption of the law on nongovernmental organizations, contrary to what some predicted, he said. Maybe there is some excessive bureaucracy. We should see, and if there really are some obstructions, things may be changed." The situation with Russian non-profits has drawn a lot of attention from the international community, including the U.S. The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom called on the Russian government to withdraw or substantially modify its amended law regulating NGOs, as outlined in a new in-depth legal analysis. According to the study, the law places disturbing restrictions on NGOs and further circumscribes the already limited role the government grants civil society in a country where democracy is under increasing threat. The report provides detailed legal analysis of the legislation and its impact. And key elements of the law are vague and open to arbitrary and discretionary interpretation and enforcement in many areas, resulting in a dramatic expansion in government powers, said Felice D. Gaer, commission chairwoman.

The confrontation between the FRS and rights activists clearly illustrates the most important attribute of NGOs operating in Russia: They are perceived through a prism of politics as a basic element complicating relations with the West. Sergei Markov, political analyst and Public Chamber member, expresses this point of view: "NGOs are the greatest political weapon of the 21st century. New forces came to power by means of political coups in the 19th century and by means of political parties in the 20th century. These days, the basic weapon used to increase political power is the NGO. In the lead-up to Russia's federal elections, the West will intensify funding for NGOs in Russia. The U.S. State Department has already said this openly."

In Russia, there's a characteristic division of NGOs into "ours" (state-funded) and "alien" (mostly funded by Western grants). The state is continuing its expansion into the non-profit sector, shaping civil society institutions to suit itself. Many Russian regions are establishing Public Chambers of their own. In accordance with a presidential decree, all federal ministries and agencies have sprouted Public Councils, described by independent NGOs as "ersatz civil society." It's interesting to note that the most active Public Councils belong to the security and law enforcement agencies, such as the Defense Ministry and the Emergencies Ministry. The state's increased attention to the non-profit system involves using the carrot and the stick: state funding and FRS restrictions. Via the Public Chamber, the state recently allocated a total of 250 million rubles (US$8 million) to several hundred NGOs.

Duma members have a condescending attitude toward NGO activities, noting that "such organizations aren't very effective, since their activities are confined to competing for grants and spending them."

There's also the problem of weak links between NGOs and citizens, says Maria Lipman, an analyst at the Carnegie Moscow Center. "We are observing the progressive depoliticization of Russian society, a reduction of even the minimal level of civic participation that we saw during the period of turbulent change." Lipman maintains that Russian citizens now feel apathetic: "We can't change anything. They decide everything."

One reason Russian citizens have little confidence in NGOs is foreign funding. But Russian companies show little interest in donating to Russian NGOs, and this isn't entirely due to doubts about effective spending; it's also because private companies are reluctant to get involved in politics. Lipman points out that Russian companies won't donate to anything that bears even a trace of politics. FSB chief Nikolai Patrushev said on December 19, 2006, that foreign intelligence services are increasingly using international nongovernmental organizations and foreign press bureaus in Russia as cover for their agents. Indeed, some NGOs were prosecuted for security reasons.

The 2006 law makes it illegal for grass-roots groups to have people convicted of extremism as leaders or members.

The Russian-Chechen Friendship Society was prosecuted for failing to remove Stanislav Dmitrievsky, an adviser to the foundation who organized the Dissenter s March in Nizhni Novgorod in April 2007, from its board and membership roll. Moreover, the society was supposed to publicly denounce Dmitrievsky within five days of his conviction, which it refused to do. Oksana Chelysheva, one of the group's leaders, said her group would try to work in Russia in another form. She kept her promise and established the Tolerance Support Foundation, which works to promote tolerance among various ethnic groups in Nizhegorodskaia Province. The foundation also works on issues of abuse in Chechnya.

The authorities tried to silence it, too.

According to Oksana Chelysheva, director of the Tolerance Support Foundation in Nizhni Novgorod, about 280 miles east of Moscow, three officers from the department of computer crimes in the Russian internal affairs directorate, accompanied by two witnesses, appeared at the foundations office. They presented a warrant ordering a complete inspection of the foundations financial, administrative and other activities. The warrant did not contain the grounds for the inspection.

After the search, the police confiscated all four of the organizations computers, claiming that the foundation could not provide licenses for the software installed on them. Chelysheva received orders to appear for questioning at the Nizhni Novgorod police station on Aug. 31 regarding the unlicensed software discovered in the office.

Inspection of the Tolerance Support Foundation appears to be a reprisal for the organizations affiliation with Dmitrievsky.

Another major crackdown on both independent media and CSO concerns Educated Media Foundation (formerly Internews), a Russian NGO focused on journalist training. Manana Aslamazyan, who heads it, faces smuggling charges. She has resigned from her post and moved to Europe.

Police raided the office of the Educated Media Foundation in April, confiscating financial and accounting documents. A criminal probe into the foundation was launched in January after British national Jillian McCormack and Russian Manana Aslamazyan were detained in the so-called green channel at Moscow's Sheremetyevo Airport with excessive undeclared cash on them. In May, the Federal Tax Service froze the foundations Russian bank accounts, citing incorrectly filed value added tax reports in the previous quarter.

The Educated Media Foundation had already effectively halted all of its activities after Interior Ministry officers confiscated documents and computers from its office.

Russian human rights organizations also have voiced concern over the Chechen administration's initiative to move the offices of international humanitarian organizations to Grozny.

In early August 2007, Chechen authorities suggested that international humanitarian organizations working in Chechnya move their offices and warehouses into the republic. "We are not dictating terms to anyone. We don't even dream of it. However, we should work hand-in-hand if the humanitarian organizations really want to help the Chechen Republic and the people resolve the difficult economic situation within a short time," Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov told Interfax.

If the new initiative is mandatory, access to Chechnya will be restricted for humanitarian organizations that do not have an office there, Deputy Director of Human Rights Watch's Europe and Central Asia division Rachel Denber told Interfax.

Around 1.5 billion rubles (US$48 million) from the 2008 federal budget will be given to support Russian public organizations, Public Chamber member Valery Fadeyev said in early August.

On July 3, President Vladimir Putin inked a ruling on the second tender for budget funding of NGOs. But current competition has two features that make it materially different from the last years event. First, the money will be appropriated not to improve material and technical bases of NGOs but to implement socially vital projects. Second, the tender will be held not by the Public Chamber but by the tender operators, i.e. by some NGOs chosen by president.

Under the tender provisions, only NGOs that have been properly registered with the FRS, worked for at least a year and whose activities could be deemed socially vital may bid for the grants. Each tender operator will have a tender commission that will consider the bids and choose a winner by Oct. 31. The arrangers explicitly say that the budget funding of NGOs is being improved to move aside the western grant-givers that finance opposition movements of right defenders. Of interest is that the opposition is also willing to join the battle for budget funds. Leading Russian human rights organizations have decided to apply for the grants provided by the state for the development of civil society.

"We are preparing an application for a state grant," head of the Moscow Helsinki Group Lyudmila Alexeyeva said. "It is very important that we receive state funds in order to avoid accusations that we work on the West's money. Now, Russian human rights organizations work mainly with foreign grants because there are no Russian grants available," Alexeyeva said.

The Office of Federal Registration Service in Ekaterinburg has refused to register a CSO called the People Court of Sverdlovsk Region, which was to evaluate local public officials accused of mismanagement.

References: Control and Punishment: Human rights implications of Russian legislation on NGOs, report by the Moscow Helsinki Group and Human Rights Without Frontiers, issued February 2008, [ LINK ]

[ LINK ]; [ LINK ]; [ LINK ]

Interview with Boris Pustintsev, chairman, Citizens Watch

Memorandum from Agora, an interregional association of Russian human rights groups

NGOs Buried by Mountain of Paper, Nikolaus von Twickel, Moscow Times, Aug.24, 2007

Rossiiskaya Gazeta, Sept.11, 2007

Only 36 percent of Russian NGOs reported working results, Itar-Tass news agency, Sept. 11, 2007

Voronezh Interregional Group of Right Defenders

Lyudmila Alekseeva, chief, Moscow Helsinki Group

Over 600 NGOs Closed in Russia This Year, Kommersant daily, Aug. 20, 2007

Interview with Sergey Vasilyev, published in Rossiyskaya Gazeta

"Filter for Soldiers' Mothers," interview with Pavel Chikov, chairman of the Agora Interregional Human Rights Association, by Yevgeniy Natarov, June 8, 2007, [ LINK ]

Only two out of 400 NGOs denied registration in Russia  Putin, Interfax news agency, Oct. 10, 2006

Russia registers 189 foreign non-governmental organizations, Interfax news agency, Dec. 22, 2006

Challenge to Civil Society: Russia s Amended Law on Noncommercial Organizations, U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom

Non-governmental Organizations Get a Suspended Sentence, Igor Romanov, Nezavisimaya Gazeta daily, No. 78, April 16, 2007

"Russian Court Backs Closing of Chechen Rights Group, by Peter Finn, Washington Post, Jan. 24, 2007

"NGOs Bid for Budget Money," Kommersant daily, Aug. 8, 2007

"Russian NGOs Preparing to Apply for State Grants," Interfax news agency, Sept. 5, 2007

(#@0;LA:8< ACBO6=8:0< 70?@5B8;8 AC48BL G8=>2=8:>2, by Vladimir Terletski, Nezavisimaya Gazeta daily (Moscow), Feb. 6, 2008, a [ LINK ]

[ LINK ]

"Emissaries of foreign terror and religious extremist organizations, exploiting socioeconomic problems and ethnic and religious differences, are trying to conduct recruiting efforts," Nikolai Patrushev told law enforcement officials in televised comments. "Individual foreign nongovernmental organizations provide informational support to them to a large extent," he said.

He did not appear to identify any particular organization.

The Federal Registration Service (FRS), meanwhile, said the number of NGOs operating in Russia had dropped from 600,000 in 2002 to 227,577 in 2007, according to Vedomosti (a business daily newspaper co=sponsored by Russian media, the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times). The drop in figures led some aid workers to speculate that the trend would get worse before it gets better.

"We are already forecasting that a mass liquidation of NGOs will occur this summer," Maria Konevskaya, director of the Resursny human rights organization in St. Petersburg, told Vedomosti. Konevskaya predicted an additional 15,000 to 20,000 NGOs would close this year.

President Vladimir Putin, his successor, Dmitry Medvedev and others have criticized the work of nongovernmental organizations such as human rights groups. Putin has defended new, tighter regulations on NGOs as a way to make sure they are not controlled by what he calls puppeteers from abroad.

In 2007, the first full year the new regulations were in effect, more than 11,000 NGOs out of over 227,000 were denied registration and 8,274 registered groups were closed by court order.

"As soon as a Russian organization begins to cooperate with the Council of Europe, the European Court of Human Rights and United Nations human rights organizations, it immediately becomes accused of working against Russia, of criticizing Russia to please the West," Human Rights Watch researcher into Russia Tatyana Lokshina said on Ekho Moskvy radio.

"Linking NGOs to terrorist organizations is absolutely irresponsible; there is no confirmation of that," head of the Russian branch of the World Wildlife Fund Igor Chestin said. "Two years ago, an absolutely nonsensical law on NGOs was passed in Russia, which has affected the NGOs. Several thousand organizations that could not deal with official red tape have been closed. And none of those organizations was closed because of their links to terrorism or because they were carrying out activities harmful to Russia," he said.

Authorities are not simply accusing CSOs of anti-state activities; they are trying to stop those CSOs they consider dangerous.

In March 2008, investigators seized the computer servers of rights activist Stanislav Dmitriyevsky, the latest in a series of searches and criminal investigations against the longtime critic of human rights abuses in Chechnya. It happened at his office in Nizhny Novgorod. Dmitriyevsky said prosecutors told him that the search was connected to an investigation into purported extremism involving opposition coalition the Other Russia, which had organized the Dissenters' Marches against President Vladimir Putin. Dmitriyevsky's previous organization, the Russian-Chechen Friendship Society, was ordered to close by the Supreme Court last year for purportedly promoting extremism. He was also convicted in 2006 of extremist activity for publishing articles petitioning the Chechen government to end the conflict and given a two-year suspended sentence. Prosecutors later opened a new investigation into Dmitryevsky's organization on the suspicion that it used pirated computer software.

In August 2007, new amendments to the law on combating extremist activities came into force. They added a new motivation of hatred against a specific group to the list of possible extremist motivations: The list now includes hatred against not only a specific race, religion or ethnicity but also political, ideological and social groups.

Government representatives and state-controlled media repeatedly accused human rights defenders and members of the opposition movement of working for foreign interests and being anti-Russian.

Human rights defenders and civil society activists were subjected to harassment and intimidation. Criminal charges, such as for using unlicensed computer software or for inciting hatred, were made selectively against human rights defenders and independent journalists. Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has downplayed the allegations about encroachments on human rights in Russia. "All this talk about human rights is often used as an instrument of pressure on Russia for achieving objectives that have nothing to do with the rights of man," Putin said.

The Russian government should reform regulations that are choking independent activism, Human Rights Watch said in its report. New laws and regulations giving the state broad authority to interfere with the work of nongovernmental organizations have been adopted in the context of growing authoritarianism in Russia. The 72-page report documents how these regulations have targeted various NGOs that work on controversial issues, seek to galvanize public dissent or receive foreign funding.

With the new rules, NGOs live under a looming threat of harassment, said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch. And this is a serious threat to freedom of expression in Russia.

Roth was to have presented the report at a press conference in Moscow. However, the Foreign Ministry, aware of the plans, cited a changing array of technical reasons to refuse him a visa.

The new rules also include the 2006 law that gives the FRS broad control over NGOs. It can reject NGO registration applications, conduct intrusive inspections of NGOs and make extensive requests for documents, including confidential records. An inspection is a lengthy bureaucratic ordeal during which an NGOs substantive work can grind to a halt. Theoretically, an NGO can face a series of inspections. The FRS can issue warnings following inspections for a wide range of alleged violations, some of them petty. It also can petition to shut down an NGO for repeated or systematic violations. The FRA has said that in a period of four months in 2007, it issued warnings to 6000 NGOs.

The Human Rights Watch report illustrates how these rules work in practice, through examples of NGOs harassed by authorities or whose work was paralyzed by red tape. In 2007, for example, authorities conducted a month-long inspection of the Center for Enlightenment and Research Programs (CERP), a small St. Petersburg-based NGO. The local Registration Service criticized CERP for violating its mandate by conducting educational instead of enlightenment work and holding events outside of St. Petersburg, despite CERP's status as a regional organization. It also admonished CERP for a publication that officials said appeared to interfere with and discredit the work of state officials and undermine Russia's interests because it characterized police as not having sufficient awareness of the rights of refugees. The local Registration Service petitioned to have CERP dissolved. The case is pending.

Organizations that work on sensitive issues or receive foreign funding have been subjected to inspections for noncompliance with tax codes, software licensing or other regulations. Organizations that work on Chechnya are especially vulnerable. For example, throughout much of 2007 the Information Center of the NGO Council, a group that provides daily bulletins on the situation in Chechnya and Ingushetia, was threatened with dissolution by the tax service for being improperly registered and failing to pay back taxes. The organization is challenging a fine for the equivalent of US$ 20,000 imposed by the tax service. The Russian government made clear that the 2006 law aims to control and monitor foreign funding of NGOs, which it has viewed with intense suspicion since the so-called color revolutions in Georgia in 2003 and Ukraine in 2004.

The Agora Interregional Human Rights Association has evaluated the situation with Russian CSOs and published a list of most common petty objections the FRS uses to shut down a CSO. According to Agora experts, it's very simple.

References: Russia: Cut Red Tape That Stifles NGOs, report by Human Rights Watch, Feb. 20, 2008, [ LINK ]

Choking on Bureaucracy: State Curbs on Independent Civil Society Activism, report by Human Rights Watch

"Human Rights Watch's Director Denied a Visa," Nabi Abdullaev, the Moscow Times daily, Feb. 21, 2008, [ LINK ]

[ LINK ]

[ LINK ]

In March 2008, investigators seized computer servers belonging to rights activist Stanislav Dmitriyevsky, the latest in a series of searches and criminal investigations against the longtime critic of human rights abuses in Chechnya. It happened at his office in Nizhny Novgorod. Dmitriyevsky said prosecutors told him that the search was connected to an investigation into purported extremism involving opposition coalition the Other Russia, which has organized the Dissenters' Marches against President Vladimir Putin.

Dmitriyevsky's previous organization, the Russian-Chechen Friendship Society, was ordered to close by the Supreme Court last year for purportedly promoting extremism. He was also convicted in 2006 of extremist activity for publishing articles petitioning the Chechen government to end the conflict and given a two-year suspended sentence. Prosecutors later opened a new investigation into Dmitryevsky's organization on suspicion that it used pirated computer software.

In March 2008, activists from public and human rights organizations called on the authorities to put a stop to the bureaucratic and administrative pressure applied to them.

"Non-profit organizations today suffer from administrative barriers and stifling bureaucratic controls no less than small businesses do," said a statement by leading Russian non-profit organizations that was published in Moscow on March 31. The statement was signed by representatives of the Center for Development of Democracy and Human Rights, the Russian branch of the World Wildlife Fund, the Moscow Helsinki Group, the Glasnost Defense Foundation, the Public Verdict foundation, the Golos association and others.

"Many non-profit organizations, facing one check after another that paralyze their activity, are wasting more and more of their time and limited resources on satisfying the requirements of inspectors and protecting themselves from lawlessness rather than getting on with their work. Suffering most of all are the thousands of small non-profit organizations that work 'on the ground,' directly offering help and services to those in need or facilitating the development of citizens' self-organization and mutual help," the statement continued. "It is now both more complicated and more expensive to register a non-profit organization than a business. It is easier for such an organization to be shut down than a business. Inspectors' powers are excessive, there is no limit to the list of documents that are required and demands on those being checked exceed the boundaries of the law on non-profit organizations, providing grounds for selective application of the law. Penalties are frequently not in proportion to the seriousness of technical violations: Non-profit organizations are shut down in situations when a warning or fine would be sufficient. More and more non-profit organizations are deciding to cease their activity, being unable to cope with the administrative pressure."

Leading Russian human rights activists have repeatedly suggested amending or annulling the law on non-profit organizations.

"That law should be abolished, not amended," Lyudmila Alekseyeva, head of the Moscow Helsinki Group, one of Russia's oldest human rights organizations, told Interfax. "In democratic countries, democracy is built on the fact that society monitors bureaucratic structures, and not the other way round. The law on non-profit organizations has placed non-profit organizations, which do not owe anything to anyone and do not ask anything of the state, under tedious everyday control. It is a damaging and undemocratic law."

On April 9, 2008, the Public Council of the Federal Registration Service (FRS) and the Public Chamber of the Commission for Civil Society Development met to discuss simplifying the registration procedures for CSOs. Their recommendations come down to introduction of less complicated and more understandable procedures of mandatory reporting.

Those present at the meeting admitted that the FRS was far too selective in its allegedly random audits CSOs. Meeting participants also said that the legislation included too many loopholes enabling the authorities to close whatever CSO incurred their wrath for some reason. More often than not, the authorities undertake to close CSOs for their educational efforts (the FRS views everything from single seminars to permanent programs as educational activities).

Participants advanced the opinion that the FRS was inordinately hard on CSOs that lacked the status of being federal organizations but had operated beyond the territories in which they were registered from their inception. It means that practically every CSO may be liquidated on this pretext (after all, their activists do travel to other regions, say, to meet with representatives of other CSOs).

Moreover, there are some dangerous local initiatives.

This is not an attempt to move the public and authorities to pity. The number of CSOs registered with the FRS and its regional departments went down by 12,000 between 2006 and 2007, the FRS press service told ITAR-TASS.

"Almost 11,000 CSOs were excluded from unified state registration as legal entities by tax bodies due to cessation of activities," the press service said. "The FRS regional departments file requests to courts asking to close down only those public organizations that, for several years, have not informed the FRS about their activity and have not responded to letters and warnings, that are not based at the address indicated in the documents submitted during the registration and that, in fact, do not carry out any activity at all.

The service went on to explained that the figures did not indicate any serious decline in the number of public and non-commercial organizations operating in Russia. "The FRS regional departments registered 5,708 newly set up public organizations and 12,665 other organizations in 2007," the source said.

According to Mariya Kanevskaya, director of the Human Rights Resource Center, there were 600,000 CSOs in Russia in 2002, around 380,000 in 2006, 2768,000 in 2007 and 227,000 in 2008. Pavel Chikov, with the lawyers' group Agora in the central city of Kazan, said that out of an estimated 227,000 NGOs registered in Russia, 25 percent would meet this year's filing requirements. The government-run newspaper Rossiskaya Gazeta also reported that only one-quarter of all NGOs have filed properly.

Organizations that fail to submit the financial forms can have their activities suspended and may be liquidated. Last year, when the procedure was introduced, less than one-quarter of registered NGOs managed to submit the reports on time due to the complexity of the paperwork. The Kremlin is moving first against those outside the capital, confident that it will be able to set precedents there without international organizations or foreign embassies paying much attention.

However, not everyone agrees that new law on CSOs is ultimately bad.

In May 2008, the situation with the FRS and activities changed. According to a presidential decree, the power to register NGOs was handed over to the Ministry of Justice. Human rights campaigners were accusing the FRS of exceeding its powers and are asking Prosecutor-General Yuriy Chayka to deal with the situation.

Pavel Chikov told Russian radio station Ekho Moskvy that the FRS is not complying with the president's decree, according to which the department has been deprived the power to control NGOs. Despite the decree, the FRS continues to carry them out, Chirkov said.

On May 28, 2008, at a session of the Council of Ministers of the Commonwealth of Independent States held in Minsk, Aleksandr Konovalov, justice minister in the new government, explained Russian authorities' ideology in relation to public organizations and political parties. He said that the state must create comfortable conditions for public organizations to register and operate, but also an efficient and justified monitoring system.

"Russia's policy in creating conditions for NGOs is based on two principles. First is the understanding that civil society in any country cannot develop without public organizations' active and transparent work. Second, public organizations' activities must not damage citizens' rights and interests, or upset the balance of private and state interests," Konovalov said.

Last year, 13,482 inspections, mainly financial, were carried out. In 2007, over 46,000 written official warnings were issued, which is three times more than in 2006.

"I think that this year and next year, this number will be growing," Konovalov said. He noted that 8351 requests to close down NGOs were sent to court and emphasized problems with foreign NGOs that "don't want to register or abide by the law." "Some foreign NGOs were closed down. We don't consider this a violation of human rights."

The case of Manana Aslamazyan, former president of the Moscow-based Educated Media Foundation, illustrates how a CSO the authorities don't want to exist is destroyed. This wasn't an anti-corruption/good governance CSO. Aslamazyan's widely respected foundation trained journalists and media executives. It was the legal successor of Internews Russia, which received much of its funding from the U.S. Agency for International Development and from European sources. The foundation had worked in Russia since 1992. The government viewed the foundation as too independent to be allowed to continue its activities.

Aslamazyan was charged in January 2007 with smuggling, after she carried a sum of money modestly exceeding the legal limit into Russia without declaring it. The charge, punishable by up to five years in prison, was widely seen as a pretext for a campaign against the non-governmental organization. It soon came under intense pressure from the authorities. In June 2007, police raided its Moscow headquarters, confiscated computers and documents and froze its bank accounts, after which Aslamazyan was placed under a second investigation for tax evasion. Just weeks later, the foundation shut its doors. Aslamazyan took refuge in Paris after the smuggling charges were filed.

On May 28, 2008, the Constitutional Court ruled in favor of Aslamaziyan, agreeing with her lawyers that the anti-smuggling law under which she had been charged was so vaguely worded as to be unconstitutional. The Interior Ministry's investigative committee, keeping in line with the court's ruling, dropped charges against Aslamazyan for smuggling just over $13,000 into the country and scrapped an order for her arrest.

"The criminal case against Aslamazyan will be closed. She can come right now," said Irina Dudkina, head of the investigative committee's press service. "No one is going to go after her. The arrest warrant will be cancelled."

A new set of lesser smuggling charges were brought against Aslamazyan, but if found guilty she will face a fine, not prison. In September 2008, she was fined 1000 rubles (US$40) by the Sheremetyevo Airport customs service.

It was only a partial victory, however, as Aslamazyan still faces tax-evasion charges. She said she doesn't plan to revive Educated Media, whose staff have found other jobs.

Rights activists and Western nations saw the developments as a glaring example of government pressure on foreign-funded NGOs  which Putin accused of seeking to undermine his government  and the curtailment of media freedom in Russia.

References: Interview with Lyudmila Alekseyeva, chairwoman of the Moscow Helsinki Group

[ LINK ] and "And Now the Third One," Vedomosti, June 19, 2008

"Activist's Computers Seized in Police Raid," The Associated Press, [ LINK ]

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"Russian NGOs appeal to authorities about 'stifling' red tape," Interfax news agency, March 31, 2008

"All of Them May Be Shut Down," Anastasia Novikova, Gazeta Internet portal, April 10, 2008

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Number of non-commercial organizations goes down by 12,000, ITAR-TASS news service, April 8, 2008

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http://www.newizv.ru/news/2008-04-15/88528/

"Rights groups: Thousands of Russian NGOs face closure for not meeting onerous rules," Mike Eckel, Associated Press, April 16, 2008

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The Parallel Universes of NGOs in Russia, Sarah Lindemann-Komarova, co-founder of the Siberian Civic Initiatives Support Center, April 18, 2008

Russian human rights activist says registration service now acting illegally, BBC Monitoring, May 26, 2008

I interview with Pavel Chikov, head of Agora, [ LINK ]/comments/2008/06/26_x_2766814.shtml" target="_blank">[ LINK ]

Russian justice minister wants to improve monitoring of NGOs, Interfax news agency, May 28, 2008

Keepers of the Balance, editorial, May 28, 2008, http://www.Gazeta.ru

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"Russian court: Smuggling charge against U.S.-funded NGO head unconstitutional," Associated Press, May 27, 2008

"Russia scraps arrest warrant for media campaigner," Reuters, May 28, 2008

"Small Victory for Speech in Russia, Gregory L. White and Daria Solovieva, Wall Street Journal, May 28, 2008

"Russia drops charges against NGO boss," RIA Novosti news agency, June 10, 2008

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Peer Review Comments: There are more and more reports of attacks on the Internet resources of these NGOs.

References: Interview with Lyudmila Alekseyeva, chairwoman of the Moscow Helsinki Group

References: Russian Glasnost Defense Foundation, [ LINK ]

References: Interview with Lyudmila Alekseyeva, chairwoman of the Moscow Helsinki Group

Mikhail Shmakov, head of Russia's Federation of Independent Trade Unions (FNPR), noted an increasing number of strikes across the country but regretted the fact that legal protests were almost impossible.

"It's practically impossible to stage a legal strike, which results in extremely negative manifestations of protests such as hunger strikes," Shmakov said. Oleg Neterebsky, deputy president of the FNPR, in a statement in the end of January 2008 publicly criticized the existing Labor Code. He agreed that it is practically impossible to call a strike without breaking the law, and so there is no any mechanism of peaceful argument settlement.

Current legislation enables courts to acknowledge all strikes illegal on formal grounds.

Company managements justify their extremely aggressive behavior by blaming workers for Labor Code violations, while at the same time denying striking workers the right to conduct negotiations through their elected union representatives. This is because management refuses to recognize the legitimacy of worker-formed unions. Instead, they grant official status only to the purely symbolic unions, leftovers from the Soviet era that operate under an umbrella organization called the Federation of Independent Labor Unions.

At most enterprises, the local branch of FILU functions as a department of social affairs, run by the general director. Although FILU might serve some useful purpose, it is by no means a labor union. To fill the gap, a handful of a company's workers often form fledgling unions of their own. In most cases, management immediately cracks down on these unions. The director calls the offending workers into his office one at a time to demand that they withdraw their membership in the new union. If they refuse, he transfers them to low-paying jobs or fires them. Meanwhile, the official union stands on the side of the company's management and owners. What's more, management can usually find formal justification for its anti-union actions in the Labor Code.

From the beginning, the Labor Code was written in such a way as to make life easier for management. But business leaders are realizing that repressive measures do not work and that it would be more effective to negotiate with freely elected unions than to face the consequences of spontaneous and uncontrollable strikes. Even an organized strike would be easier to cope with than a spontaneous uprising. It is no longer a question of whether authorities will revise the Labor Code, but of when and how.

References: Federal Law On Trade Unions and Their Rights and Guarantees of their Activity, passed in January 1996

"Legal strikes almost impossible in Russia  union leader, Itar-Tass news agency, Jan. 29, 2008

"Labor Movement and Civil Society," Boris Kagarlitsky, director of the Institute of Globalization and Social Movements (Moscow), Feb. 19, 2008, [ LINK ]

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"A Labor Code in Bad Need of Revision," Boris Kagarlitsky, director of the Institute of Globalization and Social Movements (Moscow), Moscow Times daily, April 3, 2008, [ LINK ])

Although we hear much from optimistic government sources about the growth of salaries in dollar terms, a significant percentage of workers and members of the middle class are experiencing a decrease in their purchasing power. Salaries at many manufacturing enterprises in the provinces do not exceed 6,000 rubles (US$186) per month, and a salary of 10,000 to 12,000 rubles (US$310 to US$372) per month is considered quite good, even for employees whose jobs are dangerous or harmful to their health.

There are two types of companies in Russia today: those financed by transnational capital and those owned and funded by domestic sources. The work is roughly the same in both categories, but the rules of the game  and, more important, salaries  differ significantly. Employees of domestic companies have noted this difference, and they are demanding equal pay for equal labor.

A wave of strikes is sweeping Russia. Labor troubles at the VAZ auto plant and Ford Russia are only the tip of the iceberg; official statistics understate the actual number of labor protests. There were around 3000 strikes in Russia in 2006, but the Federal State Statistics Service (RosStat) recorded only 8. Another problem: The legislative branch sides with employers, and it's practically impossible for any strike to comply with all legal regulations. Nevertheless, despite a media blackout and other difficulties faced by strikers, labor revolts are rarely pointless. In a survey released by the All-Russian Public Opinion Research Institute (VTsIOM), 90 percent of employers admitted that their pay rates are below the norm.

It's almost impossible to organize an entirely legal strike in Russia. "We tried keeping count of strikes ourselves," said Elena Gerasimova, director of the Social and Labor Rights Center. "While RosStat was recording one strike a month, we recorded a strike every day."

Concealing the real state of affairs enables official bodies to kill two birds with one stone. On one hand, "8 strikes a year" sounds like evidence of Russia's prosperity. On the other hand, if people were aware of all the strikes happening around them, it would only encourage more people to strike. That's why the figures are reduced to a fraction of the real number.

The Constitution affirms the right to participate in individual and collective labor disputes; but the process as such is regulated by the Labor Code. In theory, it all looks simple enough. As soon as an employer-employee dispute arises, workers are supposed to hold a meeting or conference and compile a list of demands. At least half of those in attendance should vote to approve the list. The first problems arise at this stage of the process.

Elena Gerasimova: "For example, how are you supposed to assemble the 110,000 employees of AvtoVAZ for a meeting? Manual workers, service personnel, health care personnel, managers & Obviously, if the managers find out that a meeting is being planned, they will make every effort to prevent it."

Besides, it's hard to get employees from various levels to agree on a common list of demands.

The next step in the strike process is to send the list of demands to management. Management then has three days to respond. But if workers are following all the rules, there is still a long way to go before the strike itself can begin. A reconciliation procedure should begin within three days, during which a specially selected commission representing the workers negotiates with management. The actual strike can't start until the reconciliation stage has failed to produce results, and management must be informed in advance that a strike is about to begin. As a rule, this gives management enough time to take legal action against the strikers and declare the strike unlawful.

Elena Gerasimova: "The record shows that courts grant 100 percent of employer requests to have strikes declared unlawful. Even the International Labor Organization has contacted the Russian government to express concern about the complicated procedures for labor disputes in Russia, but this has had no effect as yet."

The only solution is a spontaneous strike, as in the VAZ incident. In theory, it cannot be called unlawful; only a court can declare an act of protest unlawful. Nevertheless, management holds all the cards in such cases.

According to Nikolai Karagin, AvtoVAZ union leader: "We were informed in advance that a strike was being planned, but the strikers didn't follow all the proper procedures, so we warned the instigators and all potential strikers that they might be punished. What happened was a stop-work incident, not a strike. The penalty for that could be dismissal."

Strike instigators in Russia rarely escape dismissal. "That's what unions are for: to take the blow and negotiate with management," says Sergei Khramov. But even union mediation doesn't always help. The SotsProf organization is trying to get four workers reinstated.

Still, experts say that strikes are rarely futile. They're difficult to organize, and there's always the danger of dismissal. But in the end, pay rates are raised and workplace conditions are improved. For example, a prolonged strike at Ford Russia led to a pay rise of 30 percent ¬¬ from 14,000 to 21,000 rubles (US$433 and US$650) a month. After a strike in June, delivery drivers at the Voskhod Bakery had their pay raised by 20 percent, with the promise of annual indexation.

Boris Kagarlitsky considers the labor movement in Russia to be the first and the only real manifestation of the civil society in modern Russia  not an artificial one, established for Western grants or sitting-in a fake Public Chamber but a real grassroots movement.

Enterprise owners respond to employee demands with natural irritation. Although there are differences, Western managers are used to negotiating with strikers. Russian managers and owners behave quite differently. During the strike at the Murmansk sea port, internal security "dealt" with employees. But when a strike was called in the port of Novorossiysk, which is larger and more important for the economy, the local Main Department of Internal Affairs was called by the local administration to suppress the troublemakers. According to Alexander Schepel, leader of the Russian Labor Confederation, the more influential the owner of the enterprise is, the more aggressive the interference of authorities. Some involve security services, some call for a special police squad and others involve the Prosecutor General's Office to deal with trade union.

Strikes have been on the rise in Russia during the last 18 months. It was started by transnational companies' workers and was continued by Russian corporations' employees. Labor disputes are becoming more intense and enduring. Official trade unions are helpless: They've failed to organize workers, who ignore those organizations, but neither can they serve the interests of corporations by preventing or helping to regulate disputes. When grassroots worker groups of the official trade unions take initiative proposing to increase wages or improve the labor conditions, they find themselves in a conflict with superior agencies and have to turn for support to alternative labor organizations.

The majority of disputes are similar in that the management behaves aggressively, pleading violations of the Labor Code by workers. And the strikers cannot negotiate via alternative trade unions, even when they have one, for management refuses to recognize such trade unions and insists on working with the official trade union. But even should the latter take initiative, it is nailed down, just as the alternative trade unions are.

At the majority of enterprises, the official structures of the Russian Federation of Independent Trade Unions serve the interests of management. Sometimes these organizations do serve the interests of workers, but that single fact does not bring them an inch closer to being genuine trade unions. When a grassroots trade union does emerge, it is usually weak in numbers and is repressed by management, which has the Labor Code on its side. The union-member workers are invited one by one into the boss's office and are coerced to give up union membership, while instigators of the movement are paid less and/or forced to quit.

Under the current Labor Code, the employer is authorized to ignore an emerging workers union until its membership outnumbers already existing ones, which is practically impossible while intimidating and repression are practiced by management and the officially registered trade unions.

This policy results not in managers' triumph but in an uncontrollable strike. The situation usually develops in the following way: Management ignores the trade union and negotiates with the Federation of Trade Unions, which is equal to holding negotiations with oneself. For some time, the problems pile up unsolved, but only when the strike is on the horizon does the administration agree to negotiate with the alternative trade unions, which by that moment has already lost control of the situation.

No criminal sanctions are imposed for strikes, and administrative sanctions are ineffective. Should such a "troublemaker" be fired, he will immediately find a new  and usually better-paid  job. In Russia, the demand for skilled workers is strong. It is usually self-confident workers who start strikes. In many cases, managers use only threats and almost never resort to dismissing trade union activists. But when shareholders don't see any result from half-measures, they turn to police, prosecution and private security, hoping to regulate the situation by the means of force. The workers movement then becomes more radical and politicized.

Interestingly, Russian employers significantly under-record the number of strikes at their enterprises in official reports, said Oleg Neterebsky, deputy president of the Federation of Registered Trade Unions (FNPR) and a Public Chamber member. Official data submitted by employers show that there were from 2 to 11 strikes involving about 1,000 people in 2007, according to Neterebsky. However, statistics obtained by trade unions directly from employees indicate that Russia saw 1,072 labor disputes involving 470,000 people in 2007, he said.

Employers "succeed in finding sophisticated methods to rig the law, and the number of people working for the Russian labor inspectorates makes it possible to comprehensively inspect an enterprise no more often than once in 32 years," Neterebsky said.

Khusain Tekayev, of the Prosecutor General's Office, said prosecution agencies uncovered more than 113,000 violations of the law on labor protection and 716,000 violations of people's labor rights, more than half of which concerned remuneration issues, in 2007.

References: [ LINK ]; Federation of Independent Trade Unions of Russia - [ LINK ]

Boris Kagarlitsky, director of the Institute of Globalization Studies

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"Police wear camouflage uniforms here," by Evgeniya Zubchenko, Novue Izvestiya daily, Aug. 1, 2007

"Protiv kogo druzhim by Valeri Panyushkin," Vedomosti daily, Feb. 5, 2008, [ LINK ]

Number of Labor Disputes In Russia Growing, Not Reflected In Official Reports  Public Chamber Member, Interfax news agency, April 30, 2008