#6337
[Second Issue of the Day]
#7
Izvestia
July 3, 2002
GLEB PAVLOVSKY
Gleb Pavlovsky on the prospects of civil society in Russia
Author: Yelena Yakovleva
[from WPS Monitoring Agency, www.wps.ru/e_index.html]
AN INTERVIEW WITH GLEB PAVLOVSKY, DIRECTOR OF THE EFFECTIVE POLICY FOUNDATION, A WELL-KNOWN POLITICAL CONSULTANT. HE SAYS THAT A PROPER CIVIL SOCIETY MUST HAVE A DEMARCATION LINE BETWEEN THE STATE AND THE CITIZENRY, WHICH NEEDS TO BE RECOGNIZED AND NEVER CROSSED.
An interview with Gleb Pavlovsky, director of the Effective Policy Foundation, a well-known political consultant, initiator and organizer of the Civil Forum, author of some sharp assessments of the state of civil society in Russia.
Question: You once said that "society is dreadfully weak" in Russia.
Pavlovsky: Russia is often spoken about as an "empire of facades," implying the authorities. However, nowadays society and its institutions, rather than the authorities. are our "facades." Society is neither ready to consolidate nor to discuss any ideas seriously. There is no one whom we consider as authorities, and expressed proposals become a plea for a question: I wonder why this person needs that, and who is behind him? Everything is separated and coordinated. What, for instance, has the recent flood in the south shown? We see Russia where any authority is concentrated in cities and regions and is powerless for any common district deserted by the "power hierarchy". There are no institutions of local government capable of taking responsibility at the local level. It's as if the local governments are cut off. The local media are idle, there are no vertical information links.
Question: What is the problem?
Pavlovsky: The social milieu is fragmented. The "political publicity," which ensures contacts between members of society, between cultures varying territorially and ethnically, between the authorities and the common people. Democracy doesn't work without that. It has been divided and monopolized by small groups of people, engaged in their own deeds - self-presentation, self-promotion, show-politics.
Question: However, if the social milieu is monopolized, a simple prescription suggests itself: it must be de-monopolized. There is a stratum of active people in Russia...
Pavlovsky: The most active are not members of any institutions. They make up the "new street." A stratum of people, active politically and socially, but involved in no mechanism of political activity, simply because they have no such mechanisms. And nobody wants to create them. Ask, for instance, the Yabloko party why it doesn't take on more members locally, and you'll hear thousands of complaints about reasonable excuses: the local authorities are creating obstacles, the democracy is wrong, there's no lawful money from lawful sponsors. All of this is true, but democracy is always "what is shouldn't be;" this is a system, which arranges and changes by itself. Our parties have no political will to create a mechanism to work with the masses. The communists used to have such a mechanism, but it seems to be collapsing. In the places where the "red belt" is vanishing, it is being replaced by an evident "plume" of extremist groups and their networks.
Question: Do you mean skinheads?
Pavlovsky: God forbid! It is easier to depict skinheads on TV as those discernible in the crowd. Hundreds of organizations around the country are recruiting youths under various ideological passwords - dragging them into single-type military-sports structures, such as Vityazi in Volgograd, Nashe Delo (Our Cause) in Vladimir. These are generally linked with the local police and engaged in running protection rackets along with the police. The teenagers are gathered "under an idea," coached in defense and attack techniques, and later on a coach says: "Go and set that person on fire, because..." - further on selectively, depending on the ideology - a globalist, a native of the Caucasus, a Jew. That is why houses and shops are burning, like for instance in Suzdal, Nizhny Novgorod, or Ryazan. By the way, this is also a kind of "civil society."
Question: In Russia we have 300,000 non-profit organizations. By no means all of them are teaching hand-to-hand combat. They cannot recover the "usurped" public sphere.
Pavlovsky: This concerns society's will to do so. Quite often many of these organizations, mainly human rights organizations, can be neither a professional partner, nor opponent or expert to the reforms the authorities are carrying out. In Russia a human rights activist often plays a role of a so-called "collective Shandybin", saying: "The authorities are implementing their devilish plans again, to destroy our civil liberties!" You need to create these liberties first.
Crazed envy between organizations has been prominent in Russia. In the social sphere the authorities have been searching for anarchists, spies and rebels, even though ordinary citizens have settled down long ago and don't want to shake up the state. A dissident conspiratorial mindset exists among the human rights activists: supposedly, we know for sure - there is a group within the Kremlin where plans to eliminate rights and liberties are being developed. The only disputed point is whether this group is headed by Putin, or if he is only condoning its actions. What kind of social partnership can be created in this atmosphere?
Question: What do you think civil society is?
Pavlovsky: This is society which has an unspoken principle which all people recognize, even opponents. It has a demarcation line between the state and the citizenry, which neither of them crosses. Informal rules are observed. For instance, in the 1970s any dissident in the Soviet Union knew that he wouldn't be beaten up in a hallway by a criminal, at least in Moscow or in Russia. Dissidents used to comprise the "civil society" of Soviet times, until this very same demarcation line was recognized.
Question: Is it becoming clearer now?
Pavlovsky: It is impossible, for instance, to abolish elections: three-quarters of the population rejects the idea that state officials should be appointed rather than elected. Restrictions on freedom of movement and traveling abroad are unrealistic for the public; so is banning trade and freedom of speech. Oddly enough, it is even impossible to ban parties with low popularity ratings. This is beyond the limits of the acceptable.
However, society is not sufficiently consolidated in Russia. It is not consolidated enough to prevent the bureaucracy from interfering with the Internet, the media, and education without drawing a public response or debate. Not all debates, however, end in victory for the people. Sometimes these victories are destructive. After 1968 de Gaulle had great powers and the parliamentary majority, like Chirac nowadays, but the public didn't accept his reforms to higher education. and he abandoned politics.
Question: When will the time come that the president would step down if the public doesn't approve a reform proposal?
Pavlovsky: In my view, the foundations of such an extra-solid legal system must be laid by the end of Putin's second term in office.
(Translated by Andrei Ryabochkin)
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