Rights in Russia interviews Arseny Roginsky

RiR: Can you give an example?

AR: For example we are trying to get the government to change its policy on commemorating the victims of political repression, to be actively involved in preserving the memories of the victims of repression, to stop human rights violations against, for example, refugees. And of course we try to influence public opinion by telling people about the political terror of the Soviet period, for instance.

Here is a specific example: our project about access to historical information stored in state and institutional archives. As you know the situation with regard to access to archives is very difficult right now and it’s continuing to deteriorate. And we are trying to mobilise public opinion and interested professional associations to overcome this situation. But from a purely legal standpoint we are coming up against several legal concepts: on the one hand freedom of access to information that is of public interest, and on the other hand the concepts of “state secrets,” “official secrets” and “protection of personal data,” etc. As part of our project we recently held a very interesting conference attended by many different kinds of people: historians, lawyers and archivists. And you know, as a result we managed to get some very important lawyers from academic institutes to collaborate on our project, we found a common language with archivists, so that even staff from government archives said that in principle they were on our side. And the historians are of course by definition on our side.

Simultaneously, as part of this project we initiated several court cases.

Two young women attended this conference. They were lawyers who had already met before at one of these court cases, where one of them was representing the interests of the claimant, ours in other words, and the other the interests of the defendant, the archive service of the FSB. It’s important that they met at the conference, where they could conduct a dialogue not aimed at defending someone’s interests but with the aim of better understanding one another, understanding the arguments of their opponent. We cannot give up using legal processes, however bad the situation with the legal system is in our country. The main thing now is to act calmly, with dignity and without hysterics. And even today you can achieve certain things through the courts.

Only recently the Constitutional Court ruled in our favour on a very important matter to do with access to archive information, concerning the time when previously classified documents should be declassified. (You know that in Soviet times a huge number of documents were marked ‘Secret’). The gist of the case was that in 1993 a law was passed on the maximum period of validity for the term “state secret.” For documents stored in archives this was 30 years and for intelligence documents it was 50 years. As a result, today in 2013 you would think that you should no longer be able to use ‘state secrets’ as a reason for refusing access to documents from 1983 (or 1963) or earlier. But the FSB has come up with a quite astounding interpretation of this law: in their opinion, since this law is not retroactive, it only applies to documents created in 1993 or later! Please come back in 2023 (or 2043) to read documents written in 1993… The court, thank God, did not uphold this ludicrous interpretation. Now if they want to restrict access to a document they have to come up with other excuses. You can be sure they’ll find some. And the arguments will start all over again.

Of course it’s much more interesting to talk about what we actually do and the things we really achieve than about the conditions of our existence in this crazy atmosphere created by the efforts of our government and our legislation. But as far as I know the topic of this interview is unfortunately not our positive work, our educational, research and legal activities, but about the conditions in which we are forced to operate…

RiR: Unfortunately that’s true. Can we go back to the law on foreign agents? What will happen to Memorial?

AR: Yes, it turns out that we may well fall foul of this law. We receive financial support, including from foreign funds. At the same time our activity could, according to the wording of this new law, be interpreted as ‘political.’ What will happen to us? Let’s suppose we are told that we have to issue a statement saying we are foreign agents. But we cannot and will not comply with this directive because it’s not true and we do not want to lie. Of course our refusal could lead to serious consequences, including having the organisation shut down. Yes, we will fight in the courts. So what will happen if we lose all the court cases…You know, the Memorial organisation has been in existence for almost 25 years. Without the support of society we could not have existed for such a length of time. It seems to me it is not only the concrete results of our work that are in demand – from gathering facts about crimes of the past to monitoring human rights violations today – but also the idea on which all our work is founded: the connection and continuity between the past and the present. And because society needs this, it means our work will continue. One way or another.

RiR: But the law on foreign agents has already come into force. Are you doing something about it?

AR: Yes of course. Together with 10 other NGOs (including the Moscow Helsinki Group and Golos) we have submitted a complaint to the European Court of Human Rights about the highly illegal nature of this law. Lawyers from the Memorial Human Rights Centre prepared the complaint. Unfortunately, the effects of this law may be felt far earlier than we receive a reply from the court in Strasbourg.

RiR: Have the current inspections of hundreds of NGOs in Russia in connection with the law on foreign agents affected Memorial?

AR: And how! Representatives of the Public Prosecutor’s Office, the Ministry of Justice and the Federal Tax Service called on us demanding a host of different materials from all the Moscow Memorial organisations, from protocols of our executive committee to the most detailed level of bookkeeping accounts. We have submitted a total of over 8,500 pages of copies. And that’s just for Moscow. Our organisations in St. Petersburg, Perm, Ryazan, Ivanovo, Vladimir, Syktyvkar and other cities have been subjected to the same inspections. The Memorial Human Rights Centre and the Memorial International Society have appealed against these inspections in court; we consider them to be unlawful on many counts.

RiR: Are there already any results yet from these inspections?

AR: For Memorial so far no, we are waiting from day to day. Out of the many hundreds of Russian organisations inspected so far the Ministry of Justice and the Public Prosecutor’s Office has identified only three ‘foreign agents.’ The reasons are striking: for one organisation (Golos) it was the preparation of a draft electoral law and a public discussion about it; for another (the Kostroma Resource Centre) a public discussion in which an employee of the American Embassy took part; and for a third (Kostroma Soldiers’ Mothers) it was the publication of their results of electoral violations. It all looks ridiculous (if not delusional) but the fact is attempts are being made to fine them all for not declaring themselves as foreign agents. Of course all these NGOs will challenge these fines and their classification as foreign agents in courts. On the whole this is very revealing: to date not a single NGO has voluntarily declared themselves to be a foreign agent – to the irritation of the authorities and unleashing all these illegal (in our opinion) inspections. The pointlessness of these recent inspections is exacerbated by the fact that the authorities already knew everything about these organisations anyway. We already (in accordance with existing legislation and countless by-laws) continuously report to the tax authorities and Justice Ministry. To which state authorities don’t we report! The Justice Ministry website regularly publishes comprehensive reports of every organisation as well as their funding, including both the overall budget for every NGO and the exact amounts of funding from abroad. So the government already has all this information: the amounts, where each organisation gets its funding from, and what they spend it on. Therefore the authorities are perfectly capable of deciding who should be labelled a ‘foreign agent’ in their view and who shouldn’t without any of these inspections. The inspections are more about general intimidation than about obtaining specific information. The main thing these inspections demonstrate is that the authorities still do not understand or don’t want to understand what freedom of association, which is guaranteed by the Constitution and international covenants, means. They are trying to maintain absolute control over NGOs in all areas of their lives. So the overall trend today is not one of establishing civilian control over state institutions, but the exact opposite.

RiR: Your building was recently covered in offensive slogans and banners. Was that an expression of public dissatisfaction with your organisation?

AR: No, I don’t think that was done by ‘ordinary people.’ I saw the banner which was placed on our building. It was very professional looking. And in order to put it up on the roof they probably even used some kind of crane to get up there.

This was well thought through and prepared beforehand and was designed to insult us and set people who are walking along this street against us. Just think: this was done during the very first night after the law came into force. Who in this country knew what date the law was coming into force?

There are certain youth groups that have been established to support the Kremlin. They’re like a kind of Red Guard, officially independent from the government, but sharing their ideas and hounding those deemed to be enemies of this government.

RiR: Ludmila Alekseeva says that the Moscow Helsinki Group will try to seek internal sources of funding, collect donations from Russian citizens, etc. What do you think, is this is possible in principle?

AR: Overall, we do receive funding from inside Russia too. For example, from Russian business, from Russian charitable foundations set up by Russian businessmen. It’s not a lot and not all that often, but it does happen. But there are two points here. Firstly, in Moscow it’s still possible to get these types of grants sometimes, but in the provinces it’s much harder, especially in the poorer regions. And secondly, business knows full well that the government is not very well disposed towards NGOs such as ours. So do you think there are lots of business people willing to risk supporting us financially under these circumstances, given that in this country business is still highly dependent on the government?

Then, and I will say this again, dividing organisations according to their sources of funding is unlawful and discriminatory. What’s more, it’s not only discriminatory against those NGOs that receive money from foreign foundations, it’s also discriminatory against those foundations who really have invested a great deal to set up civil society in Russia, maybe not quite as much as is written about in the semi-official Russian press, but still, we’re talking about substantial sums. We should be grateful to these foundations for their help. In my opinion it’s not right blatantly refusing their help now. If it gets as far as a legislative ban on receiving funding from abroad, that’s another matter, then there would be no other choice. But while there is no such ban in place we should continue working with them normally.

RiR: So what can you say about the overall approach to civil organisations on the part of the authorities, about this war of annihilation the state is waging against civil society? Is this a new 1937?

AR: No of course it isn’t. That’s a completely inappropriate comparison, even as a metaphor. The year 1937 was above all about the murder of hundreds of thousands people and the sending of further hundreds of thousands to prison camps. It marked the final isolation of the country from the rest of the world, the start of life behind the Iron Curtain. Today the situation is completely different. Today our relatively sluggish authoritarianism is trying to turn into a strict authoritarianism. Today the regime is making more and more extensive use of anti-Western, Great Power rhetoric; this rhetoric is becoming the base for the ruling elite. It’s hard to take and it’s unpleasant, that’s true. But not only is this not 1937, not mass state terror, it’s also not life behind the Iron Curtain. There is no curtain and by all appearances you would no longer be able to lower one over Russia. This is not just a question of technical capabilities, the Internet and the like, but about the fact that real isolation would not hold out, it would fall apart. Yes, we live in a reactionary age, but becoming Burma or even the Soviet Union under Brezhnev is not something that can be done any more.

RiR: What has been the reaction in Russia to the Magnitsky Act?

AR: It backs up what I am saying. It’s striking that what caused such agitation among our legislators was the fact that a certain corrupt section of the Russian ruling elite is having difficulties travelling to the United States! Their rhetoric may be as nationalistic, Great Power, and isolationist as you like, but they are actually falling over themselves to go to the West, like bees to honey. The reaction of the ordinary, average members of the Russian public to the Magnitsky Act is perfectly calm: ‘We cannot deal with our corrupt officials ourselves, so let them have problems travelling to the States.’ As for myself, personally I have an ambivalent attitude to the Magnitsky Act. On the one hand, it’s a correct step, but on the other hand, why should it only apply to Russia? If it was extended to cover all countries (including China) or even only applied to a specified number of countries it would mark a real breakthrough on the issue of human rights protection. The protection of human rights is, after all, a worldwide issue. So the Act is correct, but it doesn’t go far enough, which is why it is so easy for Russian politicians and political analysts to use it to whip up anti-Western, anti-American sentiment in this country.

RiR: OK, but it is perfectly clear that the attitude of the authorities today to independent civil activism has become much more negative than before.

AR: When do you mean, “before?” In Soviet times people were imprisoned for civic activism. For civic activism, political activism, cultural activism, religious activism, etc. The Soviet authorities were firmly against any kind of public independent activism whatsoever. Then when the Soviet regime collapsed, in the 1990s independent civil activism was mainly manifested in the activities of non-governmental organisations. The authorities were pretty indifferent to this activity, they didn’t understand it, didn’t believe in it and didn’t value it in the slightest. The general view was that there was no civil society in Russia and there couldn’t be one. This was the firm belief of the ruling elite, the mass media, the population and, odd as it sounds, even some of the civil society activists themselves. It was agreed that in the best case scenario in Russia there were “shoots of civil society,” in the form of non-governmental organisations. Then Putin came along, uprooted political opposition, dispersed the regional elites, took a grip of the business community, took control of all the significant media outlets. And then he turned his attention to NGOs.

At first he wanted to come to an amicable agreement with us, turn ‘third sector’ into a peculiar kind of continuation of the ‘power vertical.’ A testament to this effort is the Public Chamber, a structure which has not caused any particular harm, but at the same time has not brought any great benefit either. But a significant number of organisations remained outside this Putin-style consensus, preferring to maintain their independence. These organisations, which included Memorial, did not think of themselves as ‘political opposition,’ virtually all of them were prepared to cooperate with the government and its agencies, but as equal partners. These were the organizations that the authorities considered to be enemies.

The authorities are continuously looking for signs of an Orange Revolution, believing, probably sincerely, that Orange Revolutions are created by NGOs using Western money. It is these signs they are fighting against.

Civil society is not just about a free press and NGOs. Above all it’s a question of having a certain mindset, a certain level of self-awareness, at least among the population. But look at how things have turned out. In the 2000s the authorities managed to get a lot done: control over regional elites, control of TV stations and the press, control over business and the marginalisation of opposition political parties. If anyone protested it was only a handful of people. A few hundred people might turn up at protest rallies in Moscow, in rare cases maybe a few thousand. And in the provinces if a hundred people turned out, that was a lot. Then all of a sudden at the end of 2011 something happened and thousands of people started going out onto the streets to protest, and in Moscow it was tens of thousands. Who led them out onto the streets, the NGO’s? Not of course not. It was simply that people appeared in Russia who had their own sense of civic concern about what was happening in the country and were not afraid to publicly voice this concern, they were the mouthpiece for civic responsibility. They were not born yesterday, they’ve been around for some time, it’s just that 18 months ago they finally came of age. So there we have our civil society.

RiR: So what about civil society organisations? What is their role in public life, apart from the very specific work that each of them is engaged in, shall we say?

AR: I don’t think they have that much of a role to play in the development of the protest movement. The authorities believe that the protests are being initiated by civil society organisations using Western money; that is why the law on foreign agents was brought in. Our role is actually a much more modest one, albeit a very important one. The protest movement is developing on its own, it is creating its own infrastructure, finding its own language and ways of acting. NGOs did play a significant role in creating the conditions for the emergence of the protest movement. Around 10 years ago, when the government started taking control of everything, our organisations and several newspapers, radio stations, non-governmental expert centres, certain educational institutions, etc. became rather like little islands of independence. One such island was Memorial, another the Moscow Helsinki Group, a third the Sakharov Centre, and a fourth the Moscow School of Political Studies. There is also the Levada Centre and of course Novaya Gazeta and Echo of Moscow radio station. And others. And there has been no small number of these islands over the past few years. We have probably managed to keep certain banners flying, which is important for public awareness.

We are not civil society. But we prepared the ground to enable civil society to emerge, and it has emerged.

RiR: If what you say is correct, then there is a future for civil society on the whole in Russia. Do civil organisations, in particular Memorial, have a future? It would seem that the main goal of Memorial is to persuade society of the perniciousness of totalitarian forms of government, to create a consensus of public opinion about the Soviet past and about state terror in the Soviet era. But this has not been achieved. Stalin’s popularity is on the rise, as is nostalgia for the Soviet past. The human rights situation in Russia is also very difficult. That means that you have to give some thought to who is going to carry on your work after you. What is the situation like with young people in Memorial? What role do they play in your organisation?

AR: Regarding Memorial’s mission, you are of course right, our work is far from complete. But I don’t think that our educational efforts have been totally unsuccessful. Today far more people know about the Stalinist terror than was the case say 15-20 years ago, and Memorial’s activities played a key role in this I think. However, knowing something about Stalinism is one thing, but understanding the phenomenon, with all its causes and consequences, understanding the fatal role Stalinism played in our lives, is another matter entirely. But, as one of my colleagues said, we may not have succeeded in changing the situation for the better, but without us it would probably be much worse.

As far as young people are concerned, for us there are two sides to the question. Firstly, young people are the target of our educational activities. And here, in my opinion, practically all the Memorial organisations, and the Memorial Society as a whole, is doing a fantastic job. For instance, for the past 14 years we have been running a historical research competition for senior pupils, ‘People in history. Russia in the 20th century,’ which receives between 1,500 and 4,000 entries every year. Nearly all the regional organisations regularly work with schools and teachers’ associations, a vast pool of schoolteachers has formed around us.

The other side of this issue is getting young people involved in Memorial’s activities. In recent years many of our organisations have been very successful in this area. I’ve already mentioned the Perm Youth Memorial group. We have lots of young people working for us in Ryazan, St. Petersburg, Moscow, Penza and other places. There are of course problems: attracting young people is one thing, holding onto them is much harder. The point is that our work requires professionalism and at the same time total dedication. Young people need to study, and those who are a little older need to make a start in life and earn a living. They simply do not have the time. If it was possible to give Memorial two hours of your time once a month everything would be okay. But Memorial is not just a job, it’s a way of life. And the requirements for professional skills, of course, impose certain restrictions: high school students, for example, cannot be given the task of annotating personal recollections that end up in our archives, there is too much they have to be taught before they can do this.

But we are seeking and finding solutions. Maybe schoolchildren can’t annotate survivor’s tales, but they can, for example, catalogue new additions to our library. It’s another matter that this exercise is tedious and boring for young people.

Nevertheless, young people do come to us, both as volunteers and, those who are a little older, for permanent employment. And we are very happy to work with them.