Human Rights in Russia

In 2004 Aleksei Korotaev, someone with both Russian and international experience, suggested to his fellow activists:

We talk about human rights in terms of the UN declarations. Victims usually express themselves in quite other ways […] There's no public demand in this country for what's called ‘the defence of human rights’ […] I organize a minimum of two, and sometimes four or five seminars a year on the UN system of defending human rights – the theory, mechanisms etc. […] and the only real conclusion that I can draw is that no one except the human rights activists, who are happy when I come, is the slightest bit interested in the UN system. It helps them to feel that they are part of some worldwide activity.

If, by the new century, increasing pressure from the Kremlin posed one problem for the human rights organizations, public indifference was another. To many it seemed time to think hard about why they, and the values they championed, were failing to attract a response from their fellow citizens. Tanya Lokshina and Sergei Lukashevsky, who had left the Moscow Helsinki Group to set up an ‘analytic centre’, Demos, headed an initiative to bring leading activists, specialists in public opinion survey research, sociologists, and the new PR experts together to undertake research, discuss the issues facing the human rights community, and come up with recommendations. This, in itself, reflected the presence of a younger generation of activists. Both Khodorkovsky's Open Russia foundation and Western funders supported the project and further research.

The issues that concerned activists of both older and younger generations included the challenges from the international and domestic environment, the ‘war on terror’ following the 9/11 attack in the USA, the arrest of Khodorkovsky earlier that year, and Putin's re-election to a second term. Sessions on all these issues featured in a 2004 conference, part of the project, but here we focus on the session devoted to the lack of public support.¹ We start with popular attitudes towards rights and to activists, before turning to the activists’ perceptions, and conclude by looking again at the different elements that made up the human rights community.

The ending of Communist party rule had been accompanied by huge expectations that not only would personal freedoms exist (to speak out, to travel abroad) but that living standards would rise, while free medical services and pensions would continue to provide security in sickness or old age. Instead the majority experienced extreme insecurity and impoverishment, while a privileged few enriched themselves. Disillusionment with the ability of a free press and electoral freedoms to produce politicians who would remedy the situation became widespread.

Dmitry Dubrovsky (a young sociologist, teaching human rights at the Smolny Institute in St Petersburg) adds another dimension to the arguments we have heard from Orlov and Auzan.

Rights were understood not as civil rights, not as something positive, rather they were negative – against the Soviet Union, against authoritarianism, against the Communist party. When all that disappeared, it became apparent that there was no shared agenda […] Everyone holds the strange view that the movement against the Soviet Union was necessarily a movement for civil rights. But it was not like that. People think the same way about an anti-colonial movement – that it is necessarily a democratic movement, when it is not necessarily anything of the sort. It was the same in Russia. There was an anti-totalitarian, anti-Soviet, anti-Communist movement but not one that, unfortunately, had any clear conceptions of civil rights. At that moment there was a spontaneously evolving ‘democratic’ platform, with very wide margins and a confused concept of freedom of speech, because freedom of speech was absolutely critical, as in February 1917. Then the consensus evaporated, and the liberals played a part in this because, upon coming to power, they claimed that the economy would now advance, democracy would catch up and everything would be fine.

Nationwide survey research, repeated annually since the 1990s by the Levada Centre, which asks the respondents ‘Which of the following human rights do you consider are the most important?’ always shows ‘the right to life’ leading the field. But it is very difficult to interpret what ticking this box really means, especially in comparison to some other options. By the middle of the first decade of the new century, the following (in this order) continued to be prioritized: ‘The right to free education, medical assistance, security in old age, and when sick’; ‘the right to well-paid work according to one's specialization’; ‘the inviolability of personal life and housing’; ‘the right to a state-guaranteed minimum subsistence level’. By 2010 ‘the right to own property’ had just pushed ‘the right to a state-guaranteed minimum subsistence level’ out of fifth place. The list does not include, for example, the right to a fair trial, but it is clear – as the commentators observe – that the rights of freedom of speech, or of electing one's representatives are rated as far less important than those above.²

In 2001 the Levada Centre carried out a nationally representative survey designed by Sarah Mendelson and Theodore Gerber, two American scholars, which included questions on the strength of support for eight specific rights, listed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. These were: freedom from arbitrary arrest, freedom of religion, the right to work, freedom of expression/information, freedom from torture, the right to a minimal standard of living, the right to own property, and the right of free association. The responses suggested that rights concerning a minimum standard of living, private property, and a job enjoyed the most support, with freedom from torture following closely behind, and then freedom from arbitrary arrest. Support for the others was more qualified, and weakest of all was support for free association.³

Other surveys in the early 2000s show little interest in the rights of association, or in joining a trade union. Very few people participated in any voluntary or social activity. Most, when faced with an infringement of their rights, do nothing; a quarter of the respondents stated they would be prepared to turn to court; very few would be prepared to participate in a protest.⁴ However, according to the findings of a survey conducted for the 2004 conference: ‘In fact the population reacts quite sharply to the infringement of these [personal and civil] rights – but mainly when it involves abuse and injustice by officials, the police, or various bosses and leaders’. And when asked ‘what would be more important for the future well-being of Russia?’ given a choice between civil rights and freedoms or a system of vertical power, 38 per cent opted for civil rights compared with 31 per cent for vertical power.⁵ Prioritizing socio-economic demands at a time of impoverishment does not necessarily mean a preference for authoritarian rule.

But these kind of surveys can only tell one so much. How did people think about human rights? In 2003 Igor Averkiev offered an answer, based on the 3–5,000 individuals who each year turned to the Perm human rights centre. Human rights are ‘the defence an ordinary person has against the rich and powerful’. Particularly for the elderly, it is not important whether the offender is the state, a corporation, neighbour, or a relative. Human rights are ‘my shield against arbitrariness, injustice, stinking injustice, and blatant lawlessness’, those actions that affect basic aspects of my life – housing, work, my pension. ‘I don't necessarily want to go to court, I should not have to pay for a defence lawyer, any way it's all sewn up […] If you are a human rights defender, you should assist me’, if needs be with a phone call to the relevant person. Although not usually voiced as such, there is an assumption that human rights are for the poor, because the rich can pay for what they want. And, there is simple confusion – ‘all my rights are human rights because they are “rights” and I am “human”’.⁶

When people react positively to the term ‘rights-defence’ or ‘defending human rights’, it may well be because these terms include the word ‘defence’, and not because they believe in adopting an active civic stance or because they share these values. It's rather, if you like, that people see the terms through the prism of their paternalistic views. Someone, a human rights activist, cares about them, and would help to mend a leaking roof.

the main problem is that the average citizen has a superficial conception of his or her rights as such. There is no awareness of the values of rights and freedoms. What are rights, in such a view? They are always something very personal, individualistic. People do not talk of rights as shared values […] in our society the values of collectivism are not recognized. In the minds of our citizens, rights – that's something that they need, that is in their interest […] they are what is due to a person.

The explanation they offer ‘for the persistent character of these beliefs’ is that ‘the majority of citizens, including those who hold liberal views, perceive rights as something given to them by the state’.⁷ As I suggested in the previous chapter, they were given by the state in the Soviet period, and many reappeared in the 1993 constitution. Its new civil and political rights, with the emphasis on international conventions, also came from above, not after a long process of protracted bargaining, or even a roundtable where opposing groups hammered out a compromise position (the parliamentary attempt had ended in deadlock). They owed their inclusion to Yeltsin's wish to retain the support of the democrats and to have support from Western governments. The constitution may have won the support of the majority in a popular vote but that did not mean that all understood it in the same way. What then did the population think of the human rights activists?

‘A normal person should be doing three jobs, so as to be able to feed his family, and not be concerned with defending the Chechens.’⁸

Yury Levada, the father of public opinion research, referred to the post-Soviet Russian citizen as ‘passive, patient, and sly’ – in other words as very little different from his Soviet counterpart. And indeed the daily struggle to feed a family, or get medical care, the disillusionment with democratic politics and its assumed benefits made the survival tactics of the Soviet period as relevant as before. Trust and rely on those whom you know; use personal connections in the first instance, find a patron; if there is an organization that will help solve your problem, try it, but don't expect too much; be wary of engaging in collective action, at most in a one-off mass protest to achieve a concrete result. Two examples, both of behaviour, and of attitudes towards activism are quoted in the research report by Elena Rusakova.

If a person comes up against a real, actual threat (for example, a son is conscripted into the army), and attempts to defend him, this is viewed as absolutely normal behaviour (and the individual is not seen as a human rights activist) […] But if someone is continually involved in this activity, that is in helping not only ‘her own’ – she becomes seen as ‘strange’, is viewed ironically, with puzzlement.

Yet this surely is not a good example because the Soldiers' Mothers were taking up the cases of other people's sons, and this was viewed sympathetically. More revealing is the following: religious lessons are about to be made compulsory in a school; several of the parents object but none are prepared to respond to the suggestion from one that they should write a joint letter to the director of the school; no, they each prefer to deal individually with him.

The sociologists draw attention to a social norm – it is unwise to tilt at windmills. ‘People straightaway begin to relate to someone who is prepared to participate in civic activity, public activity, even if they react positively to them, as a “marginal individual”.’ A human rights activist will probably be categorized as someone who could not make it on a professional level, maybe as someone without a profession, a dilettante. Young people refer to them as ‘strange’, ‘cranks’. Quite kindly, they may be described as the ‘holy fools’ of today. In other words, the sociologists suggest, there are strong norms of acceptable or sensible behaviour and ‘for the majority of the population (but not for all!) an active civic position – is an infringement of an established norm of behaviour’. If the activists are described as ‘helping people’, then the respondent is more positive. However, it depends upon whom. Where a justice system is serving the majority of the population badly, there may be little sympathy for those who defend minorities against discrimination – ‘why are they fussing about them, when judges treat us all so badly?’ ⁹

But, most people simply do not know what human rights activists do. Those with higher education might manage to name Memorial, the MHG and Soldiers' Mothers, but others have difficulty in naming even Memorial. The respondents in the 2004 interview survey claimed to know practically nothing of human rights organizations, but they ‘knew’ the following: first, if human rights organizations are defending rights they must be state agencies, funded by the government; second, some provide free legal aid, but they are obliged to do this and cannot charge for it; and third, there are some organizations, staffed by ‘dissident-types’, who fight for ethical issues and justice, and they will disappear when they have achieved their aims. In general, the assessment – where it was proffered – was quite positive. The Rusakova research suggests that the public response to the activists, while perhaps not so positive, was ironic rather than hostile. After 2004 the emphasis in the media on their receiving Western funding, and then the spy scandal saw a more negative response, but this was short lived. Some thought of the activists as politicians but as ‘unsuccessful politicians’, and were hard put to distinguish between them. A much more widespread attitude was that ‘it's not clear what on earth they are doing’ and there was little interest in knowing more.

All the above refers to the general public. When level of education is introduced, the better educated know more, and respond more positively. It is a pity government officials were not asked for their views. In an interesting experiment, conducted by the Independent Council of Legal Expertise, judges, prosecutors and defence lawyers, when asked for theirs, came up with a very negative picture of ‘highly politicized individuals who, instead of producing concrete information, talk in general phrases, they can behave with little tact, interrupt or argue with judges’ but, when presented with a list of individuals whom they did not know to be human rights activists, ‘gave them positive ratings as good defence lawyers’.¹⁰ People who had been helped by a human rights organization, not surprisingly, were grateful but, as we saw earlier in Auzan's comments, that made them no more willing to then help the organization, financially or otherwise. And, as someone commented, ‘It's mostly poor people whom the activists help, and they haven't any money, and the rich aren't interested.’

All agreed that they lacked popular support but they did not necessarily agree on the reasons for this. Most of those present at the conference in 2004 probably assumed that they shared a common creed (the Universal Declaration of Human Rights) and that this set them apart from their fellow citizens. But Igor Averkiev threw down the gauntlet by arguing that, while ‘human dignity’ was an inalienable part of being human, part of the problem was the Declaration itself:

The spirit and the letters of the Declaration – that's the only thing that we can, today, understand as human rights. I don't feel very happy with this but today there is no other paradigm. Therefore when today we talk of human rights we have in mind the UN conception of human rights, regardless of how we relate to it […]

While this is a problem for Russia and other post-totalitarian states, we are only illustrations of a more general crisis. All that is connected with worldwide, historical and other questions relating to human rights is experiencing a crisis today. The crisis of liberalism as an ideology is clear. And it is clear that human rights and liberalism have at the very least a strong historical connection. Human rights have always been endowed with a kind of sacredness. In the twentieth century the UN gave it this with its association with its being higher than the state, a ‘super-value’, part of international law, etc. And today the UN is in crisis, and international law is experiencing a crisis […]

I am absolutely convinced that the problem of human dignity […] is an eternal value, some eternal feeling of a person. And the arbitrariness of power, not only of the state, but any power – that's also an everlasting problem. In that sense human rights are part of objective reality. We are now involved in the problem of finding a new paradigm. It is a global problem – but we are facing it too.

Few took up Averkiev's arguments. The discussion revolved around whether their ideas, based on the Universal Declaration, were perhaps too advanced for the greater part of the population or whether it was their inability to get them across that was at fault? Yury Dzhibladze wanted activists to use key concepts from the Declaration:

It seems to me that people do react to the word ‘the dignity of man’ and we should sell ourselves by using that […] today people feel that no one pays any attention to them, the authorities and others denigrate them and so on. ‘Dignity’ is an inalienable part of human rights, it's the basis of human rights.

Despite a tendency to talk in UN language, Dzhibladze was one of the few at the 2004 conference to suggest a practical reason for their needing to share a language with the people.

In order to be heard, and not simply cry in the wilderness, we must have backing. That is we can only have a conversation with the authorities from a position of strength. Strength – not in the sense of bringing the people out on to the streets, although that's a possibility at a particular moment. Rather we need the people themselves, citizens, so that we have the strength to engage in dialogue with the authorities.

He, in contrast to many, as we shall see in Chapter 8, saw his mission as one of influencing policy through negotiations with the authorities. Part of the problem was that activists were speaking to different audiences – international NGOs, Western donors, government officials, journalists, and, as they came increasingly to call them, clients, and this required different ways of talking. Some favoured, and probably all agreed, that they must use different materials for different audiences. Lukashevsky argued: ‘Given that there are many target groups, and society is so multifarious, a different strategy has to be adopted for each’, and the sociologists recommended that:

The rhetoric used by activists must vary depending upon the type of recipient of information. At a minimum there's the man in the street, the expert community, and the authorities. Each of them requires their own type of information. Expert and scientific texts may work for experts and the authorities, but citizens need much simpler, popular, materials.

Korotaev suggested that the community was a broad church – it included all sorts – politicians, supporters, hands-on defenders, and those promoting values.

That's normal […] For an understanding of what we as a community are, as a whole, our products must be packaged differently for different target groups […] forgive me for the cynicism. But among ourselves we must agree and have a clear understanding of our shared strategy, implemented through very different types of activity.

Others were more willing to blame themselves for not addressing the issues that mattered to people, or for writing in a way that appealed to Western donors and international agencies, but not to the Russian public. In 2008, at a conference funded by the European Commission to mark 60 years of the Universal Declaration, Dzhibladze, in answer to his own rhetorical question ‘What must we do to return these words [universal inalienable rights] written 60 years ago, to the centre of life of societies and the world?’ suggests: ‘we have a non-trivial task before us – the translation of human rights and the declaration on human rights into everyday language […] we must turn these high, maybe abstract, values into everyday practical principles useful for people’.

Activists cannot translate their [ideas] into the Russian language. That doesn't mean that we must translate ‘right’ as ‘justice’. But all the same, they should get closer to the Russian language, they don't think about that and they are not able to do it. Those who write reports are oriented towards their main audience which is European or the world community. But I think they will learn, in time.

However, in the discussion in 2004, Lev Levinson (an analyst and activist) took the criticism further:

One of the problems is the exclusive nature of our human rights community. Effectively human rights activists have long since become some kind of an elite group which has monopolized the rights to human rights […] whereas we should be widening human rights discourse and sharing the field with others who are prepared to work in it. I mean not only the trade unions but many others.

This takes us back to the debates in the mid-nineties. What had changed? Then the activists had engaged in quite bitter arguments over ‘who is right?’ in their interpretation of human rights. In the debate between the Kovalev group and activists from the provinces in 1995, the differences between the supporters of the classical civil and political rights conception and those arguing for the inclusion of socio-economic rights came out quite clearly. By the beginning of the new century the latter had won their place on the agenda, and even Kovalev, by 2010, was suggesting that partners should be sought among the new trade unions. But if there was an acceptance that we can agree to disagree, did not this make the task of getting their ideas across even harder? The activists themselves were talking in different languages. Compare the following statements. The first by Valentin Gefter, who was chairing the session at the 2004 conference, and spoke, in his conclusion, of the baneful influence of traditional Russian attitudes:

The language itself, which we use, and in the first instance to a wide circle of Russian citizens, is not theirs, it includes other concepts and slogans, which do not relate to many of life's priorities […] that immediately brings us face to face with the age old Russian problem (part of our history and mentality) […] the non-correspondence of ‘human rights’ and ‘interests, both group and individual’ […] We have talked a lot about this but […] we haven't reached an understanding of what to do about it, except for the need to exert ourselves by engaging in enlightenment, in working on these remnants of a pre-legal and egotistical consumer consciousness.

A group of activists from the provinces who had discussed the issue of finding a common language during the break, spoke very differently:

If we accept that our strategic aim must be that of forming popular opinion, working together with the people, and directing public opinion, then we must make social rights one of our most important priorities […] Only in that way shall we be able to involve the broad masses in our work. And only then can we engage in education, explain that the monetization of benefits, or a wage lower than the minimum required for subsistence is the result of our not having civic democratic freedoms.

One can imagine some of the Moscow intellectuals shrinking at this classic piece of ‘Soviet speech’ but, upon reflection, was Gefter's any less ‘Soviet’ in its view of the enlightened working to eradicate ‘the remnants’, not now of a bourgeois consciousness, but of a ‘pre-legal and egotistical consumer consciousness’?

The professionalization of the community […] simultaneously promotes differences among the activists, divergent activities, and competition within the community which, while it still recognizes itself as one, cannot respond effectively and in unison to external challenges. What is needed is to work out a clear, agreed, position, a statement of priorities – of tasks – something that is very difficult because of the horizontal nature of the community, which itself is a matter of principle.

But was it the professionalization of the community, and its lack of vertical structures, that were responsible for the disunity? We have seen how, as disillusionment with the new political sphere grew, as poverty spread, and as neither local authorities nor the justice system were able to cope with the multiplying appeals for help or for the observance of rights, hundreds of very different organizations appeared. The activists’ self-description – human rights activists – owed something to the international popularity of human rights at the time Communist party rule in Russia collapsed but also to the fact that the 1993 constitution affirmed a huge array of rights, including social and economic rights. Here was an ideology that could create a broad church. The church however barely held together. Schisms occurred, heresies were denounced. This was not surprising, given the catholic nature of the doctrine – human rights – and the different concerns or interests of those who advanced them. Some were inspired by the desire to press for reforms of the justice system, to defend new-found freedoms, to effect legislative changes; others to act as some kind of political opposition. Many were primarily concerned with defending or improving the lot of vulnerable people. Those who took up the plight of street children or of the migrants flooding into Russian cities, or thought the bombing of Grozny, the capital of the Chechen republic, unacceptable, were not inspired by international declarations. They were responding to things that they found abhorrent and that they thought should be addressed. Ideas of decency, of the treatment of one's fellowmen, of children's needs, of recompense for past atrocities, of abjuring violence – all rose to the surface. And this is one reason why there was such a variety and disagreement within what came to be known as the human rights community.

Was it even a community? Perhaps what is most striking is that such very different organizations should have conceived of themselves as belonging to one. Svetlana Gannushkina on one occasion suggested: ‘human rights activists fall into two groups – some are interested in defending “people (humans)” and some in defending “rights”.’ Arseny Roginsky of the International Memorial Society suggested:

Take the idea of human rights – a very powerful idea but absolutely incomprehensible […] It is clear that an individual must have rights, and the rights should be observed […] but the idea is such a huge, such a difficult one, it gets dissolved into hundreds of different organizations. They all claim to be defending human rights, they can't stand each other, they are very different […] some work professionally, others do not. It's a difficult idea.

This is true not only of the Russian activists. Large UN conferences have ended with violent disagreements between the participants, even when the theme is a single issue one, for example racism. What we can say is that the more catholic the interpretation, or the rights that are included, the less likely will be united action and, in this respect, the Universal Declaration creates problems.

Without doubt, what we can call the Helsinki interpretation of human rights, promoted by those who had been involved in the Helsinki movement in the USSR and Eastern Europe, and by Western governments, and then picked up by Western funders and NGOs, inspired many. A commitment by the state to its constitutional obligations, with priority for the citizen's political and civil rights, and an independent judiciary to ensure that these rights are observed, were key elements in this position. The desire to promote the rule of law, understood as a situation where the state could be held accountable by the courts, had lain behind the work of the original human rights committee of the Supreme Soviet, and had played its part in influencing the wording in the 1993 constitution and the creation of the institution of ombudsman. Russia's signing of the European Convention on Human Rights, and the ability to turn to the European Court of Human Rights, whose brief did not extend to social and economic rights, seemingly strengthened such a position. Gefter, at the 2004 conference, declared:

We lack conviction and honesty when we say that defending human rights is not defending the rights and interests of one or other group, however badly they may be infringed, or however discriminated maybe their representatives, but rather the defence of Rights for their own sake.

A human rights activist is not a defender of victims. There's a principle difference between the defender of a victim and the defender of a right. The human rights activist is not only and not primarily defending a particular individual who, for example, was tortured in a remand prison or who was not given access to a legal counsel. He is defending values and mechanisms. The [principle] of Rights must be guaranteed. Hence each concrete case is simply just one small step in the promotion of a principle, that of law.

She continued: ‘In defending a concrete individual, you must focus on the supremacy of law, and not on the individual as a victim.’ ‘Do you think most people think that way?’ I ask.

No, some think like that, others think differently […] one of the apparent weaknesses of the human rights community is […] not only the inability to articulate this but also that many activists see them themselves as defending victims […] and begin to take the side of their victims, and to support them as a defence lawyer would, or an aunt, mother, grandmother.

The activities of the Soldiers' Mothers Committees, Abramkin's Centre for Prison Reform, of Marchenko's Mother's Right, the domestic violence centres, or Memorial's campaigns for compensation for Stalin's victims owed little to concerns for the supremacy of law. As we suggested, the prime concern of many was to help those suffering from abuse or neglect, whether at the hands of the state or other citizens, and to hope that gradually their actions would have an effect on the behaviour of those who abused the power they held. But because so much of everyday activity in Russia was subject to legal regulation, infringements so frequent, and politicians so unresponsive, the activists increasingly looked to legal means to fight their cause. The courts became the site for contestation. Larisa Bogoraz, in that first human rights seminar in Moscow in 1991, had urged the participants to engage in spreading ‘legal consciousness’. She would have been pleased to see, 15 years later, how many of the activists were using the law to defend rights but it was not a belief in the supremacy of law that had brought them into defending human rights.

Olga Shepeleva, a young lawyer from the Nizhny Novgorod organization, who had studied at Columbia, New York, and would subsequently move to Moscow to work on public interest law, clearly felt frustrated by the discussion at the conference.

We have talked a lot about diverging paths, methods and strategies, about which rights to focus on, social or civil, about whether the population's perception of the phrase ‘defence of rights’ is a problem of language or a problem of the value of human rights in Russia, we have talked about the general crisis of human rights, and about what is a human rights activist – a missionary or a fighter but [to take this any further] we must understand and answer the question: what are human rights activists actually doing in today's Russia, what are their aims and tasks? […] Offering particular services to the population, or something else? Once the aims are clear, and hence why human rights activists are needed in Russia, strategy and tactics can be determined: will activists negotiate with the authorities, and how will they negotiate, do they need public support and in what form, and so on. I want to ask: why are we here?

Surely the problem was that they were involved in all kinds of different activities, prompted by different aims, and concerns. Perhaps all they held in common was the commitment to using legal, non-violent means of defence, to the peaceful pursuit of reforms, and a belief in the importance of education or enlightenment. Most, but not all, had distanced themselves from the discredited political arena. At the 2004 conference Lev Ponomarev urged the participants to think of creating the wing of a political party, or to set up their own, which his movement For Human Rights was in the process of doing. This fell on deaf ears, as did Averkiev's argument that ‘if someone is defending social rights, then he should have the appropriate technology […] if he wants to be a missionary, and blaze a trail, he must be morally above reproach, and without doubt be charismatic […] if he wants to tackle the question of rich and poor, come out against privatization, etc., then he should honestly state that he is part of the new left.’

We must explain that we speak the truth, offer other information. That means [talking about] ‘dignity’ and ‘truth’. And about ‘social justice’ […] which people also want, and not only here, but throughout the world. But it's absolutely not necessary to stick on labels of ‘left’ or ‘right’, to create some kind of parties or something of that sort.

But what if the human rights community was home to those of different political persuasions, and different views on social justice?

The sociologists, tentatively but not very optimistically, suggested that the new, and educated, middle class should be thought of as a target group, but that the human rights community needed to extend its links with different social groups. Oddly enough they wrote of the need ‘to restore the trust of the population in the human rights community’ which would require ‘the energetic defence of social-economic rights as well as prisoners of conscience, civil rights, and the victims of arbitrary actions of the authorities and the law and order agencies.’ But these were all activities the community was involved in, and no evidence was produced that suggested that the activists had been more popular or trusted in previous years. Yet this was something that the activists felt. ‘We have lost society, that's the truth. How to win it back, I don't know’, according to one activist. And they felt the need for ‘our national idea’; the divisions were ‘an obstacle to any consolidation of the human rights community and to the working out of a common (shared) idea’. The experts thought the same. ‘Many human rights experts view the inability of the human rights community to work out a common position, based on shared priorities, as responsible for its weakness today.’ But how could they do so? And, as important, why should they do so? Shepeleva's question still hung in the air. On the one hand they prized their autonomy, and their ability to design their own different strategies, on the other they hankered for a community, a collective consciousness, a solidarity. Not surprisingly agreement on how to proceed remained elusive.

In summing up the discussion at the conference, Gefter suggested that ‘Unfortunately we have barely managed to talk about which concrete, recognizable types of activity we should engage in, in order that they don't contradict each other, except for those relating to enlightenment’. And that brings us to education.

At the 2004 conference Korotaev, asking to be forgiven, claimed that the reason so many participants advocated education or enlightenment was that

We are the direct descendants of the Russian populist intelligentsia which considered its function to be that of educating the ‘dark people’ [temnyi narod] and leading it to a shining future. We should not deceive ourselves, that's the only reason why we are interested in what the people think, certainly it's not because of what they think.

Some probably were offended and, I would add, a belief in educating the masses was very much part of a Soviet mind set too. At the conference the experts recommended focusing on human rights education for students and school children because they had grown up in a post-Soviet environment, were open to new information, and not burdened with worry over everyday issues. And, indeed, they had been a target group since the early nineties.

In 1991, a group, mostly schoolteachers, members of Memorial, began to gather school children and students to talk about Stalinist repression, they then set up a Youth Centre on Human Rights. They moved on to visiting schools, and organizing discussions on human rights. The leader of the Centre was a teacher, Vsevolod Lukovitsky, and Elena Rusakova, a social psychologist, was an active participant. The Centre's members undertook these activities in their free time; they did not set up an office. Beginning with a small grant from Soros, they began to prepare materials for teachers, and for school children, and in 1998 produced a textbook that received Ministry of Education approval. By this time they were in demand as teachers of new role playing and interactive methods of teaching human rights. One city that they visited, as trainers, was Perm where an NGO, the Centre for Civic Education, headed by Andrei Suslov, a young historian from the Pedagogical University, a specialist on Stalinist repression, was teaching human rights. Suslov's group too produced a textbook, drawing on the Lukovitsky materials, and over the next few years held three-day seminars for school teachers, either in Perm or in the region's towns. Perhaps 25 teachers would attend, 250–300 over the course of the year.

The early years of the new decade witnessed conflicting tendencies. On the one hand, the Youth Centre for Human Rights fell out of favour with the authorities. A revised version of their textbook failed to get ministerial approval in 2000, making it difficult for teachers to use it. In 2001, with youth organizations coming under scrutiny in the search for ‘extremists’, the Centre's name and its juridical address as the Memorial offices was sufficient to send the police to Memorial to look for young extremists. Lukovitsy and his colleagues set up a new organization, with a suitably neutral name, the Humanist Research and Methodology Centre, but found that schools, regional educational authorities and pedagogical universities were less and less willing to work with them. The Centre joined in a successful campaign against compulsory religious and military education in schools in 2003–05, but subsequently learnt that it was on a blacklist circulated to local institutes that run programmes for raising teachers’ qualifications. A firm that prepares electronic materials for schools withdrew an order on being instructed that it was not allowed to work with the Centre.

Meanwhile, in 2000, a Project of Human Rights Education Capacity Development for Russia, designed within the framework of the UN Technical Cooperation Programme on Human Rights was launched. Key activities were the training of teachers of human rights in the higher education sector and in the secondary schools, the introduction of new methodologies into the school curriculum, and the creation of mini-libraries of human rights materials. The establishment of a human rights network of educators, across Russia, one that brought together teachers, NGOs, government and the media representatives was emphasized as a goal. The UN Committee on Human Rights and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs assumed leadership functions, and the Fulcrum Foundation, the Russian NGO that ran the small grants programme under Mikhail Timenchik's leadership, took responsibility for designing and administering project activities.¹¹

Pedagogical universities, local education authorities, and NGOs in a number of cities were selected to provide courses for teachers, students, and school children; an essay-writing and project competition brought the winning school teams to make presentations in the Constitutional Court; course materials were published and distributed. The project ran for three years. In 2002 UNCHR included it as a case study in a global review of its Technical Cooperation Program, and received a recommendation for an expansion of the project, once an impact evaluation survey by outside experts had been undertaken. A Russian colleague and I were asked to do it. We struggled, not because of an unwillingness by the participants to assist us (although the teachers’ response to questionnaires was very poor), but because, as we suggested in our report, ‘any assessment of the impact of teaching on children's knowledge of and attitudes towards human rights [over a short period] is very difficult’. We tried, with questionnaires, and control groups, to tap this, and drew attention to a two-year impact study conducted in Romanian classrooms whose findings illuminate the difficulties in making such assessments. The impact of training on teachers and students is similarly difficult to assess, especially if there is no base line data; all we could say is that many teachers had been introduced to new teaching skills and approaches. Our recommendation that a new project, with stable funding for no less than three years, and with new guidelines, should be based on the existing network, led by the Fulcrum Foundation, did not materialize. The total lack of interest in the project shown by the official from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, when we interviewed him, alerted us to this project being one from an earlier Yeltsin era, in a different political climate.

What did it leave behind? It's difficult to tell. As Rusakova suggested, and we were well aware, any large project will bring in many who are only interested as long as funding exists. The Lukovitsky group carries on its work in regions, for example Kaliningrad, where the ombudsman offers protection, but when she was away on vacation, their teaching of human rights teaching came under attack. St Petersburg? That is more difficult, Rusakova suggests, because there the group faces competition from a rival group. As we might expect, Perm is a region where human rights teaching is pursued actively. The Perm Centre expanded its activities during the new century, with its members travelling to several cities, including to faraway Astrakhan in the south and Arkhangelsk in the north to hold seminars hosted by the institutes engaged in raising teachers’ qualifications. In 2007 the Ministry of Education announced a competition for a manual for teaching human rights to 16–17-year-olds (maybe in response to an initiative by Vladimir Lukin, the ombudsman), to be available for schools with a humanities specialization. The contract was won by a group from the Moscow Academy for Raising Teachers’ Qualifications, which included specialists from Perm, and produced an impressive manual. The Perm Centre has a very full list of relevant human rights educational materials on its website.¹² But Suslov feels that, with the political changes at federal level, there is less interest both from education authorities and from teachers. A decline in interest in the history of political repression is particularly marked.

There is no set course in the school curriculum on human rights, and the course on ‘citizenship education’ has been axed, but a teacher can introduce one, or part of one, under social studies or sometimes under law. It will depend upon her ability to negotiate this with the school director and whether she can include such a course under extra hours (for which she will be paid). Both Suslov and Rusakova would agree that a great deal depends upon the individual teacher, and on teachers’ attitudes in different parts of the country. ‘How do you explain this?’ I ask Suslov. ‘I think, first and foremost, it is related to established political traditions […] from the Soviet period.’ He gives as examples the way teachers in Astrakhan obeyed an instruction to turn out to vote for a particular candidate, and how in Cheboksar an order to bring the school children out on a demonstration on 4 November, the new Russian holiday, where they stood for several hours in freezing temperatures, was seen as perfectly normal. In Perm, he suggests, it would have produced a scandal. The authorities would not think of issuing such an order, and the public would not respond so obediently.

Soviet traditions continue to exist everywhere. And in their new wrapping they reproduce themselves even in those regions, in an environment, where the authorities do not think of themselves as leaders of a soviet type.

For example, in Perm, ‘leaders think of themselves as managers of a new type, using the newest management techniques’. At a meeting that he had recently attended, the 45-year-old head of the regional education authority announced to the 48 heads of the district education departments that the governor wanted the heads of all government departments, down to district level, to use personal blogs, using a particular technology – Word Press. Apparently not all were doing it correctly, and regularly, at least once a week. The following day, the head of the education authority continued, the regional government was going to assess the performance of all departments and, in order that they, education, made a good showing, all blogs should be up by 10 a.m. Those who had four to five hours travel to get home that evening, should ensure they were at work, early, to achieve this.

Suslov's colleague commented to him ‘So, the raikom [party committee] returns’.

I think that is the case. Despite all the external appearance of something new, it's the party-Soviet-administrative tradition […] dressed up in the clothing of ‘new management’. He who is in command thinks of himself as supremely knowledgeable, and therefore requests from society have little significance […] each region depends upon its own petty tyrant. Here it is blogs, somewhere else it will be something else. And everyone will do exactly as the boss prescribes […] in the absence of democratic traditions and institutions.

The interview survey of NGO representatives in several cities, carried out by Denis Volkov of the Levada Centre, adds another dimension to this:

Those who have been ‘elected’ recently on party lists, according to our respondents, are not only uninterested in working with civic activists, but are not interested in doing the work of a deputy […] any criticism which contains ‘real demands’ is always viewed as an attack. People appointed by the governors, mayors, or by the deputies, answer not to the electors, but to those higher up. One of the respondents explained the logic of those in power as ‘You did not put us in office, and therefore your views are of no particular interest to us’.¹³

But to return to the teaching of human rights. In the early years of the new century, human rights schools, whether for adults or children were still popular, and supported by large amounts of Western funding. While a few remain, others simply closed. According to Suslov:

There's a feeling that all those campaigns, connected with human rights education, with conceptions of tolerance or anti-discrimination have worked badly. Perhaps it would be worse if they had not existed. Take xenophobia – it works both ways – because as regards some officials and parts of the media there are successes. Officials watch what they are saying.

Now there are new projects, financed by the Council of Europe, which again aim to introduce teachers to human rights materials. A project run by a Norwegian Centre, Wederland, in partnership with the Moscow School of Civic Education,¹⁴ will, over a period of three years, introduce cohorts of 15–20 teachers and youth workers in Rostov on Don, and in Stavropol, to teaching materials and involve them in designing courses. I attended the first training session, in 2013, in Rostov. What had changed? It was a pleasant surprise to find that the ‘Norwegian’ trainers were a young Belarus and Pole, with native or very good Russian, and that among the materials were those by Suslov's centre. It was disheartening that, in a field in which there are good Russian experts and trainers, the Moscow School had not consulted with those among its own alumni. The project looked sensible, and well organized, and the young teachers participated. It has the support of energetic faculty at Rostov State University. But neither the UNCHR project nor one, run ten years earlier in Rostov by an enterprising lawyer and teacher, seemed known to the participants. Whether this project will succeed in introducing something new into school curricula, and influence students’ and teacher behaviour, will depend upon the future educational and political environment at local and federal level.

Both Sergei Lukashevsky (the Sakharov Centre) and Robert Latypov (Perm Memorial) believe that to teach human rights you have to move away from courses on human rights. The Sakharov Centre now has a programme of seminars, discussions, films on issues that interest students – and they come, 50 to 60 will turn up. As Lukashevsky explains, the topic could be:

hegemony over the Arctic – the conflict of interests between different states, environmental issues, the rights of the indigenous peoples of the north. And this takes us to a whole number of Sakharov themes – peace, progress and human rights […] Unfortunately, few come to historical topics. At the moment, that is not popular, whereas ecology is right in the mainstream, few are interested in political issues, but the fact that it's difficult to breath in Moscow is of interest.

In Perm they approach the issue of education rather differently. They organize schools for journalists, for moderators, on PR, or speechwriting, in other words on subjects which attract those who want to improve or learn new skills. Then they will introduce themes such as freedom of speech or access to information, or the historical past, as part of the material for teaching the skills. The schools are free, on a Saturday, four sessions, and may attract up to 50 young people in their twenties, of whom 30 will last the course. Robert Latypov, the young leader of Perm Memorial, whom we shall meet in Chapter 10, suggests:

If someone like Ponomarev learns of this, he will be amazed, but maybe he will understand that we are going in a different direction […] we understand that you have to move forward, try new methods, be interesting […] even talk about values […] and in such a way that you get some results.

Lukovitsky of the Youth Centre has taken a different path. He is now also active in a new teachers’ trade union. Originally simply designed as a consultation service for teachers facing local problems – for example, the selling of a school building in the centre of a city to a developer – demands came for a trade union, and a newspaper, 1st September, supported by teachers’ contributions, not by the Ministry of Education. Again, there are marked differences in the response from different regions, but the union and newspaper have become sufficiently popular among the 30–35-year-olds to support the setting up of a publishing house.

But now we move on to the activists engaged in ‘concrete’ action, their attempts to influence legislation and its implementation.