Simultaneous political, economic and social reform in Russia since 1991 has made three factors of group development more significant for civil society organizations in the initial period of regime transition: the scope and clarity of the group’s goals; the priority placed on information networks and services; and the ability to generate local sources of economic support.

The scope and clarity of a group’s mandate plays a key role because of the relative newness of civil sector activity. The formal organization of group goals and the institutionalization of activities demand more thought and consideration than usually was given at the outset of a group’s coming together. The choices made with regard to official definition of a group’s goals effects the character and size of a group’s constituency.

Information becomes a more valuable commodity during simultaneous transitions because of the fluidity of newly established institutions. The interconnectedness of reforms dictates that information regarding the reform activities in one sector will have some kind of direct effect on the changes taking place in another sector. Therefore, political changes will dictate needed adjustments in economic and social reforms. Changes in the economic situation will effect political and social decisions. Social activity will have a potential influence on economic and political policies as well. None of these alterations, however, would be possible if information about such changes was not made available.

The importance of local support for civil society groups proves to be one of the most difficult, and yet most important, aspects of group development. It is fair to say that for the most part and with few exceptions, non-profit, non-governmental activity in Russia has to-date been primarily funded from abroad. Nearly all NGOs remain financially dependent on grants from Western donor organizations. As the civil sector begins to expand and as the political and economic situation in Russia begins to stabilize, the successful groups will be those who have managed to locate local sources of support, either through direct financial assistance or non-financial sources such as donations of goods and services. All Russian NGOs start out from an extremely weak financial base. Groups that prove successful in finding diversified funding create a safety net to protect the group’s survival in case of dramatic changes in international funding patterns. Below, I will examine how human rights groups in Russia fare on these three key factors, based on twenty case studies conducted in the autumn of 1995 (See Appendix 1 for complete group profiles).

The scope of a group's mandate can greatly effect its potential for development in the immediate transition period. The specific human rights issues a group chooses to address in its work will define its primary membership and constituency. Identifying a topic that suits a viable constituency and adapting an approach suited to that constituency may or may not be a conscious decision on the part of the group founders. Regardless of the amount of forethought put into defining the group’s goals and working philosophy, the results will significantly effect the degree to which the group develops.

The distinction between a broad agenda of universal human rights and a more issue-oriented approach focusing on a select group of rights within the overall human rights framework serves as the first level of evaluation (see Table 1). There are general comparative advantages to each. Nearly all groups work on both levels at least to some extent, if for no other reason than the degree of overlap between issue-specific activities and long-term universal human rights advocacy.

Narrowing one's focus to a specific issue or group of rights allows a group to develop an expertise in the issues and arguments in this debate. Therefore, a group which focuses solely on the right to freedom of movement can become well-versed in national and international laws governing freedom of movement, precedents in forced-migration and refugee work, as well as develop specific regional focuses where freedom of movement is jeopardized. This has proven to be the case for Movement Without Frontiers. On the other hand, groups which deal with a large number of rights issues will often make their appeals based on broader, more generally-known national and international standards, but will likely not have the breadth of experience to bring more specific legal issues to bear on a given case. Groups falling into this weaker category include the St. Petersburg Independent Group for Human Rights and the International Society for Human Rights.

Organizations that focus on the universalism of human rights in Russia during the early stages of regime transition tend to work most effectively on projects of long-term political policy development and civic education. International groups such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch prove to be strong in these areas. A major component of their work involves analyses of countries' adherence to given international human rights protocols and making suggestions for implementation of these standards. In addition, Amnesty International has focused much of its attention in the past few years to developing human rights education programs and practical syllabi for teaching human rights issues at all levels of formal education. These projects demand long-term commitments on the part of groups if they are to succeed in changing political tendencies and social understandings of very complicated theoretical and substantive issues.

The relationship of Soviet and Russian human rights groups to this debate between issue-oriented and universalistic approaches to rights advocacy is, at first glance somewhat inverted. Rather than beginning with issue-oriented activism, the universalistic approach was the initial approach adopted by the first Soviet activists. There were specific historical reasons for taking this universal approach at first. Similarly, the current historical situation dictates the need for and development of more issue-oriented approaches.

When the cause of universal human rights was initially taken up by Soviet dissidents in the late 1960s, it was used as a mechanism to criticize specific Soviet policies and abuses through the language of universal rights. This approach allowed dissidents to avoid the danger of having their actions seen as direct counter-revolutionary violations of the criminal code. In a review of Andrei Sakharov’s memoirs, Michael Scammell suggests, "What the idea of human rights offered individuals confronted by this crushingly monolithic system was a seemingly non-subversive ("non-ideological") platform from which to oppose it." At the heart of the matter remained specific abuses -- psychiatric abuse, torture, and abuse of ethnic minorities and Jews. The political situation of the Soviet 1960s and 1970s, however, made the universal approach much more accessible, and as a result, more successful. In the climate of international human rights advocacy associated with Basket Three of the Helsinki Accords signed in 1975, this manipulation of the Soviet regime’s international commitments afforded early activists leverage in their debates with authorities.

Under the auspices of glasnost and perestroika, more leeway was given to the many informal associations associated with the human rights movement by allowing them greater freedom to organize publicly. One principle event marking this expansion of NGO possibilities was the abolition of the article of the Soviet Constitution that guaranteed the supremacy of the Communist Party. In addition, glasnost policies which sought to expand the circles of political discussion and inquiry gave new life to the intellectual circles so heavily persecuted in the late 1970s. A host of formerly ‘forbidden topics’ of discussion were put up to public debate.

With recent improvements in many basic fundamental rights, such as freedom of association and freedom of the press, blanket universalism has given way to a more particularized manifestation of rights advocacy. Groups tend to pursue more narrow mandates, addressing concrete issues and setting very immediate goals. Explaining this tendency, Vladimir Raskin of the Moscow Research Center for Human Rights suggests that in a situation where there are still so many concrete human rights abuses taking place in one's own country, practical close-to-home issues must take precedence. Raskin noted:

The sheer quantity of human rights violations here in this country is so high that you can't just focus on things like human rights education or creating the mentality of a real citizen who understands his rights. First we have to carry out those very practical projects, dealing with concrete people with concrete problems.

The opportunity to organize has resulted in particularization of the human rights movement.

This practical focus becomes more apparent when one examines the major groups currently working in Russia. While it is possible to organize groups by topical themes, even within these groupings there are a number of diverse smaller issues within given areas of human rights work. For example, there are currently hundreds of organizations dealing with human rights issues in the Russia military, many of which are organized by the parents and families of conscripts and servicemen. However, when one begins to look more carefully at the day-to-day activities of these groups, further distinctions can be made. While the Committees of Soldiers' Mothers are active in making mass appeals to authorities regarding the conditions of military service, the branches of the Organization "Soldiers' Mothers" tends to focus its energy more directly on social grassroots empowerment, providing assistance to those parents and families seeking to make their own appeals through officially-established channels. In yet another example, the "Mother's Right" Foundation provides services for the families of those who have died during peacetime military duty. Each of these groups addresses a very specific subset of issues within the broader scope of military service-related human rights issues. Because of the narrowness of their agendas, these three organizations compliment each other's work rather than duplicating activities under different or competing banners.

The reason for the diversity among organizations in Russia today can be explained by the manner in which NGOs are currently being formed. Lacking the historical tradition of grassroots organizing, Russian civil society groups tend to develop more out of an immediate need or circumstance that a general interest or value assertion. Raskin observed:

People start to work from an entirely different point -- absolute grassroots. They start an NGO when they see some specific kind of abuse -- something where concrete rights are related. They collect a group of people with similar problems together and create a program of very practical work.

Accepting this manner of group formation, it follows that groups would more likely form in defense of local rights issues. The broader application of rights-oriented values to international-scope problems does not necessarily develop out of such specific interest-based activism. In fact, until local issues are resolved, the case for value-based activism -- what Scammell has called "extraterritorial citizens' lobbing" -- remains weak. Does this inevitable leave the cross-boarder defense of human rights to only the more highly developed democracies? Perhaps not.

When local issues coalesce with international issues, more credibility can be granted to a local cause. A case in point is the rise of the international gay and lesbian rights movement that developed extensively during the 1980s. Since the issue of sexual orientation rights had already been placed on the agendas of international QUANGOs and NGOs, groups like the Russian Tchaikovsky Foundation and the Association "Wings" were able to access greater international publicity and attention and receive more assistance from international supporters and related NGOs at their outset. Similarly, profession-based advocacy roles such as the ones filled by the Independent Psychiatric Association and the Russian Lawyers' Committee for Human Rights find universal context given to their local rights issues by the support of international professional associations such as the World Psychiatric Association and the International Bar Association respectively.

There are a number of examples of Russian human rights groups that take an issue-oriented approach to their work. The Committee of Soldiers' Mothers, the Organization "Soldiers' Mothers" and "Mother's Right" Foundation all grew out of specific crises associated with military service. The Committee of Soldiers' Mothers was formed by mothers who were concerned about the fact that their sons were forced to interrupt their university studies for two years of military service. Once formed, the Committee expanded their work to include other issues of conditions of military service. The Organization "Soldiers' Mothers" was created to assist families and conscripts in the formal process of appeals for deferment or exemption from service and requests for alternative service. The group focused its work on resolving difficulties in the appeals process -- from acquiring the proper appeals forms to understanding the legal statues governing one's rights. "Mother's Right" grew out of the need to pressure military officials to be more respondent to the needs and requests of families of those who had died during military service. The group lobbies for the release of information surrounding the deaths and tries to secure entitlement benefits for the surviving family. The specific nature of each group's focus within the broader issue of the rights of servicemen and their family reflects this tendency of issue-oriented group formation and activity.

The need-based support structure resulting from this type of organization works to the advantage of Russian human rights groups during the period of regime transition. Grounding their cause in the practical needs of their constituencies enables human rights groups to overcome the challenge posed by the lack of a tradition of volunteerism or interest-based social activity in Russia. It also bodes well for groups seeking to secure volunteer time from constituency members who are already strapped for time as a result of economic hardships related to transition period instability. Thus, pursuit of one’s needs serves as the motivation factor for membership and active participation rather than more idealistically conceived value advocacy as is commonly true in the West.

Groups who take a more universalistic approach to human rights advocacy since 1991, for the most part, have failed to develop a strong local support base in Russia. Broad-scope mandates and/or non-specific (case-applicable) goals characterize these groups. Herbert Kitschelt has argued that division and disorganization within groups tends to manifest itself in proportion to the extent to which the group advocates broad, sweeping goals, such as the "democratization of society." Two indigenous Russian organizations falling into this category are the Right to Life and Human Dignity Society and the St. Petersburg Independent Group for Human Rights. The first of these groups deal with human rights issues in a broad sense, pursuing the general right to life issue in its many different forms. The group pursues not only an end to the death penalty, but also more generally advocates the rights of socially unprotected groups and the overall establishment of civic peace. As one can see, the potential constituency for the "Right to Life and Human Dignity" Society ranges from death row inmates to the many ethnic minorities across Russia to the victims of police brutality. As a result, the activities of the group have tended to focus more on publishing opinion pieces in newspapers than specific casework activities. The only specific casework they have addressed recently has been individual death penalty cases and the cases of victims of abuse during the political events in Moscow in October 1993.

The St. Petersburg Independent Group for Human Rights falls victim to its own problem of self-definition. While they work from the basis of universal human rights as put forth in the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, their casework on behalf of political prisoners takes various forms which members themselves find hard to define or explain. They pursue their work primarily though personal channels within local dissident circles, often making their working agenda a haphazard collage of personal cases rather than any thematic approach to rights advocacy. In this respect, the St. Petersburg Group continues to resemble Soviet-period human rights groups. It remains ineffective -- in a sense paralyzed -- for these very same reasons. The fact that their activities are not in any way standardized makes it hard for them to describe their work in concrete terms or to solicit local support. Especially in a situation where people are highly suspect of any politically oriented group activities, weakly structured or defined groups fail to engender any broad scope of local support.

The distinction between issue-oriented and universal approaches parallels the differences between groups with long- and short-term goal orientation. The tendency of Russian NGOs to form as a result of specific

needs suggests that, by nature, these groups will take case-related approaches to immediate issues at hand. Not surprisingly, the pursuit of short-term goals dominates the work of human rights groups in Russia today. As a result, groups organizing in this manner can often lay claim to concrete accomplishments (or, for that matter, failures). For example, Movement Without Frontiers can give a detailed list of those secrecy refusniks whose appeals for permission to exit the country were successfully or unsuccessfully pursued. Similarly, the Independent Psychiatric Association can itemize their casework and quantify the number of psychiatric misdiagnoses they helped to identify. The "Mother's Right" Foundation can establish how many cases of survivor benefits they helped to resolve in the same way. These short-term successes can be held up to support group legitimacy so often questioned by the public in this period.

In contrast to short-term casework, long-term development of social and group infrastructure is more difficult to track. Especially during the period of regime transition, long-term projects pose a challenge to civil society organizations. Poorly developed channels of social-political dialogue and weak legal infrastructure make development issues all the more precarious. Instability in the political realm place human rights groups at a severe disadvantage with respect to influencing political policy decisions which may effect human rights advocacy or protection. During political transition, instability dominates the channels of representative democracy because of the fluidity of political leadership and the changing legal grounds on which that authority is based. For this reason, Russian human rights groups in 1995, while potentially effective in social organization, remain weak in their role as political interest groups throughout the transition period.

Besides the political challenge to long-term infrastructure work, human rights groups face the challenge of developing and maintaining a support base in a society in which any and all group organizations are suspect and the motivation for membership may be unclear. Many human rights activists have acknowledged the difficulty in widely developing their membership on account of other demands on people's time as well as their critical view of anything even remotely falling into the political realm.

During this period, infrastructure is more successfully pursued within the human rights movement itself rather between state and society. The Moscow Research Center for Human Rights provides an example of this intra-movement development. The Center plays the role of central organizer for the wide expanse of human rights groups active throughout the country. The strength of the Center lies not so much in its ability to provide these groups with access to political representatives, but rather in its ability to enhance the networks of communication and organization between groups. The Center provides groups with organizational training and access to development funds. Infrastructure issues are vitally important aspects of work for many groups, including the Independent Psychiatric Association, the Moscow Center for Prison Reform and the Russian Lawyers' Committee for Human Rights. It should be stressed, however, that infrastructure issues are not the only foci of their work. Each group also pursues -- in many cases with more primacy -- short-term, issue-oriented casework.

Groups that focus entirely on long-term infrastructure issues fare poorly during the transition period. In general, this fact tends to make the work of international human rights organizations more difficult in Russia at this point. Besides the fact that they tend to take a more long-term, universalistic approach to their work, international human rights groups are challenged by their often poor local contacts and the perceived threat of cultural imperialism associated with international organizations involved in democratization and development projects.

In the scope of this study, both the International Society for Human Rights and Amnesty International fall into this category. Both base their mandate on general principles embodied in the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In the case of the International Society for Human Rights, this broad mandate results in a non-standard approach to casework based more on the personal interests of the in-country leadership than regularly organized casework. For Amnesty International, two factors work against them during the transition period. First, as a rule, AI groups worldwide do not work on cases in their own country (with the exception of death penalty cases). This policy aims to ensure AI’s non-partisan character and to reaffirm their commitment to universal human rights. Second, many aspects -- most notably their human rights education projects -- are serious, long-term endeavors that do not provide immediate or concrete results.

These factors do not only effect international human rights groups. There are several indigenous Russian groups that currently struggle with the potential drawbacks of their mandate and approach. One such case is the Human Rights House. This group focuses solely on developing academic specialty in theoretical issue of human rights: training future teachers, applying human rights foci to current curricula, developing new civic education and rights-related curricula. Working out of the St. Petersburg Institute of Theology and Philosophy, Human Rights House has failed to expand its partnership to other institutions in Russia or to increase its local support base beyond the faculty of the one institute. While some success has been made in locating unofficial partners abroad (namely Columbia University), concrete or quantifiable results remains lacking. After three years of organizing, they have failed to significantly increase their local membership and support base, leaving them to work in relative isolation from other human rights groups.

Two other Russia groups that fall into this category are the Association "Wings" and the Tchaikovsky Foundation, both addressing issues of gay and lesbian rights. While the groups do regular work on specific cases of abuses, to a large extent their role in society is to create a better understanding of gay and lesbian issues and to change the public opinion of what it means to be homosexual. Changing social attitudes is by nature a long-term process. The initial successes or failures of these groups can best be seen and judged by the members of the gay and lesbian community based on their personal experiences in social participation and interaction with heterosexual members of society. On a more general level, changes in social attitudes will only come with the passage of time, allowing for new social and cultural patterns to be established and influenced by the work of these groups. At least during the initial period of sociopolitical transition, the identifiable successes of such groups will remain their individual casework, not their degree of influence in changing social patterns.

To a certain extent, the Moscow Helsinki Group also falls into the category of groups pursuing long-term, relatively non-specific goals, in their case monitoring Russia’s adherence to the Helsinki Accords. Interestingly enough, this value-based approach does not seem to have hurt the group’s ability to flourish in the transition period. I attribute this to three factors. For one, the Moscow Helsinki Group is in a sense, the club of former Soviet dissidents -- the main players (and founders) of the human rights movement in the 1960s and 70s. The Moscow Helsinki Group Board of Directors reads like a laundry list of famous activists: Yuri Orlov, Ludmilla Alexeeva, Sergei Kovalev, Vychaslav Bakhmin, Aleksei Smirnov. Together as the Moscow Helsinki Group, these activists are influential overseers of the broader human right movement in Russia. In most cases their names evoke the respect -- or at least the attention -- of Russian political leaders and the international community. Many of the group’s members have served on governmental commissions and bodies, including the Presidential Commission on Human Rights and the State Duma.

In addition to applying pointed political pressure on certain cases and issues addressed by other human rights groups, the work of the Moscow Helsinki Group also includes holding seminars that deal with theoretical and practical issues of human rights, assisting in the development of a comprehensive human rights network, and developing legal education programs which focus on human rights in their legal context. The scores of related Helsinki monitors and associations across Russia perform more of a watchdog role in the regions rather than as active participants in the programs of the Moscow group. Overall, the potential weaknesses posed by the long-term nature of their work is overshadowed by the Moscow Helsinki Group’s prestigious membership and its central role in the development of human rights information and communication networks.

During the transition period, information becomes a more valuable commodity. The speed of democratization can be manipulated -- for better or for worse -- through the control of information. Especially at the local and regional levels, access to information related to legal and political changes taking place at the national level in major urban centers such as Moscow and Petersburg plays an integral role in deciding whether or not certain aspects of transition will succeed. The sheer speed and number of legal reforms passed in Russia in 1991 and 1992 alone made it difficult for regions to maintain continuity with the center. For NGOs, information resources prove invaluable to their activities during the transition period. Groups must be able to access, analyze and adapt to changing legal and political cultures.

The issues of community, connections, and support prove important both within Russia and internationally. Within Russia, the benefits are perhaps more immediate, more concrete: providing much needed information and resources; increased access to funding and training opportunities; practical hands-on assistance with fundraising; insights into locally effective appeals and actions; friendship and camaraderie. On the international level, the value is no less important: technical and professional assistance; increased publicity and acknowledgment; resource sharing; and once again friendship and camaraderie.

Information can also be used as a point of leverage by groups to apply pressure to political players during Russia’s transition. Information also becomes useful in a group’s interaction with society. By providing well-organized information otherwise not readily available to society, a group can play the role of information provider and increase its appeal to certain interest groups within society. Human rights group which place a priority on their role as an information provider will prove to be more useful and effective in pursuit of short-term goals and more influential in laying groundwork for long-term pursuits of interests (see Table 2).

Connectivity to the community of NGOs -- most specifically the community of human rights organizations -- is essential for serious group development during the transition period. The information services provided by this community to one another prove exceptionally valuable since the transition process itself turns information into one of the most valuable commodities. The fluidity of legal and political structures during the transition makes keeping abreast of changes vital to those groups seeking to utilize legal channels and/or interact with political players. Contacts within the non-governmental sector also prove useful in helping to define the environment in which the group works. Without an adequate and up-to-date understanding of the general social, economic and political situation, groups cannot make themselves useful to their constituencies. In this respect, membership in a community of associations proves to be most vital for groups in the more remote regions and non-urban centers because of their need to overcome traditional communication weaknesses between the center and periphery.

During the initial years of a group’s development, the experience and opportunities made available through contacts with similar organization prove to be invaluable resources which can sufficiently fill many of the gaps resulting from weak grassroots traditions such as poorly developed channels of communication or broad-scale group coordination aimed at reducing project overlap and redundancy. This holds especially true for Russian NGOs, historically plagued by their "islands of relative isolation from one another" and their inability to organize on any large scale during the Soviet period.

Today, connectivity and networking among NGOs has resulted in the creation of umbrella groups and central coordination offices through which resources and opportunities flow. These centers provide a central locus for information regarding the activities of their members and associated groups. In many cases, these centers serve as amplifiers of publicity and channels for international funding and support. In many cases, they also serve as an example of professionalism, providing the groups associated with them access to resources and training in organizational management and development. The Moscow Research Center for Human Rights and a number of similar centers in St. Petersburg and other regions across Russia provide such services to the local human rights community.

The Moscow Center was created to address this very issue of developing connections between human rights groups around Russia and enhancing groups through outreach, training, and support. One of the main tasks carried out by the Center has been the administration of small grants programs funded by international donor organizations. Since the Center has made contacts within these funding organizations and has proven its responsibility and worthiness for such funds for the first five years of its existence, many international funders now look to the Center for assistance in administering grants and monitoring recipient groups on-site. Raskin notes, "People at the foundations have gotten to know us now, started to trust us in terms of our financial responsibility. It also helps that we are financially transparent, publishing our budget every year in the newsletter." This set-up is seen by funders, the Center and recipient groups alike to increase the return on investments in the human rights movement in Russia. Raskin commented:

We can make sure this money is spent properly and most effectively, more so than Western organizations which frankly don't know who these groups are or what the situation is in the regions. Even if they do, they don't seem to care or pay that much attention to who gets the money or where it goes. These small grants programs are very often more effective because they go to the groups that are really out there in the trenches doing the really hard work.

The Center also serves as an information clearinghouse on funding opportunities available to groups -- mainly international donor organizations and private foundations. Staff members of the Center provide assistance to groups wishing to pursue funding opportunities by helping to draft grant proposals and make yearly accounting records and reports for groups. In many cases, this is an area where young Russian human rights groups lack experience, many groups having only recently emerged from their informal beginnings. Raskin described this difficulty:

It is not only that most of them do not speak English, but also that they do not know where to apply, how to get money, or how to write project proposals. They do very practical work, but they don't know how to describe this work. ... We have taken interviews with their leaders to gather information so that we can make reports and proposals for them because they can't or don't have the time. Again, it's a lack of knowledge of organization management, fundraising and the sort. This is the situation all over the country.

Aleksei Smirnov, Director of the Moscow Center, compares the situation of the groups in the region to the situation of the Moscow groups four or five years earlier. Smirnov commented:

The groups in Eastern Europe are five years ahead of our groups here in Moscow in their level of development, their maturity and strength of their groups. It can be said that groups in Moscow are five years ahead of the groups in the regions [of Russia].

The need to connect with one another has remained central to the mission of the Moscow Research Center for Human Rights and other groups. Raskin noted this importance, "We need to help each other more so than in the West, in part because of this potential political pressure and the actual pressures on us -- the total newness of our NGOs, our weaknesses." Through its Information Network Project, the Moscow Research Center for Human Rights is currently developing a standardized system of information exchange between human rights groups in the regions and the central office in Moscow. Much of this project has developed by way of the most up-to-date technological innovations -- mainly the Internet.

The Information Project is currently in the process of administering a series of small grants programs that provide material assistance and technical training to provide regional human rights groups with Internet access (or at least access to e-mail). The program aims to help groups by providing direct technical and financial assistance. The National Endowment for Democracy initially sponsored the project with a $60,000 grant, $45,000 or which goes directly to regional partners (fifteen $3,000 grants). The Project has already held five training sessions in Moscow for regional group leaders and has widely distributed modems to groups in the field. Follow-up training and on-site support has also been provided through a series of trips to the regions. Over 200 human rights groups are already in some way connected to the project and over 500 groups receive the monthly news bulletin.

Nearly all of the groups interviewed for this research have made mention of the significance of this news bulletin, both practically and morally. Practically speaking, the information contained in the bulletin provides groups with concrete examples of human rights work -- from how to deal with local authorities to where to find new and up-to-date legal texts. While many of the examples are very locally specific, groups have argued that they often find that such examples hold lessons that can be applied to different regions and different rights issues.

In many cases, guidance on where to find certain kinds of information resources benefits many groups. In other cases, where information is not readily available, the Center in Moscow has provided assistance with locating and distributing such documents. A recent example is the telephone hotline provided by the Committee of Soldiers’ Mothers for families across Russia to access information on casualties in the Chechen conflict. These are only a few ways in which groups that are networked together in some fashion can help to provide information and resources to other groups who may not be able to locate or access these materials.

On a more emotional level, close contact with other human rights groups can serve as a source of moral support. Understandably, the burnout rate among human rights activists and volunteers is quite high. Dealing with issues of mental and physical abuse, torture and an wide range of inhumane acts in the course of their work, human rights groups -- more so perhaps than other NGOs -- need to provide some form of moral and emotional support in order to maintain the devotion and energies of their members. Hearing the stories of other groups can in many cases provide this needed sense of community.

Contact with the community of Russian and international human rights groups and women’s organizations provides moral support for members of the Committee of Soldiers’ Mothers. Tatyana Znachkova, member of the Committee of Soldiers’ Mothers Planning Board, noted:

When the war in Chechnya started, we received letters from Belgium, Norway, England, America, Canada, from all the countries in Europe -- and not only organizations, but individuals from the West as well, America and Europe. The women around the world gave us their support. They provided us with moral support. That's very important. We feel that we're not alone, especially because the military dismiss us as crazy old ladies. When we receive letters of support of our struggle, we are comforted and can continue our activities, our protests. Yes, moral support is VERY important...when you know you're not alone.

In the same respect, Veronika Marchenko stressed that one of the most important services that the "Mother’s Right" Foundation provides is a sense of community for those families all suffering from the peacetime loss of loved one in the military. "And with this sense of community," Marchenko said, "comes an increased sense of power -- power to fight for what is yours, to fight for your right to know what happened, and to demand the compensation due to you for your loss."

Groups that maintain international contacts with similar-minded organizations have also expressed the sense of community and support. The Independent Psychiatric Association places a great value on the support it has received over the years from the World Psychiatric Association and others within the international medical community. In fact, it was the relationship between these two associations which proved instrumental in delaying the admission of the Russian State Psychiatric Association into the World Psychiatric Association until human rights issues could be more thoroughly addressed by the admissions committee.

Community is also a major issue for the gay and lesbian rights groups "Wings" and the Tchaikovsky Foundation. Since their founding, both organizations have maintained regular contact with the International Lesbian and Gay Human Rights Group. The Glasnost Defense Fund maintains contact with international press associations and freedom of speech groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union, Committee for the Defense of Free Speech, Freedom Forum and Reporters sans Frontiers. Citizen Control also maintains contact with the ACLU, as well as other right-to-know groups worldwide. The Moscow Center for Prison Reform also maintains contacts with a host of American and international criminal justice organizations. The Russian Lawyers’ Committee for Human Rights maintains contacts with legal associations, including the World Bar Association and the American Bar Association.

Playing the role of an information service provider can take many forms. Groups themselves can serve as media outlets. The human rights news agency Express Chronicle provides such an example. While not necessarily a ‘group’ in the sense of being organized as a membership-based association which engages in NGO-type activities, Express Chronicle plays the role of a professional journalistic news agency which focuses directly on issues of human rights and sociopolitical current events. Express Chronicle acts as a channel through which other human rights groups and activists can be heard. By dedicating itself to reporting on the activities of NGOs and individual activists, Express Chronicle helps to fill the communication gap between civil society and the state.

This exchange flows both ways, filtering information about governmental activity to civil society organizations as well. When it first began in 1978, the Express Chronicle Weekly Newspaper was one of the few regular publications playing this role, and even so, at that time Express Chronicle was an illegal underground publication. When restrictions on the press were lifted under Gorbachev, Express Chronicle gained a stronger voice and an increased readership. Today, Express Chronicle, the weekly newspaper, runs a circulation of 15,000 copies. This number is slightly lower than in previous years for reasons of financial constraints, but has been supplemented by the daily news wire and weekly summaries which are sent out via e-mail and/or fax to approximately 150 news services, organizations and individuals worldwide.

Another media outlet provided by a different human rights group is the radio program Oblaka (Clouds), run by the Moscow Center for Prison Reform. This program, airing weekly across all of Russia on Radio Rossiya, provides information related to issues of criminal justice, the prison and camp systems in Russia, and human rights work in general. In the past, Oblaka has given airtime to numerous human rights groups and charitable organizations, offering them nationwide exposure not often made available to NGOs by traditional media organizations. As the St. Petersburg Independent Group for Human Rights came to realize, this level of exposure can prove to be overwhelming. Director of the group, Vladimir Sergeev noted:

One time they interviewed us on the ‘Oblaka’ radio program, and the response was overwhelming. In the next few weeks we received letters and correspondences from over 500 people from all across Russia. So many of these people had cases they wanted us to look into, but of course we could not respond to the all. We are only a small group here -- a few volunteers. We tried to get some other groups we know of to help us to help these people. I think that kind of response says a lot about where human rights stand today in Russia.

Other groups that have been featured on Oblaka include the Moscow research Center for Human Rights, the Committee of Soldiers’ Mothers and Independent Psychiatric Association.

The Glasnost Defense Fund plays a supporting role through its advocacy work to support the free flow of information and on behalf of journalists who fall victim to human rights abuses. The Glasnost Defense Fund not only provides resources and support (legal, technical, professional) to journalists, but it also documents and publishes cases of abuse and infringements upon the freedom of speech and press. When asked why documenting such cases is so important, Oleg Ponfilov of the Glasnost Defense Fund responded:

If we don’t let people know what they are not being told on the official news broadcasts and reports, they will not know the true reality of Russia today. ...They will believe many false-truths about how many have died in Chechnya or how free the press really is, because they won’t know any better.

In this respect, their main role is that of a freedom of press watchdog.

Serving as an information resource can not only make a group more popular within society, but also make the group more powerful vis-à-vis political actors. The increased visibility of a group actively involved with the media and other information networks can attract more attention to a give human rights issue, both nationally and internationally -- and beyond the usual circles of interested parties. Nationally, increased exposure to an issue can help to increase the size of the interest group at hand. Nationally advertised concerns about the rights of a given ethnic minority, for example, can help to increase a group’s support base outside of its regional locale. Internationally, similar interest groups can get involved, applying political pressure from the outside.

Many NGOs in Russia today are quickly learning how best to work with the media. Group activities are conducted in ways to maximize the public interest, garnering more media attention. The desire to make symbolic reference or historical connections through their public activities has worked to the advantage of Russian human rights groups seeking more media coverage. The March of Maternal Compassion and Protest Against the War in Chechnya, organized by the Committee of Soldiers’ Mothers used several symbols in order to make their statement heard: beginning the march on International Women’s Day; directing the march directly down the line of engagement between Russian national troops and Chechen rebels; the laying of white handkerchiefs along the way as signs of peace. Each of these details enhanced the media-quality of the event.

The Memorial Society annually holds a silent vigil in memory of the victims of political repression on October 31. In Moscow, this event is held at the site of the Solovetskii Memorial Stone in Lubyanka Square, directly across from the former KGB building where, ironically enough, many of the political prisoners being remembered, were tortured, killed, or sent to Gulags. "They say that Lubyanka is the tallest building in Moscow," a man attending the Moscow vigil in 1995 remarked to me. "You know why? Because you can see all the way to Siberia from inside."

Besides events, publications can play an important role in a group’s public exposure. Books, magazines, and newspapers are consumed en masse by Russians in major cities and small towns alike. One can hardly walk two blocks without finding a kiosk or street vendor selling a wide range of books and publications. Especially in a country that until recently strictly limited and/or censored most publications, citizens now consume large quantities of print news and publications. Groups that can take advantage of the new openness of these publication outlets can not only increase the their exposure, but also advance their cause through performing public education services.

Nearly all of the groups working out of the Moscow Research Center for Human Rights produce monthly group newsletters that document group activities. In addition to individual group newsletters, the Moscow Center produces its own newsletter that highlights the activities of its member groups. Group newsletters are primarily circulated among members, funders, and other human rights groups and are not widely distributed to the general public. Many groups, however, do produce journals, periodic reports and bulletins that are released to the press and made publicly available. In many cases, these bulletins address topics of the day. Memorial recently released a book documenting an incident in the Chechen village of Samashkin that involved a large number of civilian casualties who suffered at the hands of federal troops. Glasnost Defense Fund has also released Chechen-related publications, including a documented report of violations of media rights and attacks on journalists reporting in the region. The events in Chechnya currently hold the most appeal for the general public.

Another type of information resource being made available by Russian groups are various ‘how-to’ manuals and instruction booklets. The Organization "Soldiers’ Mothers" recently published a guidebook for conscripts looking to defer service or gain exemption on account of medical, legal or personal reasons. This booklet, published with financial assistance from the European Union’s Phare/Tacis Program, contains application blanks, samples of various appeals and legal texts to cite in making one’s appeal. The booklet is distributed by branches of the Organization "Soldiers’ Mothers" across Russia. Another publication produced by the group collects of newspaper articles on the work of the Organization "Soldiers’ Mothers" and various aspects of military service dilemmas in Russia today.

"Mother’s Right" Foundation has an ongoing publication project which aims not only to educate the public on the very often tragic deaths that occur in the military during peacetime, but also to provide a sense of closure and support for the families of those who have died. The Memory Book: 100 of the 15,000 includes photos and brief synopses of the cases of individuals who died in the military during peacetime service. President of "Mother’s Right" Veronika Marchenko acknowledged that The Memory Book plays an important role in the family’s healing process.

The final factor in group development that plays a crucial role during the early stages of regime transition is the ability of a group to generate local financial support for the group’s work. The fact that the current transition is one from a communist regime makes this factor even more important in Russia’s case. Economic marketization has placed extreme financial hardships on the large part of the population. During these times of skyrocketing inflation, increased unemployment and a plummeting ruble, both individuals and institutions are forced to make drastic adjustments in their financial lives. For individuals, this translates into long hours at work and tight budgets at home. Raskin observed:

This transition period, with its political instability and economic hardships on everyone, creates a lot of sociological repression. People can't be confident that anything will stay the same from day to day. You can't know what's going to happen tomorrow.

For institutions, it often means cutting programs and scaling down their activities. In the non-profit sector -- an area that, by its very nature, faces enormous fundraising challenges -- this scenario does not bode well. In Russia, the lack of a strong tradition of charity or volunteerism amplifies this situation even further. Raskin observes:

Unfortunately the main disease is that we lack financial sustainability, which means that there are no traditions in Russia -- never in the 3rd sector or grassroots. .... In the US, it's something like 80% of the budget that comes from private donations. We simply cannot rely on private donations.

The ability to locate and utilize non-financial means of support puts certain civil society groups at a marked advantage over those that cannot make such adaptations (see Table 3).

The most obvious and traditional way to take advantage of non-financial resources available to a group is to utilize volunteer potential. Although this may appear to be an obvious step for most non-profit organizations, the ability to successfully attract and maintain volunteers may not always be present. Effective volunteer management and extrapolation of volunteer resources comes with professional experience, very often lacking in the nascent Russian non-profit sector. Attempts have already been made to address this problem in Russia. United Way International currently distributes two books on non-profit and volunteer management to aspiring Russian organizations. IREX (The International research and Exchange Board) has also embarked on a cooperative project to develop non-profit training and resource centers across Russia where groups and organizations can go for assistance with such development issues.

Most Russian human rights groups today are run almost entirely by volunteer staff. This results from the crisis-driven manner in which groups are formed, just as much as it does from fiscal necessity. Those few organizations that can afford to maintain a regular paid staff often receive most -- if not all -- of the funding for this staff from international donors. Even in these cases, the size of paid staff remains small and the pay itself rather low. Many paid staff members also hold additional jobs. Given the changes in a group’s funding, there are no guarantees that a group will be able to maintain paid staffs from year-to-year. In this situation, developing a dedicated volunteer basis can provide a more stable working environment.

A hidden benefit-of-sorts lies within Russia’s crisis-stricken economy: unemployment. While high rates of unemployment force groups to seemingly discount the possibility of membership donations, the large number of unemployed can provide a pool of volunteers with the time to spare. A significant number of volunteers with whom I spoke acknowledged that they were able to volunteer because of their unemployed status. Many groups also find dedicated volunteers among the ranks of the retired. Pensioners make up the large part of soldiers’ mothers groups. The members of these two volunteer pools help to form the majority of volunteers in Russian human rights groups today.

The nature of certain groups’ activities makes it easier for them to incorporate volunteer power into their system of operations. Groups geared toward more professional elements of human rights work are more challenged to find ways to include unskilled volunteer power into their activities. Membership-based or mass-support groups such as Committee of Soldiers’ Mothers, "Wings", the Tchaikovsky Foundation, and Amnesty International can find many useful ways in which to incorporate general volunteer time into their work. Petition drives and letter-writing campaigns are perhaps the easiest activities to utilize volunteer power. This technique has become the staple for Amnesty International groups worldwide. In these instances, the more volunteers pounding the pavement, passing out petitions and getting the public involved, the greater their impact on the group’s work. In many cases, a volunteer need only know the basic goals and philosophy of the group and the project on which they are working. Basic office work such as filing and stuffing envelopes also takes little to no training or supervision.

Groups whose work demands more training and/or experience can find it more difficult to overcome the direct financial constraints they face. They are not necessarily immobilized by this weakness. In fact, many groups in Russia today have proven extremely adept at soliciting pro bono and volunteer time from professionals in their fields. The Independent Psychiatric Association and the Russian Lawyers’ Committee for Human Rights, as professional organizations, regularly offer pro bono services to their constituencies. The St. Petersburg Organization "Soldiers Mothers" provides free access to legal and medical professionals during their public receiving hours. Free legal services are also made available by the Moscow Research Center for Human Rights, Glasnost Defense Fund, "Mother’s Right" Foundation, and Movement Without Frontiers.

Besides free services, some groups have taken advantage of donations of goods and materials. While direct cash donations can be difficult to solicit, donations of material goods can often be easier to locate. The International Society for Human Rights has been successful in soliciting donations of basic medical supplies for prison and camp inmates in several Russian cities. The Committee of Soldiers’ Mothers has provided food and clothing for servicemen who deserted their posts, as well as donated wheelchairs and crutches for disabled servicemen. "Mother’s Right" Foundation has been instrumental in providing relief supplies to surviving family members of deceased servicemen once service stipends are stopped.

One of the most impressive cases of in-kind donations made to human rights groups involved a group outside the scope of this study, the Moscow Association for the Guardianship of Penitentiary Institutions. It was reported in the Moscow Research Center for Human Rights newsletter that in 1995, the Association for the Guardianship of Penitentiary Institutions solicited donations of clothing and books from individuals and churches, donations of foodstuffs from five Moscow bakeries and stores for distribution to over 5,000 prisoners in thirteen different prisons, camps and hospitals around Russia for its "Easter in Prison" project. Cash donations totaling 2,243,000 rubles also helped to fund the program.

Not only do groups solicit support from local businesses and donors, but international organizations as well. Several funding organizations have supplemented small grants programs and ongoing project support by making materials and equipment available on a case-by-case basis. It was through general technical assistance funding made available through the Soros Foundation that enabled the St. Petersburg Organization "Soldiers’ Mothers" to receive additional photocopiers for their office. It was through similar funding from various sources that Express Chronicle expanded their computer resources and Internet capacity. Direct donations of this kind help to prevent the questionable allocation funds.

A final method of exploiting local resources and support is through resource sharing between groups. While one cannot ignore the fact that in many cases groups in the non-profit sector are in indirect competition with each other for a limited amount of funding opportunities, it is nonetheless encouraging to see a large number of groups making certain resources in their possession available to other groups. This proves especially helpful when one group has expertise in a specific technical or professional area that other groups do not have the resources or experience to develop.

The Moscow Research Center for Human Rights provides several examples of resource sharing. Office space in Moscow does not come cheaply. Locating available space can prove to be an enormous task in and of itself. It took over two years for the founders of the Center to locate their current office space. Raskin observed:

Yes, we're very proud that we got this office -- and without bribing especially. Aleksei Smirnov and Andrei Pribylov especially are proud to have gotten this office without bribing people. It was really hard...really hard."

Currently, fifteen groups work out of the seven rooms the Center occupies in downtown Moscow. Without this space, many groups admit that they would have to be run out of a member’s apartment and would be much more limited in their activities as a result. A similar situation exists in St. Petersburg, where the building at 8 Izmailovsky Prospect houses a number of human rights and democratic organizations.

Hand in hand with shared office space goes shared office equipment such as fax machines and photocopiers -- often the most powerful tools in human rights work, but at the same time some of the more difficult supplies for fledging groups to acquire on their own. In the Moscow Research Center for Human Rights, groups share fax machines, photocopiers and electronic mail. In addition to sharing material good, skills are traded as well. Those involved with the Center’s Information Network Project have helped other groups get on-line and explore the ways in which e-mail and other Internet resources can be used to fill group needs. Personal contacts with officials have also been exchanged between groups.

All of these techniques have helped Russian human rights groups to protect against the negative effects of their financial vulnerability. These techniques used to supplement broad financial support from group members and local supports have not totally resolved the dilemma of their financial dependence on the West for support. All of the groups mentioned here still face the threat of extinction if Western funding is stopped. What these groups have shown, however, is that they are taking serious measures to provide a safety net of local support channels and alternative resources in case such a funding crisis arises.