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DICHOTOMY OF STATE AND CIVIL SOCIETY RELATION IN RUSSIA: THE CASE OF NGOS

Irina Burmykina

Abstract

The issue about the development of civil society in Russia is open to discussion among Western and Russian scientists. The inconsistency of the Russian practice of civil society formation does not often fit itself within the framework of foreign socio- and political theories and is subjected to criticism. Meanwhile, this social institution is immanently appropriate to any society. In this regard it is more reasonable to speak about the features of social practices and conditions of the formation of civil society rather than about the level of its development in Russia. This process can be very obviously traced by the example of interaction of non-governmental non-profit organizations (NGOs) and the state. Sociological research carried out by the author shows that the formation of civil society in Russia, the development of NGOs considerably differs from this process in European states and has a regional specific character inside the country. Thus, the Russian regions, where the nongovernmental nonprofit organizations were not supported by western funds in the 1990s and in the early 2000s, and where there are no established traditions of civic engagement, demonstrate actually the Russian specific features of the formation of civil society institutions and their interaction with the state. Its essential basis is a controversial symbiosis of paternalism and etatism in the interaction of the state and NGOs. On the one hand, Russia has quite pronounced dominating role of the state pursuant to the number of some historical, geographical and geopolitical reasons. The state has been acting long mostly as the main initiator of the formation of the social institutions, NGOs. Independent activity from the grass roots was limited what caused actual absence of civil society in this country in its classical interpretation, underdevelopment of the non-profit sector. Hence nowadays there is a fragmentariness of civil society structures, underdevelopment of forms of public participation in the activities of NGOs, territorial administration, the high expectations of the population with simultaneous low level of trust in all the branches of public power. On the other hand, the currently actual measures of the state to increase the support of NGOs meet their weak social base and unwillingness to undertake the responsibility for the performance of social services to the population, quite low effectiveness and weak social resonance of their activities.

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DOI resolver: doi.org/10.5593/sgemsocial2014/B12/S2.029

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