A number of strange protests — small, mild and held in a sort of minor key — took place in Russia’s main cities this week.
A bookstore in St. Petersburg wrote in its window on Tuesday, “We are proud to be selling books published by the Dynasty Foundation.” The Dynasty Foundation, a charitable organization that funds research and educational projects, had just been designated by the authorities as a “foreign agent” — contemporary Russian-speak for an “enemy of the state.” In Moscow, a school teacher stood in front of the Justice Ministry holding a cardboard placard. Later, a writer wearing a graduation gown stood in the same spot, holding a sheet of paper in a plastic sleeve. The teacher’s sign said, “Dynasty is not an agent”; the writer’s said, “Agents yourself.”
Dynasty is one of the oldest and largest charities in Russia. Its founder and leader, Dmitry Zimin, seemed, atypically for a rich Russian, to have no enemies — at least until Monday. Mr. Zimin, 82, is widely liked and admired. The oldest of the oligarchs of the 1990s, he is a former radio engineer who made his fortune by starting a cellular-phone network. In 2001, he left the company he founded in order to start a charity to fund scientific research. He then branched out into popular-science publishing, science museums and educational projects. Old enough to remember the Great Terror and his relatives who perished in it, Mr. Zimin had been careful to stay out of political controversies.
The “foreign agent” designation, created by Russian law three years ago, is reserved for NGOs that receive foreign funding and engage in political activity. A sort of scarlet letter, it carries practical consequences. It means that state organizations cannot work with any such organization, and it imposes financial-reporting requirements on NGOs that can paralyze them.
For a charity like Dynasty, which works with schools, libraries and museums, the blow, both moral and practical, is huge. Mr. Zimin has said it hurt him “almost to the point of tears” and that he will no longer finance the foundation. He cannot unilaterally decide to shutter it, but the Dynasty board is likely to make that decision at its meeting early next month.
But how can an educational foundation started by a Russian businessman be considered a “foreign agent” at all? The Justice Ministry points out that Mr. Zimin keeps his money in foreign banks. This is a common practice, used by the Russian government itself, among others, but it does mean that when Mr. Zimin uses his own money to fund his charity, which is in Russia, the money technically travels into the country from abroad.
As for the designation’s other requirement — political activity — the ministry argues that Dynasty funds a group called Liberal Mission. Run by a former Russian economics minister, 81-year-old Yevgeny Yasin, the group holds a series of seminars on topics like “Reason, Religion and Democracy” and “The Myths and Realities of Residential Construction in Russia,” and awards an annual prize called Politprosvet (Political Education) for explanatory journalism on a political topic. The prize was awarded on Wednesday for the fifth, and likely, last time. When Mr. Zimin appeared on the stage of a Moscow theater, wearing belted jeans and a short-sleeved shirt with a smartphone in its pocket, the audience rose to give him an ovation.
Mr. Yasin’s group, Liberal Mission, is also an NGO, and it, too, received the “foreign agent” designation on Monday — because it is funded by Dynasty, which itself has been designated a “foreign agent” because it funds Liberal Mission. This transparently circular logic suggests that however expansive the “foreign agents” law already seemed to be on the books, it is now being applied even more expansively to serve the Kremlin’s needs.
Likewise, the Russian Parliament last week rushed through — and President Vladimir Putin immediately signed — a law on “undesirable organizations,” which allows the government to summarily shut down such organizations if it finds that they threaten the Russian state. The Carnegie Foundation’s Russian branch is in the first batch of five organizations to come under scrutiny under this law.
The Kremlin’s attack on NGOs predates the “foreign agents” law. George Soros stopped financing the Russian chapter of his Open Society Foundation back in 2003, under pressure from the authorities. Late that year, the oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky was jailed, and over the next few years police and prosecutors hounded his Open Russia Foundation until it stopped operations. Over the last three years, the “foreign agents” law has been used to hit very hard what remained of civil society.
With this week’s attacks on two organizations run by octogenarians, the fight against NGOs seems to have entered its final stage. This is happening not so much because the regime is scared of two wise old men who have tried to enlighten the population; it is happening because the state’s repressive machine has become unstoppable. It will not quit until it has vacuumed up every last bit of free thought and independent activity in Russia.
Masha Gessen is the author of seven books, including, most recently, The Brothers: The Road to an American Tragedy.