Foreign Agents in Russia - Doria

disclosure statute that requires persons acting as agents of foreign principals in a
political or quasi-political capacity to make periodic public disclosure of their
relationship with the foreign principal, as well as activities, receipts and disbursements
in support of those activities. Disclosure of the required information facilitates
evaluation by the government and the American people of the statements and activities
of such persons in light of their function as foreign agents. The FARA Registration Unit
of the Counterespionage Section (CES) in the National Security Division (NSD) is
responsible for the administration and enforcement of the Act.” (The United States
Department of Justice)
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Linguistically as in English, also in Russian to some the term agent might mean representatives of
foreign background with for example commercial interests as the liberalized and more
internationalized markets have presented. However in such contexts agenstvo (агенство) – agency
is the word used in most often practice instead of agent. According to dictionary electric data base
http://translation.babylon.com/, agent can also mean person authorized to perform a certain action;
courier, emissary, envoy; factor, medium; promotion man, man of business. To academical groups
agent can mean among other the person of subject or by agency a self-recognized actorship often as
counterpart of structures. I will note the other possible meanings of the term agent as it appears in
my discoursive research.
1.6. The Research Process
The process of developing the research question has taken big shifts on its main empirical focus.
The orginal idea to understand Russian biopolitics (or the lack of it), its domestical and international
social structures have gone through focusing on different organizations in Russia and abroad until
eventually I figured out to combine these interests in the new NKO law amendments. By February
2013 I felt satisfied with my research question, found promising research method, had got acquitant
with relevant research theories, and figured my tentative primary research material which originally
limit until the end of 2012 and included blog writings and more news agencies.
I had to reconsider my primary research material as in the spring of 2013 there occurred
many important relative events such as the mass inspections of NKOs and official foreign agent
allegations and registrations. It felt that my research would be deficit of major content the
discourses of foreign agents had got at the time so I broadened the research material period and due
to the limits of working time I cut blogs and news agencies of Russia Beyond Headlines and
Novaya Gazeta. The blog texts would provide very descriptive material for the study but it would
have given an over emphasized role to individual interpretations of foreign agents compared to the