Foreign Agents in Russia - Doria

2. Theoretical Background of the Research
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The non-commercial organizations that the Russian foreign agent legal stipulations concern are
popularly recognized as one of the main actors of grass-root civil society movements. From a
western perspective such as mine to some degree, the developments of Russian civil society are
dominantly seen under the range of democratization/authoritarization trends. For example an
official article on the nation's state by Dmitry Medvedev in September 2013 in foreign media was
examined highlighting its (non-existing) stand on civil society (Staalsen 2013). This interest is
mostly due to the western tendency to see democracy more safe for civil rights, trade and
international peace. Democracy – despite of its often loosely defined content – is often portrayed
even as a synonym of good. The contribution and role of civil activity has traditionally been
highlighted in the western tradition of social sciences.
Robert Putnam (1993, 168-172) is one of the many scholars who has drawn the connection
of active and independent civil society and democratic political structures supporting the hypothesis
often used in international politics of western countries: support civil societies by development
policies and you cultivate democracy. The Russian approach to the civil society issue has been
affected by the Western influences, among others the former finance minister Aleksey Kurdin has
made public writings supporting the sivil society's strong role in developing Russia (Staalsen 2013),
but such views are often in collision with the Russian political tradition. Because of my academical
background as the writer of this thesis the understanding of the Russian political tradition or
governmentality is inseperable from comparison of the Russian and West European perspectives.
This background unfortunately preassumes the western tradition as the other to the Russian tradition
but it has quite comprehensive background in scholars of my discipline in social sciences.
2.1. Historical Background of the Foreign Agent Discourses
Historically Russia have had an exceptional art of governance from the European perspective since
the medieval times (Neumann 2010, 71-72, 78-79.), but it is sensible to look the drift to different
directions when the liberal governmentality started to gain popularity in West Europe. While in
most of Europe some implementation space for the liberal non-direct governing were given by
authorities starting gradually from the 17 th century, the Czarist Russian regime was very
conservative towards the liberally influenced segment of Russians, that looked towards Europe for
remedies to solve Russia's material and economic problems. The reformist ideas were often
received as something that would endanger the ancient traditional political structures and the
representatives of reforms – notably the Decembrists – were seen as ' an enemy within' by the