| Publication |
2013.
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| Summary/Abstract |
If the level of domestic political repression in Vladimir Putin's Russia has not yet reached the scale of that in the Soviet Union-though several dozen Russian political prisoners are being held behind bars on fabricated charges-the level of officially sanctioned anti-Western agitation, and anti-Americanism in particular, is certainly comparable to the worst years of the Cold War. Hardly a day goes by without hate-filled reports on state television. Regime officials and senior legislators angrily accuse the United States of "interfering in Russia's internal affairs" through its supposed proxies inside the country, by which they, of course, mean Russian human rights groups and other nongovernmental organizations that are critical of the Putin regime. All NGOs that receive funding from abroad are required by a new law to label themselves as "foreign agents" (which, in the Russian public discourse, is synonymous with "spies") or face closure. Needless to say, these groups have refused to comply. (How could, for instance, Memorial, an organization co-founded by Andrei Sakharov to perpetuate the memory of victims of political repression, declare itself a "foreign agent"?) As a consequence, prosecutors are conducting disruptive raids on the offices of Russia's leading human rights groups, which they charge with violating this law.
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