Life After Death: Russian civil society under conditions of war and dictatorship

Between patronage and repression: two vectors of ‘demand’ in the civil sector

While contemporary Russia largely fits the image of a classic dictatorship – an authoritarian regime with a rather high level of repression – Russian civil society and civil activism have by no means disappeared. The rapid development of the civil sector in the 2010s was based on the effects of grassroots modernisation and the accumulated social capital of post-Soviet generations of Russians. The outbreak of the war, sanctions and the breakdown of relations with the West, as well as several waves of pre-war and especially wartime repression, have dealt a significant blow to this sector and its networks of social solidarity. Many Western companies that had been donors to charitable organisations left Russia, Western NGOs stopped supporting Russian civil society, and SWIFT and PayPal blocked payments. Additionally, a number of Russian NGOs shut down after being labelled ‘foreign agents’ or were forced to relocate abroad, while some activists ended up in prison.

All of this has led to a significant transformation of the civil sector, though not to its disappearance or total dismantling, as it might appear from the outside. The threat of repression and the replacement of non-state funding with state financing have become the primary factors shaping the sector’s new configuration, forcing its politicised, human rights-focused segment to shrink and go underground.

A study by Ekaterina Kalinina and Stevan Ingvarsson, based on surveys of Russian civil society activists, outlines the new topography of Russia’s civil sector. At one end of the spectrum are initiatives that are state-sponsored, tightly controlled, and aligned with government interests – such as the promotion of militaristic patriotism among young people. At the other end are grassroots initiatives, which may be either neutral toward state interests or outright hostile to them. This latter zone of the civil sector is largely deinstitutionalised, relying on autonomous groups and hidden networks of trust, and occasionally collaborating with Russian civil initiatives operating from abroad. However, between these two poles, there exist numerous transitional forms.

In general, this landscape resembles the situation in Russian media. On one extreme, there is the exiled, uncensored, and largely opposition-minded journalism. On the other, there is state propaganda. In between are media outlets that continue operating within Russia, staying within censorship limits (i.e., not opposing the war) while maintaining an independent, non-state-driven agenda. There are also niche professional and regional publications that uphold high editorial standards but avoid political topics to ensure their survival (→ Kseniya Luchenko: Inside and Outside Censorship). In both cases, we are dealing with two vectors of demand – ‘from above’ and ‘from below’. In the case of the civil sector, this is the demand for civic loyalty and support for official narratives (demand from above), on the one hand, and the demand for civic activity from below, on the other. The initiatives and organisations shaped by these demands, however, are not strictly separated, but coexist in a complex relationship of both confrontation and forced interaction.

White sector: official and censored civil society

Within the institutionalised sector – operating either under state patronage or under the state's radar – two clusters can be distinguished. The first is a politicised cluster aligned with official ideological priorities. The second is a non-politicised cluster, which remains dependent on state funding and interaction with government structures.

The main player in the institutionalised sector and its funding is the Presidential Grants Fund. According to Re:Russia's calculations, in 2024, the fund distributed 7.75 billion rubles across nearly 3,000 projects in two grant competitions. In the first competition of 2025 (held in January), 4.7 billion rubles were allocated to 1,500 projects. The competition includes eleven thematic categories, with the distribution of funds reflecting their prioritisation.Thus, 40% of all funds went to the two largest categories. ‘Social services and social support’ accounted for almost 23% of all funds over a year and a half and ‘public health and the promotion of healthy lifestyles’ received 17%. The three smallest categories, each receiving only 2% of the total funds, were ‘protection of human and civil rights and freedoms, including the protection of prisoners’ rights’, 'development of public diplomacy and support for compatriots abroad' and 'strengthening inter-ethnic and inter-religious harmony'. Three mid-sized categories – ‘development of civil society institutions,' 'environmental protection and animal welfare,' and 'support for youth projects' – received between 3% and 6% of the total funds. Finally, three larger mid-tier categories – each receiving between 10% and 14% – were: ‘support for family, motherhood, fatherhood and childhood’, ‘support for projects in science, education and enlightenment’ and ‘the preservation of historical memory’.

Distribution of the Presidential Grants Fund, 2024-2025

Additionally, in 2024, the revived Soviet-style youth organisation 'Movement of the First' was allocated 2 billion rubles to fund its own projects and events. According to media reports, the organisation received 21 billion annually from the federal budget. 

A significant portion of the Presidential Grants Fund's resources is allocated to projects that directly promote official state narratives. However, even within these state-sanctioned categories (such as 'preservation of historical memory') some meaningful, non-propagandistic initiatives can still exist. The same applies to 'social support', where traditional charity work is mixed with projects aimed at assisting participants in the war in Ukraine. According to the calculations of the ‘Govorit NeMoskva’ project, which has studied about 400 initiatives related to the war and its consequences, the majority of them are oriented towards the provision of services that are essentially an obligation of the state, such as rehabilitation for severely wounded soldiers and psychological support. Nearly half of these projects focus on assisting refugees from war-torn occupied territories – a policy actively encouraged by the Russian government, which in 2023 facilitated the relocation of around 100,000 people from these territories into Russia (→ Re: Russia: Migration and Occupation Balance). However, only 2% of the analysed projects were directly aimed at supporting frontline military operations.

The situation for institutionalised, state-censored NGOs deteriorated sharply in 2022 following the start of the war. According to the Pulse NGO monitoring project, which tracks the development of this segment, in 2022, 52% of organisations reported a reduction in funding and 42% reported a reduction in recurring donors. However, over the next two years, according to Pulse survey data, there was an increase in funding for a growing number of projects (rising from 30% to 40%), driven both by state grants and donations from private individuals and businesses.

According to the data from the 18th wave of monitoring by the Higher School of Economics' Center for Civil Society and Non-Profit Sector Research: 37% of organisations received funds from the Presidential Grants Fund and subsidies from regional authorities, while 26% and 21%, respectively, considered them their main sources of funding. Donations from private individuals were received by 38% of organisations, but for only 15% of them, this was a main source of income. About a quarter of organisations received funds from Russian commercial companies, but only 10% relied on this as their main financial source. The weak involvement of the commercial sector in funding civil society means that, after the withdrawal of foreign donors, state funding has almost automatically become the dominant source of financial support for NGOs.

In the grey zone: invisibility and burnout

However, the boundary between the state-controlled and state-funded sector and the next segment – the 'grey' sector, which operates on the periphery or outside officially sanctioned agendas – is largely blurred. Experts at the Hannah Arendt Centre note that even anti-war NGOs are often forced to compete for state funding and incorporate pro-war rhetoric or activities into their grant applications just to sustain initiatives that are otherwise unrelated or even opposed to official narratives. According to the authors of an Russian Analytical Digest report on eco-activism, only 3 out of 10 surveyed environmental projects managed to operate without government support or assistance from government-organised NGOs (GONGOs).

To paint a current portrait of Russian civil society, researchers at the Hannah Arendt Center conducted 115 interviews with representatives of various initiatives, examined 12 online communities using digital ethnography, and performed a quantitative analysis of over 10,000 communities on VK and Telegram (this research is still ongoing). Their findings indicate that, due to repression and high risks, projects in the 'grey zone' – which deal with issues that do not fit into the official ideological framework – try to remain as inconspicuous as possible. They avoid unnecessary attention, limit public communications, refrain from sharing results on social media (let alone mainstream media), and focus on direct, localised community work. These projects typically operate with small teams and recruit fewer volunteers, as vetting new members is too resource-intensive and risky. To minimise risks, they favour horizontal management structures, distributing responsibilities and decision-making more evenly.

Such strategies, however, come at a significant cost. Reduced visibility limits fundraising opportunities, as well as collaboration and knowledge exchange. In an environment of constant danger, uncertainty, and lack of public recognition, the risk of activist burnout becomes particularly acute.

The KARTU Foundation, created by former members of the ‘Need Help’ foundation, conducted a small-scale survey of 46 organisations that had undergone training at the fund. These organisations primarily focused on causes outside the scope of state-supported activities, such as anti-war activism, women's and LGBTQ+ rights, support for political prisoners, and the promotion of open government. Despite the limited sample size, the survey provides a typical profile of grassroots, independent initiatives in the ‘grey zone’. Most are small volunteer-driven projects, with three-quarters lacking official registration. About 60% have no more than 5 permanent staff members and up to 20 regular volunteers, and only 13% have more than 20 permanent members of staff. In 2023, 40% of these organisations raised less than 500,000 rubles, while 30% raised between 500,000 and 1 million rubles, and the remaining 30% raised over 1 million rubles.

Among the sources of funding, two-thirds of organisations named private funds from individuals who are not team members, 40% relied on personal funds from their own members and the same number received grants from other NGOs and foundations. 30% reported receiving income from foreign donors. Only 1 in 10 people mentioned government grants and subsidies, and the same number (10%) said they had some kind of working relationship with the authorities (regional, federal or local). Among the forms of activity reported, 80% focused on raising awareness of social issues, half engaged in public statements, social media campaigns, and signing petitions or collective letters, a third signed petitions or appeals to government agencies, and 15% conducted public demonstrations or actions. About 60% reported experiencing some form of state pressure.

Paternalistic vs. civic models of activism

In response to repression and the near-total ban on public protest, Russian civil society has developed different strategies for adaptation. Organisations in the grey zone recognise that the state is, at best, indifferent to their work – and, at worst, actively hostile. They attempt to operate within the limits of the permissible or in secrecy, fully aware of the risks. The desire to stay 'below the state's radar' explains why their work remains small-scale and low-profile.

An alternative protective strategy against state repression is shifting from a civic model of activism to a paternalistic one. In this paternalistic model, activism relies on appealing to state authorities and lobbying within government corridors, rather than engaging in public advocacy. The trade-off is a demonstrated loyalty to key state ideological narratives. This tension between civic and paternalistic activism is particularly evident in the movement of relatives of forcibly mobilised soldiers.

The coordination among mothers and wives of mobilised soldiers began almost immediately after the partial mobilisation in September–October 2022. Initially, their demands were pragmatic and framed within a loyalist stance: ensuring proper military equipment for mobilised soldiers, organising proper military training before deployment, and improving their living conditions at the front. At this stage, their rhetoric remained loyal to the state, not questioning the war or mobilisation itself. However, they criticised the Ministry of Defense and local authorities for failing to meet 'state standards' in their treatment of mobilised soldiers. At times, their narratives overlapped with those promoted by Yevgeny Prigozhin, attacking military leadership for incompetence rather than questioning the war itself.

As the one-year mark of mobilisation approached, the movement's focus shifted to demanding troop rotations. At this point, two distinct strategies emerged within the movement. The first, a loyalist strategy, focused on formal appeals to government bodies, sought to lobby for troop rotations through the State Duma, avoided public protests, and distanced itself from support by opposition figures and independent media. This approach was based on the belief that demonstrating loyalty to 'patriotic duty' would persuade the government to act 'fairly' and distribute the burden of war more evenly among Russian citizens. The second, civic strategy prioritised raising public awareness rather than appealing to the government. It framed the issue as a fundamental injustice, often implicitly or explicitly questioning the legitimacy of the war itself. More openly, it challenged the necessity of mobilisation and the sacrifices it demanded (→ Re:Russia: Anti-War PatriotiZm; for a detailed analysis of the mobilised soldiers' relatives' movement, see this study by the Laboratory of Public Sociology).

The paternalistic model of solidarity has become widespread since the start of the war and the increasing repression of the regime: collective appeals to governors, military leadership, or the president have been recorded from mobilised soldiers, residents of Orsk affected by flooding, residents of the Belgorod region impacted by shelling, and refugees in the Kursk region who fled their homes following the invasion of Ukrainian forces. This form of civic activity allows the authorities to selectively respond to such appeals, taking into account, among other factors, the level of public resonance they generate.

On one hand, these forms of solidarity can be classified as a 'weapon of the weak.' On the other hand, there are numerous instances where they transform into civic initiatives when, due to a lack of response from the authorities, their target audience becomes society itself.

Ecology as a conflict zone and a substitute for the ‘political’

Finally, another sphere of civic activism that can be identified as an area of confrontation, where the relationship between the state and independent initiatives takes on particularly dramatic forms, is environmental activism. On one hand, even in an authoritarian environment, environmental concerns remain, in the eyes of loyal citizens, entirely legitimate, as they are not perceived as ‘political’. Surveys indicate that as political and human rights activities have been suppressed, interest in environmental issues has grown (in 2024, 45% of respondents expressed concern over environmental degradation, whereas throughout the 2010s, environmental anxiety remained steadily around 30%, according to surveys by the Levada Centre). On the other hand, from the perspective of the authorities, environmental concerns hold significant potential for civic and protest solidarity, which makes them a cause for alarm. The transformation of environmental protests into political ones is a well-documented phenomenon (a classic example being the 2013 protests in Istanbul), and the Russian authorities remain acutely aware of past large-scale environmental confrontations, such as the battle to save the Khimki Forest or the campaign against the landfill site in Shiyes.

The dynamics of activity in the environmental sphere vividly illustrate the coexistence and struggle between 'top-down' and 'bottom-up' demand in the civic sector. Following the disaster involving two oil tankers in the Kerch Strait, numerous volunteers from across the country flocked to the Black Sea coast near Anapa to clean up fuel oil and rescue birds. This grassroots volunteer movement directly follows in the footsteps of similar efforts in the 2010s (such as fighting forest fires and providing aid to disaster victims). The authorities have, at the very least, tolerated this initiative, although they exert pressure on volunteers' media activities, which most volunteers have accepted as the rules of the game, note correspondents from the environmental publication Kedr.

At the same time, institutional forms of environmental activism have long been under heavy state pressure. Even before the war, the authorities had begun efforts to push out major international environmental organisations (such as Greenpeace, WWF, and Bellona) along with their Russian partners. According to authors of the environmental issue of Russian Analytical Digest, between 2014 and 2021, 35 environmental groups, organisations, and activists were designated as 'foreign agents,' and one was labeled an 'undesirable organisation.' Over the three years of the war, an additional 10 'foreign agents' and five 'undesirable organisations' have been added to this list.

Events take an even more dramatic turn when environmental initiatives become confrontations with local authorities. The Eco-Crisis Group, which monitors repressive pressure in the environmental sphere, estimates more than 300 instances of pressure on eco-activists were recorded in 2022, followed by 156 in 2023, and 95 in 2024. Over three years, 31 criminal cases have been initiated against environmental activists, 20 of which have already resulted in convictions – 12 involving actual prison sentences, the longest being nine years. In the same period, there have been 79 physical attacks on environmental activists, 16 individuals have been subjected to administrative detention, and fines totaling over 3 million rubles have been imposed in administrative cases.

Repression against independent environmental activists is occurring alongside efforts to establish a loyal environmental sector. In February 2025, Vladimir Putin signed a decree to create the Fund for Environmental and Nature Conservation Projects, which is intended to become the central operator for distributing resources to civic environmental initiatives, allocating 1 billion rubles per year for these purposes (by comparison, in 2024, the presidential fund allocated only 310 million rubles to environmental projects, and in the first half of 2025 – 240 million rubles). This marks the second attempt to create an umbrella organisation promoting 'environmental patriotism' (the first being the Compass fund, established a year earlier), as noted in a Kedr review.

While political protest and human rights advocacy appear too dangerous, the environmental agenda will likely continue to serve as a kind of 'legitimate' substitute, absorbing suppressed civic solidarity and protest potential. These demands are unlikely to be 'satisfied' merely through tree-planting initiatives and clean-up campaigns under the banner of 'patriotic eco-activism.' Instead, they are more likely to be shaped by repressive strategies. The decline in recorded instances of pressure on eco-activists over the past two years, as reflected in Eco-Crisis Group’s statistics, likely signals not a decrease in repression, but rather the success of repressive measures in curbing independent environmental activism.