Moscow         Part of what had drawn the Organizers’ Forum (www.organizersforum.org) to visit Russia was the widely reported series of new rules imposed on non-governmental organizations almost a year ago by the Putin administration. We had heard contrary reports, but none of the information encouraged us to believe that something was happening that might …

Moscow The Organizers’ Forum (www.organizersforum.org) delegation has been getting some depressing reports about the state of democracy in the Russian Federation. United Russia, the governing party of Putin, is pretty much the single dominant part to the degree that over the last year Putin allowed the creation of an “opposition” party and made the appointments …

Moscow Carine Clement directs a small NGO with five staff called the Institute for Collective Action in Moscow that supports nascent movements building around housing and other issues throughout Russia. It was hard not to continually think about the fact that she was a French woman who had come to the country a dozen years …