Is it fear or inertia? I could ask the same of China...
Wait a minute. How could I be so arrogant? We've squandered every bit of our freedom and are about to reelect a despot. At least the Russians and Chinese can blame their pasts.
From AP via Yahoo News:
Russia flood brings volunteer spirit, and new law
A stooped woman in her 70s dropped off a kettle and about $600 in cash in Moscow, while a thick-necked businessman unloaded an SUV packed with brand new strollers and jumbo packages of diapers.
It was part of a spontaneous wave of charity for flood victims in the town of Krymsk,
jumpstarted by social networking sites and through a handful of
independent radio and TV stations. It was also part of a growing
penchant for independent action that unsettles the powerful.
A week after the unprecedented flood volunteerism
emerged, a Kremlin-linked body proposed a bill that regulates charity
drives. Critics suspect the move is aimed at keeping a tight leash on
popular movements that could snowball into anti-government protest.
While the eagerness of Russians to rise to the flood cause was seen by many as a heartening advance for civil society, it also appeared to be tacit criticism of Russian authorities as untrustworthy and ineffectual.
"The government
is terrified of an awakening civil society," Genady Gudkov, an
opposition member of parliament, said Monday on Echo Moskvy radio.
"Volunteers and mass volunteerism have only just appeared, and there is a
genuine fear that this volunteer movement will morph into something
else."
The bill, to be taken
up by Parliament when the lower house reconvenes in September, does not
block volunteer efforts. It concerns itself only with the legal and
financial liability incurred by volunteers and the organizations they work with.
But
activists are concerned that it will add a laborious layer of paperwork
that could bog down quick and effective response to disasters like the
one in Krymsk.
They complain that the vagueness of the legislation
creates an ominous atmosphere of government supervision that could have a
chilling effect on Russia's budding volunteer spirit, at the same time as President Vladimir Putin intensifies his squeeze on the opposition.
Thousands of volunteers traveled to the area some 1,200 kilometers (750 miles) south of Moscow to help dig houses out from mud and aid the estimated 5,000 left homeless. Across the country, activists set up donation points for contributions of food, clothes and money.
The response was unusual in a country where the volunteer spirit is far less developed than in the West. In communist times participation at mass rallies and involvement in social groups was mandatory. After the fall of the Soviet Union, many Russians turned inwards, focusing on family and their jobs instead of on the public sphere.
Developers of the legislation say its intent is not to stifle volunteerism, but, in fact, to add clarity to the process.
Darya Miloslavskaya, a member of the Public Chamber and author of the bill, said that it was designed only to establish a more formal relationship between volunteers and the organizations they worked with.
"We
have nothing to do with politics. There was no intention of saying that
the government is bad and volunteers are good, or vice versa,"
Miloslavskaya, who had been drafting the legislation since April, told
Echo Moskvy.
The Public
Chamber is a state oversight body that monitors parliament and drafts
legislation. It consists of members appointed by the Kremlin and
representatives of public associations.
The
bill would require volunteers and the organizers they work with to sign
a contract if participants hoped to receive compensation for any
expenses incurred.
Particularly
in a country where many look suspiciously on government officials and
corruption-riddled state institutions, Russian activists worry that the
new law will only deter ordinary people from getting involved at all.
"If the first thing that a volunteer
does is get in a car and go to look for some children who are lost in
the forest, now according to this bill you'll have (the volunteer)
talking to some bureaucrats and filling out papers," said Maria
Baronova, an opposition activist who was one of the main organizers of
the Krymsk relief effort.
"People will stop getting involved, because in general people don't want to be connected with either government officials or with bureaucracy," she said.
The
Krymsk relief effort attracted scores of contributors to the collection
site in Moscow, where Russians from all walks of life hauled boxes of
food and clothes on buses bound for Krymsk.
"It's
better to participate in something independent rather than something
that belongs to any kind of party, so that no one can make PR out of
such a tragedy," said 28-year-old Anastasia Kayumova, a choir teacher
who came to the volunteer site in the morning and ended up staying until
dark to help.
"Already on
that evening (after the flood), I was telling myself that civil society
does exist here," said Maria Baronova. "People have to understand that
you have to do two things in life: go to work, and defend the place you
live, that if you don't do that with your own hands then nothing will
change."
In a public
discussion Wednesday that brought officials and authors of the bill
together with activists, charity organizers insisted that, while some
kind of regulation of nascent volunteer movements was necessary in
Russia, the law would go too far in giving the government oversight.
"There
is a lot that needs elaborating," said Grigory Kuksin, leader of the
volunteer programs of Russia's Greenpeace, during the public discussion.
"But it doesn't demand a new law that will narrow the definition of
volunteerism."
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