In this richly detailed and comprehensive account of environmental organizations in post-Soviet Russia, Laura A. Henry delivers an insightful analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of the many green groups to emerge during the post-Soviet era and the challenges they face in sustaining a vibrant movement. Red to Green delivers an important contribution to the field of contemporary Russian politics by utilizing the environmental movement to illustrate the growth of civil society and the strategies used by civic organizations to overcome the institutional and normative barriers created by the legacy of Soviet rule. Given the deplorable state of the Russian Federation's environment, a strong environmental movement would seem a logical outcome of the internationally desired democratization and participation in civil society among the Russian citizenry. Yet as Henry is careful to point out, participation in social movement organizations is not always a natural consequence of environmental grievances, and in order for green groups to survive, they must make use of preexisting norms, institutions, and social networks that both enable and constrain their efforts to advocate for a safe and healthy environment.

By focusing on organizations within the environmental movement of the post-Soviet era, Henry is able to explore the various niches in civil society in which the limited resources necessary for groups to form and function can be found. Given different varieties and availabilities of these important resources, such as donations, members, charismatic leaders, and meeting space, it is not surprising that several distinct types of environmental nonprofits have emerged. The intellectual strength of Henry's work is the linkage between resource mobilization and the strategies pursued by the different organizational types. His analytic frame looks both across a variety of Russian regions and within the movement itself, comparing the differences among grassroots, professionalized, and government-affiliated environmental groups.

The regional comparison highlighted in Chapter 3 provides several interesting findings and important contributions to the study of social movements. While the existing body of literature on social movements predicts that economic and political forces determine the level of mobilization, Henry's analysis of environmental organizing finds that regional variation in economic resources and political conduciveness to activism does not explain the rather universally low levels of activism. Instead, she finds that the “quality, but not quantity” (p. 85) of movement organizations is a better indicator of participation in civil society as unique mobilizational niches emerge, given a particular arrangement of political and economic forces. For example, in the region of Bryansk—the area most affected by the infamous Chernobyl nuclear power plant accident in 1986—low levels of economic resources and few political opportunities for civic activism have not prevented the emergence of a level of environmental mobilization on a par with other regions with more economic resources and political opportunities. A small but determined group of grassroots organizations have carved out a little niche for themselves in order to address local health concerns with residual radiation from the meltdown. It is in the exploration of these organizational niches that Henry's work expands our theoretical understanding of movement emergence and sustainability.

Russian environmental organizations face a host of pressing grievances from which to choose. Yet not all environmental grievances are created equal. From the myriad environmental troubles plaguing the Russian federation, Henry's exploration of environmental themes focuses primarily on a select few: education, biodiversity conservation, and enforcement (p. 139). Following the resource mobilization paradigm, it is the organizational form and availability of necessary resources that determines the environmental frame chosen by individual groups. Professionalized groups tend to take on big-picture items like deforestation and the protection of endangered species, while the smaller grassroots groups emphasize educational campaigns often directed toward children. And as Henry notes, “[s]ome environmental issues are more likely to attract foreign funding, while others are more likely to be supported by the state” (p. 160).

In pursuing the largest source of funding available to Russian environmental organizations—the international green community—Russia's professional environmental groups have a tendency to “scale up” and develop networks of large organizations that work on related issues. As this scaling up occurs among professionalized groups, the field of environmental organizations capable of sustaining themselves grows smaller due to specialized grant giving and donations that focus on a few specific topics. Henry acknowledges the tensions between grassroots activism and professionalized groups when it comes to transnational funding by citing choice quotations from green activists. For example, She quotes a leader of the professional environmental organization Green Cross, who criticizes transnational donors: “To put it simply, they do not know anything that is beyond the scope of their professional line. Therefore, their advice might often prove to be speculative and practically inapplicable” (p. 170). This type of mission drift due to the pursuit of outside funding is not an uncommon phenomenon among social movement organizations, particularly where grassroots support is low. Although Henry presents these feelings among Russian environmental leaders, her analysis of the growing schism between professionalized groups and the grass roots over issues and funding could be more critical.

If the more organized and well-funded groups recognize that their efforts are largely unsupported and frequently unknown by the public affected by these environmental problems, why are they not doing more to bridge the gap between the transnational and the local? An examination of these barriers in conjunction with Henry's organizational analysis could provide some useful insight into the future of the movement. Although she acknowledges the fundamental linkages between the sustainability of an environmental movement in contemporary Russia and the need for support from the grass roots, we are left wondering about the specific strategies that organization leaders might pursue in a transition from an almost complete reliance on state or transnational support to a more grassroots base.

Henry's data suggest that the overreliance on transnational support among the professionalized organizations in the Russian environmental movement may have opened the door wider for conservative criticism of foreign meddling in domestic affairs. As she argues in Chapter 6, the specter of being labeled anti-Russian after accepting foreign funds has “undermine[d] their ability as social actors and generated suspicion among the public and local and regional officials” (p. 215). This contradiction between the growth in civil society organizations represented by professional social-movement groups and the anti-Russian and anti-democratic rhetoric growing around participation in these groups is fascinating. Red to Green closes with the question of whether the environmental movement in Russia is contributing to a transformation of civic values and the growth of civil society. The author concludes with a disappointing, but not unsurprising, answer: “While surveys demonstrate that Russian citizens are extremely dissatisfied … the environmental movement has been unable to tap into those grievances to gain public support for their organizations and encourage participation” (p. 228).

Overall, Henry is optimistic that the growth in environmental activism in post-Soviet Russia is an indicator that the Russian people and elements of the state are moving slowly toward that democratic transformation that so many transnational actors desire. In my opinion, one of the most interesting questions raised by Henry is found in the critique of transnationalism in the concluding chapter. Without the investment in environmental activism, environmental mobilization would likely never have grown to the scale it has today, and the many successful environmental campaigns accomplished by these groups would not exist. But a more critical analysis, one that Henry's work does not quite delve into enough, may reveal that transnational support has in fact prevented the sustainable movement that she is optimistic about—one grounded in local issues and grassroots mobilization—from developing in the foreseeable future.

Questions about deepening democracy and sustaining social movement organizations in a closed political system are important in advancing our understanding of civil society. Henry's work provides important insights into contemporary Russian society and the challenges to democratization created by the existing governmental institutions and stunted cultural norms related to participation and engagement. The environmental movement provides an exceptional case study for exploring the continuing transformation of Russian politics, as well as many reasons to be optimistic about the future of civil society in post-Soviet Russia.