In his thoughtful review, Brian Mayer identifies some of the key factors that will shape the future development of Russia's environmental movement. In doing so, he provides me the opportunity to highlight and expand upon these themes. Mayer's comments suggest that the study of social movements is enriched by the interaction of scholars focused on vastly different societies. In this vein, attention to one key aspect of my argument—how activists' diverse interpretations of the Soviet period shape their current perceptions—helps respond to some of the questions that Mayer raises.
My book argues that insufficient attention has been paid to the way that activists' earlier experiences, particularly under non-democratic regimes, shape their interpretation of the current political and economic context. In this new approach to the Soviet legacy, we see that Russian environmentalists “recycle” familiar norms, institutional affiliations, and survival networks from the Soviet period in order to achieve their goals. Thus, in the early post-Soviet period, Russian environmental organizations clustered into different mobilizational strategies depending on their evaluation of current state-society relations. Recognizing these elements of continuity in efforts to generate political and social change, I argue, moves scholarship beyond a simplistic characterization of Russia as “in transition” and increases the explanatory power of civil society as a concept.
Even as the past provides material for mobilization, it constrains activists tactically, making them more or less inclined to develop ties to state, transnational, or social actors. The divide between professionalized and grassroots groups over issues and funding, emphasized by Mayer, is linked to activists' starkly different conceptions of the purpose of “environmentalism” in contemporary Russia, ranging from Western notions of achieving sustainable development or a means of community recovery and spiritual development to a way to enhance state authority. Different definitions of environmentalism also partially account for why professional organizations have had trouble bridging the gap between their goals and the preferences of the Russian public. In their eagerness to make immediate progress on the urgent work of environmental protection, developing a relationship with the public seemed to imply an opportunity cost—requiring organizations to confine their work to issues of existing public concern or to engage in longer term but less immediately fruitful tasks of educating the public about unfamiliar issues such as climate change. In the short term, many high-profile organizations preferred to press their case to a sympathetic transnational environmental community rather than proceed incrementally at home.
Over time, environmental organizations are devoting greater attention to this gap and identifying issues amenable to public mobilization. For example, rising rates of property ownership have created a class with a long-term investment in local environmental quality; rising living standards mean that more Russians engage in recreation and tourism, drawing attention to issues such as garbage disposal; and, in a connection to Mayer's own work, citizens are increasingly aware of the link between environmental conditions and health. Given these trends, and the early intervention of foreign funding, which created a reservoir of organizational capacity and expertise, the Russian environmental organizations may indeed find common ground.
