This week´s issue of The Citizen is devoted to an interview with Nina Belyayeva, an active participant in developing Russia´s civil society. One point she makes is that she often has to deal with the impression that there is no civil society to speak of in Russia and, presumably, the idea that Russians are incapable of organizing themselves (unlike, say, Americans, most of whom don´t even vote).

This belief is a patent falsehood. One only needs to consider miners sitting on railroad tracks in 1998 to disabuse oneself of this quite incorrect notion. Russians have showed on many occasions that they are fully up to the task of independent organization and standing up for what is theirs and what they believe in. These efforts have often been stymied in practice by the state, but that is another matter.

It is true that Russia has little history of independent organization - though, as Belyayeva points out, the kernels of such activity existed even in the Soviet era. The idea that the state bears the sole responsibility for the well-being of its citizens is deeply rooted. However, it is not so deeply placed that it a priori stamps out any possibility of initiative on the part of individuals - in fact, believing so would not only be erroneous, it would be more than a little bit racist.

Belyayeva, her colleagues and people like them demonstrate that there is in fact a great interest in an expanded role for civil society in today´s Russia. The fact that they are operating successfully against the background of the past only demands our deeper respect.

The days of a powerful, authoritarian and paternalistic state that, for better or worse, monitors every aspect of its population´s lives is a thing of the past in Russia, at least for the forseeable future. Accordingly, looking to the state to solve every problem is not a viable option. The future of Russia, then, can lie only in the acts of individual people working with others for the benefit of all. We wish those Russians actively working for this goal all the best.