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The state of freedom in Russia: a regional analysis of freedom of religion, media and markets1

The lack of freedom was perhaps the most repugnant characteristic of the Soviet Union, and its attainment was a dream not only of dissidents, but of ordinary people and government reformers as well. Although the system was ultimately unable to reform itself without collapsing in the process, now more than a decade later the citizens of postsoviet Russia are still struggling to attain and maintain the freedoms that seemed to be within their grasp during the heady days of perestroika, glasnost’ and demokratizatsiya. While even a casual observer can plainly see that Russian citizens today enjoy greater freedom than they did twenty years ago, the creation of an autonomous civil sphere in which freedoms will be consistently guaranteed is still very much a work in progress. A growing body of scholarship reveals great diversity and spatial variation across various substantive areas, such as freedom of religion, a free press and the establishment of free markets. This disparate body of work, based upon different methodologies and written from diverse theoretical perspectives, makes generalisation and the discernment of trends difficult. It also raises several questions. How do the different areas of freedom relate to each other? Are there observable patterns? Are certain regions more free generally, while others enjoy fewer freedoms? Or do some regions enjoy certain freedoms while different regions enjoy others? The answers to these questions have implications not only for those who live in Russia, but also for scholars and policymakers who seek to understand the state of freedom in Russia and the role it plays in the country’s postcommunist transformation. The case of Russia also offers a unique window into the process of liberalisation and provides an opportunity to test some basic theoretical assumptions concerning freedom in transitional societies. The issue of freedom has not received sufficient attention in the discourse on Russia’s postsoviet transformation. There has been a plethora of work documenting specific areas of freedom, such as freedom of religion, freedom of the press and the free market, but such work often remains disconnected from the more general discussion of civil society in Russia. These studies of specific areas of freedom all have at their core the same concern, however: ‘freedom of the individual from society – more precisely, from the state and from all such compelling social bonds’, as the Russian Christian philosopher Georgi