43 Colonization or Liberation: The Paradox of NGOs in Postsocialist States Julie Hemment Cornell University The stimulation of civil society has been central to the efforts to democratize post- socialist states and has been regarded as a crucial dimension of transition. However, recently criticisms have been made from both East and West. Some of those who were once most in favor of the notion of civil society and its promotion in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union have become disaffected with the emergent structures, while others question why concepts and terms are exported with such enthusiasm at a time when their salience is challenged in Western countries (Carothers 1996). Even George Soros, the high priest of the "open society" has distanced himself from some of the processes that are underway in Eastern Europe today (Soros 1997). In order to ground this discussion I shall consider a central plank of the democratization process, the non-governmental sphere. Non-governmental organizations (NGOs)1 are a striking feature of the post-Communist landscape. Their role in transition is crucial as they serve as conduits for the distribution of material, technical and intellectual resources - international agencies such as the World Bank and donor governments frequently send funds directly to internationally recognized NGOs rather than to governments. Equally important is their symbolic function. Perceived by their advocates to be a vital component of civil society, the existence of NGOs has been encouraged and stimulated by international agencies and western governments accordingly. Discourse about NGOs is strikingly polarized. I have been struck by an apparent paradox, that while they are seen to be tied to democratic and emancipatory movements and concerns, NGOs are also perceived as part of the attempt by Western states, external to these societies, to control, civilize and discipline post-socialist states. In this paper I will present both positive and negative evaluations of NGOs and explore some of the contention about this new sphere. I shall then provide an historical analysis of the concept of civil society as it has been used in the context of Eastern Europe and the USSR, from the late 80’s and early 90s when it 44 was much in vogue,2 to the more recent backlash against it. I shall then consider how the contemporary non-governmental sphere has apparently failed to meet these expectations and reconsider the binary colonization/emancipation. Why does civil society continue to be viewed in such polarized terms and what does this tell us about the processes of transition? NGOs as Salvation Some positive views of NGOs are as follows: First, let’s take the self representation of an international NGO, taken from an announcement of an internship position advertised on the internet: ISAR is a non-profit organization that supports the growth of the non- governmental sector in the countries of the former Soviet Union….our mission is to empower grassroots activists to address local social, political, and environmental challenges by providing them with grants, training and other forms of technical assistance. This rhetoric suggests a progressive form of democracy-building at its most grass-roots and people friendly. A second, similar type of language is found among scholars who celebrate NGOs as progressive forces in the context of transnationalism and see them as key players in an emergent "global civil society". In a recent article, anthropologist Terry Turner (n.d.) provides a positive reading of the new networks of NGOs, environmental and rights activists and sectors of the media and public opinion, "An emergent transnational community of movements and groups has begun to coalesce as a new, global extension of civil society, in complementary opposition to the longer-established sector of global civil society comprised of private transnational corporations." This type of rhetoric is also pronounced among feminist activists and scholars, particularly in the aftermath of the Fourth World Conference on Women.3 Finally, a third constituency that celebrates the emancipatory potential of NGOs is found at what is traditionally considered to be the opposite end of the political spectrum, among pro- market liberal democrats. Until his recent turn around, George Soros, international financier- 45 turned-philanthropist and promoter of civil society in the former Communist states has epitomized this trend. With western governments, Soros’ Open Society foundation has promoted NGO development as part of the agenda to stimulate the development of an independent pluralistic "civil society" in post-Communist states and has set up independent media organs, think tanks and academic institutions accordingly. In these positive evaluations, NGOs are progressive bandits that work to protect people against the incursions of evil states and/or international forces. The symbolic order around NGOs is predicated on a series of binary oppositions, most fundamentally between state/society. In all cases, the "non-governmental" sphere is seen to lie outside the state/society dichotomy, and NGOs are seen to represent a third realm that is apparently free from particularistic interests. They transcend politics, particularly the politics of the Cold War, they are non-aligned and stand for universal values, mere facilitators of local empowerment. In the first example, the ISAR announcement is inflected with Christian notions of voluntarism and charity and contains a set of oppositions based on the pair sacred/profane (not-for-profit/for profit, charity/business) at the same time as it draws on an international development discourse of entitlements and rights. In the second case, the "global civil society" discourses replicate the same binaries - state/society (or "community"), profit/not-for-profit - at a global level. In the third example, the Soros-type discourses rest on the same binary state/society, but are expressed slightly differently, as "open society" vs. the totalitarian state, or "dictatorship." It is important to note, however, that this is a (good)state/(bad)state binary, as the designation "open society" is modeled on the liberal democratic state. Far from transcending politics, this last position smacks of liberal triumphalism at the "victory" of liberal democracy over Communism. In this discourse, "NGO" becomes a metaphor for "civility," "freedom," a concrete referent for "civil society" which is the desired end of "transition." The Denouncers As I have noted, there is a new trend toward critiquing the non-governmental sphere and its role in the "democratization" process. Here NGOs are perceived to be an arm of a generalized western colonizing project. These arguments (which are directed at various types of NGO, but broadly at the whole NGO-ization process) rest on the same binaries we have already seen 46 expressed in the other arguments (state/society) but here NGOs are perceived to have a distinctly "political" function and to be aligned with the "west". Soros Foundation initiatives have been met with rage and distrust by some actors in post- socialist states. Soros is frequently represented as acting in some "western" identified plot, either of his own or of U.S. devising. President Tudjman of Croatia recently denounced him as the "linchpin of a global plot" and the Soros Foundation was recently forced to close down in Belarusia following the seizure of its bank account. Although both these cases are at the extreme end of the hostility spectrum, they can be situated as part of a general anti-Soros trend. Whether labeled "Hungarian", "Jew" or "CIA agent", Soros is cast as the consummate "outsider" by hostile publics in Russia and Eastern Europe (Traynor 1997). Charges of "imperialism" have been leveled at NGO activity from several quarters. A recent article in Replika, a Hungarian social science journal, denounced "western intrusion in to Eastern Europe on the field of social science research" as "colonization" (Csepeli et al 1996). Though explicitly leveled at academic collaboration, this critique takes aim at the entire NGO- ization project: The ideological aim behind these efforts can be summarized as ‘Project Democracy’, conceived as something to be implemented from above, following and copying western models (Csepeli et al 1996: 114). Here, the authors do not oppose the processes of privatization and decentralization of East European institutions that they describe; their main criticism is that the terms of "East- West" engagement are asymmetrical and unfair. East-West boundaries are patrolled and reinforced by agencies that constitute citizens of "western" nations as "experts" or "primary investigator" and those of "eastern" nations as recipients or junior collaborators. NGOs are thus perceived to perform a kind of missionary function on behalf of the "West". Far from transcending politics, NGOs are perceived to be part of a strategy to further cement inequality and difference. The "reconstruction of Eastern Europe" is read as a reinforcement of the East/West binary, where projects which ostensibly prevent seepage, escape, the "drain" of best resources from the area in order to protect East European economies and permit them to gain strength, actually work to keep East Europeans "out" in the interests of West European security. In many cases, they are perceived to actually drain the wealth of the East.4 47 Once again, NGOs are "outsiders", but this carries different inflections. They are not considered outside or above politics, but to be the agents of outsider political interests. Not surprisingly, those who see NGOs as liberatory are "western" (or western identified, as in the case of elite corps who work within NGOs and who have access to the frameworks and resources they offer), while those who view it as colonizing are "eastern" or eastern-identified (as in western scholars who have in some way "gone native", or who are drawn to the position of the underdog). It is easy to write transition this way, particularly when resources are so clearly stacked on one side. In order to avoid replicating these polarities, I will side step to illuminate the issue from another perspective and question some of the concepts that are commonly taken for granted in these debates. NGOs and the "Civil Society" Debates It is important to situate the emergence of the concept of "NGO" in the post-state socialist context. As I have shown, today many scholars and actors in the non-governmental sphere view NGOs as an index of "civil society" (which is regarded as a key signifier of "democracy"). However, this is according to a very different conception of "civil society" than was envisaged when the term first entered discourse in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe in the mid-1980s. This shift is significant in so far as it suggests that much of the bitterness expressed toward NGOs is a result of disappointment in "transition" (among western scholars as much as post- socialist subjects). In order to trace these themes, it is necessary to historicize the concept of "civil society" as it has been used in the context of the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. There has been a huge amount of discussion among political scientists and my aim here is not to provide a summary, but to trace some of the themes and metaphors running through the discussions, and to consider how they relate to politico-economic events. As I have noted, the term "civil society" experienced something of a renaissance in the 1980s, stimulated by events in Eastern Europe and the USSR. It appeared to represent a means of breaking out of the polarities of the détente period (Capitalism/Communism, East/West), and was used by western intellectuals of the left as a means of articulating internal opposition to state socialist regimes whilst still critiquing capitalism (Arato 1981; Garton-Ash 1983; Habermas 1989; Ost 1990). The term was used similarly by some East European dissidents as a means of 48 articulating a "third path" between the two systems.5 If this was the original meaning, usage soon became more sloganistic, and the subtleties became less important than its performative and symbolic function. "Civil society" became a rallying cry and was the gloss on any kind of resistance to the regimes to the degree that "it" was broadly considered to have been efficacious in bringing down the regimes. As one political scientist put it, "it was highly effective in bringing about the demise of Communism" (Schopflin 1993: 262). The term is now comfortably used to justify the turn to capitalism and the west, and is deployed descriptively to describe the processes of "transition" and "democratization" with "NGO" as its concrete referent. The first "non-governmental organizations" that appeared in the Soviet Union (though they were not thus named) were loose groups of friends and colleagues who united around specific issues, for example to campaign for broadly defined religious or political freedoms, or for the state to acknowledge past crimes.6 Groups perceived themselves and were perceived to be oppositional to the state; accordingly the Soviet state attempted to suppress them, while western states lauded them as evidence of "society’s" natural resistance to the totalitarian state. These groups began to understand themselves and to be read by those outside in terms of "civil society." The concept was used in the Soviet/East European context to describe a movement from bottom up. It was frequently presented as a natural life force, as one prominent civil society theorist put it, "civil society tends to swell rapidly from below" (Keane 1988: 5), as suppressed social interests gathered together to form alliances. "Natural" society here is pitted against the "unnatural" impositions of the state. The metaphor of naturalness is pervasive - according to Pelczynski, Solidarity, the quintessential "NGO" of this period, had an "evolutionist strategy," it did not strive toward any "political" goals (it neither intended to establish capitalism or to destroy the state) but sought the establishment of a plurality of self-governing civil associations (ibid.). "Civil society" then is seen as a universal stage of development. Habermas captures this well in his characterization of the East European revolutions as "rectifying revolutions," which are distinctive due to their lack of ideas that are innovative or oriented toward the future (Habermas 1990). Here, there is something artless about the emergence of groups and organizations, which appear as a natural corrective, the result of civil society’s inevitable resurgence. Why did this notion have such currency and appeal among scholars and members of these groups, what did it resonate with? It seems to me that the yearning for "civil society" 49 represented a desire to bring "public" and "private" together and can be attributed to a desire for "completeness" and "normalcy" that the socialist state denied its citizens. The state socialist system rested on a rigid division between public and private, where people were required to submit to the state in their public lives but perceived their private lives to be free. The home then became the repository of all that was deemed most authentic and valued.7 Todorov (1991) has characterized this configuration as constitutive of "social schizophrenia"), and the system was certainly perceived thus by many state socialist subjects. "Civil society" seemed to offer a way out, a means of mending this apparent fracture - it was a repository of dreams, "a Utopia, the solution to all the problems accumulated by "real socialism" (Kumar 1993) and appeared to represent the chance to be "civil," "civilized," "normal," in so far as it signified honesty and authenticity in public life. This yearning for completeness is also a desire for an egalitarian kind of togetherness, which expresses itself through the east/west binary. "Civil society" suggests horizontal connections, rather than the vertical integration between society and state and is thus apparently egalitarian, fraternal, and unconstrained by borders and boundaries. It appeared large, expansive, unbounded (as evident in talk of a "global civil society"), but at the same time conveyed a specifically European flavor. The yearning seems to be all about a reunion between East and West, a means of reasserting a common European-ness, a shared culture and intellectual heritage that Eastern Europe perceived it had lost touch with and was outside of. These discourses have much in common with the emancipatory discourses around NGOs that I have examined - both point toward a post-ideological world, and a transcendent "public" space. Given these similarities, why was there so much disappointment with what transpired? Why can’t NGOs serve as the vehicle for these dreams? What are the similarities and differences between the intellectual project of revolution and the contemporary NGO order? The Contemporary NGO Order I shall now return to the contemporary non-governmental sphere to see how it matches up to these expectations. I shall argue that firstly, it is a far more formalized space than what was desired and secondly that, far from diminishing the boundaries between East and West in an equal, fraternal forum, it is perceived to be the preserve of a western or "westernized" elite. 50 At a glance, the "non-governmental" space of the "transition" is a far cry from what was desired. Despite the similarities in rhetoric, it is a less "political" seeming space, its participants are less often dissidents and politicos, the intellectual architects of the anti-Communist revolutions, but young people intent on developing their careers. Involvement in the civil society of NGOs can be seen to represent a form of entrepreneurial activity and for some it is very lucrative. The land of projects, funding applications and trainings is a world of task-oriented, bureaucratically orchestrated activity rather than utopian strivings. Ironically (in so far as they appeared to be diametrically opposed to all that "civil society" stood for), some of those who thrived under the old regimes have also proven to be equally adept at mastering the symbolic order of NGOs and projects (Sampson 1996). This has given rise to a great deal of cynicism among some people who regard the NGO sector as just another corrupt mafia, evidence of business as usual. NGOs are a far cry from the spontaneous and loose groupings of the late ‘80s. In order to be perceived as authentic by international agencies, an NGO has to be "autonomous, voluntary, legally registered and non-profit" (Sampson 1996: 129). No church or nationalist groups are recognized, nor are political parties. What’s more, to be credible (that is, fundable) NGOs have to meet very strict criteria, they have to name a "target group," must have a "mission statement" and provide indices for "evaluation" and "sustainability" (ibid.). While the early groups were based on principles of "openness," "solidarity" and "living in the truth" (Keane 1988: 4), "transparency" is a recurrent metaphor of project-speak (Sampson 1996: 129), which illustrates metaphorical continuity across these changes in civil society. However, in the project- speak usage "transparency" now suggests clarity of affairs, bureaucratic precision, economy and rational planning rather than an expansive dream of a post-ideological world with no walls or boundaries. Crucially, the non-stateness of this space is illusory. Note that the designation "non- governmental" is an official categorization, that is, it is dependent on governmental recognition. While historically NGOs identified themselves and were identified as oppositional to states, they are now used by governments as conduits to distribute material and intellectual resources both nationally and internationally. Organizations have to be officially recognized by governments in order to win tax exemptions and in order to practice legally, and by international bodies in order to win grants and have access to international networks. 51 A second major cause of frustration with the non-governmental sphere is that NGOs are also perceived to be "western" and hence inaccessible to most post-socialist subjects. It pays to spend a little time here to consider the significance of the designation "western" in this context. In the context of "transition," "west" signifies a set of political and economic values and standards, a stage of development rather than a geo-political location.8 "Transition" is always posited as a process whereby the "east" becomes more like the "west," by way of a series of prescribed economic and political steps. In theory, if it follows these schema, it too can joint the western clubs (EU, NATO, as well as commercial "joint ventures" and NGOs). The west is the donor, the modernizer, the site of "know-how" while the east is cast as beneficiary, recipient in a relationship of structural inequality, an "outsider" who wants "in." Actors in the "east" have accepted the designation "lesser" to some degree, because this acceptance backed up their victimhood - as citizens of states annexed (in the case of East European subjects), or as individuals oppressed (in the case of Soviet subjects) by the Soviet regime. This discourse becomes part of a strategy for resistance. Habermas points to this in his description of the "rectifying revolution." The East European revolution of the late ‘80s "presents itself as a revolution that is to some degree flowing backwards, one that clears the ground in order to catch up with developments previously missed out on" (Habermas 1990). This has the effect of primitivizing the "East" and serves to legitimate western-identified development projects as a means to an end. It is important to note that, although it posits "east" as lesser, the East/West binary as it expresses itself in the context of "transition" is premised on the assumption of a kind of filial relationship. "East" is coded as explicitly less than "west," but in so far as it took a wrong turning along a path that they shared. As a result of that wrong turn, "east" is constituted as arrested in some way, but this difference is not irremediable. The Oriental "other" is irredeemably other, and denied voice and subjecthood by orientalising discourses (Said 1979), but as David Kideckel has put it, "the devaluation of eastern (European) life is not because ‘they’ are totally different, but rather because ‘they’ have fallen into difference over time" (Kideckel 1996: 30). The logic of the binary (which Kideckel calls "categorical orientalism" to distinguish it from Said’s "orientalism") "holds out the possibility of redemption for the fallen through capitalism, democracy, civil society, privatization and the like" (ibid.). 52 It is this relationship that causes "the east" to expect to eventually gain admittance to the western club, however, this expectation is consistently thwarted. Once they had embarked on the western prescribed path of economic and political development, many "eastern" actors called for the dissolution of the East/West binary and argued for a return to the designation "Central Europe." Timothy Garton-Ash, citing prominent East European intellectuals Havel, Michnik, Konrad, laid out the qualities of the desired Central (as opposed to Eastern) Europe, "skeptical, sober, anti-utopian minds and rational, humanistic, democratic and tolerant societies" (ibid.), terms that are associated with "west" rather than "east." However, the designation "Central Europe" has proven slow to catch on and the perception of many actors (we can include the authors of the Replika article here) is that they are still stranded as "outsiders." "West" also signifies universal standards of civility (rights, values) to which eastern subjects appeal and which are ostensibly available to all. Disappointment comes when the "east" is made to feel its own specificity, and learns that these values are not universally applicable, but are jealously guarded. Thus far I have traced the expectations that preceded the development of civil society and shown how they contrast with perceptions of the actually existing non-governmental sphere. NGOs are highly formalized structures that operate under constraints imposed by governments and international agencies, and are linked to a development project which is perceived to originate "outside". Where does that leave us? Is transition all about colonization? We can disrupt this view by questioning the fixity of the terms "East" and "West," "inside" and "outside" and by returning to "transition" to recharacterize it. We need to get away from seeing the East and West as hermetically sealed, fixed locations. It is important to see that the East/West binary is constitutive of identity on both sides (here I draw on the work of scholars like Said, etc.). The inside/outside polemic helps to conceal the mutual dependency within the relationship, that is, that the "West" needs an "East" as other, both in order to be and to know itself and vice versa. In this sense, it is impossible for the east to ever really "westernize" (in the sense of joining the west), in so far as the sides of the binary pair need each other to keep on rolling.9 This points to a different reading of the end of the Cold War. As many scholars have noted, the collapse of the state socialist regimes, though hailed as a victory of the West and liberal democracy, actually resulted in an identity crisis for "western" nations as much as for the teetering socialist states. As Turner (n.d.: 19) puts it "the removal of 53 the threat of war between these two power blocs removed the major non-economic political and ideological basis for the hegemony of nation-state as the organizing frame of global politics." "Transition" in post-socialist countries then is just as much about the west as about the east and is not reducible to a relation of domination/subordination. Scholars such as Carothers have pointed to the irony in the fact that the notion of civil society continues to be enthusiastically exported at the very time when these institutions are most under threat in western states. I suggest that it is precisely when it fails in the West that its export becomes most important. It is in the context of this identity crisis - wherein western "civil society" itself begins to break down - that proclamations about the necessity of civil society to post-socialist states grew louder (Hann 1996). As Diana Fuss (1991) puts it, "the greater the lack on the inside, the greater the need for an outside to contain and defuse it, for without that outside, the lack on the inside would become all too visible." The post-socialist "other" was re-constituted as disadvantaged and in need of "development" and assistance, thus legitimating all kinds of interventions - and maintaining the identity of the "west." It is in this light that we can read the new sets of oppositions that emerged (donor/recipient, expert/trainee). This explains why projects that ostensibly diminish the difference between East and West are perceived to cement the division still further. Let us then return to characterize the NGO order. "Transition" in the former socialist states is conventionally understood to be part of a unidirectional process, a stage of politico- economic development, part of a movement from state socialism (or "communism") to a market- oriented democratic-type economy. However, I see "transition" as a complex discursive field of ongoing transactions, explicitly, the re-drawing of boundaries between spheres (state/society, public/private, East/West). There are multiple different perspectives on this redrawing and interpretations of the emergent configurations, depending on the social, cultural and economic capital actors bring to it. "Transition" is not something that only happens in "East European" countries, "it is also a strategy being implemented by international development agencies, western financial institutions, foreign aid programs and humanitarian or other non-governmental organizations (NGOs)" (Sampson 1996: 121). It is a flow of resources that is not unidirectional and which (despite the rhetoric) does not signify a particular pattern of development. Its participants are international and there is no homogenized "western" or "eastern" participant - participants are 54 representatives of the World Bank, the IMF, the Soros Foundation, government ministers, varieties of "experts" (human rights activists, feminists, evaluators, scholars) of different nationalities as well as teams of staff, interpreters, translators and "target populations." It is important not to over-emphasize the role of NGOs. After all, they are but one of the new channels that opened up in the post-socialist landscape and have spawned much less public contention in Russia than "business" and "mafia," for example. It is also important to note that it is not just the "east" that gets recast and that the "west" is also transformed- "transition" stimulates a diversification of both "east" and "west" rather than simply reinforcing eastern lesser-ness. To reduce the relationship to one of "emancipation" or "colonization" is to vastly simplify the relationship. How then to employ the effects of NGOs in post-socialist society? Their presence brings about shifts in discourse, they introduce new structures and a new symbolic order to the Russian scene, and bring new technologies and types of human service provision, which gives rise to the perception of new needs. However, in this they are not unique; "transition" brings a whole new set of powerful operators to Russia - powerful in the sense that they have material and intellectual resources that will impact the "socio-cultural means of interpretation and communication" (Fraser 1990). It makes no sense to see this development in terms of the imposition of a "foreign" order, or to interpret the NGO order as the depoliticization of the non- governmental sphere; instead, NGOs signify a new kind of politics with which we need to come to grips. Different interest groups are created through the projects that characterize "transition," and compete with one another over resources. The concepts and agendas that NGOs bring are not stable or constant, but are subject to redrawing; "as they pass across boundaries of states, political economies and gender regimes they are decontextualized and recontextualized, fitted into other discourses which may change the meaning of arguments" (Gal 1996). Hence, regardless of the intentions of actors engaged in the process, the outcomes will be uncertain, and there is no replicating the models upon which they were based, no matter how intense the desire to do so. The more interesting questions to pose are, what are the interests behind the use of designations such as East/West, inside/outside, state/society? What are the effects? Denunciations of NGOs as "western" or "outsider" are often made by those who are baffled by the symbolic order of "transition," or who are left behind resource-wise. Contemporary Russian society is increasingly polarized, and the ability to learn these new codes 55 (what Sampson calls the "magic" of the transition) is an important component of survival. Those who are in a position to master and manipulate these codes flourish, while those who do not see it as a form of black magic that originates "outside." However, these denunciations can also be made as part of a political strategy, in the context of a savvy bid for resources. It is in this light that we can re-consider the Replika article. Csepeli et al represent the East/West relationship as one of domination/subordination. However, at the same time, the article and the authors’ collaboration itself contradicts the rigidity that this model suggests. Entitled "Colonization or Partnership? Eastern Europe and Western Social Science," it is published in a special English language edition of a journal funded partly by the Soros Foundation. As they write of the insurmountable differences facing "eastern" scholars, the authors betray their own familiarity with "western paradigms" and literature, and with the mores of both "sides." In addition, it is co-authored by a "western" scholar. This polemic represents a move by a savvy young generation of scholars who are at home in both worlds. It certainly sells copy, especially to western scholars, some of whom (including this writer) are frequently only too ready to breast-beat themselves for having too much power, cultural capital, and to constitute themselves as colonizers. It appeals to the desire for a "moralizing narrative," as opposed to the liberal democratic "heroic narrative" that celebrates the western role in the creation of a post-socialist non-governmental sphere (Todorov 1997). This amounts to a fetishization of the "outside," which is deemed to be a more radical space - in Diana Fuss’ (1991: 4) terms, it is "in" to be "out," there is an "avant-garde affinity for the liminal space of the marginal" amongst those whose location is secure, or central. Notes 1. The term encompasses a wide range of organizations, including media organs, think tanks, human service organizations and pressure groups (environmental, women's rights, gay and lesbian rights, professional). 2. While at the end of the socialist regimes and in the early days of transition, East European intellectuals and scholars of Eastern Europe coincided in their enthusiasm for the idea of civil society, today however, many regard it with suspicion. 3. As noted by Aihwa Ong. 56 4. This kind of perception has been encouraged by a series of scandals that have broken around development projects, revealing that a large proportion of funds earmarked for development go to pay the salaries of western specialists (see for example Janine Wedel's editorial, Moscow Times, June 3 1997). 5. See for example Adam Michnik. Letters from Prison. (Berkeley, 1985) 6. In Russia, they emerged out of the dissident "kruzhki" (circles) of the 1960s-70s. 7. Here I am arguing against those who have argued that there was no separation between public and private in "totalitarian" regimes. 8. Sampson has noted that the actors involved in "transition" are of various nationalities and that development programs in Albania are as likely to be funded by Islamic agencies as by "western" ones, "The social life of projects", p.125. 9. 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