In Russia, Cautious Generosity

MOSCOW -- Russia's tycoons, whose flamboyant spending has ka-chinged from Mediterranean isles to London's Mayfair district, have found a new use for their supersize wallets: philanthropic foundations.

The rich are awarding thousands of scholarships to the best and the brightest, promoting arts and culture, funding libraries, schools and universities, supporting the Russian Orthodox Church's growth and improving health-care facilities in a country where 20 percent of the population lives in poverty.

But the long and growing list of worthy projects has a striking absentee, the development of democracy. Donors "are afraid of the political consequences," said Maria Chertok, head of the Charities Aid Foundation in Russia. "For now, areas like human rights and social justice are just too controversial."

This vast country, with its troves of natural resources and strong science education, has generated 33 billionaires and 90,000 millionaires since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. "I believe that any businessman who has enough funds, who has more than he needs, has an obligation to give back. It's his destiny," said Dmitry Zimin, 73, who built Russia's second-largest cellular phone company, VympelCom, and created the Dynasty Foundation to support fundamental science, particularly physics.

All giving in Russia, including corporate charity, now totals about $1.5 billion a year, a tiny fraction of the U.S. figure. But it has risen exponentially since the figure of $1 million in 1992, when the idea of private philanthropy, after decades of communism and reliance on the state, was completely alien, according to the Charities Aid Foundation, a British organization that helps the wealthy set up foundations.

The biggest Russian foundations have created clear and open procedures to select the best recipients and monitor their work, according to Charities Aid and the Donors' Forum, an organization that brings together foreign and domestic grant makers in Russia.

However, in a country where political power is increasingly centralized in the Kremlin, the funding of groups that promote democracy-building, the rule of law, a free press and human rights has come to be regarded by Russia's elite as exposing their riches to retribution from the state.

Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the oil baron who plowed $60 million into private democracy-oriented projects, is in a Siberian prison camp. His foundation, Open Russia, has been shuttered by the authorities as part of a probe into alleged tax evasion by Khodorkovsky and the company he created, Yukos.

"The Khodorkovsky case was a very clear signal to everyone to stop this kind of activity," said Irina Yasina, who stepped down as head of Open Russia in August. "Our authorities believe that supporting civil society is opposition activity. Open Russia is dead. We've had to close dozens and dozens of projects."

The funding of advocacy groups is now almost entirely the preserve of American and European governments and private foundations.

"I don't know any Russian funds who work with human rights groups," said Arseny Roginsky, chairman of Memorial, the leading human rights organization in the country. "Foreign foundations play the dominant role in supporting our activity." The small support he receives from Russians, Roginsky said, is strictly anonymous.

Foreign funders and their grantees became subject to much greater scrutiny after the passage of a new law this year on nongovernmental organizations. President Vladimir Putin said the legislation was needed to guard against foreign interference in the country's political process, but Russian activists said it is so vague that nonpartisan activities such as human rights monitoring could be construed as political and shut down.