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Campaigns with Russian Human Rights Activists
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 How do Russians view human rights and how do they view the abuses that are prevalent in their society? For Russia to be part of the global struggle for justice, the larger public must be enlisted, and we need to know how they think about these issues.
Since 2001, CSIS has overseen nine large, random-sample surveys and more than twenty focus groups in Russia. In a unique partnership for a Washington-based think tank, CSIS works with leading Russian human rights organizations, Memorial and Memo.Ru, to get the survey data into the hands of local activists and facilitate the growth of social marketing as a new approach within the Russian human rights community.
 In the city of Ryazan, for example, local activists used data on how Russians think about the war in Chechnya to draw citizens' attention to the costs of the war, the issue that survey data suggested was most resonant with the local population. These posters (1 & 2) were part of a campaign that resulted in 2,100 letters to the President and Minister of Defense requesting information on how much the war had cost and how many Russian military had died in Chechnya. The Caucasian Knot Website also uses these posters in their social marketing efforts today.
Public Commentaries/Appearances
Publications
Analysis
Resources
• Public Commentary: Sarah E. Mendelson was live online on the Washington Post website August 24, 2004 to discuss the outlook for Russian democracy. To view the transcript, click here.
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- Publication: Sarah E. Mendelson and Theodore Gerber coauthored a article in Post-Soviet Affairs, January-March 2007, entitled, "Activist Culture and Transnational Diffusion: Social Marketing and Human Rights Groups in Russia." The article describes a multi-year project helping introduce social marketing to human rights activists in Russia. For a link to the publication, please click here.
- Publication: Please see "Selling Human Rights in Russia" an article published on March 1, 2006 in The Nation, describing the work of a project that CSIS has engaged in with Memorial since 2002.
Our partners have written about this project in Russian.
Please see Social Marketing and Human Rights and PR Campaign “Skol’ko”
- Publications: See also the op-ed about the project "Listen to the Russians," which Sarah E. Mendelson co-authored with Theodore P. Gerber and Grigory Shvedov. It appeared in Washington Post, August 24, 2004.
See The Economist for an account of the Ryazan campaign "SURVEY: RUSSIA, Who needs democracy?," The Economist (UK), May 22-28, 2004
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- Analysis: For a quantitative analysis of the social issue campaigns in Russia's regions in the 2002-2004 period, please see:
- Perm (on children's rights)
- Ryazan (on costs of the war in Chechnya)
- Rostov (on students' rights)
In 2004-2007, we continue our work with Russian activists. See Russia’s Youth
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Non-profit organizations around the world increasingly turn to strategic communications to influence policy making, to grow their organizations and to raise awareness about specific problems. A particularly efficient strategic communications tactic, social marketing, relies on opinion data to shape campaign messages, usually concerning social or broadly political (rather than commercial or partisan) goals and issues. The most effective campaigns both raise awareness and show people what they can do about a problem. They use popular media to deliver messages and also to foster a sense of collective identification with a cause, ideal, or organization. Campaigns usually involve making a positive norm more robust or creating taboos around negative norms.
Human rights activism has traditionally revolved around a repertoire of monitoring abuses and releasing reports (naming and shaming). But in recent years human rights NGOs worldwide have embraced public outreach and issue-based campaigns. Please see this chart, compiled by CSIS staff during the summer of 2006, available here, for examples of over thirty campaigns used around the world. The chart is organized by region and includes information about the campaigns in the following categories: issue, description, message, target audience, methods, and results.
Please contact Lucy Moore with additional information or questions about the information provided at LMoore@csis.org.
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