This week our guest on the podcast is Elena Belokurova.

Elena is a political scientist specializing in the study of civil society and acivic activist from St. Petersburg. She is the director of the organization Mosty[‘Bridges’].

The questions discussed in this podcast include: early

career; the NGO Bridges; Russian civil society in the 1990s; Russian civilsociety under Putin; comparison of Germany and EU with Russia in terms of civilsociety; the EU-Russia Forum; St Petersburg; examples of successful NGOs in thecity; the law on ‘foreign agents’; the law on ‘undesirable’ organisations; thefuture of civil society and human rights in Russia.

This podcast is in Russian. You can also listen to the

podcast on our website oron SoundCloud,  Spotify and  iTunes. 

The music, from Stravinsky’s Elegy for Solo Viola, is

performed for us by Karolina Herrera.

Sergei

Nikitin writes on Facebook:

"They say it is necessary to build bridges, not walls. It is something

that is relevant for both politicians and civil society activists. And while

domestic politicians have recently been getting away with building walls,

fortunately there are people building bridges, and there are many such people.

Simon Cosgrove and I spoke last week with Elena Belokurova, director of Bridges.

This is a long-standing organisation, in fact, for many years based in Ligovka

Street, St. Petersburg, and still there now. They used to be known under a

different name, but the wall builders forced a change of name. But what these

people do does not change: they build bridges of peaceful international

cooperation, and these bridges will serve to develop civil societies through

international exchanges. These bridges will help broaden perspectives and

unleash the creativity of many people, including through international

experiences. Elena Belokurova told us about the many projects, achievements of

Bridges, along with some ideas and plans for the future. Bridges: International

Exchanges, Cooperation, Creativity has brilliant partners in many different

countries and cities. The work continues."

Simon Cosgrove adds:  A summary of some of

the week’s events in Russia relevant to human rights can be found on ourwebsite here.