ABSTRACT
This chapter opens the subsequent series of discussions on civil society as part of society by examining state-sponsored associations in Russia. The simplest method to approach this issue would be to discard such associations from the ‘genuine’ civil society realm and to deem them unable to genuinely pursue the tasks of a civic struggle. This method could be justified logically and would not seem entirely unfair. In the introduction to this book, I set a definitional barrier that would generally concur with such an approach. However, this chapter continues an important qualifying statement made in the same place and proposes to unveil a few more layers of the discussion. The extent to which we would not be able to include such organisations into the civil society framework would vary from country to country depending on tradition, experience, and the nature of such organisations activity.
