New laws that cast NGOs as “foreign agents” illustrate the threat to academic collaboration in Russia

In July, the Russian government passed a law forcing foreign funded NGOs to register as “foreign agents”. Elena Omelchenko and Anna Zhelnina write that this law is part of a trend for Russian authorities to attack social scientists that collaborate outside of the country and are funded by ‘western money’. This attitude threatens to seriously undermine the development of the social sciences in Russia.