Rule of Law, Professionalism, and Cognitive Dissonance: Providing Support to Lawyers in the Former Soviet Union

Aid and development workers who spend a great deal of time working overseas become sensitized to the need to suspend assumptions and observe local culture and mores in order to better collaborate with and support the local community. But what do you do when the local culture seems to lack an ethical compass? ... When I arrived in Tashkent in 2004, it was just before Christmas, or, as celebrated there, the New Year holiday. Because of the holiday, and the fact that I was starting a new job and wanted to begin developing relationships with my team, I brought them small gifts. The gifts weren't expensive-t- shirts from the art museum in my home city and mugs with candy in them-but they were foreign and exotic to my new colleagues. This small goodwill gesture led me to my first encounter with the fraught world of gift-giving, bribe-taking, and connection-building in the former Soviet Union. A day or two after I presented the gifts to my team, a particularly open colleague who later became a good friend approached me. "You weren't asking for anything in return for the gifts, were you?" he asked. My initial confusion turned to dread as the realization of what he was asking sank in. "Oh, no!" I told him, "I didn't expect anything in return. I just wanted to do something nice for all of you to introduce myself and build a relationship." "I was just asking," he said, "because my friend told me that I should find out what you wanted." Sadly, the lawyers that seek out this training are not the majority. Most lawyers' skepticism of the applicability of the rule of law and analytical reasoning is understandable when viewed through the lens of recent Russian court case outcomes. In the case against Pussy Riot, a protest aimed to call attention to the dangers of a close relationship between the country's president and the leader of the church, the court failed to acknowledge the protest aspect of the event. Instead, the participants were convicted of "hooliganism motivated by religious hatred"-turning their protest intent on its head-and sentenced to two years in prison. They each served a bit over one year. Since the 2012 passage of a law requiring registration as "foreign agents" of NGOs that receive foreign aid and engage in "political activity"-a term the definition of which seems to encompass any attempt to create any change in society or the law-hundreds of NGOs have been raided, brought into court, and threatened with closure if they did not either reject foreign