MOSCOW — It began as an urgent effort to stave off political chaos, build basic institutions and even prevent starvation in the anxiety-ridden aftermath of the fall of the Soviet Union.
Over the next 20 years, through the U.S. Agency for International Development, U.S. taxpayers would come to spend nearly $3 billion on programs touching nearly every facet of society in the former communist state — fighting the spread of tuberculosis and HIV, developing judicial systems and training lawyers and judges, promoting child welfare, job readiness, youth engagement, human rights and democracy, even helping modernize the electric grid.
The decision by the Kremlin this month to terminate all the agency’s programs here, amid a swirl of ominous accusations of meddling in Russia’s internal affairs, has stunned aid workers, infuriated U.S. diplomats and left many nonprofit groups on the brink of collapse.
It also marks the end of a collaboration between the two former Cold War enemies, one that was unimpeded, at least initially, by the suspicion that often shadows foreign aid.
“In the fall of 1991 and early in 1992, the door for Western engagement and influence in remaking the Russian economy and polity was wide open,” Michael A. McFaul, the U.S. ambassador, and his co-author, James M. Goldgeier, wrote in “Power and Purpose,” a 2003 history of U.S. policy after the Cold War. “Issues of sovereignty that often emerge as major sources of tension between donors and recipients in other countries were simply not an issue.”
They are now. With President Vladimir Putin facing the biggest political challenges since his rise to power 12 years ago, including ongoing street demonstrations in Moscow, the Kremlin has moved to clamp down on dissent.
When Putin last winter accused Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton of sending “a signal” to opposition groups in Russia to take to the streets, many U.S. officials dismissed it as election-year rhetoric.
Russian officials insist that the U.S. should not have been surprised by their decision.
“We have long warned the U.S. side that we are not satisfied with some aspects of USAID, in particular political aspects,” said Alexei Pushkov, chairman of the foreign affairs committee in parliament.
Critics of the cancellation of aid programs say the government’s anger is misdirected. “It is difficult to say what result is expected in the Kremlin from the closure of Russian USAID programs,” Maria Eismont wrote in a column in the newspaper Vedmosti. “The protest movement is not going anywhere because people are not put on the streets by the State Department.”
