Levada Center will not dispute the status of "agent" in court

The Levada Center will not go to court to protest the decision of the Ministry of Justice, who included the sociological service in the register of "foreign agents". According to Kommersant, this was announced by the director of the center Lev Gudkov.

According to him, the Levada Center still does not recognize itself as an “ino-agent”, but it will legally prove anything only if the Ministry of Justice itself requires it through the court.

“There will be no lawsuit,” Gudkov said, citing the recommendations of the lawyers of his center. According to the Levada-Center Law on the NPO, it is obliged to send to the Ministry of Justice the “application for inclusion” to the register of foreign agents (clause 5 of Article 13.1 of the Law). Such a statement is part of the procedure according to which the ministry registers the change in the status of NPOs. The Levada-Center is not going to submit applications, but without "such a procedural detail, the entry in the register can be considered unlawful," Gudkov believes.

The levada center will continue its polls and research as usual. At the same time, the lawyers of the Center are sure that the lawsuit will be, since the center does not follow the requirements of the law: it does not declare itself an agent on the site, in official papers and in publications.

On September 5, the Ministry of Justice included the Levada Center in the list of "foreign agents" . If the Ministry of Justice’s decision cannot be challenged, Gudkov explained, it is possible that the levada center will have to be closed. “Because with such a stigma, conducting public opinion polls is simply impossible,” he explained.

The next day, the director of the NPO Lev Gudkov said that the Levada Center will appeal the decision of the Ministry of Justice in court . Studies of the Levada Center, some of which last more than 20 years, are funded by the distribution of funds from commercial orders, the head of the NPO noted. “If we refuse this, we will have to reduce the entire range of our research,” Gudkov emphasized. He noted that the studies, on the basis of which NPOs were recognized as an “ino -agent”, were not financed at the expense of the US Department of Defense and did not concern political issues.

On September 9, Gudkov said that Russian legislation on non-profit organizations opens up opportunities for the complete arbitrariness of administrative bodies due to the blurry definition of the concepts of “political activity” and “foreign financing”. "For our country, for decades, divorced from the conditions for the development of modern social knowledge, which has been in the position of a deep intellectual province, this means the prospect of further conservation of scientific archaic and degradation. The misunderstanding of this threatens not just isolationism or chronic decrease in human and social capital in our country, but by turning it into a reserve of poor and aggressive population, which consoles itself with illusions national superiority and exclusivity, ”the director of the Levada Center emphasized.

Repressions threaten not only sociology, Gudkov notes. “They will finish with sociology - they will go to history, economics, genetics, physics and other sciences, as it was in the Stalin years,” he warned.