By Author: Anastasiya Zavyalova (Rice Business School)
Interviewers: Yixi Chen (Columbia Business School); Haifa Labdhagati (Tilburg University)
Article link: https://doi.org/10.1177/00018392241297379
You introduced top-down stigmatization, which differs from the bottom-up dynamic typically assumed in much of the stigma literature. At the end of your study, you noted that public opinion remains divided, meaning that the stigmatization has not fully “succeeded” in achieving consensus. Because it’s a different mechanism than much of what’s assumed in the stigma literature, could you tell us more about this outcome? To what extent does the power asymmetry between the government and organizations contribute to it?
Anastasiya: At the very core, stigma is about really big, drastic differences in values. The fact that this process, which has already been going on for 14 years in Russia, still has not resulted in full-blown, massive stigmatization of these NGOs is because it’s very difficult, almost impossible, to reject your values—although even after the paper was published, many of the NGOs closed. Values are at the very core of these organizations, and opposing values are at the core of the government that opposed them; that’s why the division persisted. There are fundamental differences in values between those who stigmatize these NGOs and those who run them. I believe the power asymmetry made a big difference, because the whole process unfolded under it.
In reality, NGOs were just a testing ground for the powerful government. Not many other actors were protecting NGOs from stigmatization at the beginning. The quote that I used in the study demonstrates this: “First, they come after communists, and we don’t say anything; then they come after another group, and they don’t say anything; and then once they come for us, there’s no one to protect us anymore.” That’s exactly what’s been happening in Russia; NGOs were just the first step.
At the end of the day, the worst thing that can happen to these organizations is that they will close. But as you saw in the study, even within the timeline I was looking at, the government already started going after individuals. After they kind of practiced that “foreign agent” law—the strategies I call stigmatization strategies, which were really repressive strategies—they started expanding the list of “foreign agent” individuals from NGO leaders to journalists, stand-up comedians, performers, singers, actors, professors, and writers. The powerful regime started oppressing one group of people after another, for whom no one stood up, and it started dispersing all over. Because of that all-encompassing stigmatization, I think the division is winding down at this point as well. When I stopped my study, the register had around 800 NGOs and individuals. Now, individuals alone, I think it’s over 1,000 people. So for an observer, even one who did not really care about the law or the stigmatization, it becomes more and more at the forefront of your thoughts—because surely this professor, or this journalist who was quite famous, or this singer that everyone admired and loved for years, all of a sudden, all these people are becoming foreign agents. That’s why I would think that if I were to continue this study until this year, I would say even the division is winding down, because of how far-reaching and widely used this stigmatizing label is.
The number and breadth of social actors to which this label is being applied are becoming so broad that it almost gets to the level of absurdity and randomness—you never know if you’ll wake up the next morning and be labeled a foreign agent. For NGOs specifically, the initial rationale for being labeled a foreign agent was (1) accepting foreign funding and (2) engaging in “political activity,” and those two don’t even have to be connected. There is no need to prove that foreign funding is sponsoring political activity, and the definition of political activity was very broad. For example, an ecological organization that was protecting rare fish species was even considered to be engaged in political activity. They are using this tool—stigmatization strategies—against the people and organizations that pose a threat to the government’s authority. In the case of that ecological NGO, for instance, they were fighting the local government, which was pushing for industrial development and wanted to build factories along the river where rare fish were found. The NGO was trying to protect this very rare fish because factories would pollute the river, which was their source of water. Then the government declared the NGO a foreign agent, the organization could not function, and that is how the ‘enemy’ is eradicated.
Over time, the law became kind of a hammer in search of nails. The government can now label anyone a foreign agent and use that hammer to eradicate undesirable individuals and organizations that undermine its authority.
Since the study is situated in such a distinct context—an authoritarian government with a power asymmetry—we are curious about how you see this pattern potentially emerging in more democratic settings, as you suggested in your study, given that the study itself hinges on the power-asymmetry dynamic between NGOs and the government.
Anastasiya: We’re seeing it in the US right now, right?! The fact that the president is kind of testing the boundaries of US institutions and their stability speaks to it. For instance, the use of ICE is one such example here. The government is creating this force, giving resources, providing funding, recruiting people into this force to get rid of the stigmatized population – meaning immigrants, in theory illegal ones, but in practice, a lot of times it’s not. In some cases, it’s US citizens who just don’t look a certain way; they’re judged by appearance.
ICE operates under DHS’s supervision, with the director appointed by the president. If the person is appointed, they will be rewarded for loyalty, not for honesty. Then that person helps execute the strategy—recruiting ICE agents, employing them, and providing resources. At least in Russia’s case, that is how this persists and gains strength. That independent arm of the government can begin to gain agency of its own. There could come a time when it stops just looking for orders from the top and starts acting on its own because it has to justify the budget and the resources.
My hope is that institutions in the United States are stronger than those in Russia. With elections coming up, Congress may have power; the Supreme Court can have power; and there could be checks and balances, although we’ve watched them being tested. I’m just hopeful they’re strong enough to withstand this—which, in Russia, of course, was not the case. The institutions there are not independent. The Supreme Court judges are appointed, and the governors of the Oblast (which is like a state in Russia) are also appointed by the president, not elected by the people in those regions. All of that weakens the institutions. In the United States, it’s not the case yet, but it’s definitely being tested.
The power of the people is stronger in democratic societies. The most recent example was Jimmy Kimmel’s show, which was canceled over his comments, and then, all of a sudden, because of the public uprising and the cancellation of Disney online subscriptions, they had to bring the show back. This would be almost unheard of in Russia. If you call someone a foreign agent, that’s it—you’re putting a big cross on their career. In a democratic society, people still have a voice.
“And I think the biggest part is that in democratic societies, people can organize. In authoritarian regimes, the government is doing everything it can to prevent that. I think that’s partly why NGOs were the first target—NGOs are arenas where people of similar interests coalesce. Whether it’s the protection of political prisoners, ecological concerns, or journalist networks pursuing fair news coverage. An organization gives people who think alike the power and a stronger voice.”
I think that’s another reason why they went after organizations rather than individuals first—because organizations are more powerful. They are the conduit between individual will and political change.
Do you also see, for example, in a more democratic context, patterns in which the government tries to prevent people from organizing or goes after organizations?
Anastasiya: In the US, they started with US universities. DEI was the big issue in the US because of that. If you are not abiding by the Trump administration’s demands in terms of cleaning out—but actually eliminating—the DEI initiatives, including teaching classes in that area or recruiting students with affirmative action policies, the government threatened and then actually withdrew federal funding from research at universities. That’s going directly after organizations. Columbia was a big deal, Rice to a lesser extent, I guess, Harvard—many universities were victims of these policies. Some had to concede to the demands. Either you do what we say, or you lose funding, which is a big loss. So, when we talk about power, one of the biggest things is not just power over individuals, but the power to administer and deliver resources. That’s how they slowly suffocate these organizations.
More recently, this was also used against media broadcasting organizations. There were demands about which shows should run and which should not. The Colbert Report is another stand-up comedian with a late-night show who doesn’t speak too warmly about Trump and his administration. He has a deadline by which the show will be canceled. So that was another example.
We both agree that the research is super ambitious in terms of data breadth, temporal scope, and political sensitivity. So, we’re curious: how did you come up with this idea in the first place, and what convinced you to continue pursuing this question, especially given the uncertainty and sensitivity involved?
Anastasiya: The idea about Russia came about because I’d been watching Russian news closely, which I hadn’t been prior to Russia’s invasion of Crimea. That event really was a turning point for where Russia was headed. It became more and more clear that this is not going to be a democratic country if it starts invading its neighbors. Repressions intensified—and, of course, the law was passed in 2012.
I was watching Alexei Navalny’s YouTube channel very closely. He had a big investigation about Dmitry Medvedev, who was the president at the time; he and Putin switched back and forth a bit. The investigation was about Medvedev’s palace, which cost millions, if not billions, of Rubles. It revealed the scope of corruption happening in Russia. That infuriated a lot more people, and more people started coalescing around Navalny’s party. So that made me more and more interested in what was happening in Russia.
“At the same time, from a theory perspective, I had been a researcher of the dark side of organizations—negative events like product recalls, scandals, misconduct, and so on. Stigma seemed like a natural next step. As I was reading the stigma literature—preparing for a PhD seminar or seeing what people present at conferences—the original idea for the paper was that there isn’t much research about stigma emergence. Most of the literature is about: if you’re stigmatized, what do you do as an organization? How do you cope? How do you manage? So, the original idea was: this is a great context to study how stigma emerges.”
Some of these NGOs had been functioning since Soviet times. It’s not like men’s bathhouses, which are stigmatized by default by virtue of their activities. It’s not even tobacco companies, which are increasingly stigmatized. It’s not brothels or prostitution, which some stigma researchers have studied. It’s ecological NGOs, journalists’ NGOs—to me, that was interesting. In terms of the context, I’d been following the news, and in terms of theory, this is a great example of how stigma starts to emerge. All of a sudden, you have this resurrected label of “foreign agent,” which was used a long time ago—in the ‘50s during the Cold War—and people have forgotten about it. Now, all of a sudden, it’s being applied to absolutely valid, strong, long-lasting organizations. To me, that was the impetus for the study.
“Usually, in research, you’re either theory-driven or context-driven. This was a great experience where both emerged and spoke to each other.”
There was a lot of synergy and nothing forced about it. Of course, the research question changed slightly — it became more closely aligned with the context, focusing on the role of the authoritarian government in stigmatization. That was partly a result of the review process. But that’s how it started: closely following the news, and having this idea in the back of my mind about a theoretical gap in stigma research.
Then, regarding the sensitivity of the context, I am not a qualitative researcher. Everything was new to me. I started learning about qualitative research methods and how to conduct interviews. And to my big surprise, once I started collecting the registry of foreign-agent NGOs, I literally went on Google, looked up their websites and the email addresses of their leaders, founders, or directors, and started cold emailing them. Just, “hey, would you be interested?” I didn’t even know what the study would end up being. I was just interested in how stigma came about. So, from their perspective, I wanted to know: how did this foreign agent label hit you? What did you do? Were there any red flags beforehand? Those were my initial questions.
“And surprisingly enough, they all wanted to talk to me. I know it’s a sensitive topic, especially given the context. And this kind of solidified my hunch: in qualitative research, we usually protect the identities of organizations or people; we want to sterilize them. But I didn’t think we should in this case. These people wanted their voices to be heard. Some did want to hide the identity of their organization, but many said, “Please mention my name, please mention the name of my organization—I want people to know that we are fighting this and have been fighting this. We’ve been under this broom that the government has been using to sweep away the NGOs.” They wanted their names and identities to be preserved.”
So, to my surprise, I thought this was a very sensitive topic, and I didn’t know how many people would be willing to talk to me. Some just never replied, but all those who did reply said, “Absolutely, let’s talk.”
I think we’re kind of overcalibrated to this whole idea of confidentiality and anonymity, which originated in medical research to protect the identities of vulnerable populations. These are leaders who are outspoken, well-spoken, and well-known people. They know what to say and what not to say to a researcher. We don’t need to anonymize them unless they explicitly say, “Please don’t mention my name.”
I think we should start by acknowledging the contribution of these people. If they’re willing to disclose their names and get credit for their contribution to the study, I don’t see why not—their names should be there.
Were there any surprises or challenges during the review process that helped reshape the paper in meaningful ways?
Anastasiya: Many great insights. One is that the paper was reframed, from “stigma emergence” to really centering the role of the authoritarian government. Initially, I wanted to sidestep the government and focus purely on the emergence of stigma. But the reviewers and the editor saw more value; they said, “No, bring it fully front and center—this is an authoritarian government stigmatizing NGOs.” That was one big change.
The figure that explicates the stigmatization process—those three phases—was also a result of the review process. One of the reviewers pushed me to show with data why these are distinct phases. Intuitively, I saw that there were phases, but I hadn’t dug deeper into the data to show it. When the stigmatization was just starting, the law was carefully applied to a handful of organizations. Then, the next phase was a big deal as they started upping the number in the registry and really going after them—sending police to raid them, sending inspectors under the guise of fire inspections, which were actually very disruptive and unannounced. You can imagine how difficult it is to function when you never know when your day will be disrupted. Increasing administrative burdens were imposed on these organizations. These distinct phases and what triggered them came through the review process.
What triggered the transition between phases, it turns out, was social and political turmoil, such as elections. If there’s going to be an election, the government wants to silence dissenting voices even more. There were demonstrations in the streets, and the government wants to silence them further. I called them precipitating events of social unrest. That came out of the review process—I didn’t come up with that initially. Another thing the editor suggested was to visually overimpose data onto the theoretical insights—and you see in one of the figures that the media coverage is overimposed onto these phases. Initially, they were two separate illustrations, but it was a great insight: if you overlay one on the other, you can clearly see how media coverage tracked the development of the phases.
I was really lucky with how closely the reviewers read the paper and the quality of their recommendations. And as a side note, this was the fastest project I ever worked on. From the initial idea to publication, it was four years. And it was one round of review. I’ve never had such a smooth experience with publishing a paper. I think that speaks to the idea that when data and theory are so synergetic, you don’t need to force anything. In some of my papers, I had to try different framings and tell a better story with the data. But when the story and the data converge so well, you just have to sit down and write it as a story.
Do you have some advice for junior scholars like us, and for other PhD students who may hesitate to pursue this kind of work? Because we think this type of work is really important—we need to get their stories heard and let the world know what’s going on in such sensitive contexts.
Anastasiya: For this particular project, while I was working on it, a lot of events were happening to Alexei Navalny. He was poisoned, had to go to a German hospital, and I was closely following his personal journey. Then he finally rehabilitated, came back to Russia against all advice, was imprisoned, and, as we learned, was killed in prison. That whole journey just infuriated me—it gave me the fire to keep working on this project. I thought: if he dedicated his life to trying to change how Russia is developing as a society, surely, I can give my time to writing this paper.
“Find a topic that gives you motivational fuel—one that you think is important, and that people around you agree is important whenever you pitch it. And of course, it has to be theoretically novel. If we already have a whole bunch of theory that would have predicted what you’re observing anyway, that would be less impactful. Identify the gap, but also find the context that fuels you—because these projects last years. Sometimes they’ll weigh you down, and you’ll feel like you can’t do this anymore. The fact that you know the topic is important, and that once it’s published, people will hopefully read it—that should be the motivation. As with anything else in life, if you have a goal and believe in it, everything else is just steps toward it.”
Interviewer Bios:
Yixi Chen is a PhD Candidate in the Management Department at Columbia Business School. Her research examines how individuals with stigmatized identities navigate strategic self-presentation and how these choices shape audience evaluation, network formation, and well-being across entrepreneurship and elite education contexts.
Haifa Labdhagati is a PhD Candidate/Lecturer in the Department of Organization Studies, Tilburg University. Her research interests are in the interactions between organizations and their institutional (regulatory) environment, and how the dynamics shape the meaning of regulations.
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