By MOSCOW TIMES editor

"Russian populism was the first response to the rise of capitalism in this country"         The Russian government and Western assistance agencies regularly pay lip service to the notion of an independent, diversified civil society, but they equally regularly adopt policies that trivialize the issue or even undermine whatever beginnings may be achieved.     The Soviet system systematically destroyed civil society, taking everything under the firm control of the state. As a result, citizens developed the habit of dependence on the state, and the state developed the habit of expecting and demanding that no one would take any action, no matter how small, without the permission of some bureaucrat.     Citizens have been quick to move beyond their Soviet mindset, but the government and the bureaucracy — at all levels — have not. Civic initiatives, such as the effort to compel a national referendum on the government's nuclear-waste importing scheme, are routinely and gleefully quashed. Civic-minded groups such as, for example, the Salvation Army, are harassed rather than embraced. As a result, civil society remains under-developed, fragmented and underfunded.     Recent "efforts" to remedy the problem are most likely to be equally ineffective or counterproductive. In June, President Vladimir Putin met with a select group of civic organizations and promised to set up a liaison group that would connect these groups to the government.     Earlier, self-styled dissident Boris Berezovsky created a foundation dedicated to this problem, while simultaneously announcing his intention to create an opposition political party. Most recently, The Moscow Times reported Wednesday on a camp sponsored by the Yukos oil giant that supposedly instills healthy civic values in children.     All three of these projects represent Soviet-style, top-down initiatives that are most likely to result in a managed society, rather than a civil society.     Ironically, the problem isn't really so vexing. If the state allowed companies and individuals to take tax deductions for donations to organizations, funding problems would be reduced.     If the state — at all levels — stopped persecuting, controlling and "liaising" with civic organizations, people would feel that their efforts are appreciated and their limited resources could go into their causes rather than to their lawyers.     The only thing really missing in the effort to solve the civil-society problem is the will to do so.