Carine Clément, a French sociologist working at the Academy of Sciences in Russia, was attacked in Moscow on November 13, 2008. According to an article in the Le Monde, her attackers stabbed her with a syringe while she was on her way to a public meeting of activ- ists. This was the third time that Clément had been the victim of anonymous acts of aggression in the preceding three weeks. It coin- cides with a spate of attacks on Russian activists and trade union- ists in recent months. The same day that Clément was attacked, alexei etmanov, leader of the trade union at the Ford–Vsevolozhsk plant, and mikhail beketov, leader of the movement to defend the Khimki Forest, were also attacked by unnamed assailants. Beketov was severely beaten and is currently in a coma. The coincidence of these attacks indicates the existence of an organized campaign of intimidation against social activists in Russia, which has combined with a spate of attacks on foreigners (one of Clément’s attackers reportedly told her to “leave here”). Clément, who runs the Institute of Collective Action, said in a letter to the Humanité newspaper of the attacks, that “hundreds of activists, working more or less anon- ymously for causes related to housing, work, anti-corruption, ecol- ogy, and land rights, in the majority of regions in Russia, have been affected by these methods.”