The author demonstrates that Russia’s environmental movement, by its permanent contacts with the power and other social actors, promotes the development of democracy in our country, trying to take part in the process of decision-making, exerting pressure on the authorities, demanding due regard of the interests of the population and of its different strata and groups. Today the environmental movement retains its positions of one of the most developed and most active structures of civil society and of one of the most important agents on the eco-political arena.