This article explores how foreign funders may promote good governance in a country without a history of established democratic processes. It examines the travel of ideas of democracy and human rights from Sweden to Russia through transnational cooperation projects during the period 1991–2005. Considering these projects as forms of high-stakes translations, the study finds that many of them engaged with Russian society only on a superficial level without embedding ideas in local organizational practices. Identifying the weaknesses often found in such translations, the study points to the difficulty of contributing to a democratic transformation of Russia by means of foreign-funded projects lacking contextual anchorage.