When Vladimir Putin in the year 2000 came to power in Russia many believed that the Russian civil society were weak and had very little influence and with Putin people say that the situation have deteriorated. The purpose of this paper is to establish what kind of relationship exists between the Russian state and the civil society and to analyze this from a top-down perspective. We are looking at Russia during Putins first term in office from the year 2000 until 2004. In order to establish the relationship we have used John S. Dryzeks theory of inclusive and exclusive state and whether it’s active or passive in this process. The method used in this paper is a qualitative case study design. We concluded that the Russian state is an exclusive state rather then an inclusive one. When it comes to establish if the state is active or passive is more difficult but we feel that it’s more of a passive state then active.