MOSCOW — Russian authorities were accused of turning the clock back to Stalinist times yesterday after a group of human-rights activists was found guilty of having an “unsanctioned” afternoon tea party with two Westerners.

Pro-democracy groups immediately condemned the ruling — the first made under internationally criticized legislation passed last year to restrict the freedoms of civil society — as an attempt by the Kremlin to stifle free speech in Russia.

Nine members of Froda, a group that campaigns for ethnic minority rights, were found guilty of holding an illegal meeting and fined after they had tea with two German students visiting a friend in the southern city of Novorossiysk. The students, involved in similar campaign work in Germany, had requested a meeting to find out more about a Froda project encouraging children of different racial backgrounds to play football together.

But as the meeting began, armed officers from the Federal Security Service, the intelligence agency that succeeded the KGB, burst into the headmaster’s study and detained the group.