FOUNDING THE NASHI: A KREMLIN INITIATIVE
When, in the autumn of 2004, in neighboring Ukraine the Orange Revolution took place, this event fundamentally changed the way in which the Kremlin viewed the role of its youth organization. It was no longer perceived as a presidential fan club, but was to become the Kremlin’s bulwark against a color revolution in Russia. This meant, first, that the movement had to become more combative. Second, that, instead of concentrating on moral issues, it should focus more on geopolitical issues. And, third, that it should attack not only internal foes, but also foreign enemies, suspected of supporting opposition groups in Russia. On February 17, 2005—three weeks after the inauguration of Viktor Yushchenko as Ukraine’s new “orange” president—Vladislav Surkov met in secret with thirty-five to forty young people in St. Petersburg. The meeting was arranged by Vasily Yakemenko, founder of Walking Together. The goal of the meeting was to set up a new youth organization that would get the name Nashi (literally “Ours,” but its connotation is something like “Our Guys,” making a clear distinction between “us” and “them”—the outsiders, enemies, and foreigners).[7] Putin’s new militants were conceived as a defense against organized opposition groups, such as Kmara in Georgia and Pora in Ukraine, that were at the forefront of the popular color revolutions in these countries. These grassroots organizations, fighting for democracy, individual freedom, and respect for human rights, based their actions on nonviolent strategies, such as were described by Gene Sharp in his influential book From Dictatorship to Democracy.[8] The Nashi movement was the total opposite of these movements. Instead of a spontaneous organization that had its roots in civil society, it was a top-down initiative, conceived down to the smallest detail within the Kremlin walls. Its objective was not to foster democracy, but to support a nondemocratic, autocratic power elite. The new organization received generous funding, not only from the Kremlin, but also from the Kremlin-related company Gazprom.[9] In her diary Anna Politkovskaya commented on the Nashi:
The authorities rely on criminal elements to prop up the system of state power. That this really is their doctrine recently received further confirmation when the Presidential Administration created a clone…. It is called Nashi…. The stormtroopers of the Nashi youth movement are football hooligans armed with knuckle-dusters and chains…. They have two units, one consisting of thugs who support the Central Sports Club of the Army football team, and the other of thugs who support the Spartak team. They all have an impeccable record in street fighting.[10]
Nashi founder Yakemenko openly advocated recruiting skinheads, such as the Spartak fans, who called themselves “The Gladiators” and wore tattoos of a gladiator with a spear. In a Nashi conference in 2005, he told his audience: “Skinheads—they are the same people as you…. Skinheads sincerely believe [that] they are patriots of Russia.”[11] By 2009 the Nashi movement had grown into a nationwide organization with between 100,000 and 120,000 members. It was established in fifty-two towns and had a hard core of 10,000 activists. The members wore red jackets, waved Nashi flags (a diagonal white cross on a red background—mixing tsarist and Soviet symbols), and had their own buses to transport them to their demonstrations. In a country where opposition rallies and demonstrations are systematically forbidden the Nashi could demonstrate at any place and any time with the full cooperation of the police. The organization was drenched in Soviet-era nostalgia. Not only were the group leaders called “commissar”—as in old Soviet times—but also the official website, www.nashi.su, instead of having the usual country code ‘.ru’, ends with .su (from Soviet Union). As in the case of Walking Together, idealistic motives were not enough to inspire potential members to adhere. Therefore, visitors to the Nashi website were lured with promises “of becoming a new intellectual elite.” They were offered interesting study schemes (“Do you deserve to have higher education from the country’s best university teachers?”), as well as tempting career possibilities (“Nashi people are already in parliament, in the administration, in the strongest Russian companies”).[12] Aspiring members could choose between different sections, such as “Patriotism,” “Ideology,” and “Information.” Members of the Patriotism section had the task “to disseminate propaganda under the young generation based on the big victories of the Russian people,” and “to create models of patriotic education… based on the principles of sovereign democracy.” They also participated in “patriotic war games.”
Officially the movement presented itself as anti-fascist. It even had an “Anti-Fa” (anti-fascism) section. The main task of this section was not so much to defend migrants from the Caucasus and Central Asia against racist and xenophobic attacks by hooligans and skinheads, but to be vigilant for any criticism of the official version of the history of the Great Patriotic War or any attempt to besmirch the honor of war veterans. On the Nashi website the “Ideology” section introduced itself with the words that “no government on earth can live without a concept of the state.” In Russia, the text continued, this is “the concept of sovereign democracy,” an idea that “must be spread among as many people as possible.” Everywhere in these texts the inspiration and, possibly, even the hand of Vladislav Surkov was recognizable. Surkov is generally regarded as the godfather of the Nashi. He is a popular speaker at Nashi meetings. In September 2009 he credited Nashi with having helped persuade Obama to scrap the missile defense plans in Eastern Europe. “You are the leading combat detachment in our political system,” he told the activists. “Dominance on the street is also a necessary advantage for us, an advantage that we have thanks to you, thanks to all those who are so brilliant at staging mass actions.”[13] Was it mere a coincidence that the title “combat detachment,” given by Surkov to his new Nashi troops, had a worrying resemblance to the fasci di combattimento, Mussolini’s combat squads?
“PATRIOTIC TRAINING” IN NASHI SUMMER CAMPS
Every year, in July, the Nashi movement organizes a two-week summer camp in a pine wood near Lake Seliger, a popular holiday resort three hundred miles north of Moscow. Everything is done to make the camp attractive to young people: transport, food, and lodging are free. In 2006 there were five thousand participants; in 2007 this number had doubled to ten thousand. The camps mixed adventure with agitprop. In 2007 paintings were exhibited of internal and external foes of Russia, such as opposition leader Garry Kasparov, clad as a prostitute,[14] and the foreign minister of Estonia, Urmas Paet, with a Hitler mustache. Apart from geopolitics the future demographic development of Russia was high on the agenda. In 2007 the camp celebrated a mass wedding for about thirty couples. Red tents were arranged in the shape of a heart for the couples to celebrate their wedding night. Dmitry Medvedev and Sergey Ivanov, at that time both deputy prime ministers, called in. Ivanov called for the group to have more babies. One year later, in the summer camp of 2008, a baby was shown who had been conceived at the mass wedding of 2007. This openly proclaimed natalism is resonant of Mussolini’s call to the Italian women “to make babies for Italy.”[15] In 2008 the portrait of the Estonian foreign minister had been replaced by a pig in a wooden stall with the name Ilves—the name of the Estonian president.[16] The 2008 camp, however, attracted only five thousand participants. This diminished enthusiasm was partly due to the fact that in the summer of 2008 the Duma elections and the presidential elections had taken place. But also rumors of free love had made parents more wary. The government intervened. In 2009 the camp was organized directly by the state, paramilitary training was suspended, there was this time no “love oasis,” and also non-Nashi members were given free access.[17] But these cosmetic changes did not have a real impact on the camp’s core business. According to an observer, “the worry for critics of Seliger is that the older political generation uses it to transmit their own ideology to the new.”[18]
7
“Kreml gotovit novyy molodezhnyy proekt na zamenu ‘Idushchim Vmeste.’”
8
Some texts by Gene Sharp, such as “The Politics of Nonviolent Action,” can be freely downloaded from the website of the Albert Einstein Institution. http://www.aeinstein.org.
9
According to Marie Jégo, Moscow correspondent for
11
Charles Clover, “‘Managed Nationalism’ Turns Nasty for Putin,”
13
Quoted in John Follett, “Russia’s Past Mobilised to Shape the Present,”
14
Tony Halpin, “Winning Young Hearts and Minds: Putin’s Strategy for a New Superpower,”
15
In his famous Ascension Day Speech of May 1927 Mussolini exhorted Italians to increase the population from 40 million to 60 million in twenty-five years. Italian women were called upon to have a dozen children each. Pro-natalist measures included a tax on bachelors, tax exemptions for large families, and restrictions on emigration. (Cf. Carl Ipsen,