Story of the day - Nashi are here

One of the top stories on Segodnia at 22:00 (NTV's nightly news show) tonight - right after the story about the secrecy-cloaked, large-scale special forces raid today in Grozny - was the official launch of the much-discussed "Nashi" ("Ours") youth movement. Recycled Kremlin toady Vasily Yakemenko - leader of the apparently mothballed "Idushchie Vmeste" ("Walking Together") movement - appeared on the presidium as one of the organization's five "komissars" (yes, that's the name they are using for the organization's leadership).

The festivities were disrupted when Olga Shanina, a member of Eduard Limonov's National Bolshevik Party, ran onstage and tried to douse the "Nashi" leadership with water . According to NTV's report, Yakemenko later, uh, tastefully joked that the protester had "already been shot." Charming.

Here is a somewhat stale but still relevant report on the early development of "Nashi":

RFE/RL, March 2, 2005 Analysis: Walking With Putin By Julie A. Corwin

The pro-Putin youth movement Walking Together announced on 1 March that it has created a new youth movement called Nashi (Ours). According to a press release published on pravda.ru, which quotes Walking Together founder Vasilii Yakemenko, the goal of the new "anti-fascist" movement is to put an end to the "anti-Fatherland union of oligarchs, anti-Semites, Nazis, and liberals." Several Moscow-based newspapers reported the goal of the new group is actually a bit more specific: to eventually replace the party of power, Unified Russia.

The movement's rallying cry is preventing the introduction of foreign control in Russia. Moskovskii komsomolets" on 24 February reported that it obtained documents outlining a "grandiose plan for the creation of a new youth movement" whose goal is to save the motherland from colonization by the United States. The daily quotes Walking Together leader Yakemenko as saying that "organizations in Russia are growing, on the basis of which the U.S. will create groups analogous to Serbia's Otpor, Georgia's Kmara, or Ukraine's Pora. These groups are Eduard Limonov's National Bolshevik Party and Avant Garde Red Youth."

Yakemenko, 33, initially denied in interviews with Ekho Moskvy and "Kommersant-Daily" on 21 February that a new youth movement was in the works. However, later reports detailed Yakemenko's speeches at meetings in cities across Russia, such as Kursk, Orel, and St. Petersburg. According to "Moskovskii komsomolets," Yakemenko told students in Kursk that "Europe long ago asked itself the question: Who will be working at European gas stations, Turks or Ukrainians? This question now has been decided in favor of the Ukrainians. In the final analysis, for practically its entire history, Ukraine has been a colony. It's just that previously it was a Russian colony and now it is an American colony."

[...]In an interview with "Vremya novostei" on 1 March, [leader of Yabloko's youth movement Ilya] Yashin suggested that "one of the tasks of the 'Nashisti' is to intimidate the opposition youth so that they are afraid to attend public meetings. He said that in the last couple of months there have been several clashes between the members of the political opposition and unaffiliated people. Yashin told gazeta.ru that former members of Walking Together along with skinheads in athletic clothing were the main attendees at the Nashi congress. [...]

According to the Moscow-based newspapers, the real architect of Nashi is not Yakemenko but deputy presidential-administration head Vladislav Surkov. Surkov reportedly met with some 35-40 youths in St. Petersburg along with Yakemenko on 17 February to talk about setting up Nashi, according to "Kommersant-Daily" on 21 February. RosBalt confirmed that Surkov was indeed in St. Petersburg on 17 February; however, Yakemenko denied everything. Surkov was widely credited with masterminding Unified Russia's victory in the 2003 State Duma elections. He has now reportedly become disillusioned with his old creation as well as with Motherland [Rodina], which was originally created to take votes away from the Communist Party.

If Surkov is indeed seeking an alternative to Unified Russia, then that might explain the secrecy surrounding Nashi's creation. The presidential administration still needs obedience from Unified Russia members in the State Duma and elsewhere, which may be less forthcoming if they realize that their political careers are about to be cut short. In an interview with kreml.org on 1 March, Viktor Militarev, vice president of the National Strategy Institute, said that he thinks that Walking Together faltered as an organization because it was held together only by money and not by an ideology. Similarly, Unified Russia could have been a "powerful pro-presidential party that served as a repository of the people's hopes for the president and hostility for the thieves, oligarchs, and corrupt bureaucrats. Instead of this, we have a parody," he concluded.

However, with Nashi, Yakemenko has recently been taking a smarter approach, according to Militarev. "For example, Yakemenko has given lectures to youth activists in which he described the American authorities as our geopolitical opponent and said that Russia needs to defend itself." According to Militarev, this is a more effective doctrine than "Putin is our president and he is always right." Writing in politcom.ru on 22 February, Tatyana Stanovaya suggests that the Kremlin's presidential campaign in 2008 may assume the features of Yeltsin's 1996 race when Yeltsin managed to come from behind because of the "Red threat."

"In 2008, the Kremlin might also motivate citizens to vote not 'for' (an unpopular president) but 'against' (this time against the Orange threat) and the 'geopolitical appetites of the West' and 'the powerful subversive network within the country.'" However, if INDEM foundation analyst Yurii Korgunyuk is correct, then Nashi proponents are not pursuing a cynical election ploy. He told "The Moscow Times" on 25 February that the "Kremlin has a paranoid fear of what happened in Ukraine happening here."

Hmmm. Cynical or paranoid. Take your pick. Either way, it's hard to see a positive side to the rise of this latest Kremlin-created movement. An excellent article by Masha Gessen on Nashi from last month is also worth reading:

Moscow Times, February 28, 2005
Kremlin Youth Encourage 'Us' to Get 'Them'
By Masha Gessen

Imagine for a minute that in some country other than Russia -- say, in the United States, or in Britain -- there appeared a political organization that called itself "Us." Not U.S. as in the United States, not Us as in Us Magazine, but Us as in "us vs. them." Imagine further that this is an organization that supports, and is evidently supported by, the country's current government.

Now imagine the hue and cry, the outrage of all the righteous people who argue that an organization that openly divides its own country into those who are "us" and those who are "them" is despicable -- and a government that supports and even inspires the use of the rhetoric of war against its own citizens is criminal. [...]

Unfortunately, it today's Russia, we no longer have to imagine it. Except that the "outrage of all the righteous people" seems a bit muted - after all, they're not the ones in charge of the TV stations.

Yakemenko, though, has some outrage of his own; talking about a brochure to be published shortly by "Nashi," he proclaimed, "Definitely, Khakamada, Ryzhkov, and Kasparov - that is to say, all those who consider it possible to march with fascists - all of them will definitely be named in the brochure." I can't wait.