“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call to the Italian women “to make babies for Italy.”[15] In 2008 the portrait of the Estonian foreign minister had been replaced by a pig in a wooden stall with the name Ilves—the name of the Estonian president.[16] The 2008 camp, however, attracted only five thousand participants.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]
The Nashi Manifesto and “Megaproject Russia”
One of the Nashi movement’s objectives was, indeed, the transmission of the ideology of the ruling elite to the younger generation. Therefore, the Nashi manifesto” deserves a closer look. It is one of the rare Kremlin-inspired texts that gives a deeper insight into the ideology of the regime. The manifesto starts with inviting young Russians to participate in the “megaproject of our generation, the megaproject Russia.” And the text continues: “The development of the world involves competition between peoples.” In this competition “it is our goal to make Russia a global leader of the twenty-first century.” This leadership is possible, the manifesto continues, because, as one should not forget, “the twentieth century had been Russia’s century.” This was due to three events. The first event is the Russian Revolution, which was “an effort to modernize” the country (no mention is made of Stalinist mass murders and repression). The second event is the victory of Russia in the Second World War, which saved the world from “a global hegemony by another country” and which accelerated “the disintegration of the colonial empires.” (Here nothing is said about the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, nor about the new colonization that took place after the war inside the Soviet bloc.) The third event that is mentioned is the end of communism at the end of the twentieth century. It is stressed that this process was “autonomous.”
The manifesto explains why Russia is destined to become a global leader. The text refers to the “Eurasian heartland” theory of Halford J. MacKinder, without, however, mentioning MacKinder’s name.[19] “Russia,” it states, “is the central military-strategic space of the Eurasian continent. Control over it is important for those who want to dominate Eurasia and the whole world. It was precisely for this reason that Napoleon and Hitler dreamed of conquering it. Today, it is the United States on the other hand that is trying to control Eurasia and the whole world, and international terrorism on the other.” Against these threats, the text continues, “a strong, independent Russian government” is necessary, which is based on the sound foundation of sovereign democracy. This sovereign democracy is threatened by two internal enemies: the liberals “who are ready to give up the country’s independence in the name of the freedom of the individual” and the communists and fascists who give up personal freedom in the name of a stronger government. There follows a severe criticism of the weak governments of the 1990s, and the next paragraph, entitled “Our Revolution,” praises Putin, who, “after having strengthened the government, was the first to really challenge the regime of oligarchic capitalism.” Because Putin brought the stability the country needed so badly for its modernization, Putin is the natural leader for the Nashi movement. The Nashi is Putin’s avant-garde, because “our task . . . is to be at the head of the modernization of the country.” This modernization is not the only task for the members of Nashi. Other tasks include “the defense of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Russia,” and to counter the “geopolitical games” of the West in the post-Soviet space, with their explicit goal of vydavlivanie: pushing Russia out of world politics. Further, the Nashi should fight “extremist organizations of fascist and liberal nature.” To accomplish these important tasks for the fatherland Nashi members should have special character profiles and competences. They are expected to be patriotic and optimistic, think strategically, have social responsibility, be constructive and open to new developments, and have leadership capabilities and great professionalism.
Harassing Diplomats and Internal Foes
This was the manifesto, but what was the practice? In practice Nashi’s activities were concerned less with the modernization of Russian society than with the persecution and harassment of imagined internal and external foes. The first case that gained media attention was that of Anthony Brenton, British ambassador in Moscow. After Brenton had spoken at a conference held by the opposition movement “The Other Russia” in August 2006, he was systematically harassed by Nashi militants. They picketed the British embassy and followed the ambassador for six months with a banner demanding that he apologize. According to The Sunday Times, “They shouted abuse as he shopped for cat food, obstructed his car, advertised his movements on the internet and disrupted him when he spoke publicly.”[20] The harassment only stopped temporarily when the British government officially protested, but was resumed after the Duma elections of December 2007, when fifty Nashi members again picketed the embassy with a portrait of the ambassador with the text “Loser” (referring to Kasparov’s political party, which had not managed to get a seat in the new Duma). The demonstrators handed a letter to the embassy guard destined for the British queen, demanding that she recall the ambassador.[21]
Another high-placed victim was the ambassador of Estonia, Marina Kaljurand. She was attacked when the Estonian government removed a Soviet-era war monument, the Bronze Soldier, from the center of Tallinn. Starting April 30, 2007, members of Nashi picketed the Estonian embassy in Moscow. They blocked the street on both sides, making it impossible for the embassy’s staff to leave. Rocks and paint were thrown at the embassy building and slogans painted on the walls, such as “We reached Berlin, we will reach Tallinn too.” Day and night Nashi members played loud music in front of the building. The embassy personnel noted that “the young people were equipped with everything necessary to maintain round the clock presence, including portable toilets, a field kitchen and electricity supply.”[22] Tents had even been erected in front of the embassy in which the protesters were taking turns to sleep. On May 1, 2007, the Estonian flag was torn down from the embassy and shredded into pieces. On May 2, the ambassador had to break through a Nashi cordon to give a press conference at the offices of the magazine Argumenty i Fakty. On her arrival, there were attempts to attack her physically in the press room and gas had to be used by the guards to set her free. On the street outside rioting youths attacked the ambassador’s car and tore off the Estonian flag. These attacks on the embassy were preceded by organized riots in the center of the Estoni
an capital Tallinn on April 26 and 27 by Estonian Russophones, led by Russian Nashi activists who had come over specially from Russia.[23]
Cyber Attacks
On April 27, cyber attacks started, aimed at paralyzing the web servers of the Estonian government. These attacks originated from Russian state IP addresses. Due to the attacks access by foreign users of the government web pages had to be restricted.[24] Nashi also seemed to be involved in cyber attacks on the Georgian government’s website before and during Russia’s war against Georgia in August 2008. In a report of the Cooperative Cyber Defense Center of Excellence in the Estonian capital Tallinn, the authors wrote: “In the case of possible Russian government involvement with the cyber attacks on the Georgian government website in July and August 2008, the available evidence supports a strong likelihood of GRU/FSB [respectively, the Russian military and the internal secret service] planning and direction at high level while relying on Nashi intermediaries and the phenomenon of crowdsourcing to obfuscate their involvement and implement their strategy.”[25] The close, almost symbiotic cooperation between Russia’s secret services and the youth movement is particularly interesting. In this context the project of the “Kremlin School of Bloggers,” set up in 2009 by the Fund for Effective Politics of Kremlin ideologue Gleb Pavlovsky, should also be mentioned. The “Kremlin School of Bloggers” sells the Kremlin’s policies to the young Internet community by writing blogs, attacking opposition websites, and posting ideological YouTube videos.[26] The name of its website (liberty.ru) is Free World (Svobodnyy Mir), and its motto is—why not?—“Freedom is better than no freedom.”
Other Nashi attacks were targeted at supposed internal foes, such as independent Russian media, opposition politicians, and journalists daring to criticize the regime. They were all categorized as fascists.[27] One of these attacks concerned the paper Kommersant, one of the few remaining bastions of the free press in Russia. On March 3, 2008—as a reaction to a critical article on the Nashi movement in this paper—people posing as employees began handing out rolls of toilet paper, emblazoned with Kommersant’s logo, outside various Moscow metro stations. The rolls contained the mobile phone number of the reporter who wrote the critical article. Russian websites published a leaked e-mail, written by Nashi’s press secretary, Kristina Potupchik, with the following order: “Block their work. Psychologically and physically pester them. Revenge is essential.” The e-mail suggested buying up the entire print of the paper and destroying it, picketing its presses, and using hackers to bring down its website.[28] Editors of the opposition paper Novaya Gazeta received a box containing the severed ears of a donkey with a note “from the presidential administration.”[29] Then, in October 2009, a persecution campaign started against Alexander Podrabinek, a fifty-six-year-old former Soviet dissident, who had published an article on September 21, 2009, in the online paper Ezhednevnyy Zhurnal (Daily Paper), in which he criticized Soviet veterans who insisted that a Moscow restaurant with the name Antisovetskaya (Anti-Soviet), change its name to Sovetskaya (Soviet).[30] Podrabinek had suggested that those who were proud of being Soviet veterans, seemed to be proud of the repressive, KGB-led gulag system of the former Soviet Union. Nashi activists picketed his house with placards demanding his apology for offending the veterans. They also “visited” the editorial offices of one of the newspapers for which he worked. After receiving phone calls with death threats, Podrabinek went into hiding.[31] Foreign papers that had dared to suggest that Nashi’s activities resembled those of the Hitlerjugend were sued by Nashi for defamation.[32] Suing, by the way, became one of the preferred weapons used by Nashi to harass its opponents. Nashi has filed suits against Yevgenia Albats, Boris Nemtsov (more than once), Garry Kasparov, radio station Ekho Moskvy, the papers Kommersant and Novaya Gazeta, as well as the online paper Gazeta.ru.[33]
Preparing for More Muscled Actions: The Nashi Battle Groups
In 2008 some foreign observers thought that the Nashi movement was running out of steam and was gradually losing a sense of purpose.[34] The reality, however, was different. Shortly before this, the Nashi had set up a junior organization, the Mishki (Teddy Bears). This group had the objective of strengthening the ideological grip of the Kremlin on a still younger generation: children aged seven to fifteen. “If Nashi can be likened to the Komsomol, the Soviet era organization of high school and university students” wrote the Moscow Times, “then Mishki is a throwback to the Pioneers, the children’s group of the same period . . . . Their essential purpose, just like Nashi, is to support Putin. ‘I love the Mishki! I love Russia! I love Putin! Together we will win.’”[35] How these young children were manipulated became clear, when, during the conflict over the removal of the Soviet war memorial in Tallinn, a group of Mishki was brought to the Estonian embassy in Moscow and started to color in a giant poster of a statue of a soldier outside the embassy. Masha Lipman, from the Moscow Carnegie Center, expressed her concern. She considered it an alarming development and reminiscent of Soviet-era groups like the Young Pioneers and the Little Octobrists. “I think any youth organization directed and guided from above brings back very unpleasant associations with the Soviet days. And also Nashi, I think, is a very unsavory organization, given their record of harassing officials, of enjoying complete impunity . . . . So [the fact that they are] ideological guides to still younger kids—to me it’s a very unpleasant trend.”[36]
Nashi, at the same time, prepared another plan to strengthen its grip on Russian civil society. At the core of this new development was Stal, a subdivision of Nashi that was in charge of organizing street protests. “Stal” not only means “steel” in Russian, but it has the additional advantage that it evokes the name of Russia’s “man of steel,” Joseph Stalin. According to Le Monde’s Moscow correspondent Marie Jégo, “the group Stal . . . has just endorsed the theses of Joseph Goebbels, the minister of propaganda of the Hitler regime. The militants of Stal are asked to know them by heart.”[37] It is not surprising, therefore, that the leader of Stal, Nadezhda Tarasenko, proudly declared that “one thousand activists in my movement are not afraid of using tough methods to stop America’s influence on Russia.”[38] Tough methods? Yes, because the movement was still considered too soft for its masters in the Kremlin. While Nashi was used for pro-Kremlin rallies, Stal was used as Nashi’s “tough vanguard.” Before, such tough actions had often been outsourced by Nashi to external groups. In August 2005, for instance, violent members of the Spartak soccer fan club The Gladiators attacked leftists of the National Bolsheviks in Moscow with stun guns and baseball bats, after which four of their victims had to be hospitalized. A Gladiators member told the paper Kommersant that “the Gladiators work closely with Nashi and provide security for their events.” He added that “the guys receive $400–$600 for their services.”[39] This kind of outsourcing of violence seemed to be happening with more frequency. However, the leaders of Nashi were also determined to set up a pool of fighters inside their organization. Stal was one of them. When, for instance, on December 6, 2011, opposition rallies were organized in Moscow to protest against the rigged Duma elections, a counterdemonstration was organized by Stal, backed by 50,000 police and 11,500 Interior Ministry troops.[40] However, the rank and file of Nashi was more difficult to mobilize. Nashi members attending a second demonstration for Putin, organized on December 12, 2011, had to be paid.[41]
A second subdivision of Nashi that was to contribute to its planned transformation into a tough organization was the DMD (Dobrovolnye molodezhnye druzhiny). These “volunteer youth squads” were led by Roman Verbitsky. This Nashi section had the task of providing volunteers to help the local police in keeping order. In March 2008 Verbitsky declared that “the voluntary youth squads operate in 19 regions and comprise 5–6 thousand people. Their main activity is patrolling the streets together with law enforcement authorities.”[42] This organization was intended to become the core of a new, federation-wide system of volunteer squads which in three years would become a force that would be pre
sent in more than half of Russia’s regions and comprise at least a hundred thousand volunteers.[43] As the godfathers of this new, ambitious project, Vladislav Surkov and Vasily Yakemenko were again mentioned. Both Kremlin confidants would have taken the initiative during the 2009 Nashi summer camp.
Orthodox Battle Groups?
Putin's Wars Page 20