Putin's Wars
Page 22
10. Politkovskaya, A Russian Diary, 270–271.
11. Charles Clover, “‘Managed Nationalism’ Turns Nasty for Putin,” Financial Times (December 23, 2010).
12. Official website of the Nashi (in Russian). http://www.nashi.su.
13. Quoted in John Follett, “Russia’s Past Mobilised to Shape the Present,” Herald Scotland (October 16, 2009).
14. Tony Halpin, “Winning Young Hearts and Minds: Putin’s Strategy for a New Superpower,” The Times (July 25, 2007).
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, Dictating Demography: The Problem of Population in Fascist Italy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 173–174.)
16. Luke Harding, “Welcome to Putin’s Summer Camp,” The Guardian (July 24, 2008).
17. Roland Oliphant, “Seliger Camp’s Growing Pains,” Moscow News (July 20, 2009).
18. Oliphant, “Seliger Camp’s Growing Pains.”
19. Halford J. MacKinder, an English geopolitician, developed the theory of a Eurasian heartland for the first time in a paper “The Geographical Pivot of History” (1904). According to him the power that dominated this heartland would dominate the world, a theory that became very popular in Russia. (Cf. Halford J. MacKinder, “The Geographical Pivot of History,” in Democratic Ideals and Reality, ed. Halford J. MacKinder (Washington, DC: National Defense University Press, 1996), 175–193.)
20. Mark Franchetti, “Putin’s Fanatical Youth Brigade Targets Britain,” The Sunday Times (September 2, 2007).
21. “Vashe Velichestvo, pishet Vam kollektiv russkikh druzey” (Your Majesty, A Collective of Russian Friends Writes to You), Kommersant (December 6, 2007). When, on March 28, 2008, the Foreign Office announced that Brenton would be replaced by Anne Pringle, former ambassador to the Czech Republic, there was speculation on the website of Robert Amsterdam, Khodorkovsky’s lawyer, that this was done under pressure from the British energy giant BP that had billions of dollars invested in projects in Russia. http://www.robertamsterdam.com/2008/03/the_departure_of_uk_ambassador.htm .
However, the Foreign Office “rejected speculation the change was due to worsening ties between the two countries” (Cf. “Update 1: Britain names Russian envoy, hopes for better ties,” Reuters (March 28, 2008).)
22. Estonian Review 17, no. 16–17 (April 18–May 2, 2007), 3.
23. Even during these Russian attacks the Estonian government had the diplomatic correctness to receive, on April 30, a delegation from the Russian State Duma to discuss the events around the removal of the war memorial. This delegation was headed by the former FSB director Nikolay Kovalyov, who, on his arrival in Tallinn, bluntly called for the immediate resignation of the Estonian government—a more than ill-mannered intervention in the internal affairs of a neighboring state that awoke memories of a not so distant past. (Cf. Victor Yasmann, “Monument Dispute with Estonia Gets Dirty,” RFE/RL (May 8, 2007). http://www.rferl.org/articleprintview/1347550.html.
24. Quoted in Ronald D. Asmus, A Little War That Shook the World: Georgia, Russia, and the Future of the West (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2010), 246.
25. The attacks were distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks in which hundreds of thousands of “zombie” computers overwhelm the target network. According to an Estonian spokesperson the attack on Estonia originated in 178 countries. The Kremlin denied being implicated in the cyber attacks. Afterward, however, direct Russian implication was conceded through two incidents. The first involved Duma deputy and Kremlin pundit Sergei Markov, who, on March 3, 2009, in a panel discussion with American experts on information warfare, said: “About the cyber-attacks on Estonia . . . don’t worry, that attack was carried out by my assistant. I won’t tell you his name, because then he might not be able to get visas.” The assistant was thought to have been in “one of the unrecognized republics.” Later it was stated that he was in the Moldovan breakaway province of Transnistria—outside the territory of Russia. (Cf. “Sergei Markov Says He Knows Who Started the Estonia Cyber War,” Intelfusion (March 6, 2009).) http://www.intelfusion.net/wordpress/?p=544.
The name of this assistant was revealed later. It would have been Konstantin Goloskokov, a Nashi commissar. He told the Financial Times “that he and some associates had launched the attack.” (Charles Clover, “Kremlin-backed Group Behind Estonia Cyber Blitz,” The Financial Times (March 11, 2009).) Markov wanted to present the unprecedented massive cyber attacks on the government of a NATO member state as a kind of innocent “naughty boys” prank that, apparently, was organized from outside Russia. One might confidently assume, however, that this was an attempt at active disinformation aimed at hiding the likely real instigators of the attack: the Russian secret services FSB, GRU, and/or the Russian army.
26. Cf. Evgeny Morozov, “What Do They Teach at the ‘Kremlin’s School of Bloggers’?” Foreign Policy (May 26, 2009).
27. In 2005 the movement distributed a brochure titled “Program for Combating Fascism” in secondary schools and universities. The “fascists” named in the brochure included Ilya Yashin, the leader of the liberal Yabloko youth organization; Yukos shareholder Leonid Nevzlin; and the democratic opposition leaders Garry Kasparov and Vladimir Ryzhkov. It is telling that Dmitry Rogozin, who at that time was chairman of the nationalist Rodina party and, maybe, the only representative of the extreme right on this list, was later appointed ambassador to NATO by Putin. (Cf. Oleg Kashin and Yuliya Taratuta, “Obyknovennyy antifashizm,” Kommersant (May 12, 2005).)
28. Shaun Walker, “Pro-Kremlin Youth Group Blamed for Attacking Paper,” The Independent (March 6, 2008). http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/prokremlin-youth-group-blamed-for-attacking-paper-792074.html.
29. Dmitry Sidorov, “A Mafia-Style Message on Russian Free Speech,” Forbes (April 7, 2009). http://www.forbes.com/2009/04/07/donkey-ears-press-freedom-opinions-contributors-nashi-medvedev.html.
30. In his article Podrabinek attacked Soviet veterans. “Your fatherland,” he wrote, “is not Russia. Your fatherland is the Soviet Union. You are Soviet veterans, and your country, thank god, has not existed for eighteen years. The Soviet Union is not at all the country that you described in the school books and your liar press. The Soviet Union—it is not only political leaders, Stakhanov workers, communist superproductive workers, and cosmonauts. The Soviet Union—it is also peasant rebellions, victims of the collectivization and the Holodomor, hundreds of thousands of innocent people who are shot in the basements of the Cheka and millions who are tortured to death in the Gulag . . . . The Soviet Union—it is permanent confinement in psychiatric hospitals for dissidents, treacherous murders, and in countless Gulag cemeteries the anonymous graves of my friends, the political prisoners who did not live to see our freedom.” (Alexander Podrabinek, “Kak antisovetchik antisovetchikam ,” Ezhednevnyy Zhurnal (September 21, 2009).)
31. Cf. Follett, “Russia’s Past Mobilized to Shape the Present.”
32. These papers were the British The Independent, the French Le Monde and Le Journal du Dimanche, and the German Frankfurter Rundschau. The Nashi were demanding 500,000 rubles (11,500 euro) in damages from each of the newspapers. The group’s lawyer, Sergey Zhorin, confirmed on October 27, 2009, that four lawsuits had been filed at Moscow’s Savelyovsky District Court. (Cf. “Pro-Putin Youth Group Sues European Newspapers,” Euranet (October 27, 2009).) The first hearing took place on December 7, 2009. The correspondent of Le Monde, Marie Jégo, present at the hearing, said: “It is an opinion, it is not slander. To give your opinion is authorized by article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights, signed by Russia in 1998.” (“‘Le Monde’ poursuivi par les Nachi,” Le Monde (December 9, 2009).) On April 21, 2010, the Court sentenced Le Journal du dimanche to
pay the Nashi 250,000 rubles (6,400 euro), although the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, of which Russia is a member, had confirmed that the facts reported by the four papers, could, indeed, be described as harassment. (Alexandre Billette, “De jeunes nationalistes russes obtiennent la condamnation du ‘JDD,’” Le Monde, (April 24, 2010).) Although the probability that the sentence would be carried out in France was extremely low, the Nashi felt they had won an important propaganda victory in their home country.
33. “Kashin-Yakemenko Feud Heats Up,” seansrussiablog.org (March 28, 2011).
34. Cf. Tony Halpin, “Vladimir Putin’s Youth Army Nashi Loses Purpose,” The Times (July 22, 2008). Another British journalist, The Guardian’s Luke Harding, came to a similar conclusion two days later, when he wrote: “This year’s camp, the fourth, is smaller than last year’s—a sign that Nashi’s days may be numbered.” (Luke Harding, “Welcome to Putin’s summer camp,” The Guardian (July 24, 2008).)
35. Cf. John Wendle, “Children’s Movement Fails to Draw Kids,” Moscow Times (December 7, 2007).
36. Quoted in Chloe Arnold, “Russia: New ‘Teddy Bears’ Have Overtones of Soviet-Era Youth Groups,” RFE/RL (February 15, 2008).
37. Jégo, “Fascistes ou fans de foot?”
38. Anna Nemtsova, “Fear and Loathing in Moscow,” Newsweek (October 24, 2008).
39. “Batting a Thousand,” Kommersant (August 31, 2005).
40. Cf. Tom Balmforth, “Moscow Beefs Up Police Presence Amid Opposition, Pro-Kremlin Rallies,” RFE/RL (December 6, 2011).
41. They were each paid between 200 and 500 rubles (respectively approximately €5 and €12.50). Cf. Daisy Sindelar, “How Many Demonstrated For The Kremlin? And How Willing Were They?” RFE/RL (December 13, 2011). The correspondent of the French Figaro reported having “witnessed similarly a scene at the end of the meeting where the organizers of the demonstration handed out bills of 100 rubles to adolescents who were queuing up, waiting for their payment.” (Pierre Avril, “Les manifestants sur commande de Russie unie,” Le Figaro (December 14, 2011).)
42. Cf. Novaya Gazeta no. 18 (March 17, 2008).
43. Daniil Eisenstadt, “Vertikal Druzhina RF,” Gazeta (August 3, 2009). http://www.gazeta.ru/politics/2009/08/03_a_3231369.shtml.
44. The full name of the Association is Vserossiyskaya Assotsiatsiya Druzhin, abbreviated VAD.
45. “Nashi Looks to Expand Youth Militia,” Official Russia (August 11, 2009). http://officialrussia.com/?p=6379.
46. “Nashi Looks to Expand Youth Militia.”
47. Cf. Lev Davydov, “Provoslavnye druzhiny ispugali pravozashchitnikov,” Utro.ru (November 21, 2008).
48. “MVD obeshchaut rassmotret initiativu Tserkvi o sozdanii pravoslavnykh narodnykh druzhin,” Interfax (November 20, 2008).
49. Davydov, “Pravoslavnye druzhiny ispugali pravozashchitnikov.”
50. Peter Pomerantsev, “Putin’s God Squad,” Newsweek (September 10, 2012).
51. Pomerantsev, “Putin’s God Squad.”
52. Cf. Condoleezza Rice, “The Making of Soviet Strategy,” in Makers of Modern Strategy: From Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age, ed. Peter Paret (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986), 652: “Many Bolsheviks were never completely satisfied with Trotsky’s Red Army, however. It was created as a temporary device in 1918, to be demobilized and replaced by the militia as quickly as possible after the Civil War.”
53. Cf. Darrell P. Hammer, “Law Enforcement, Social Control and the Withering of the State: Recent Soviet Experience,” Soviet Studies 14, no. 4 (April 1963), 379.
54. Boris Yakemenko, “Vernyy Put” (February 21, 2008). http://boris-yakemenko.livejournal.com/2011/02/21/.
55. “Sledstvie podtverdilo, chto glava Rosmolodozh osnoval firmu dlya banditov iz ’29-go kompleksa,’” Newsru.com (March 23, 2011).
56. The official name of the Soviet youth organization Komsomol was VLKSM = Vsesoyuznyy Leninskiy Kommunisticheskiy Soyuz Molodezhi (All-Union Leninist Communist Union of Youth).
57. Cathy Young, “Putin’s Young ‘Brownshirts,’” The Boston Globe (August 10, 2007).
58. Lilia Shevtsova, Russia: Lost in Transition, The Yeltsin and Putin Legacies (Washington: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2007), 282.
59. Owen Matthews and Anna Nemtsova, “Fascist Russia?” Newsweek (August 15, 2011).
60. Matthews and Nemtsova, “Fascist Russia?”
61. “Bolshe ne ‘Nashi,’” (no date), website of Rosmolodezh, http://www.rosmolodezh.ru/novoteka-rosmolodezh/1-novosti-rosmolodezh/1365-boshe-ne-nashi.html. Accessed May 27, 2013.
62. “Bolshe ne ‘Nashi.’”
63. “Bolshe ne ‘Nashi.’”
Chapter 9
Send in the Cossacks
In 2012 the Kremlin took steps to diversify its druzhina policy. After doubts emerged over the effectiveness of the Nashi groups, the Kremlin polit-technologists identified a new reservoir of public peacekeepers. They found this reservoir in a traditional group: the Cossacks. The Cossacks have a reputation for being independently minded, whip-wielding horseback warriors. Originally, they were runaway serfs, nomads, and adventurers who colonized the southern steppes near the river Don where they were not likely to be caught. The oldest historical records concerning their existence date from 1549, when Crimean Tatars complained to Ivan the Terrible that Cossacks living on the Don were raiding their territory.[1] Later the Cossacks acknowledged the sovereignty of the tsar. In exchange they got land and the status of a special military community with its own rights and freedoms. The different Cossack hosts (communities) served as buffers on the borders. They enjoyed great autonomy, had a local democracy with a general assembly (Krug) that elected a leader (ataman), and were recognized as a special estate (soslovie) between the serfs and the nobility. During more than two centuries they were engaged in the tsars’ armies, and their cavalry played an important role in the expansion of the Russian Empire into Siberia and the Caucasus. They brought their own horses and weapons. Service of the state was a lifelong affair. In the period 1835–1863, for instance, individual Cossacks served the state for thirty years, of which five years in active service and twenty-five years as reservists.[2] Their relative importance becomes clear if one considers the fact that during the war in Turkestan (1877–1878), the Cossacks provided 125,000 soldiers, which was 7.4 percent of the army, while they made up only 2.2 percent of the total population.[3] The Cossacks’ fortunes, however, were reversed during the Civil War (1917–1923), which followed the October Revolution. Though they fought on both sides, the majority resisted Bolshevik rule. This led to severe repression under communism. In 1919 the Soviet authorities even ordered the genocide of the Don Cossacks.[4] Thousands of Cossacks fled abroad and went into exile. The fate of those who remained was dramatic. “Their property and livestock were confiscated, over two million Cossacks were repressed, more than 1.5 million were killed . . . . Cossack institutions, laws, self-government and customs were abolished.”[5] However, before the Second World War Stalin made some conciliatory gestures toward the Cossacks. He even established a Cossack cavalry division in the Red Army, though a Cossack ancestry did not seem to be required to serve in this division. During the war the Germans also raised some Cossack units from among their prisoners of war and war deserters,[6] which only reinforced Stalin’s suspicions about this group.
The Rehabilitation of the Cossacks
The Cossacks had to wait for Gorbachev’s perestroika and the fall of communism to make a glorious comeback. In 1992 Yeltsin issued Decree 632 on the rehabilitation of the Cossacks, followed, in July 1994, by Decree 1389, establishing a Council for Cossack Affairs. At the end of 1994 Yeltsin went still further, supporting a new law on Cossacks that granted them the status of an archipelago state within Russia, consisting of twelve Federal Cossack Regions, each of which corresponded with a Cossack host.[7] This Cossack archipelago state was headed by a Council of Atamans (Cossack leaders), which was responsible not to the government, b
ut to the president—mirroring the historical special relationship with the tsar.[8] Already in the 1990s the Cossacks began to be used as vigilantes, though only locally. In 1995 Mark Galeotti wrote: