Youth Democratic Anti-Fascist Movement"Nashi" Молодёжное демократическое антифашистское движение "Наши" | |
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| Chairman | Vasily Yakemenko |
| Founded | March 1, 2005 (2005-03-01) |
| Dissolved | December 9, 2019 (2019-12-09) |
| Preceded by | Walking Together |
| Headquarters | 24th A Building, Pervaya Yamskogo Polya Street,Moscow,Russia |
| Membership | 150,000 |
| Ideology | Anti-Americanism Anti-democracy[1][2] Anti-fascism Anti-revolutionary[a] Authoritarianism Illiberalism Putinism Sovereign democracy |
| National affiliation | All-Russia People's Front |
| Main organ | Rosmolodezh |
| Colours | Red White |
| Slogan | "Who if not us?" (Russian:"Кто, если не мы?") |
| Party flag | |
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| Website | |
| nashi.su | |
Nashi (Russian:Молодёжное демократическое aнтифашистское движение «Наши»,romanized: Molodezhnoye demokraticheskoye antifashistskoye dvizhenye "Nashi",lit. 'Youth Democratic Anti-Fascist Movement "Ours!"') was a politicalyouth movement inRussia,[3] which declared itself to be a democratic, anti-fascist, anti-"oligarchic-capitalist" movement.[4] Nashi was widely characterized as a pro-Putin outfit,[5][6] with theBureau of Investigative Journalism describing it as "Putin's private army".[7] Western critics have detected a "deliberately cultivated resemblance to" the SovietKomsomol[8] or to theHitler Youth[9][10][11][12] and dubbed the group "Putinjugend" ("Putin Youth").[13][14][15][16]
Senior figures in the Russian Presidential administration encouraged the formation of the group, whichMoisés Naím labelled agovernment organized non-governmental organization (GONGO).[17] By late 2007, it had grown in size to some 120,000 members aged between 17 and 25. On April 6, 2012, theNashi leader announced that the current form of the movement would dissolve in the near future, possibly to be replaced by a different organisation. He stated thatNashi had been "compromised" during the2012 Russian presidential election.[18] In 2013, the organization ceased its activities and on December 2, 2019, the legal entity was liquidated.[19]
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Nashi was officially announced on 1 March 2005 byVasily Yakemenko, the leader of the pro-Putin youth movementWalking Together. The founding conference took place on 15 April 2005.
Yakemenko said he createdNashi as a movement to demonstrate against what he saw as the growing power ofNazism in Russia and to take onskinheads in street fights if necessary.[20] While its funding came from pro-government business owners,[21] it is thought that it also received direct subsidies from the Kremlin.[22] Yakememko once toldGazeta.Ru that the Kremlin's support was what made it possible for the organization to raise money from businessmen.[23]
Nashi's close ties with the Kremlin have been emphasised byVladislav Surkov, Deputy Presidential Chief of Staff (1999-2011), who met with the movement's activists on numerous occasions, delivering speeches and holding private talks. Critics claimed that the Kremlin's primary goal was to create a paramilitary force to harass and attackVladimir Putin's critics as "enemies of the State".[24] At a political education event in summer 2006, the Kremlin advisorGleb Pavlovsky toldNashi members that they "lacked brutality": "you must be prepared", he went on, "to break up fascist demonstrations and prevent with force any attempt to overthrow the constitution".[25]: 174 Critics have comparedNashi to the SovietKomsomol[26] and theHitler Youth.[9][22][11][12]
Vedomosti reported that theNashi movement received funding of about 200 million rubles from the 2010 Russian state budget.[27]
The group's headquarters were housed in a £20 million building in the centre of Moscow.[28]
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The leader of the former movementWalking Together, Yakemenko, said in 2005 that the goal of the new movement,Nashi, was to put an end to the "anti-Fatherland union of oligarchs, anti-Semites, Nazis, and liberals."[a] Several Moscow newspapers suggested the goal of the group was, in fact, to eventually replace the party of power,United Russia.[30] Not all of its goals were overtly political.Nashi organized voluntary work in orphanages and old people's homes, and helped restore churches and war memorials. It also picketed shops accused of selling alcohol and cigarettes to minors, and campaigned against racial intolerance.[31]
Sergei Markov, a Kremlin adviser, stated in 2005 thatNashi "[wants] Russia to be a modern, strong and free country... their ideology is clear: it is modernization of the country and preservation of its sovereignty with that."[32]
One of the movement's main stated goals was preventing foreign control of Russia. Russian newspaperMoskovskij Komsomolets quoted Yakemenko as saying that "organizations in Russia are growing, on the basis of which the U.S. will create groups analogous to Serbia'sOtpor!, Georgia'sKmara, or Ukraine'sPORA. These groups areEduard Limonov's National Bolshevik Party and Avant Garde Red Youth."[30] Yakemenko feared that the Russia's fate may be similar to that of Ukraine which he said "was a Russian colony and now it is an American colony."[33]
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On June 26, 2005, withmedia present, Putin met with a group ofNashi members at his residence atZavidovo, Tver Oblast. He expressed his support for the group, described as "awestruck" by his presence.[34]
In August 2005, Putin invited Yulia Gorodnicheva, an undergraduate student ofTula State University, along with otherNashi members to the meeting at Zavidovo, to be appointed to theCivic Chamber of the Russian Federation,[35] but she declined Putin's appointment and on November 15, 2005, entered the second part of the chamber as a representative ofNashi. There she became a member of the Commission on Social Development.[36]
In 2006Nashi members conducted a campaign against theambassador of the United Kingdom to Russia,Tony Brenton, as he attended an opposition conference calledAnother Russia on July 11–12. He attended along with Putin opposition leaders such asEduard Limonov, leader of theNational Bolsheviks.[37] Unnamed British officials were reported to suspect that this campaign had been co-ordinated by elements within the Russian government as a punishment for the speech given by the ambassador.[38]
On 24 July 2007, Putin met with several Russian political and environmental youth organisations, includingNashi, at his residence inZavidovo, and discussed various issues affecting Russian society. At the meeting, he stated that theUnited Kingdom was acting like acolonial power with a mindset stuck in the 19th or 20th century, due to their belief that Russia could change its constitution, allowingAndrey Lugovoy to beextradited to the UK to face charges in relation to theAlexander Litvinenko affair. He also stated, "They say we should change our Constitution – advice that I view as insulting for our country and our people. They need to change their thinking and not tell us to change our Constitution."[39][40]
In December 2007, the movement was reported to be planning to send a select group of activists to study at British universities, arguably despite its disdain for Britain and its harassment of the British ambassador in Moscow. They said: "We lag behind in knowledge and experience vital for making Russia a 21st-century world leader. British education is rated highly all over the world. The graduates of British universities are in great demand. This is because of the high quality of education and also control from the government."[41]
In April and May 2007,Nashi members held daily protests in front of theEstonian embassy in Moscow in protest of the moving of theBronze Soldier of Tallinn to a military cemetery.[42] When movement members protested outside theEmbassy of Estonia in Moscow in April 2007, some members were carrying signs stating "Wanted. The Ambassador of the Fascist State of eSStonia" (Russian:«Разыскивается посол фашистского государства эSSтония»), in reference to then-Ambassador of Estonia to RussiaMarina Kaljurand.[43][44] In early 2008 Estonia placed someNashi members on aEuropean Union-wide immigration blacklist, leadingNashi to accuse theEuropean Union of violating democratic principles.[45] In March 2009, it was reported that aNashi commissar and some associates claimed they had launched aDDOS attack onEstonia in May 2007, in reaction to the Bronze Soldier's removal.[46]
On March 23, 2009, a small group ofNashi activists together with the activists of theFinnish Anti-Fascist Committee andNight Watch held a protest inHelsinki, Finland, arranged byJohan Bäckman. They denounced the publication of a new book about theSoviet occupation of Estonia bySofi Oksanen andImbi Paju and related seminar, labeling the book as an attack on Russia.[47][48]
On January 18, 2010,Nashi activists held a rally near theEmbassy of Ukraine in Moscow and "congratulated"Ukrainian presidentViktor Yushchenko for his defeat in the first round of thepresidential election the day before.[49]
On July 30, 2010,Ella Pamfilova, Medvedev's human rights advisor, resigned over comments she made, saying thatNashi activists had "pawned their souls to the devil" and that she "feared they might to come to power one day", causingNashi to sue for libel. The Russian opposition commented, claiming thatNashi assaulted and intimidated its leaders.[50][51]
In December 2011,Nashi members staged large pro-Kremlin demonstrations in response toanti-Putin protests that followed the2011 legislative election.[52]
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Every summer,Nashi ran recruiting camps all across Russia. New members received a basic military-style training, according to Yakimenko. The July 2007 annualNashi encampment, located 200 miles outside Moscow, was attended by over 10,000 members. It involved two weeks of lectures andcalisthenics. Some reports mention the use of the camp to improve thedemographics of Russia,[22] as twenty tents were set up for twenty newlywed couples to sleep together.[53]In an effort to deconstruct its discredited public image in 2012,Nashi invited opposition activists to its annual encampment named "Occupy Seliger" for that year; but few opposition activists attended.[54]
According toEdward Lucas, inThe New Cold War: Putin's Russia and the Threat to the West,Nashi is a contemporary iteration of theSovietKomsomol.[55]: 102
Nashi was accused of recruiting skinheads and local hooligans to intimidate rival youth groups.[31] Such activities caused Gavin Knight, inNew Statesman, to draw the conclusion that "Nashi’s true function was as apersonality cult for Putin whose job was intimidate, bully and harass his opponents."[56] The movement evoked comparisons with theHitler Youth,[9][22][11][12] to the extent thatNashi, together with other pro-Putin youth organizations, were derogativelynicknamedPutinjugend.[57][58][59][60]
ANashi advertisement was described in aTime magazine article as "reminiscent of Soviet-era propaganda with its non sequitur acceleration of hysteria". The advertisement read: "Tomorrow there will be war in Iran. The day after tomorrow Russia will be governed externally!"[61] The Boston Globe said that "movement's Brownshirt tactics certain evoke shades ofHitler Youth, as does the emphasis on physical fitness, clean living, and procreation for the Motherland".[22]
TheNational Bolsheviks accusedNashi of leading attacks on their members, including one in Moscow in August 2005.[62] Liberal youth leaderIlya Yashin also denouncedNashi as a cover for "storm brigades" use violence against democratic organizations and claimed that their formation is only part of Putin's fear of losing power in a manner similar to theOrange Revolution ofUkraine.[63] One young National Bolshevik, Roman Sadykhov, joinedNashi's sister organisationYoung Russia (Rumol) in order to investigate its activities. He claimed that Rumol formed a group of hooliganultras to conduct street battles against members of the opposition.[64] Their training included the construction ofsmoke bombs. He secretly taped meetings he had attended. At one of the meetings, Surkov said that he found the training for street combat "terrifically interesting."[25]: 172
According toRadio Free Europe/Radio Liberty,Nashi been linked to football hooligan organisations.[65][66]
British journalistsPeter Oborne and James Jones examined the activity ofNashi in a 2011 documentary produced forChannel 4's foreign affairs seriesUnreported World. They described it as a movement originally created to prevent the emergence of acolour revolution in Russia. Contrary to its intended purpose, the documentary claimed that members ofNashi were explicitly racist, and met with Russian journalistOleg Kashin, who alleged thatNashi members were most likely responsible for asevere beating he received in late 2010. Oborne and Jones accusedNashi of participating in acult of personality around Putin, predicting that Putin would turn "into one of those archetypal figures that occur throughout Russian history, fromIvan the Terrible toPeter the Great andStalin: a strongman with mystical powers, attracting uncritical devotion from his followers".[67]
In an article published inThe Guardian in December 2011, mention was made of reports that someNashi members were being paid to attend rallies.[28] This was based on aMoscow Times report saying that a journalist overheard a demonstrator telling another that he only participated in a particular rally because he had been paid 500rubles,[68] and on aTime article that quoted pro-Kremlin activists as saying that free meals atMcDonald's were one of their main rewards for attending the rallies.[69]
In early February 2009, Anna Bukovskaya, a St. PetersburgNashi activist, publicly claimed[70] that from January 2008 until February 2009, she had coordinated a group of 30 young people (notNashi members) who had been tasked to infiltrate branches of the bannedNational Bolshevik Party,Yabloko's youth wing and United Civil Front in Moscow, St. Petersburg,Voronezh and six other cities. Bukovskaya said that the agents were to inform her, and she, in turn, passed the information to seniorNashi official Dmitry Golubyatnikov, who was allegedly in contact with "Surkov's people" in the Kremlin. The agents, who were paid 20,000 rubles ($550) per month, provided information on planned and past events together with pictures and personal information on activists and leaders, including their contact numbers. On February 3, 2009, Bukovskaya told Youth Yabloko, which she had joined six weeks prior, that she was being paid to monitor their activities and to handle people in other opposition groups.[70][71]
In May 2012, the leader ofNashi, Yakemenko, announced his intention to establish the parallel "Smart Russia" political party.[72][73] It was established at theNashi Congress that month andNashi CommissarNikita Borovikov [ru] was elected as the Smart Russia political party chairman. The Smart Russia political party was officially registered in June 2012.[74] On June 4, 2012, Yakemenko announced that Nashi would be disbanded in the coming months. The legal entityNashi was officially dissolved in 2019.[18][19]
The Myanmar Women's Affairs Federation is a GONGO. So is Nashi, a Russian youth group, and the Sudanese Human Rights Organization.
The Kremlin's human rights council saidNashi was in violation of Articles 23, 24, 25, 27 and 29 of the Constitution.
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