Putin's Wars полностью

Aleksandra Samarina, Natalia Kostenko, and Ivan Rodin, “Yedinaya Rossiya razdelitsya na techeniya,” Nezavisimaya Gazeta (November 2, 2007).

50.

Konstantin Remchukov, “Liberalno-konservativnoe videnie budushchego Rossii,” Nezavisimaya Gazeta (November 18, 2005).

51.

Remchukov, “Liberalno-konservativnoe videnie budushchego Rossii.”

52.

Lev Sigal, “Predlozheniya k platforme rossiyskogo sotsialnogo konservatizma,” Tsentr sotsialno-konservativnoy politiki. http://www.cscp.ru/about/manifest/41/.

53.

“Politicheskaya Deklaratsiya Gosudarstvenno-Patrioticheskiy Klub Vserossiyskoy politicheskoy partii ‘Edinaya Rossiya,’” 1. http://www.gpclub.ru/news/0x1x2_p.html.

54.

“Politicheskaya Deklaratsiya Gosudarstvenno-Patrioticheskiy Klub,” 2.

55.

“Politicheskaya Deklaratsiya Gosudarstvenno-Patrioticheskiy Klub,” 4.

56.

Laruelle, “Inside and Around the Kremlin’s Black Box,” 58.

57.

Aleksandr Dugin, “The Post-Liberal Era in Russia.” http://arctogaia.com/public/eng/.

Chapter 8

The Nashi

Fascist Blackshirts or a New Komsomol?

The objective of Putin’s internal war was to avoid a democratic alternation of power. This meant that he would not allow nonsystemic opposition parties to develop. These were simply denied official registration. The systemic opposition parties, such as the Communist Party and the Liberal-Democratic Party, were allowed to participate in the elections on the (unwritten) condition that they mounted no real opposition and supported the government in parliament. Other potential independent power centers, such as Mikhail Khodorkovsky, an oligarch who threatened to become Putin’s political rival, were removed and jailed. At the same time an ideological offensive was initiated in which the values of the regime were emphasized. These were a strong state, ultranationalism, and the “rebirth” of Russia. The undivided support of the population for these values became, in effect, a value in itself in the much touted objective of national consensus. In the Soviet Union the communist youth organization Komsomol had been an important vehicle for spreading communist ideas. In Putin’s Russia, however, such a government-sponsored organization was lacking. Putin knew how important it was to inculcate the values of a regime in the younger generation. Founding the Kremlin’s own youth organization would, therefore, soon become one of his priorities.

“Walking Together”: Skinheads to Defend the Kremlin’s Message

On July 14, 2000, only four months after Putin had been elected president, a youth organization was registered at the Ministry of the Interior with the name Idushchie Vmeste (Walking Together). The president of this new movement was a young man, Vasily Yakemenko, who worked in Putin’s presidential administration as chief of the department for relations with civil organizations. Yakemenko’s boss was Vladislav Surkov, the deputy head of the presidential administration.^[1] Walking Together planned to have 200,000 to 250,000 members and to be represented in Russia’s largest cities. The organization had the structure of a pyramid: each new member was obliged to bring five new members with him or her over whom he or she became “commander.” Becoming a member was made very attractive: students from outside Moscow were offered free travel to the capital. Also free tickets for the movies and for swimming pools were made available, as well as free access to sports centers and the Internet. The movement had its own travel agency with extremely low prices. According to Sergey Shargunov of the Novaya Gazeta, in the first two years there were “many links between this pro-Presidential youth organization and skinheads. In the first place, leaders of skinhead groups were officials in the movement, bringing their ‘troops’ into action at different events. In the second place, in the movement ‘Walking Together’ there were elements of the skinhead subculture, such as high laced boots and the outstretched arm salute.”^[2] The core of the group consisted of the “Gallant Steeds” football gang, supporters of the Moscow football club CSKA, which was headed by Aleksey Mitryushin, the bodyguard of Vasily Yakemenko. Anna Politkovskaya wrote: