The authorities rely on criminal elements to prop up the system of state power. That this really is their doctrine recently received further confirmation when the Presidential Administration created a clone . . . . It is called Nashi . . . . The stormtroopers of the Nashi youth movement are football hooligans armed with knuckle-dusters and chains . . . . They have two units, one consisting of thugs who support the Central Sports Club of the Army football team, and the other of thugs who support the Spartak team. They all have an impeccable record in street fighting.[10]
Nashi founder Yakemenko openly advocated recruiting skinheads, such as the Spartak fans, who called themselves “The Gladiators” and wore tattoos of a gladiator with a spear. In a Nashi conference in 2005, he told his audience: “Skinheads—they are the same people as you . . . . Skinheads sincerely believe [that] they are patriots of Russia.”[11] By 2009 the Nashi movement had grown into a nationwide organization with between 100,000 and 120,000 members. It was established in fifty-two towns and had a hard core of 10,000 activists. The members wore red jackets, waved Nashi flags (a diagonal white cross on a red background—mixing tsarist and Soviet symbols), and had their own buses to transport them to their demonstrations. In a country where opposition rallies and demonstrations are systematically forbidden the Nashi could demonstrate at any place and any time with the full cooperation of the police. The organization was drenched in Soviet-era nostalgia. Not only were the group leaders called “commissar”—as in old Soviet times—but also the official website, www.nashi.su, instead of having the usual country code ‘.ru’, ends with .su (from Soviet Union). As in the case of Walking Together, idealistic motives were not enough to inspire potential members to adhere. Therefore, visitors to the Nashi website were lured with promises “of becoming a new intellectual elite.” They were offered interesting study schemes (“Do you deserve to have higher education from the country’s best university teachers?”), as well as tempting career possibilities (“Nashi people are already in parliament, in the administration, in the strongest Russian companies”).[12] Aspiring members could choose between different sections, such as “Patriotism,” “Ideology,” and “Information.” Members of the Patriotism section had the task “to disseminate propaganda under the young generation based on the big victories of the Russian people,” and “to create models of patriotic education . . . based on the principles of sovereign democracy.” They also participated in “patriotic war games.”
Officially the movement presented itself as anti-fascist. It even had an “Anti-Fa”
(anti-fascism) section. The main task of this section was not so much to defend migrants
from the Caucasus and Central Asia against racist and xenophobic attacks by hooligans
and skinheads, but to be vigilant for any criticism of the official version of the
history of the Great Patriotic War or any attempt to besmirch the honor of war veterans.
On the Nashi website the “Ideology” section introduced itself with the words that
“no government on earth can live without a concept of the state.” In Russia, the text
continued, this is “the concept of sovereign democracy,” an idea that “must be spread
among as many people as possible.” Everywhere in these texts the inspiration and,
possibly, even the hand of Vladislav Surkov was recognizable. Surkov is generally
regarded as the godfather of the Nashi. He is a popular speaker at Nashi meetings.
In September 2009 he credited Nashi with having helped persuade Obama to scrap the
missile defense plans in Eastern Europe. “You are the leading combat detachment in
our political system,” he told the activists. “Dominance on the street is also a necessary
advantage for us, an advantage that we have thanks to you, thanks to all those who
are so brilliant at staging mass actions.”[13] Was it mere a coincidence that the title “combat detachment,” given by Surkov to
his new Nashi troops, had a worrying resemblance to the
“Patriotic Training” in Nashi Summer Camps
