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]
