The idea behind these volunteer law-enforcing druzhiny is not new. In 1913, on the eve of the First World War, they could already be found
in tsarist Russia. And the October Revolution, four years later, was made possible
by an uprising of spontaneously formed, armed militias of peasants and workers. After
the Revolution there even emerged a competition between these militias and the new
regular Red Army, organized by the People’s Commissar for War, Leon Trotsky. This
power struggle—which resembled the competition between the SA and the Reichswehr in
Nazi Germany—was in Russia ultimately decided in favor of the army.[52] Under Stalin the role of the militias was further reduced, and it was—ironically—in
the period of Khrushchev’s thaw that the idea resurfaced. In 1958—during the Khrushchev
era of de-Stalinization—the criminal law was revised to allow the accused certain
procedural guarantees, which would lead to a more liberal punishment regime. Uncertainties
concerning the impact of this liberalization effort led to initiatives to accompany
this more permissive policy with measures of enhanced preventive social control. As
a consequence the 21st Party Congress of the CPSU in 1958 called for the reintroduction
of the druzhiny volunteer squads,[53] and on March 2, 1959, the Central Committee and the Council of Ministers issued
a joint resolution, “On the Participation of the Workers in the Maintenance of Public
Order,” in which the druzhiny were reintroduced. These militias were independent from the police, but worked often
in cooperation with police officers. Its members came from the trade unions, the Komsomol,
and the local soviets. This civil police force was especially active in factories
and collective farms to fight drunkenness and hooliganism and enhance workers’ discipline.
The initiative to introduce nationwide Nashi volunteer squads was certainly inspired
by these former Soviet examples. However, between the Krushchev-era druzhiny and the Putin-era druzhiny there exist two important differences. The first and most important difference is
that in Khrushchev’s time they were introduced as a measure of a liberalizing regime that intended to replace the totalitarian control of civil society of the
Stalinist era, characterized by repression and draconic punishments, by a more relaxed
and normal authoritarian society. The druzhiny were a symbol and an expression of this liberalizing regime, substituting prevention
for state repression. Putin’s Nashi militias are, on the contrary, the expression
of exactly the opposite development: they are the expression of a society that becomes
less democratic and more repressive. A second difference is that Khrushchev’s druzhiny were rather bureaucratic: they lacked an ideological drive. Its members were, as
a rule, appointed. The new Nashi squads, on the contrary, have ideologically driven
leaders, who are convinced of the importance of their mission: fighting the internal
and external foes of the fatherland.
The Nashi: Komsomol, Red Guards, or
Hitlerjugend
?
How should we assess the development of Putin’s youth organization? In fact we can
distinguish three stages. It started with the organization of Walking Together. This
was followed by its incorporation into a bigger, nationwide follow-up organization,
the Nashi, which subsequently broadened its scope to include younger children in a
new club, the Mishki (Teddy Bears). Finally, Nashi gave birth to a possibly armed
youth militia. Walking Together was still a more or less loosely organized Putin fan
club. Its transformation into the Nashi had a threefold aim. It was, first, a deliberate
attempt by the Kremlin to create an ideological vehicle for the regime. Second, it
was set up to create a new elite. Third, it was meant to prevent a Ukrainian-style
Orange revolution in Russia. While the organization seemed to have the capacity to
achieve the first two objectives, the Kremlin had doubts about Nashi’s ability to
counteract broad popular protest movements. After the beginning of the financial and
economic crisis of October 2008, when there was a real danger that the opposition
might build on popular disaffection, this last role became more urgent. This led in
the summer of 2009 to plans to build nationwide Nashi militias. We can, therefore,
observe a clear, Kremlin-led dynamic, gradually transforming a loose, nationalist,
presidential fan club into a tightly organized, ideologically homogeneous, ultranationalist,
paramilitary organization.
