Nashi

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Nashi logo

Nashi (Russian: 'Молодежное движение «Наши»', 'Youth Movement "Ours!"') is a Kremlin-funded youth movement in Russia that includes more than 100,000 members ^[1].

The movement was officially announced by Vasily Yakemenko (leader of the pro-Putin Walking Together youth movement) on 1 March 2005, the founding conference was carried out on 15 April 2005. It is believed that Nashi was set up mainly as a reaction against Ukraine's Orange Revolution in 2004, in which youth-led street protests helped give the presidency to pro-Western candidate Viktor Yushchenko.

Yakemenko claims to have constituted Nashi as a movement to demonstrate against what he saw as the growing power of Nazism in Russia and to take on skinheads in street fights if necessary [1]. The Kremlin gave its blessing to the formation of the movement,^{[citation needed]} although some Russian newspapers argued that this support extended further and that Nashi had actually been formed by Vladislav Surkov as a paramilitary force to attack Putin's harshest critics.^{[citation needed]} At one event for political education in summer 2006, the Kremlin advisor Gleb Pavlovskii told members of Nashi 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'. ^[2] One young National Bolshevik, Roman Sadykhov, joined Nashi's sister organisation Rumol (Young Russia) in order to investigate its activities. He claimed that Rumol had formed a group of 'Ultras' to conduct street battles against members of the opposition. Their training included the construction of smoke bombs. He secretly taped meetings he had attended. At one of these Vladislav Surkov said that he found the training for street combat 'terrifically interesting'.^[3]

The National Bolsheviks have accused Nashi of leading attacks on their members, including one in Moscow in August 2005 [2]. Liberal youth leader Ilya Yashin has also denounced Nashi as a cover for 'storm brigades' that will 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 the Orange Revolution of Ukraine [3]. However, Nashi has also been praised for increasing youth involvement in politics and for helping young people to develop leadership skills [4].

It is disputed whether Nashi is an anti-Fascist movement.^{[citation needed]} Yakemenko in a talk with journalist of Komsomolskaya Pravda claimed that the Russian liberal left party Yabloko is fascist. [5] Yakemenko's inclusion of liberals alongside anti-semites and racists as an anti-Russian union has furthered the argument over Nashi's understanding of the term fascism. [6] Subsequently, Nashi has been accused of recruiting skinheads and local hooligans to intimidate rival youth groups. [7]

Nashi has also stood against what it sees as the growing influence of the United States in Russia. Yakemenko has stated that he fears that Russia will become a colony of the United States like Ukraine [8].

On June 26, 2005, President Vladimir Putin met at his residence in Zavidovo, Tver Oblast, with 56 members of Nashi and expressed his sympathy towards them.^[4]

In August 2005 Putin officially invited Yulia Gorodnicheva (b. December 161985), an undergraduate student of Tula State University, one of the members of Nashi he had invited to the Zavidovo meeting, to become a member of the Public Chamber of Russia^[5], but she refused to be selected by the President and on November 152005, entered the second part of the chamber as a representative of Nashi. There she became a member of the Commission on Social Development. [9]

On July 24, 2007, Putin met with Nashi, Young Guard and Young Russia and attacked Great Britain over the Alexander Litvinenko affair, stating, "“They are making proposals to change our Constitution, which are insulting for our nation and our people...It’s their brains, not our Constitution, which need to be changed."[10]

Incidents

In 2006 members of Nashi conducted a campaign against the British ambassador in Moscow, Tony Brenton, as he attended an opposition conference called The Other Russia on July 11-12^[6]. 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 at an opposition meeting in July. [11]

In April and May 2007, Nashi members held daily protests in front of the Estonian embassy in Moscow in protest of the moving of the Bronze Soldier of Tallinn to a military cemetery. ^[7]

On May 2 2007 they blocked both the cars of both the Estonian and the Swedish ambassadors. In July 2007, Nashi's annual camp, 200 miles outside Moscow, is attended by 10,000 members and involves two weeks of lectures and physical fitness.^[8]

Some Russian political commentators have dubbed the movement "Putinjugend", in obvious parallel with Hitlerjugend, the "Hitler Youth" of Nazi Germany.^[9]

Other uses

In early 1990s, there was another organization also called Nashi. The movement had ultranationalist orientation and its members were called nashists (Russian word "nashisty", rhymes with fashisty, "fascists" and natsisty, "nazis", a fact that is not lost on Russians of any political stripe), which led some people to call the Nashi members also fascists.^[10]

See also

• Walking Together
• Nashism

References and notes

External links

• Official Nashi site (in Russian)
• Putin's Children- Int. Herald Trib.
• Analysis of Nashi by a Russian Jewish group
• Article in the Daily Mail (UK) on the youth movement and attitudes toward sex
• Report on Nashi by the BBC program Newsnight
• M.A. Thesis on Nashi's Mobilization Apparatus and Early History
• Newsweek Article: The Kremlin Has A New Weapon
• Наша армия, a military recruitment video by the movement
• New York Times Video: The Putin Generation, copy and paste link in browser: hyperlink does not go directly to correct video

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