:smack: God, I’m an idiot. Apologies.
But where’s the Mexican Nashi? For that matter, where’s the Mexican Putin? I admit I don’t keep up that much, but is there some nationalized and subsidized youth movement in Mexico that is doing brown shirt work for a cult hero president?
I totally didn’t think about Stalin! :smack:
Actually, I was making a way-too-veiled reference to a Tsarist system. While I have the U.S. Protestant perspective of the Bible/the Christian faith as supports for a representative democratic constitutional republic, I am quite aware & wary of the Russian tendency to utilize them in undergirding autocratic systems.
Not to my knowledge, and that does give me pause – but I just don’t see it going anywhere. Putin is not Hitler/Stalin material – he does not have the personal charisma to build a cult of personality around himself. The Russian people admire him simply because he brought order out of chaos; but he does not appear to have any grand radical vision for the future. A successful grassroots fascist movement requires a vision, even if it’s bullshit.
All I can say is, I hope you turn out to be right. There’s plenty of reason to fear that Putin has created a cult of personality, and that Slavism is by itself enough of an ideology to build a fascist system around. The real test will come when oil prices fall, the Russian economy starts to stagger a bit, and people start looking around for scapegoats.
Well, if the U.S. government is really worried about Putin, I guess they should start funnelling political aid to his opposition. Let’s see, that would be the Communists.
Well, we could also help arm and fund the islamic sepretists in Chechnya. Nothing bad could possibly come from that plan.
Or Buffy.
Your orange is running down, better go wind it up! 
Damn! Are you ever* old!*
I’m less concerned about the Nashi than about some real neo-Nazi skinhead groups in Russia who are actually doing murder. And which just might be getting support from (or being manipulated by) the government.
Well, Nashi came out of another pro-Putin group called Walking together, which was disbanded more or less in 2005. It was the brainchild of Vladislav Surkov, who’s a Karl Rove of sorts of the Kremlin, and Vasily Yakemenko, who was the leader of Walking Together.
Nashi came out of Walking Together’s failure to have an actual platform, it was a true cult of personality and it’s rumored that once Putin leaves office that Nashi won’t have much of the steam they had, or have now.
To answer Liberal’s question, they are funded by the Kremlin, not directly of course. They’re funded by Gazprom and Lukoil and all the other companies directly tied to the Kremlin. Surkov makes a phonecall and Nashi gets another hefty check to fund their annual summer camps at Lake Seliger.
They also apply for “grants” to pay for such things, but it’s obvious that if Yabloko Youth or any of the anti-Kremlin youth groups planned to apply for the same grants they’d be denied instantly. Nashi’s been accused of assaulting members of oppositional groups on several occasions, and have been arrested and subsequently released shortly after. The most telling event was when they stormed the Estonian embassy in protest of Estonia’s decision to move a statue from the Red Army. They’ve also harassed Britain’s ambassador to Russia for several months for meeting with members of Other Russia.
Nashi’s purpose though wasn’t just to pump out Putin rhetoric. It was to stabilize the base so that Russia doesn’t have a Colored Revolution ala Ukraine.
Needless to say I just finished a significant amount of research on the subject.
Also, “Nashi” isn’t meant to be reminiscent of “Nazi”, it literally means the plural form of “ours” and follows in this pattern of ultra nationalism and Russia’s recent quest to define “Russian-ness”.
Nashi is at least, superficially, an anti-fascist or anti-fa organization. So they are somewhat designed to counter the skin-heads and such cited by others.
However, their idea of what constitutes a fascist includes relative liberals such as Другая Россия, Other Russia (Kasparov’s and Limonov’s party). In the Nashi universe, basically anyone that the Kremlin has reason to be suspicious of is tagged as a “fascist”.
As pointed out by others, Nashi means “Ours” and they essentially are a small group of kids being led by the nose to spout views and perform psuedo-grassroots actions useful to the Kremlin. Yes, they were also designed to counter any possible “color” revolution that might appear in Russia during the upcoming elections.
One wonders what they will be doing with their time after this election cycle.
Those interested in Russian youth groups and movements and their history in the Soviet Union would be well-served to browse Sean’s Russia Blog . Some readers might find this Scraps of Moscow article of interest as well.
GoneTheSun, do you post to Sean’s blog? It’s funny that you mentioned it because I’m around there a lot.
I’m W. Shedd aka Accidental Russophile.
Yes, I think I’m one of his top posters on that blog. I’ve “known” Sean for several years, now via blogging and other forums.
There was a time when I was almost the only commenter at his blog, but it has taken off nicely in the past year or so.
Indeed it has, funny meeting you here. I don’t post but I frequent the site a lot. I’ll be getting my M.A. in Russian and East European Studies, his site was a valuable resource for a research paper on Nashi and youth politics in Russia that I recently wrote.
I’ve only recently been posting here, although I was a member back in 2002.
Ahhh, so you have a formal education on this topic as well. I can’t say it is my field - I’m an geotechnical/environmental engineer by trade. I believe Sean is finishing up his PhD at UCLA, bright boy.
He is a bright boy, I enjoy his blog very much. Especially the discussion it sparks, and yes, I’m in the process of obtaining formal education on the subject.
It’s very interesting to know about it and see what a clear misconception many have on the politics of the region.
I was honestly shocked to read this thread title here of all places 
Yes, this isn’t a typical forum for discussion of Russian topics.
Actually, if you know any other forums or blogs to recommend, I’m open to suggestions. I think I have a list of places I most often frequent on my blog.