#18 - RW 3-11-05 - RW Home
Moscow News
March 9-15, 2005
Moving Together - With and Without Putin
By Valery Vyzhutovich

Last week saw two significant developments on the political youth scene. Senezh, a sanitarium in Solnechnogorsk (a town approx. 60 kilometers north of Moscow) owned by the RF presidential Property Management Administration, played host to a conference of a new youth movement, Nashi (Us), created under the Kremlin's patronage. Meanwhile, the Yabloko youth wing and a youth group called Moving without Putin decided to merge and through concerted efforts forge a viable student opposition movement.

Nashi Lands a Punch

Ilya Yashin, the leader of the Yabloko youth wing, penetrated the enemy camp, infiltrating into a Nashi gathering. Spying is a punishable offense.

Five skin-headed bruisers pushed the infiltrator into a snowdrift head first and then proceeded to kick and punch him. The incident was front-page news from Senezh although it merits just a passing mention, but even then only in the sense that Putin's new young followers are tougher than their predecessors. Head first into a snowdrift, this is our stile - this is Us.

The leader of the Yabloko youth wing gave his own interpretation of the tasks set before Us at the conference: "Take 300,000 people out into the streets and defend Russia," "Stop the 'orange revolution' and U.S. invasion."

According to Yashin, approximately 200 people were in attendance (the conference was not publicized and no reporters were invited). The bulk of the participants was constituted by the Moving Together group with its leader, Vasily Yakemenko. The second largest group was comprised of 15- to 18-year-old newcomers (they were promised free billiards and paintball games, as well as a buffet with a disco) - mainly Moscow college students. About 50 people had come from the provinces. There was also a separate, distinct group of burly young men with shaven heads who were wearing track suits. "Security staff," was how their introduced themselves.

The atmosphere of secrecy that pervaded the conference was, however, superfluous. It's an open secret that the Kremlin is building a new youth movement. In this context, a recent visit to St. Petersburg by Vladislav Surkov, deputy head of the presidential staff, and his address to future Us members did not go unnoticed. While talking in extremely uncomplimentary terms about all of Russia's political parties and expressing his disappointment with Unified Russia, Surkov said that Us could possibly provide a base for a new party-of-power. The potential activists were told that "as a result of a series of coups, external administration was imposed in Georgia, Serbia, and Ukraine, which must not be allowed to happen in Russia."

Surkov did not explain why Us was necessary when Moving Together already existed. This is not difficult to guess, however. First, Moving Together has ended up as little more than a caricature. The burning of "harmful" books in lavatories alone would have been enough for an organization, conceived as a buttress of the ruling regime, to discredit both the regime and the person whose likeness is embossed on its members' T-shirts. Second, the Putinites clearly lacked "commitment to an idea," their principal motivation being all sorts of freebies (free pagers, movie tickets, and so on). Now there is going to be more "commitment." After all, Us is not only about Putin (incidentally, the president's name was not mentioned at the conference, and this is hardly accidental). Us, in its original (Soviet) interpretation, is a comprehensive, one-stop organization: Motherland with a capital M, the search for an external enemy, the "not-a-patch-of-native-land-to-give" philosophy, xenophobia, a besieged fortress mentality, the "we'll show 'em" attitude, and so on.

This movement will probably have more followers than Moving Together ever had.

Yabloko Plus

While Us members were preparing for their conference, the Yabloko youth wing and the Moving without Putin group issued a joint declaration, saying in particular that they were pooling their efforts "to create a democratic youth opposition to Vladimir Putin's regime and organize civic resistance to the system of police authoritarianism that has evolved in Russia."

The Yabloko youth wing needs no introduction. As for Moving without Putin - for the benefit of those who may not know - it originated in St. Petersburg this January, uniting students from several city institutes. In February, a Moscow chapter was opened. Now they are negotiating with their supporters in other parts of Russia. They are opposed to the abolition of draft deferments, the ongoing war in Chechnya, and scrapping social security benefits for veterans. They are ready to cooperate with all opposition forces that share their platform. The Yabloko youth wing is their first and foremost ally.

"We've issued a declaration," Ilya Yashin says. "When we get enough signatures on it, we'll begin forming joint structures. Our aim is to create a student opposition movement like the Ukrainian Pora and the Georgian Kmara. The principal unifying force here is Putin and his regime."

In an era when a country's policy is engineered by the so-called administrative resources, PR technologists and spin doctors, people who believe in pure politics that draws inspiration from an idea (especially this sort of idea) look somewhat strange, to say the least.

Supposing the unification of young anti-Putinites is achieved. But will this product, in our political environment, be able to develop into something like Pora or Kmara? The general theory that students are the most rebellious part of any society cannot provide an answer to this question - either in the affirmative or the negative. It may be rebellious, only not in Russia. The reason for this is not general servility, as one might have thought from watching Putin's recent meeting with Moscow State University (MGU) students, nor the cold pragmatism of Russia's career-minded whiz kids. Rather, it is a state of total indifference, a "screw it all" or "who cares" attitude. Apathy. Political activism simply does not arise in an apolitical country.

But if the ruling establishment begins to tread on the students' interests, it will surely be rebuffed then, right? Consider the thousands of pensioners who have taken to the streets over the replacement of in-kind benefits with cash payments.

This comparison is not quite appropriate. When future managers and executives start working in corporate offices in their second or third year at university, while future journalists start writing and getting their first honorariums, a beggarly stipend alone is unlikely to set off a social explosion. If even the upcoming exchange of student cards for military service record cards (that is to say, the abolition of draft deferments) did not force students out into the streets, it is perhaps too soon to talk about a resistance to "police authoritarianism" brewing in this milieu.

"For the youth to be mature and ready for resistance, it must be stimulated," Ilya Yashin says. "Our task is to work out a new ethos. It should the ethos of student riots, as in France of the 1960s, the Yugoslav Otpor, or the Georgian Kmara. The word combination "young democrat" must be infused with an element of freethinking. I can see protest already brewing. The political establishment has been so clumsy, so lacking subtlety".

Them and Us

According to the All-Russian Public Opinion Research Center (VTsIOM), which is not prone to publish figures that may be unpleasant for the ruling authorities, Putin's rating has fallen to an all-time low - 48 percent. This must be a sign of - well, if not yet of protest, but of sullen, nascent discontent with the regime brewing in our society. It is also perfectly obvious that this discontent is seeping through to youth club patrons and disco goers. The simultaneous birth of several political youth antipodes is conclusive evidence of this trend. Indeed, if the youth are the engines of "velvet revolutions" (remember Georgia and Ukraine), who else but the youth will the ruling establishment tap to cut this engine?

True, those who took to the streets through sheer conviction and those who were driven there by their leaders tend to behave differently at the crucial moment. When the attempts to impose Yanukovich on Ukraine began to fail, the hired "white-and-blue" detachments disappeared from Independence Square, while the volunteer "orange" corps stayed there to the end. MN File MN Internet Poll

What youth organization would you join or advise your children to join?

None 48%
Moving without Putin 20%
VLKSM (the All-Union Lenin Communist Youth League)12%
The Yabloko youth wing 8%
Pora (Ukraine, pro-Yushchenko) 6%
Moving Together (an old pro-Putin organization) 2%
The Eurasian Youth Union 2%
The Leftist Youth Front 1%
Us (a new pro-Putin organization) 1%