Also there is information that in case of a serious publicity this man who does not represent a great value for his bosses will be easily given away.”
Atington group, Pravda-Info, 03.15.05.
On February 26th in the Sinezh hotel near Moscow the Nashi movement held a conference. The leader of the youth Yabloko Ilya Yashin and the Kommersant correspondent Oleg Kashin who went to the conference were recognized by the security service of the Nashi and beaten up.
In the middle of March Kaluga’s department of the Nashi affirmed that on March 15th some people broke into the Nashi headquarters in Kaluga and beat up a certain Andrey Maltsev, a Nashist. Maria Kislitsina, the Nashi leader in Kaluga affirmed that the people who broke in raised their hand in a fascist salute and chanted “Glory to the NBP!” On the following day, on March 16th according to Kislitsina 20 nazbols put fire to the door of the headquarters and broke the windows. And the senior police officer Alexander Ulyashin did not only reject the statement but according to Kislitsina, insulted and beat her up. On the following day an unsanctioned meeting of the Nashi movement gathering 800 participants, some of them from Nizhni Novgorod, Tver, Ryazan, Moscow and other regions took place near Lenin’s police station. The meeting ended with a public reading of the order given by the chief of Kaluga’s police about Ulyashin’s dismissal from the police.
The National-Bolsheviks affirmed, “Everything that happened in Kaluga was a carefully prepared provocation” and demanded to examine the activities of the Nashi movement and to return the lieutenant colonel Ulyashin to his functions. Their arguments were: 1) The absence of witnesses and evidence about the identity of the attackers; 2) The senior police officer Ulyashin is characterized positively by his colleagues and residents; it is not clear how he could be accused of such a shameful action; 3) The nazbols proved that the meeting at the police station was thoroughly prepared. How could have such a mass of Nashi activists from cities situated far from Kaluga, such as Nizhni Novgorod and Tver been brought together in less than a day? Also the banners directed against Uliyashin were clearly produced in a factory and it is hard if not impossible to make them in one night. Nobody was accused of anything because of lack of evidence.
After these events even “the speaker of the Federation Council Sergey Mironov compared the Nashi with the Chinese Red Guards of the 60s and called this movement “a masquerade” and “too dangerous”, Izvestia wrote.
Most probably either Surkov or the president himself have reprimanded the Nashi for their crude job on March 5th – beatings, syringes, vodka, ORT interview with Vasya the Killer, baseball bats. So the Nashi prepared a set up of a nazbols’ attack in Kaluga. There is no other explanation to this incident.
Approximately at the same time in Moscow and in the regions a wave of attacks on nazbols and NBP headquarters began. The attacks continue to this day with a frequency of two-three per week. Usually the nazbols are attacked where they live or near the NBP headquarters, they are hit from behind with a baseball bat or a pipe and beaten up.
Being a fascist organization by its methods (how else could we call the attacks on political opponents with pipes and baseball bats?), the Nashi perfidiously and mockingly call themselves “antifascists”. On April 13th on a press conference dedicated to the congress of the movement Vasily Yakemenko said that the Nashi movement considers the fascists and their sympathizers as its enemies. When asked what movements in particular he considers fascist Yakemenko answered: NBP. As fascists’ sympathizers he named the leaders of the democratic movement. “Rizhkov, Khakamada, Kasparov are obviously sympathizing to the fascists,” the Nashi leader declared. Yakemenko added that today a perverted alliance between the liberals and the fascists, the westernizers and the ultra-nationalists, the international funds and the terrorists is formed. “Only one thing holds it together – hate to Putin,” he affirmed. “In this situation we will support Putin. We don’t care about someone’s personal attitude to Putin but we consider that those who don’t share his political views are our enemies.”
Yakemenko read out the movement’s manifesto. It says that the generation that rules the country from the 80s has lost faith in Russia and in its perspectives. “Ruling the country in the conditions of economical recession and Russia’s ousting on the roadside of world’s history they grew used to retreat and they are scared to give the order “Forward!” the document says. “The issue of Russia’s unity is the issue of changing the generation of leaders. Our generation has to replace the defeatists at the helm.
The main tasks of the movement as stated in the manifesto are to preserve Russia’s sovereignty and integrity, to modernize the country and to form a functioning civil society. “Our movement has to become a model for a functioning civil society. Enough of words about human rights. The phrase-mongering of today’s’ liberals is democracy’s worst publicity,” Yakemenko declared. “The phrase-mongering of the liberals” is a typical fascist expression just as the criticism of human rights is their subject.
On April 15th the Nashi held their constitutive conference in Moscow. 750 delegates from 20 regions of Russia took part in it. But the most interesting is that the minister Fursenko and the governor of the Tver region Zelenin, i.e. official representatives of the power were present on the congress. And both made speeches, greeting the creation of an organization that fights political enemies attacking them with baseball bats.
On April 17th during a meeting with youth organizations one of the participants of the meeting approached Kasparov, supposedly for an autograph, and hit him on the head with a chessboard. On the Echo of Moscow radio station the Nashi press secretary Ivan Mostovich has mockingly accused… the NBP. “This looks very much like the NBP, Mostovich affirmed. “/…/ Such methods are typical of the fascist Limonov and his assistants. /…/ What else should happen in order for the State to intervene and stop the revelry of delinquency and fascism spread by the NBP? The Nashi movement has nothing to do with this incident,” he emphasized. Clearly this is a mocking lie; the NBP has never used violent methods, first. And second – why should we attack a person whom Yakemenko himself has counted among the comrades-in-arms of the “NBP fascists”?
In the night of April 27th in Moscow near the NBP headquarters on Maria Ulianova Street, 17, a nazbol from Arzamas, Evgeny Logovsky was beaten. He was hit with a heavy object on the head, and then he was put a plastic bag on the head and was stabbed in the neck with a knife. In the night of April 28th a garage belonging to the National-Bolshevik Yuri Valiev was put on fire. Flags and banners, all NBP attributes, were kept in the garage. Two neighboring garages were burnt together with Valiev’s garage. In the beginning of the fire Valiev heard a small explosion and the garage burst into flames. When later the bookstores Phalanster and Bilingva were put on fire in Moscow, witnesses have also heard similar explosions.
On April 29th at about 10 o’clock PM Sergey Udaltsov, leader of the Vanguard of Red Youth organization was beaten near his home on Zatonnaya Street.
On May 15th the Nashi held a grandiose demonstration on Leninsky Street in Moscow. Over 2 thousand buses lined up on the sides of the street. Columns of Nashists marched to a stage near the Gradskaya hospital on specially marked asphalt. On May 16th Kommersant writes: “At noon the police has counted the participants of the action: they were 60 thousand. The crowd seemed to never end and the TV operators were cursing, not knowing how to film such a quantity of people. ‘We need Leni Riefenstahl over here,’ joked an operator. The image of columns with flags disappearing in the horizon really reminded scenes from Triumph of the Will (The triumph of the will cost the Kremlin from 1200 thousand dollars to one million and a half.) After the speeches followed the culmination of the action – an oath of allegiance beginning with the words: ‘I, citizen of a free Russia, today accept my homeland from the hands of the old generation.’ A thousand of veterans lined up among the side of Leninsky Street. Each veteran had to take the oath from 60 Nashis. After a young man or woman pronounced the text the veteran hung a cartridge-case on a ribbon around the neck of the newly converted. /…/ After the oath the Nashi were left to take a walk in the city, which rejoiced most of the students from the regions. ‘In school they told us that we could have a free trip to Moscow, a student from Kovrov told Kommersant. ‘I want to go to the Red Square before the bus leaves.’