During my fieldwork in Moscow and St Petersburg, I met active youth who are organized in formal and informal youth groups that cover a variety of different political and ideological standpoints. The popular uprisings in Central and Eastern Europe known as the Color Revolutions, especially Ukraine’s Orange Revolution in 2004, were important triggers for Russian youth activism. Right after the Orange Revolution, a new wave of youth organizations, both ‘pro-’ and ‘anti-orange’, took place in Russia. Stanovaya (2005) has categorized Russian youth movements into two groups: ‘loyal to the Kremlin’ and the
‘opposition’. In the ‘Loyal to the Kremlin’ group, she locates the Nashi (Ours), Molodaia Gvardiia (Young Guard of the United Russia Party) and Rossiia Molodaia (Young Russia)3, which she describes as ‘liberals’ differentiating them from the other loyal to the Kremlin groups that are more patriotic or nationalistic in character, such as the Eurasian Union of Youth and the youth organization of Vladimir Zhirinovsky’s Liberal-Democratic Party (LDPR). Stanovaya categorized the political opposition’s youth movements as
‘liberal’ and ‘patriotic’ and according to their ‘left’ or ‘right’ wing character. The liberal
3 Jussi Lassila adds the Moscow based youth movement Mestnye in this category (Lassila 2011b).
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left-wing opposition consists of the youth movement MY (WE), Oborona (Defense) as well as the already dissolved movements DA! (Demokraticheskaia Alternativa, the Democratic Alternative), Pora (It’s Time) and Ia Dumaiu (I think). She categorizes left-wing patriots as movements such as Za Rodinu (For the Motherland), Union of Communist Youth (Soiuz kommunisticheskoi molodezhi), AKM (Avangard Krasnoi Molodezhi, Vanguard of Red Youth) and the National Bolshevik Party (Natsional-Bolshevistskaia Partiia). (For a similar categorization, see Gromov 2009a.)
Stanovaya’s categorization is helpful in mapping out the various and often interconnected youth groups and their political orientations. However, the left-right division as it is understood in the western context is problematic in the Russian case (G.
Evans and Whitefield 1998) and especially concerning liberal youth movements that often want to include as many young people as possible in their groups and are therefore defining their position quite loosely regarding socio-economic questions, such as educational reforms, social benefits or taxation, that could bring out the ‘left’ or ‘right’
wing character of the movement. Rather, they wish to keep their grievances on the abstract level in order to accommodate youth of ‘all colors’ (see forthcoming chapters).
Movements also move on this left-right scale according to their participant base, because of their small size that often gives individual participants power to define the whole movement’s activities.
In 2005, right after the Orange Revolution in Ukraine, the Kremlin began mobilizing youth to join the movement ‘Nashi’ in support of the government and thereby channel discontent to prevent the further spread of ‘orange sentiments’ in the country and public displays of protest among Russian youths (Danilin 2006; Robertson 2009; Lebedev 2008).
Pro-Kremlin movements, such as Nashi, Molodaia Gvardiia of the United Russia Party and the Young Russia movement (Rossiia Molodaia) as well as the Locals (Mestnye) represent state ideology and the state’s ‘official anti-fascism’, and are officially supported by the state (Atwal 2009; Blum 2006; Hemment 2009; Lassila 2011a). Within a few months of the Nashi movement’s founding, its membership increased up to 120 000 people. This is quite remarkable in a country where youth is seen as politically disinterested and apathetic. Nashi got the media’s attention by organizing mass-rallies targeted against the opposition and sometimes against western countries as well. An internationally noted event was the mass protests against the relocation of the Soviet war memorial, the ‘Bronze Soldier’ in Estonia in the spring of 2007 (see Lassila 2011b).
According to Heller (2008), after the presidential elections in 2008, the Kremlin started to reduce its support to Nashi and the other government-friendly movements. Some assessed that President Medvedev’s project of ‘civilized Russia promoting itself as a friend and partner of the West’ did not need the Nashi anymore (Heller 2008). However, Nashi and other pro-Kremlin movements were actively organizing ‘anti-orange’ rallies as a counterweight to the opposition’s rallies in 2012, until in April 2012 the movement’s leaders announced that Nashi would disband its activities, and the movement will be dissolved (Gazeta.ru 2012).
Youth participation in Russia is often described as ‘state-managed’ because the government has provided considerable administrative and financial resources to enhance the mobilization of the pro-government youth (Blum 2006; McFaul 2003; Heller 2008).
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According to Heller (2008), Nashi cannot be considered an independent mobilization project by youth themselves but rather ‘a Putin-era political technology project’. Putin’s former adviser and the founding father of the so-called ‘sovereign democracy’ project, Vladislav Surkov is said to be the movement’s mentor in the Kremlin (Heller 2008, 2;
Horvath 2011, 20). Horvath (2011) claims that Nashi was part of ‘Putin’s preventive counter-revolution’ against the orange revolutionary feelings and a ‘response to a tangible domestic threat posed by opposition leaders prepared to flirt with revolutionary politics’
before the election cycle of 2007-08. However, recent research on pro-Kremlin youth movements has questioned this thoroughly state-managed nature of youth participation and has also shown how pro-Kremlin activism is more complex than that. It has described the activists as agents in the civic field and elucidated how some activists use the movement as a tool to create better chances in life for themselves and to distance themselves from the adult politics, which they view negatively or as inefficient (Lassila 2011b, 362; Andreev 2009; Atwal 2009; Hemment 2012).
The political opposition’s youth movements are smaller than the pro-Kremlin groups.
They question the current political regime and its policies and resist the state-managed forms of participation. These movements are therefore under the strict control of the authorities. They have no access to formal politics, nor do they want to be engaged with it.
Oppositional youth movements are organized under umbrella movements such as the United Civil Front (Ob’iedinennyi Grazhdanskii Front, OGF), the Other Russia (Drugaia Rossiia) and most recently, the Solidarity Movement (Solidarnost’) (see table 1). The most numerous and active of the opposition groups are the communist forces, such as the
‘AKM – the Vanguard of Red Youth’, and the now banned National Bolshevik (Party) and some other leftist groupings that have organized under the Left Front coalition (Gromov 2009b). The National Bolsheviks have a program that is a mix of bolshevism and nationalist agendas, and the group relies on their well-known leader Eduard Limonov, who is the organizing force behind many demonstrations and events, and has actively participated in the Other Russia coalition.
In addition to the leftist and communist youth, there are youth movements that describe themselves as democratic and/or liberal movements. The most active of these in Moscow are the Youth Movement Oborona, Movement MY, and smaller movements, such as Smena (Change) Svobodnye Radikaly (Free Radicals), Natsiia Svobody (Nation of Freedom). Typically for Russian politics and especially for opposition politics, also the democratic youth movements revolve around a few active members. Liberal youth movements gather those with a variety of political views together, but define their overall goals as free and democratic elections and party politics, free media, and guaranteed constitutional and human rights. The young activists are also especially concerned with army recruiting policies and students’ rights. One common and unifying idea for these various opposition youth movements is the personified resistance to President Vladimir Putin.
Even though Russians have started to recognize political youth movements somewhat better than in earlier years, especially opposition youth movements are still very rarely known by the wider audiences. According to FOM’s (Fond Obshchestvennoe Mnenie 2011; 2010) surveys of political youth organizations in 2010 and 2011, 52 percent of the
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respondents did not recognize any of the 13 listed youth organizations. However, the number has diminished from the 2007 survey when as many as 60 percent of the respondents did not recognize any of the organizations. The most widely known of the youth organizations was the Youth wing of the United Russia Party, the Young Guard (Molodaia Gvardiia), which has overtaken the position of the movement Nashi that was leading on the 2007 survey. The Young Guard was known to 25 percent of the respondents in 2010 and Nashi’s was recognized by 18 percent of the respondents. From the anti-Kremlin movements only the National Bolsheviks or ‘Limonovtsy’ (referring to its leader Eduard Limonov) reached 10 percent of recognition while other movements had been heard of by only 1–2 percent of the respondents. Young people and Muscovites knew the youth movements somewhat better than the older generation and people from the regions (Fond Obshchestvennoe Mnenie 2012).
Public recognition of the youth movements is surprisingly low even though the pro-Kremlin youth movements, such as Nashi, are often featured in the Russian media.
According to Lassila (2011b), Nashi received its most media visibility in 2007, but still people claimed not to recognize the movement’s existence in the surveys. Lassila (2011b, 260) argues that ‘Nashi’s relatively low familiarity among the population (including youth) is based on public unresponsiveness rather than simply a lack of information’.
Lassila connects this unresponsiveness to the population’s disinterest in politics in general.
However, Nashi’s wide mobilization is also interesting when looking at the political opportunities and restrictions in Russia. In general, Russian civil society is politically steered according to the principle of ‘managed democracy’, which leads to the categorization of civic organizations as ‘allies’ or ‘adversaries’ of the state. The allies are seen as the ‘state’s helpers’, supporting state systems and carrying out social services that the state cannot provide. This kind of civic activism is encouraged by the state while the adversaries are discouraged, and even harassed. (Salmenniemi 2008.) The openly oppositional youth movements are part of the ‘adversaries’’ group, while the pro-Kremlin movements are deemed allies of the state. The opposition movements often complain of harassment, that they do not get any media-coverage, and that their demonstrations are controlled and often forbidden. At the same time, the state invests in the ‘right kind’ of youth activism by allocating economic and emotional support for the pro-government movements. Allowing the pro-Kremlin movements access to the state-controlled media while the opposition has been dislodged from the public eye strengthens the mobilization potential of the pro-Kremlin movements such as the Nashi. However, during the 2011–12 demonstrations, the opposition’s access to the state controlled television and other media has somewhat eased. According to the Levada Center (2012, 196), in 2012, 78 percent of respondents had heard of the protests against the rigged elections and 85 per cent of those had heard of the protests on the television.
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