Nashi (Ours)

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Nashi (Russian: 'Молодежное движение «Наши»', 'Youth Movement "Ours"') is a Russian youth movement, officially announced by Vasily Yakemenko (leader of the pro-Putin Walking Together youth movement) on 1st March 2005, the founding conference was carried out on 15th April 2005.

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.

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. Yakemenko himself claimed that the Russian liberal left party Yabloko is fascist, thus confirming that Nashi's definition of fascism is far from conforming to the internationally accepted definition of the term.[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 taken a strong Russian nationalist stance and has 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 the Ukraine [8], and as a result Nashi nationalist rhetoric has resembled xenophobia in its stated purpose of anti-fascism.

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.^[1]

In August 2005 Putin officially invited Yulia Gorodnicheva (b. December 16, 1985), 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^[2], but she refused to be selected by the President and on November 15, 2005, entered the second part of the chamber as a representative of Nashi. There she became a member of the Commission on Social Development. [9]

A security officer of the British embassy is trying to drive away a member of the "Nashi" movement

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^[3]. On September 26, 2006, during a manifestation in front of Ambassador’s residence, a British security officer tried to drive away a demonstrator, having rudely told him to “get away”, then walked closely to the him, smashed him in his face and broke his tablet. [10]

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] Obviously, ambassador Brenton's participation in the conference had been considered as a grave violation of the basic multilateral agreement that regulates diplomatic relations between all countries - the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations (1961): "...it is the duty of all persons... to respect the laws and regulations of the receiving State. They also have a duty not to interfere in the internal affairs of that State." (Article 41)[12]

At the beginning of 1990s, there was an organization of the same name Nashi. The movement had ultranationalist orientation and its members were called nashisty, which led some people to call the Nashi members also fascists.^[4]