Vanguard of Red Youth

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Vanguard of Red Youth (Russian: Авангард красной молодёжи or Avangard Krasnoi Molodyozhi (AKM)), is a radical Russian communist youth group. Its website describes it as an "independent youth organization, entering the all-Russian public political motion." Its "territory of action" is Russia, which it insists is still the heart and soul of "the republic of the USSR." The AKM's ideology is Marxism-Leninism.

The name of the organization is the backronym of AKM, a model of the well-known Kalashnikov assault rifle. Its organizational structure uses military terminology: battalion, brigade.

The group entered on to the world scene by being the indirect subject of a November 2005 ZMag article dealing with the annual November 7th demonstration commemorating the anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution, and also addressing the civil unrest in France.

In the article, Boris Kagarlitsky of the Institute for Globalization Studies describes the AKM as "[the] Russian equivalent of [the] Western Black Bloc . . . surrounded by the police and strictly controlled." But others have pointed to the picture of Stalin on their webpage and their obviously disciplined orientation as proof that the AKM, while it may be prone to direct action, cannot possibly be anarchist.

Kagarlitsky quotes a young AKM radical as shouting: "We will turn Moscow into Paris!" It is unclear how much support the AKM currently has from other organizations in Russia, or whether it truly plans on becoming a vanguard party.

On March 3, 2007, the AKM took part in the Saint Petersburg March of the Discontented, one of the biggest demonstrations of the opposition in recent years.