Nashi has officially hit the American mainstream. On Sunday the NY Times published an expose of the youth organization. Unfortunately, the article doesn’t say anything that hasn’t already been said before. In fact it is clear that the media has nothing new to add to what Nashi is except for repeating the fact that it is a Kremlin tool. I would figure that this is quite obvious. I’m more interested in how the organization actually functions on the ground. That said, I think the best statement was from Yabloko youth leader, Ilya Yashin. He told the Times,
“The authorities may face serious problems because all the young people whom they teach today, in whom they invest, whom they teach to organize mass actions, may find themselves in the real opposition when they see that their interests are violated. Today they are loyal, but tomorrow they may become the opposition. And this may not be the young Red Guard’s Cultural Revolution, like in China, but something much more serious.”
I think he is right on. Such is the dilemma of arousing and then having the audacity to think you can actually control populism.
But what really struck me is how the article opened. It reads:
Yulia Kuliyeva, only 19 and already a commissar, sat at a desk and quizzed each young person who sat opposite her, testing for ideological fitness to participate in summer camp.
“Tell me, what achievements of Putin’s policy can you name?” she asked, referring to Russia’s president since 2000, Vladimir V. Putin.
“Well, it’s the stabilization in the economy,” the girl answered. “Pensions were raised.”
“And what’s in Chechnya?” Ms. Kuliyeva asked, probing her knowledge of a separatist conflict that has killed tens of thousands and, although largely won by Russia’s federal forces and Chechen loyalists, continues.
“In Chechnya, it’s that it is considered a part of Russia,” the girl responded.
“Is this war still going on there?”
“No, everything is quiet.”
Ms. Kuliyeva is a leader in the Ideological Department of Nashi, the largest of a handful of youth movements created by Mr. Putin’s Kremlin to fight for the hearts and minds of Russia’s young people in schools, on the airwaves and, if necessary, on the streets.
I sure wish the Times would have questioned this obvious charade. I doubt your average Nashi member has such ideological prowess. In fact, Kuliyeva’s question and answer session reminded me of a document I found in the Komsomol archive. Such ideological questioning was common in Komsomol admissions and expulsion trials. Mine comes from an expulsion trial. I believe it is probably more indicative of not only your average Komsomol member at the time but also even symbolic of your average Nashi member’s ideological awareness.
The document dates from 1926. On trial was one Klishin, born in 1904, an unemployed peasant, and joined the Komsomol in 1923. Klishin was also charged with neglecting his studies, playing ill to get out of them, and for “rowdiness and drunkenness.” Here is what the Moscow Raikom expulsion commission asked Klishin to determine his guilt:
Were you drunk in the washroom?
I drank.
What kind of work did you do in the Komsomol since 1923?
I was a member of the cell bureau.
What did you do as a bureau member and what was your responsibilities?
They didn’t give me any responsibilities.
What else did you do?
I did literary work, gave reports on Komsomol activism.
How do you express your Komsomol activism?
I encourage worker youth to join the League.
When was the 14th Party Congress?
I don’t know.
Which Party Congress was in 1925?
The nineteenth.
What is KIM (Communist Youth International)?
Dictatorship of Komsomol.
What newspapers do you read?
I read but I haven’t for a month.
Who is Stalin?
I don’t know.
The last one was the ringer. To say the least, Klishin was expelled from the Komsomol. I wonder is Nashi has its own expulsion process to deal with their riffraff.
I read this NY Times Nashi article as well.
I couldn’t stop rolling my eyes. I find it frustrating that American and UK newspapers fall into the same patterns of superficial reporting.
Seemed the accompanying photo included a group of red t-shirt clad girls and blue jeans. If I didn’t know better, I would have sworn it was women-only.
Then again, so many Russian newspaper headlines make my stomach churn.
Rolling eyes and churning stomach … hopefully not contagious.
As has been well-documented, the latter days of the Komsomol gave birth to this generation of oligarchs. One might well wonder what this group will become in the future.
Rolling eyes and churning stomach … hopefully not contagious.
I would be more concern about brain damage. That’s why I called it WMD – weapons of mass desinformation
(
As has been well-documented, the latter days of the Komsomol gave birth to this generation of oligarchs. One might well wonder what this group will become in the future.
Most famous – Khodor?
One might well wonder what this group will become in the future.
What group? There is a big difference between VLKSM and current “groups”. More exactly – nothing in common (I judge by my experience)
Thanks for sharing the archival document – pure comedy gold.
Seems to me that “the Dictatorship of the Komsomol” would easily make for a great dissertation chapter title or sub-heading!
Certainly Komsomol and Nashi have a few similarities, despite what experience you profess.
Then again, you might also throw the Young Republicans into that grouping as well.
I’m not trying to be churlish here, but what exactly did you guys not like about that article (except perhaps for the simple fact of its appearance in the NYT)? I thought it did a pretty good job of tying together a lot of good points about Nashi which haven’t been made before in one place in the Western media (specifically, among other things, anti-americanism, the speculation about funding sources, the Kremlin’s ability or desire to distance itself at times from its creation).
Unfortunately, the article doesn’t say anything that hasn’t already been said before. In fact it is clear that the media has nothing new to add to what Nashi is except for repeating the fact that it is a Kremlin tool. I would figure that this is quite obvious.
Remember that the NYT’s audience is not the gang of obsessive Russia-watchers that reads this blog – it is Americans who hope (one hopes) to be informed about events foreign and domestic. I doubt that even the existence of Nashi is “quite obvious” to the NYT’s readership at large.
The NYT guys aren’t trying to write scholarly articles for a regionally focused publication, you know, and their articles on events and phenomena in foreign lands are therefore likely to often be simply restatements of the obvious for individuals who follow those particular lands closely and have access to local-language sources.
Seemed the accompanying photo included a group of red t-shirt clad girls and blue jeans.
Perhaps in the print edition, but in the on-line edition the photo has a dude right in the foreground.
As has been well-documented, the latter days of the Komsomol gave birth to this generation of oligarchs. One might well wonder what this group will become in the future.
In some of the Nashi literature, the organization is promoted as being a breeding ground for “future leaders” and a new elite, and one of their brochures promised the top Nashisty internships with big-name Russian companies. Their problem will come when they can’t reward people who have been very committed to the organization. I’m not talking about the masses of youths bussed in from the provinces for aktsii in Moscow – for the most part I’d guess that these kids get their trip to Moscow and then move on. But the people who have committed serious time to org-rabota will expect to be compensated in some way. This ties into Yashin’s and Sean’s point about how letting this particular genie out of the bottle (especially as it’s a genie with some unpleasant xenophobic aspects) may prove dangerous in the future both for Russian domestic politics and for the country’s foreign relations.
Thanks for sharing the archival document – pure comedy gold.
Amen. The first question made me want to be in the interrogation room or wherever this took place.
As for Nashi’s own expulsion process, my guess (total speculation, I admit) is that at first they were not concerned about it – being concerned about achieving a certain level of massovost’ means you may not want to expel anyone – but if they can really deliver spoils to their members (but not to too many of their members), then they may have to devise a method of filtering out those who are just there for the internships, etc. Although that still doesn’t seem to be the mode they’re in – Nashi publicizes the benefits of membership relentlessly, whereas it seems to me (again, not knowing even 1/100th of what Sean probably knows on this topic) that VLKSM’s privileges were implicit – people knew about them, but there weren’t promotional brochures about them. Or were there? If Komsomol also had marketing materials, I’d be interested to learn more about them. Possible diss chapter topic: “Membership has its Privileges” (not as good as “Dictatorship of the Komsomol,” but still…).
Then again, you might also throw the Young Republicans into that grouping as well.
Actually, you might throw in just about any well-educated American youngster who joins a political campaign of any stripe in hopes of securing a job or earning useful connections.
I sure wish the Times would have questioned this obvious charade. I doubt your average Nashi member has such ideological prowess.
I’m not sure I agree. Remember that the person was essentially being interviewed for a spot at summer camp; so, just like someone at a job interview, she told the interviewer what she knew the interviewer wanted to hear, and she probably did a bit of preparation for the interview. The mantras are not hard for today’s youth to learn, because they have a crib sheet that the Komsomol leaders of the ’20s could only dream about – TV. Just watch the news (or read a Nashi brochure – which is something I’d think one would do if one was interviewing for an apparently coveted summer camp spot), and you’ll hear all of those points made repeatedly.
So – in my opinion, the average participant in a Nashi demonstration might not be able to rattle off the right answers like this, but the average person at a high enough level in the organization to be interviewing to go to Seliger probably is. Unless they either believed in the “right answers” sincerely or were cynical enough to pretend to believe in hopes of receiving benefits, why would they want to go to Seliger anyway?
I’m not trying to be churlish here, but what exactly did you guys not like about that article (except perhaps for the simple fact of its appearance in the NYT)? I thought it did a pretty good job of tying together a lot of good points about Nashi which haven’t been made before in one place in the Western media.
Not true at all. Newsweek International did a similar article on them in May. So has the Guardian, Globe and Mail, the Daily Telegraph, and the Christian Science Monitor. All of them basically say the same thing.
Sure there is nothing objectively wrong with this. And I agree the article is good for a general audience (which I guess is the NYT’s main concern) My problem with it is based on my taste. I just don’t consider all of NYT readers when I make a judgment. Plus considering the average NYT aren’t readers of this blog, but obsessive Russia watchers are, I’m telling my readers that the article states the obvious.
Amen. The first question made me want to be in the interrogation room or wherever this took place.
If you were a member you could be. Expulsions occurred at the cell level and general meetings voted on expulsions of individual members. I’m actually going through a transcript of one right now.
As for Nashi’s own expulsion process, my guess (total speculation, I admit) is that at first they were not concerned about it – being concerned about achieving a certain level of massovost’ means you may not want to expel anyone – but if they can really deliver spoils to their members (but not to too many of their members), then they may have to devise a method of filtering out those who are just there for the internships, etc.
I would agree. In fact, my research on the Komsomol suggests the same thing (which is why I see similarities between Nashi and the Komsomol of the 1920s). At first, expulsions were not an issue. It is only when membership exploded (around 1924/25) was a formal juridical system established to deal with them and members’ appeals. But until 1929, there was a stress on rehabilitation. The sad thing is that when you were kicked out, it was usually by your friends. Man that must have really sucked for both sides.
You know on second thought, I shouldn’t be overly critical of the Times. The more they report on entities like Nashi, the more my work is relevant i.e. employment. So carry on, oh purveyors of all the news that is fit to print!
Not true at all. Newsweek International did a similar article on them in May. So has the Guardian, Globe and Mail, the Daily Telegraph, and the Christian Science Monitor. All of them basically say the same thing.
Fair enough – I admit that my Russia-watching has been uncharacteristically less than obsessive in the past two months or so (unread JRLs are piling up in an e-mail folder like unread newspapers, most likely never to be read), which explains why I’ve missed some of these. This is the problem with trying to follow a phenomenon or place and the media coverage of it – you really can’t take a break. I’d still note that none of those publications (with the possible exception of the CSM) really overlap with the NYT’s readership (certainly not in terms of print editions), but I understand that’s irrelevant to the point you were making.
Plus considering the average NYT aren’t readers of this blog, but obsessive Russia watchers are, I’m telling my readers that the article states the obvious.
Gotcha. In that light, the statement makes perfect sense.
The sad thing is that when you were kicked out, it was usually by your friends. Man that must have really sucked for both sides.
Wasn’t that a major aspect of the tragedy of the purges also (replacing in your sentence above “friends” with “colleagues” and “kicked out” with “exiled or killed”)? I guess this is one of the things that people found/find to be so scary about the Soviet era – the proven ability of some people to bring horrible consequences down upon their friends & colleagues, perhaps best encapsulated in the Pavlik Morozov legend (about which there’s recently been a book published – someone gave it to me but I sadly have yet to read it).
By the way, have you considered doing a historically oriented post on the original “Doctors’ Plot” in light of the fact that everyone’s now using that appellation for the latest terrorist threat?
The book I mentioned about Morozov is by Catriona Kelly and doesn’t appear to be on Amazon, strangely. But you can find some info about it here. If there’s a good intro or concluding chapter, it might be worth using for your Soviet history course (not to mix thread topics…).
I have not read the article yet so I am briefly commenting only on political “quizzes/interviews”. This is exactly the type of questioning I remember. I remember going through various interviews of this type over the years as well as conducting them later on on various occasions, for example prepping volunteers for activities that involved dealing with foreigners.
I think you’re being too hard on this person being interviewed. Economic improvement and stablization in Chechnya ARE the two most obvious accomplishments under Putin — it doesn’t take a genius to notice that. That’s what I would answer if I were being interviewed. I may be bit older than the people in question, but I like to think I could have figured that stuff out even at 19!
You know, it’s kind of funny — I don’t think I’ve ever actually seen a person dressed in a Nashi shirt.
Economic improvement and stablization in Chechnya ARE the two most obvious accomplishments under Putin — it doesn’t take a genius to notice that.
True enough. I guess it doesn’t take a hopeless cynic or Vremia-watching Putinophile to say those things, either – they are fairly uncontroversial views among the Russian public and are difficult to dispute. On the other hand, the question which isn’t asked is – at what cost? (Please note that I pose this question rhetorically, fully recognizing that most Russians would probably not think twice about what I think can be seen as the “costs” of stability: excessive reliance the on natural resource sector, curtailed media freedom (at least on TV) and political choice, the rule of Kadyrov rather than of law in Chechnya (granting that the last of these may be a marginal improvement over the rule of no-one), and possibly others).
After all, the Komsomol in the ’20s or ’30s might have elicited favorable responses about the VKP(b)’s biggest achievements being stopping the civil war and electrifying the country (or literacy, or something else). Although I know comparisons are often silly and there in fact should be no comparison between the Soviet rulers of the ’20s and the current Russian ruler(s), in response to claims of great achievement, one should always ask, Was it worth the cost?
“Economic improvement and stablization in Chechnya ARE the two most obvious accomplishments under Putin”
Politicians always receive too much credit/blame for the economy. It wouldn’t be difficult to imagine the Russian economy greatly improving since 2000, regardless of who was President of the Russian Federation. Much of the improvement is not based upon any specific government program – simply rise in prices of natural resources encouraging development/exploitation of those resources.
It is inevitable that prices on such things will rise and fall. It is the nature of capitalist economic systems. As they have been rising for some number of years now, I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised for the next president to be blamed for any downturn in the economy as well.
Anyone who has studied or read W. Edward Deming realizes that the political process is largely just attempting to steer the economy by looking at what has recently happened … rather like driving by watching your rear view mirror. Mostly they just screw things up and hope the economy does well under their watch.
oops .. small typo. W. Edwards Deming, I should say.
“Was it worth the cost?”
What would you be willing to trade for being paid on time, not having your wages delayed for months or years?
Simple question.
Who read following http://www.nashi.su/ideology?
NYT is respected and long established part of WMD
)
But for further discussion would be helpful to read Nashi’s manifest itself.
(Sorry, no English version for export)
Actually, you might throw in just about any well-educated American youngster who joins a political campaign of any stripe in hopes of securing a job or earning useful connections.
Yes, good point – I just listed a formal political group devoted to one of the two primary political parties here.
You know on second thought, I shouldn’t be overly critical of the Times. The more they report on entities like Nashi, the more my work is relevant i.e. employment. So carry on, oh purveyors of all the news that is fit to print!
Not to rag on the NYT too much, but I would hope that one of the supposedly most respected newspapers in the country might write something a bit more in depth … even on general Russian topics. I probably set my sights too high, in that regard.
Regarding the photo that I originally saw with the article .. I’m trying to locate it. I actually read this through one of my news feeds, that reprinted the NYT article. I was surprised when I clicked directly onto the NYT article and saw a different image of annoyed looking teenagers holding political signs.
The picture I saw looked more like teenage girls going to a Justin Timberlake concert … except wearing red t-shirts with stylized white stars, etc.
Chris:
You know, it’s kind of funny — I don’t think I’ve ever actually seen a person dressed in a Nashi shirt.
The only time I have was around the first anniversary of Beslan when all these youths were running around Moscow in black shirts with “Bez slov” written on them. But that was during a Nashi campaign. That is all I’ve seen.
Lyndon:
After all, the Komsomol in the ’20s or ’30s might have elicited favorable responses about the VKP(b)’s biggest achievements being stopping the civil war and electrifying the country (or literacy, or something else).
To my surprise, I’ve found little praise of the VKP(b) from Komsomol members in the 1920s. In fact there was a lot of animosity between the two organizations in the localities. Many Komsomoltsy saw the VKP(b) was conservative and the Komsomol as the real revolutionaries.
In memoirs of Komsomol Civil War veterans there is virtually no mention of the party. Hell there is little mention of the Komsomol. Most veterans spoke in terms of experience of themselves and their buddies. This carried into the 1920s, when these vets despised many new Komsomol members, who were seen as careerists. In one of my favorite lines a Komsomol veteran, in a moment of nostalgia, lamented how during the Civil War when one comrade had lice, every comrade did. Now all there was around him were sycophants and careerists who didn’t fight in the war. Sadly, he wrote this in his suicide letter in 1926.
Rarely was the Party praised for anything, that is outside of rote statements. Lenin was loved, but if you asked them about the Civil War or even electrification (which was never done), Komsomol members might have mentioned themselves as the main participants before the party.
So in the 1920s, not all of course, but many Komsomols had a separate identity from the Party. I wonder how much this gap between the two organizations carried into later periods.
Which brings me to some questions I have about Nashi. ivanov’s referencing the Nashi manifesto is all fine and dandy, but I’ve learned that when it comes to youth organizations, such words are rarely indicative of what is happening on the ground in local chapters.
For example, and forgive me for yet another Komsomol reference, I have a letter from one Komsomol from 1927 that says that as a young communist it was his duty to beat up Jews since they were now the new bourgeoisie. Or a report I have from Azerbaijan where a group of Russian Komsomoltsy ransacked a mosque and beat up its Mullahs. Or Turkish Komsomols raiding Armenian churches and they, in return, falling upon mosques. All of this was done under the auspices of anti-religious campaigns. The Komsomol leadership in this instance was horrified because it only excerbated already existing tensions between the state and the local population. In the report he labeled those Komsomoltsy hooligans. So the leadership makes the rules on paper, but the rank and file are the ones who make them in practice.
The words of activists like in the NYT article are interesting but more for what they are expected to say and how they say it. I’m sure any members the NYT reporters had access to were well primed and media savvy. I have it from a friend who met some of the NYT authors that Nashi gave them good access despite initial apprehension.
While, as Lyndon rightly notes, Nashi has far more effective propaganda, but still we should give members agency. This is why I would like to know what the Nashi chapter in places like Tula are up to. Because if the Komsomol was any example, what happens below tends to be wholly different, and often in the face of, what happens and what is desired from above. So I would suspect that the real face of Nashi is not as much the activist trying to get to Seigler, but the one that is in the rank and file for whatever reason. This is why I found Ilya Yashin’s point in the NYT article so interesting.
ivanov’s referencing the Nashi manifesto is all fine and dandy, but I’ve learned that when it comes to youth organizations, such words are rarely indicative of what is happening on the ground in local chapters.
Sean. My point was different. Rather then reading NYT or Yashin’s opinions about NASHI’s intentions and action – why not reading the originals?
ivanov. Oh yes I see. Fair enough. I misunderstood you.
ivanov, thanks for posting the link to the manifesto. I can’t say I took the time to read it in full, but someone should take the time to translate it. In the past, it was the sort of thing I’d try to do, but at the moment I plead not enough time. To be fair to the NYT (which I love fact-checking on these sorts of things), they did quote and correctly translate one (unfortunately representative) part from it:
“Today the United States on one hand and international terrorism on the other strive to control Eurasia and the whole world,” Nashi’s manifesto says. “Their gaze is directed at Russia. The task of our generation is to defend the sovereignty of our country as our grandfathers did 60 years ago.”
Chris:
What would you be willing to trade for being paid on time, not having your wages delayed for months or years?
Years? I don’t think that was typical, unless you’re talking about pensions or perhaps some state-run sectors, and I’m not saying that makes it tenable. But anyway, of course the “was it worth the cost” question is rhetorical (didn’t I hedge it enough for you?), and I spent enough time in Yeltsin’s Russia to understand why people prefer RFv2007 to RFv1999. Still, some intangible things have been lost in the drive towards “stabilization,” and Wally is right to point out that many of the gains are due to one major factor outside of VVP’s control.
As for the Nashi T-shirts, I suspect that their absence from everyday life shows that the organization has not really penetrated people’s lives (yet). People wear the T-shirts to the demonstrations – or, more likely, are given the day’s appropriate T-shirt when they show up for the demonstration and are ordered to put it on – but you don’t see them wearing them around. It’s hard to make Komsomol comparisons here, since Soviet life was characterized by a lack of themed T-shirts, but from what I recall of the ’80s (not sure about the ’20s – Sean?) people did seem to wear the VLKSM lapel pin around (doubtless also a requirement) and, in the younger age brackets, to merrily sport the Pioneer scarf. Nashi is not on that level (a truly mass organization fully ingrained into the society) yet.
Wally:
Not to rag on the NYT too much, but I would hope that one of the supposedly most respected newspapers in the country might write something a bit more in depth … even on general Russian topics. I probably set my sights too high, in that regard.
Well, it is a newspaper, after all, not a magazine (like the New Yorker or the Atlantic) with the space to do long features, and it’s certainly not an academic journal. The format & length of a newspaper article limits the potential for depth. Plus, based on what I’ve heard from Western journalists in Russia, it is sometimes difficult to get space in their publications for such stories (by which I mean, not “breaking news” and not a compelling or “exotic” human-interest or travel story, but simply a story about an ongoing, potentially important political phenomenon). In my mind, one can’t expect such articles to be much more than restatements of the obvious (perhaps with an especially good turn of phrase or a couple of good new quotations), and the notable fact about such an article’s appearance is not its content but the simple fact of its publication.
I’m not trying to invest the NYT with supernatural powers, but this article may mean that Americans (as opposed to Brits and Europeans, who were the audiences for the majority of the earlier Nashi articles Sean mentioned above) are starting to take notice of the fact that there is such an organization in Russia and that one of the pillars of its ideology appears to be anti-Americanism. Thus, the article could be considered “important” not because it makes any new revelations but simply because it possibly puts the topic more firmly on people’s radar screens.
Sean:
To my surprise, I’ve found little praise of the VKP(b) from Komsomol members in the 1920s. In fact there was a lot of animosity between the two organizations in the localities. Many Komsomoltsy saw the VKP(b) was conservative and the Komsomol as the real revolutionaries.
Interesting. Maybe if Nashi develops, their leaders will eventually start criticizing the old guard of EdRo as “reactionary” (that is a bit tongue-in-cheek, as it’s hard to imagine the current political scene staying static long enough for that to happen).
To be honest, I was just using VKP(b) as a proxy for the early Soviet leadership, perhaps having forgotten or not appreciating the debates (within boundaries, of course) that did take place during the ’20s.
Nashi has far more effective propaganda, but still we should give members agency.
Even more, some of Nashi’s most effective propaganda is created by the members. I had been talking earlier about the most mass level – state-run TV creating a generation of kids who may not have seen alternative points of view about their government – but some of the more powerful materials may be the brochures (likely designed in-house and therefore by young, photoshop-savvy Nashisty), various Nashisty’s LiveJournals, and of course YouTube. Although the one Nashi promo clip that was posted here earlier looked at first glance like it would have required a fancy studio to put together, you never know – modern digicams and editing studio software have put the means of propaganda production in the hands of the youth!
Anyway, I’m sure that Nashi’s rukovodstvo has at least some “branding” sensibility and may try to restrict its members’ uses of the name & logo for their own purposes, but Yashin’s point and Sean’s fascinating examples suggest that even an organization created and ostensibly managed in a top-down fashion can slip from its masters’ hands from time to time. Though it sounds from Sean’s account that the Komsomol might not have needed as much of a top-down effort to get organized – there were already various “bands of brothers” with a common cause, just waiting to be organized.
This carried into the 1920s, when these vets despised many new Komsomol members, who were seen as careerists.
I wonder what the Nashisty will have as their creation mythology, assuming the organization lasts more than a couple more years. (Remember the stillborn “Idushchie Vmeste“? It looks like Nashi has learned from their mistakes, as well it might, since I think it’s run by the same people) It will be hard for Nashisty to develop an anti-careerist mentality, because of course one of the organization’s motivating forces appears to be careerism – but it shouldn’t be hard for them to develop a “we were here first” or “Nashisty were more pure back in the day (and girls were prettier, beer was tastier, etc.)” mentality if the organization lasts a few years.
Maybe a historian in 2110 will be culling the internet for tales of the true old-school Nashisty written by them in 2015, condemning the careerists and extolling the heroic showdowns they and their comrades had outside the US Embassy; confronting the Estonian ambassador; and undertaking the grueling, selfless mass campaign to provide Muscovites with special SIM-cards. Somehow those don’t have the same ring to them as the story about the lice, but modern PR-masters are very talented and could possibly make Nashi’s exploits look almost as heroic in retrospect.