"Ivan’s" Nashi
By Sean at 31 July, 2007, 7:36 pm
They have been called “Putin’s Generation” and “neo-Komsomol.” They have served as evidence of a rising Russian fascism. But little reporting about Nashi in English goes beyond what its Commissars give reporters. The following interview gives a different picture. Kommersant Vlast reporter Anna Kachurskaya spoke to “Ivan” (not his real name) a former Nashi member who was expelled from Camp Seliger for what he says was “personal ideological differences” with Nashi leader Vasili Yakemenko. “Ivan” wouldn’t tell anymore because he is afraid of Nashi’s security force, the DMD. Despite his fear and the secrecy surrounding his identity, the circumstances of his expulsion from the camp, and his position in Nashi, “Ivan” met with Kachurskaya and gave her an inside look at the group. Moreover, he provided Kommersant Vlast with documents of Nashi’s local activities, finances and expenditures. The documents themselves have no signatures or stamps. Kommersant couldn’t verify their authenticity.
I’ve translated the interview, removing any side comments added by Kachurskaya. I figured what “Ivan” had to say was worth reading since it is a rare glimpse at Nashi from the inside. I recommend reading the interview (in Russian) for all the details.
Why all the secrecy if you are completely disappointed in Nashi and don’t plan to return to their ranks?
I am afraid of them. There is the DMD.
What is this?
Voluntary youth guard, well a type of cleaners. There have already been cases when they’ve beaten people who have spread information against Nashi. They can probably catch you anywhere. They are football fanatics, athletes, and ordinary thugs. They enforce the ideology and they fulfill their duties with pleasure.
What kind of duties?
To keep order in the movement and its borders, instigate disorder in meetings and marches, which hasn’t been approved by those in power. For example, in the spring DMD arranged provocations in practically all the “Dissenters’ Marchers,” they provoked the police and threw smoke bombs, and as police approach they planted them in the bags of marchers.
I don’t remember the police reporting about smoke bombs at meetings.
I saw this myself.
And what did you do there? Also planted them?
Oh no, I simply went because I was interested to see. The DMDs have special red marks on their arms and the police don’t touch them. And in Seliger they provide security. They throw out whoever Yakemenko shows them. Almost 700 people were driven out of the camp in the first four days.
And you were among them?
Yes. I wasn’t ready when they came. I didn’t even collect my things. In my pocket there was a purse and they took my money. Although they are normally given money, they left me without a kopeck. Here look.
And where did you get these estimates?
Some of them passed through me, I pulled some of them and sent them to myself that were interesting. I thought they would be useful at some point, but I didn’t think that it would be so soon.
And what of these camp brothers (lesnye brat’ia)?
We nicknamed them this. Of course, officially they don’t have any relationship with Nashi. They simply live nearby in their own camp for a particular type of “strong young people”. The DMDs take all the delinquents to them. The lesniki beat those who the DMD brings them, but at first they ask what you are guilty of.
Did they beat you?
They didn’t. They decided would unfairly drive me out. They even brought my things from the camp.
And you took from this that they usually beat up people? Do you know a single person who they’ve beaten?
I don’t know. But everyone in the camp talks about how the lesniki are needed exactly for this.
You say that 700 people were expelled. For what?
Various violations: for drunkenness, for not attending lectures or for [not fulfilling] some kind of obligatory duty. They even drive you out for being late three times for a lecture.
And you were thrown out for?
Well, we’ll say that I conducted myself ideologically incorrectly. If I tell you more, they will find me.
They threw out 700 people and only you’ve decided to get revenge, Why?
My wedding was supposed to be there and it was canceled for my ideological divergence. Now I hate Yakemenko.
I heard of this action “Nashi gets married”. I trust that people married voluntarily?
Not all. Forty weddings were planned, but on the 18 July, this is when the ceremony was to occur, it seemed that there was no more than 15 couples. Representatives from various regions already arrived to the camp to record the marriages, therefore those responsible ran to the camp and persuaded all of them to get married. The result of these efforts was that they persuaded a few more couples to get married a few hours before the ceremony but forty was impossible. It seems that they barely got 18.
Was there a dowry given to the newlyweds from the movement?
No, this was simply a summer gimmick. And now I will only be married this fall. Because of him. But I want to speak about something else. About finances.
About this, how much does Seliger cost?
Well this everyone knows: 17 million Euro. I want to talk about [Nashi’s] daily life. Money is sent to the regions everyone month in suitcases to the technical director—these are the regional leaders. They always carry dollars and usually more than necessary. In the amount of $20,000 to $30,000. The money goes to rent a headquarters, expenses, and work in sections.
Still there is payment of the internet, telephones. And to salaries. Its true that not everyone receives a salary. The leader in the region, the accountant, the secretary and some other head directors. We have in my town a technical director who received almost $1,500 a month, apart from bonuses. They also pay for leaders to rent apartments.
And you received money?
I saw some kind of estimate that I needed 1,500 rubles, but I never saw it. Someone took it.
And where does the money basically go?
To “mass actions.” Look, you see here the three lines: advance, expenditures, and surcharges. The money is granted according to the demands of regional leaders. Here it is detailed that almost $11,500 a month, and expenditures are almost more than $20,000, in “surcharges”, accordingly, $8,500. And where this money is spent, it is unclear. In general, they have such accounting that will make your head spin. They accept a check and vouchers from movement activists without details on what they spent. I myself wrote such a release more than once on the request of the accountant.
At the end of the month these checks and vouchers are taken in a suitcase to
And where do these checks go next.
This, I don’t really know
Understood. Vasilii Yakemenko will announce in a few days that he is prepared to give up his post as the head of the movement. Have you heard something about who will take his place?
Yes. They are planning elections in Seliger, which is unusual. Yakemenko must select two regional leaders and give each a team. How these teams are formed, I do not know. It is well known that the technical director from the
And where will Yakemenko go?
He will head a federal agency on youth policy.
What will happen to the movement after 2008. Will it still exist?
Yes. Plans are written up to 2012.
Talk about what is in store for Nashi in the near future.
Well, for example, to flood the Parliamentary elections with “Just Russia.” Nashi will be observers in many regions.
And how will it flood [the election with Just
There is an idea to organize a “backwards carousel”, but this still hasn’t been discussed. The plans are thus. First it will be necessary to find a voting district, and prepare people to vote for money, about 150 to 200 rubles a vote. Then, whoever agrees, will receive a false ballot with prepared tick next to “Just Russia”. The voter goes to the polls, receives a real ballot, and drops the fake one into the box, and take the genuine one to the activist. Shortly before the polls close the activists will collect the real ballots, mark on them United Russia, and take them to the polls and drop them into the box. Several minutes before the polls close, observers will announce that evildoers are in the area distributing fake ballots. Nashi will go and record the violations on the side of Just Russia.
But this has yet to be discussed, and whether Nashi or another will carry this out or not, I don’t know exactly.
And in the Presidential election?
First there will be a dress rehearsal in December before the March elections. In
And what is the reason for this?
What is the reason!? In order to prevent an “Orange Revolution” and the squares will not be occupied by oppositionist forces.
And Nashi knows that the Opposition has such plans?
No, of course, there aren’t any kind of plans. From where does the opposition have such strength? Well in any case, to be on the safe side.
Thanks to mab and Lyndon for help translating “????? ????? ????”.
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That’s a very interesting article, great find and translation, Sean.
I notice you didn’t have to resort to any “Horror of Ballot Stuffing Unbound” sensationalist style headlines either.
It’s interesting that so much of this seems to be in reaction to the so-called color revolutions. 1960’s political activist strategies exported to other countries – being met by anti-fascist fascists. I do seem to recall that Nashi ironically considers itself to be anti-fascist (although it seems that these poor kids aren’t being taught the definition of the word).
I feel there are other stories out there like this that will keep Nashi from ever being an organization with great power. Even with various methods of suppressing opposition news stories available in Russia, it isn’t tightly controlled enough to prevent such things from being discussed, as this article clearly proves.
FIRST!
Sorry, just had to write that. All the popular blogs and messages boards have that little challenge!
Sean, thanks, this is quite interesting. One note:
????? ????? ????
= something like “this summer’s special thing” or maybe (in this context) “this summer’s theme.” Although the very useful multitran.ru (highly recommended when you have to translate something and have only a computer and internet connection at your disposal) doesn’t have this meaning, I’ve heard it used to refer to some unique or distinctive quality about e.g. a particular restaurant that sets it apart from others.
And I would render “lesnye brat’ia” as “Forest Brothers” – I think that’s what some of the “resistance” fighters in the post-WWII Baltics called themselves, and the term may have some resonance. Or it may not.
Wally:
I feel there are other stories out there like this that will keep Nashi from ever being an organization with great power. Even with various methods of suppressing opposition news stories available in Russia, it isn’t tightly controlled enough to prevent such things from being discussed, as this article clearly proves.
True, there may be other stories, although (as for this story) K-Vlast’ is not exactly an opinion-maker among youth or among most of the Russian public.
The italicized comments in the original article (detailing the reporter’s efforts to confirm some of “Ivan”’s stories) are interesting, but the last one – saying that she gave him money for a train ticket home – makes the whole article feel a bit sketchier.
Is paying sources OK journalistically as long as you disclose it? I’m not sure (of course, in Russian journalism’s “heyday” 10 years ago, at Kommersant and elsewhere, it was probably the journalists who were getting paid by “sources,” but that’s another story).
I also thought it was interesting that she was able to confirm that a youth agency would be opening up within the Ministry of Education and Science. I guess Yakemenko’s apparent success with Nashi could get him a nice chinovnik’s kreslo – making him a living example of the group’s ideology: “bud’ s nami” and you’ll have a job in the “political elite.”
?????? ???.
I have to wonder if people who describe Nashi as “fascist” have a clue what fascism is. My grandfather was an actual fascist, of the particularly unpleasant German variety, albeit with some idiosyncrasies. There is no way on Earth he and Nashi could coexist in the same room.
Hey, that kind of reminds me. Sean, you’re doing work on the Komsomol. Do you have any good sources (or ideas of your own) comparing it to the Hitlerjugend?
(The Stalin-era Komsomol, I mean.)
I have to wonder if people who describe Nashi as “fascist” have a clue what fascism is. My grandfather was an actual fascist, of the particularly unpleasant German variety, albeit with some idiosyncrasies. There is no way on Earth he and Nashi could coexist in the same room.
Trotsky and Lenin couldn’t coexist in the same room either, but both were Communists. Differences of opinions, means, or methods does not exclude a shared larger idealogy. If it did, than George W. Bush and John McCain couldn’t both be Republicans, for example.
Perhaps this definition of fascism will help clarify:
“A form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion.”
That sounds exactly … EXACTLY … like every description I’ve ever heard of Nashi, from their own mouths and from outside sources. Considering this group originally was cited as being anti-fascist, I find this extremely ironic.
For the record, I think that description of fascism mostly (although not completely) fits some youth-based groups here in the US, particularly those that mix religious fundamentalism with American nationalism.
I would even add to that definition, that traditionally fascist groups find a way of identifying or marking each other as a group – be it through uniforms, arm-bands, t-shirts, etc.
This adds to the overall bullying effect, branding each member of the pack, as it were.
I don’t think I have any problems whatsoever recognizing the characteristics of fascist groups. I think you are only identifying the National Socialist German Workers Party (Nazi) variety that you are most familiar with and thinking anything else isn’t fascist.
The Nashi = fascism claim is rather lame and completely drains the latter of all its specificity.
Pretty much all of my sources stop at 1929. Almost everything Komsomol related from that point becomes focused on collectivization and that was too big to even touch.
I believe I have one article from the mid-1920s from Molodaia gvardiia that talks about fascist youth movements in Europe. I would have to dig it out.
I also remember seeing a few articles from Komsomolskaya pravda from 1928 debating whether the Komsomol needs uniforms like fascist youth groups in Europe. The idea was forcefully rejected.
Comparisons between the Komsomol and Hitler Youth are made of course, but I don’t know how much they hold weight. The Komsomol was so embedded in governing the country, especially the countryside. I don’t know if the HJ ever got to that point. Plus the HJ always appears to me at least far more obedient than the Komsomol. But I could be wrong because the HJ always appears to me like a ideologically charged up, but super lame boy scouts.
Trotsky and Lenin couldn’t coexist in the same room either, but both were Communists.
They did quite well together. It was Trotsky and the rest of the Party leadership that couldn’t stand each other. Mostly because Trotsky would never shut up.
I have a friend who did extensive research on internal Party debates in the 1920s. Mostly plenum archival stuff. He once told me that Trotsky was so annoying that he would have voted to expel him too. The man just didn’t know when to give something a rest. Forget the fact that most saw him as an intellectual snob.
At any rate, that is another issue . . .
If you don’t have a Fuehrerprinzip; don’t postulate a link (usually mystical in some undefined way) between the Leader, the Party, and the People; and don’t have an ideology that professes to be creating the New Man By Returning to the Past in some form, you don’t get to call yourself fascist, in my opinion.
The best place to go for this stuff IMO is Mussoloni and Gentile’s “Doctrine of Fascism,” which is here: http://www.worldfuturefund.org/wffmaster/Reading/Germany/mussolini.htm
(in English)
BTW Wally, I do agree that National Socialism is (was) not the only form of fascism, probably not even the main form.
Sean, come to think of it the better organization to compare the Hitler Youth to would be the Pioneers — similar age range.
Here’s an angle for you — personally (pop psychology speculation here) I think my granddad’s extremely, ahem, pro-Fuehrer and pro-Hitler Youth attitudes had something to do with the fact that he had an absolutely atrocious — like out of Mommie Dearest — home life. He was born just a few years before the Nazis same to power, and basically grew up in the HJ, and I strongly suspect that it gave him some kind of structure and sense of comradeship that did not exist at home, to say the least. Have you ever come across anything like this in your Komsomol work?
(He was also very pro-Stalin later, which is a little weird unless you look a little more closely at the circumstances.)
“The man just didn’t know when to give something a rest. Forget the fact that most saw him as an intellectual snob.”
I read Montefiore’s Young Stalin recently, and was amazed by the contrast between Trotsky’s portrayal of Stalin has a grey bureaucrat and the picture that emerges from Montefiore’s book.
I’m also curious why Trotsky didn’t use Stalin’s gangster past (running bank robberies, kidnappings, piracy and so forth for thr Bolsheviks, likely assassination too) as a weapon against him. I suppose he may have thought it would besmirch the Bolsheviks and work against him at the Counter-Trial. I have trouble seeing John Dewey approving of that kind of stuff.
They did quite well together. It was Trotsky and the rest of the Party leadership that couldn’t stand each other. Mostly because Trotsky would never shut up.
I apologize for my inaccuracy in lumping Lenin in with the rest of the Communist party leadership. I had this vague, general impression that Lenin, as head of CCCP and communist party, was in agreement with the ultimate dispatching of Trotsky.
I think my larger point about disagreements within common idealogy does stand, however.
Probably the result of the trauma of reading “Animal Farm” in high school, instead of any real history of CCCP.
Chris, you’re being so reasonable and gentlemanly – I was more than half expecting some serious venom on this!
As a curious side note – when I was a young Army brat living in what was then West Germany, my young teenage friends and I used to crawl around in old bomb shelters and such places on and off base. It was always remarkable how much old Nazi paraphernalia or hardware we would find. As kids, I don’t think the grim reality of what we were sifting through stuck with us, we were just looking for cool WWII items, etc.
I’m also curious why Trotsky didn’t use Stalin’s gangster past (running bank robberies, kidnappings, piracy and so forth for thr Bolsheviks, likely assassination too) as a weapon against him.
Two reasons I can think of. One its because these were considered heroics of an Old Bolshevik struggling in the underground. Something Trotsky couldn’t claim because he wasn’t a Bolshevik until 1917, and nor could many of the intellectual wing who were in exile. Two, after the Civil War when a culture of toughness and iron will defined a Bolshevik. Experience in the underground was a mark of honor. So it Trotsky made Stalin’s banditry an issue it would have probably backfired.
A HJ and Young Pioneer comparison is probably a better one.
I do have evidence of youth’s joining the Komsomol as rebellion against their parents and because it offered them something–a social life, especially if their friends were in it, access to sport, education, travel etc.
This is especially true for village youth. Joining the Komsomol could be a way out of the village or at least out from under your parents control. I have many instances where parents objected to their sons, but especially their daughters from joining. A lot of the objections had to do with the Komsomol’s anti-religious campaigns. But also because in some places being in the Komsomol was equated with being a hooligan. The Komsomol was afraid of this and constantly spoke against local members “undermining the League’s authority among the masses.”
“As a curious side note – when I was a young Army brat living in what was then West Germany, my young teenage friends and I used to crawl around in old bomb shelters and such places on and off base. It was always remarkable how much old Nazi paraphernalia or hardware we would find. As kids, I don’t think the grim reality of what we were sifting through stuck with us, we were just looking for cool WWII items, etc.”
My grandmother on the German side of the family was 14 in 1945. Shortly after the war, she, being a teenage girl, wanted to go out dancing, but given the destruction her family like most people were very poor and she didn’t have money for clothes to go out in. However, they did still have a big Nazi flag hidden away somewhere. She used the material to make a red dress with black trim, and the leftover cloth to make doll clothes.
I always really liked that story. I think it’s a good end for a Nazi flag.
BTW ????? ???? = gimick of the summer. Something like that.
This is a really interesting piece; thanks.
A number of journalists snuck in this year, so there have been a lot of reports about it. I frankly still think they’re a scary bunch, whether they fit the definition of fascist or not. Splitting hairs, it seems to me.
I don’t agree it’s just splitting hairs, because 1) my background is in philosophy and so I am annoyingly anal in my insistence that terms have definite meanings and 2) “fascist” is a term that packs a lot of emotional weight. In the populae mind, “fascist = Nazi.”
mab:
“gimmick” – exactly, thanks for finding the word that I couldn’t.
Wally:
“As a curious side note” – when I was a kid, for the years we were in Leningrad, I dig around a lot of construction sites and pomoiki – one of my prize possessions to this day (and forgive me if I’ve mentioned this already here) is a certificate verifying that one Ivanov survived the blockade of Leningrad, which I found on a trash heap.
Thanks for the discussion, guys.
I don’t think its spitting hairs either. Fascism does carry a lot of emotional and rhetorical weight as the New Statesmen article I linked shows. Plus throwing “fascism” around tends to be simply lazy analysis.
Plus I tend to think of the concept as rooted in a specific historical context. I don’t think present conditions make fascism even possible. Especially if we go by Mussolini’s doctrine.
Nashi appears scary, but at least for me, the jury is still out as to what they are. I think the post-Putin years will be a big test for them. Like the Komsomol, the second generation of Nashisty might completely transform the organization into something else.
What I find interesting about this interview, if accurate, is how local Nashi orgs are clearly skimming cash off the budget. I wonder where this money is going and how much the allocations to certain activities are merely on paper only.
One of the things that should be noted about the Komsomol is that occupying a high position there didn’t necessarily mean you got one in the Party or Soviet government. Most ended up occupying “middle management” in the Party apparatus. Most old Komsomoltsy I’ve met who were on the Central Committee in the 1960s pledge Komsomol allegiance to this day.
I wonder if Nashi will be the same–essentially providing bureaucrats instead of leaders.
Well, okay, it’s not splitting hairs. We should split them. But I don’t agree that fascism is only connected with one historical period.
You are all right-right-right that fascism is a weighted word, and in fact the Nashisti throw it around all the time. For them it means “anyone I don’t like or agree with.”
However, I wouldn’t want such a narrow definition of fascism (ie strictly historical, referring to one or two countries) that excludes Nashi and their ilk and gives a sense that they are not to be worried about. You might want to qualify, but they are clearly in the same boat.
I’ve written this before (so ignore it if you’re bored): my young friends who know Nashisti say that the kids are in it for the money and perks and they (my friends) don’t take it seriously or think their Nashi-friends do. But I dunno. If you are a kid from the boonies and get this kind of indoctrination, I think it would stick. Or at least some of it would. Certainly the “we’re unique and we’re the best” and “we hate America” part seems to be sticking.
I think the jury is out on whether the conditions are “right.” I’m not sure those conditions are carved in stone. Recent surveys show about 15 % hard core nationalists, which I think is probably about average world-wide. But… parts of the ideology are being mainstreamed, and as long as the MVD doesn’t really crack down on the skinheads (see previous discussions), I think some danger remains.
This passes for an ‘article’? If there was anything of real value
in it (i.e. whatever is actually nailed down) risks being lost in this
journalist’s particular ’style’.
Still, I’m sure the NYT and outlets
of similar ilk will run with it (across streams and meadows, singing
with joy. Not).
As for the ‘fascism ‘thing, I get the impression that most of these young russians don’t know what it means and use it in place of extreme profanity.
You even get called a ‘fascist’ for not agreeing with someone’s opinion these days or driving badly….
You even get called a ‘fascist’ for not agreeing with someone’s opinion these days or driving badly
Yeah, you fascist! (I am, of course, joking)
I got the sense of that in another Nashi article, where the girl indicated she hadn’t known who Kasparov and company were before coming to the camp (and now she knew they were fascists).
I mean, I found that, like, totally confusing. I thought they were, like, whores.
Back to an early point be Sean – I’m not sure which conditions you are hinting at, that would (or in this case, wouldn’t) allow for fascism to exist.
I suppose the very strict sense of the word, from 1930-1940s Italy and Germany would require fascism to exist on the state level. However, that would seem to imply that fascists can’t exist without state complicity and I’m not buying that. That would point towards a chicken and egg argument.
Wally, I would argue that for an ideology or movement to be classified as “fascist” it would need to at least subscribe to Mussolini’s core dictum (I paraphrase from memory) “everything in the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.” It’s a totalitarian ideology.
(Now in actual fact the ideology was never implemented all that well in Italy in practice, as you can see for instance late in the war when Italian Fascist officials sabotaged Hitler’s plans for killing all the Jews despite Mussolini’s orders. Italian Fascism was never anti-Semitic in essence, but that’s a digression. There’s a reason 80% of Italian Jews survived the Holocaust, and 80% of French Jews were killed.)
PS I have a slick (in the sense of high preoduction quality) little book put out by (I think) Nashi with the title Glamurnyi fashizm. It’s supposed to show people what is really the ideology of organizations like the NBP, full of quotes from people like Limonov. Anpilov is in there to I think. There are lots of quotes from the eXile.
Whatever happened to Anpilov? That guy’s star has really fallen.
Michael Mann, a sociologist at UCLA, has offered this concise definition of fascism: transcendent and cleansing nation-statism via paramilitarism. This incorporates what Chris mentions (everything in the state, etc.) but also includes the important element of paramilitary organization (perhaps the essence of fascist movements). Because of all the desctruction that fascists wrought while in power, we tend to overlook all the paramilitary violence and street-fighting that was an important element in their rise to power.
Did they really use a lot of street fighting in their rise to power? I know very little about Mussolini’s rise to power, but wasn’t the SA pre-1933 mainly used in fights with Communist paramilitaries and didn’t play much role in the actual election of Hitler? I suppose they might have intimidated people into voting in some ways, kept Communist and Soc-Dem voters away from the polls, and so forth. I really don’t know.
And lo, another query hath fluttered through my mind –
Does anybody know how much of Nashi’s support/membership is ethnic Russian vs. non-ethnic Russian? There must be Tatars, Jews etc. etc. etc. in it.
From what I can read, nobody defines fascism in the original Statist terms given by Mussolini. In practice, I would argue fascism never came close to that goal or ideal of everything for or about the State. That seems rather like idealogy designed to bend the masses to the will of political and business leaders.
In fact, I would have said it is Statist, but with the sense that the State has been wronged or damaged by “others”. And, by god, the fascists are going to make them pay!
I scanned the wikipedia entry on Fascism (I know, I know) and found that defining what IT is a topic of much scholarly debate.
Not to put anyone in this forum down, but I doubt we hold the answer to really clearly defining it either.
However, in my mind it has to include the points that I cited earlier (turns out that definition is from Columbia University Professor Robert O. Paxton .. I found it on dictionary.com).
“Not to put anyone in this forum down, but I doubt we hold the answer to really clearly defining it either.”
You fascist!
I think maybe it was a mistake way back when to use the name of a particular political party (the Italian Fascists) as a term for a class of political systems. I’m not at all sure the Nazis ever called themselves fascists at all. Actually, I’m with Hannah Arendt in thinking that Nazism falls into a different class than “fascism.” While there are obviousl similarities, classical fascism did not include racial thinking as a core of its ideology (no more than the British Empire did, anyway), whereas for the Nazis it was the core belief.
Statist or corporatist? Mussolini made corporatism a fundamental part of fascism. Now that Russia is a bona fide knuckle bruising capitalist state, I think the corporatist part is/has already been absorbed… Not that I’m saying Russia is fascist of course (I’ll leave that to the journalists).
wasn’t the SA pre-1933 mainly used in fights with Communist paramilitaries and didn’t play much role in the actual election of Hitler
I think the street fights w/ Communists were very important in keeping the Nazi movement going through the 1920s (the NSDAP’s share of the vote declined during this time, only to rebound w/ the election in 1930, and again in 1932). I think you’re right that the SA isn’t the most important factor in NSDAP’s increased electoral appeal from 1928-32. But after Hitler became chancellor in 1933, the SA was supressed and, as you well know, Rohm and more than a hundred others were rubbed (the Night of Long Knives).
Still, it seems to me that without the paramilitary element, you can’t have a fascist movement. (see Iron Guard, Arrow Cross, etc.)