The plan to fill Russia’s streets with 100,000 young militiamen by 2010 has been all over the Russian internet media over the last few weeks. And as usual the thought of the Russian government recruiting and deploying youth to monitor the streets has many shaking in their boots. Perhaps for good reason. The Russian police are already known for their corruption. Having a potential army of 100,000 youths “protecting” the streets certainly doesn’t provide much comfort.
The militia plan, which was announced at this year’s Seliger camp, will allow Nashi to form an All-Russian Association of Militias before the end of the year. Nashi has had a youth militia program in the works since 2007. The All-Russian version will incorporate the Nashi DMD and place the militias directly under the local police. Former Nashi founder and chairman of Russia’s Youth Affairs Council Vasili Yakemenko will appeal to the government for “start-up funds” and local administrative support. Advocates for the initiative are hoping to pass some version of the law “On the participation of RF citizens in securing law and order” which has been sitting in the Duma for a few years despite MVD sponsorship.
According to the project’s leader Sergei Bokhan, youth militias will kill two social ills with in one stroke. Deploying the deputized youths will help keep law and order and get “at-risk” kids off the street and direct their energies to more socially purposeful endeavors. And I’m sure if they let all that energy out on helping OMON crack some National Bolshevik heads, then all the better. “We find kids, who are practically living on the streets,” Bokhan told Gazeta.ru,“who don’t know how to occupy themselves, and who don’t have money or interests. We provide them with gyms, teach them combatant and competitive sports. We work with the at-risk group, who would potentially break a bottle over someone’s head, or throw rocks through windows.” This wouldn’t be the first time Nashi has recruited such kids to do their dirty work.
The real question is whether the youths will be armed with non-lethal weapons: nightsticks, air or stun guns etc. As some have noted the law in the Duma will allow citizens participating in militias to get licenses to carry weapons. Though I doubt that doling out nightsticks to street hooligans turned street security is what the MVD has in mind. The MVD already let their concern about youth extremist groups, hooliganism, and violence be known in February.
Plus allowing youths to carry weapons were require changing weapon possession laws. There there is the public fear of giving people with criminal records the right to legally carry weapons. According to Anastasia Dzhmukhadze, who works for the Moscow police licensing office,
“The allegation that youth will go out on the street with “non-lethal weapons” is some kind of fabrication which has been leaked to the press, and which journalists have spread without knowing anything about the issue whatsoever. This is impossible for many reason, but it is simply because no one will change the weapons law for the sake of training at-risk teenagers. For the registration of licenses to carry and possess weapons conditions must be observed which are equal for all. First, no one will give a license to persons under 18 years old . . . Second, [an applicant] must pass a physical and mental health exam on a regular basis by a medical commission. Third, no one with a criminal record can be trusted with the possession of non-lethal weapons even for self-defense.”
Indeed, if the militia will be recruited among the at-risk youth who are already apt to bust bottles over people’s head or hurl rocks at windows, nothing remotely positive can come out of giving them batons and air guns.
This is of course assumes that the All-Russian youth militia project will get off the ground in the first place. Nashi and Yakemenko make a lot of plans. Whether they actually materialize and in what form is often anyone’s guess.
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Excellent ideas. Arming and giving authority to the militias will make them responsible stakeholders in society. I also support subsidized gun sales to the population to fight crime, combat authoritarianism and inspire national martial spirit.
The thing is, there could be the potential for something constructive. American cities have organizations like the Guardian Angels, etc. And I am all for getting kids off the streets. I guess the question is, who would they ultimately answer to? Does Nashi take orders from the top, or does the top just try to “maintain & contain” Nashi? Right now it sounds like this youth militsia is glorified street gang aligned with a political party. Like the “neighborhood social clubs” back in the day. But this reads like the Kremlin is arming hooligans to beat dissenters to a pulp, or as The Other Russia implies, to shoot them! Handguns? Can anyone verify this “armed with handguns” assertion? That said, The Other Russia piece does make a good point about the dangers of arming kids who could turn on you.
The real question is why people are taking every Nashi PR stunt seriously. Nashi doesn’t even matter.
I think this might well have potential to get off the ground, if the authorities decide this is a good way of mobilizing youth. After all, voluntary militias have been getting more and more popular recently. An intriguing question is to what extent this is informed by the history of the Komsomol’s method of organizing youth: after all, Komsomol patrols were a constant feature of late Soviet life, though they became increasingly corrupt and “for show” by the end of the Soviet years. Does this signal an attempt to revive this method in a mass form, and will the Russian authorities learn from some of the problems of Komsomol patrols?
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