Category Archives: Youth

I haven’t peeked into the world of Nashi in a while.  The movement seems like it’s in a rut and continues to bobble along.  Long gone are the days where Nashi paraded 10,000 red and white clad youths down a Moscow thoroughfare denouncing the scourge of “colored revolution.”

Yet Nashi perseveres.  It carries out a small action against illegal gambling clubs here; and joins the chorus of sympathy for Poland there.  Nothing flashy.  Almost barely noticeable, in fact.  If it wasn’t for the machinations of  its member and Duma rep Robert Shlegel, Nashi would barely make headlines at all.

Shlegel reared his all too Aryan looking head following the bombings in Moscow.  Always eager to seize the moment, if not some exposure, the young parliamentarian proposed a bill making it illegal for media outlets to quote terrorists.  I suspect the ..read more

Today, I began research on Komsomol participation in collectivization and found this little tidbit in the archive.  This is from Komsomol Central Committee member Gerasimov’s report, October 1929:

In Penzen region, there were rumors that a [grain requisitioning] commission arrived to close the church.  Or in a similar rumor, the commission arrived to arrest the priest and take him away.  A crowd gathered.  Or another case, to catch a swindler.  A crowd of up to 800 people surrounded the commission and began shouting.  They wanted to arrange a samosud.  There were shouts of “They attack the peasantry from all sides, let’s beat them all.”  True, more than half of [the crowd] was drunk.

RGASPI f. 1M, op.5, d. 24a, l. 22

Vasili, Vasili, Vasili.  How far you’ve fallen.  To think that only a few years ago you were the leader of your own youth army, Nashi.  Now, you’re just a bureaucrat.  As for Nashi, with the “orange threat” vanquished, their only presence in Russian society is to pull pranks (some of which I admit are funny), hounding “oppositionists,” and filing lawsuits against those who “slander” them.  Nashi can apparently dish it, but they can’t take it.

But Vasili, I understand that Nashi has its own problems, and you have yours.  This is the Year of Youth, and as head of Russia’s Federal Agency of Youth Affairs, you gotta keep up with the kids.  Now that the year is closing, you’ve found your theme song in Timati’s new single, “Love You” (featuring Mariya and Busta Rhymes)

You apparently liked the swoons of the pop trio so much that you issued a letter officially supporting ..read more

HIV-AIDS is something that hits close to my heart.  My brother died of the disease in 1993.  One of my earliest blog posts way back in 2005 addressed the issue in Russia. Sadly, the situation here has little improved though the UN reports that the number of global HIV infections has dropped 17% in the last eight years.  33.4 million people are living with the disease worldwide, and Russia is one of the places were news cases are growing rapidly.

RIA-Novosti reports some startling statistics about HIV in Russia to mark today, World AIDS Day.  Russia reported 59,000 new cases of HIV in 2008.  The number for 2009 is expected to reach 60,000, reports Marina Semenchenko of UNAIDS Russia.   Gennady Onishchenko of the Russian Health Ministry said last week that 12,759 died from AIDS in 2008, up 14% from 2007 death toll of 11,159. He estimates that around ..read more

It looks like Nashi might have crossed a line in their campaign against Alexander Podrabinek.  According to Vremya, the Civil Society Institutions and Human Rights Council under the President of the Russian Federation made an official appeal calling for an investigation of Nashi’s “illegal and amoral” campaign to hunt down the journalist. The appeal reads:

The campaign to hunt the [Podrabinek] clearly violates existing legislation and demonstrates obvious signs of extremism: fomentation of discord and the violation of a citizen’s human rights and freedoms. There presently are signs of the violation of articles 23 and 25 of the Russian Constitution (the inviolability of private life and residence.) The violation of article 24 which prohibits the use and distribution of information about the private life of an individual without his sanction: it is unlikely that A. Podrabinek gave his address to anyone for the organization to picket his home.  Finally, and this ..read more

Russian politics is a joke.  I’m not being sarcastic.  It really is funny.  Perhaps in an effort to one up the inanity of American politics (as we all know Russians just want to be like us!), or because it has a fatuous dynamic of its own, what passes for the political over there often epitomizes the absurd.  Take the most recent scandal involving the Anti-Soviet Kebab House, the Moscow Veterans Committee, the dissident Alexander Podrabinek, and Nashi.  It was a publicity stunt within a publicity stunt. A narcissistic plea of “Look at me!” if I’ve ever seen one. A better political parody couldn’t have been concocted by the Kremlin’s best spin doctors.  The sad thing is that the ensuing scandal would have been really, really funny if the joke wasn’t so bad.

Long story short: After a summer of renovations, the owner of kebab restaurant on Leningradskii prospekt decided to call ..read more