Paul
Goble
Staunton, August 31 – Dmitry Rogozin
has set up an alternative youth group to the Kremlin’s Nashi. It is the TIGRs –
the Russian initials for Tradition, Empire, State, and Motherland – and its political
program is suggested by the location of its founding meeting: Stalin’s bunker
65 meters below ground and three kilometers from the Kremlin.
In today’s “Novaya gazeta,”
journalist Diana Khachatryan describes both the bunker where the organizers of
this new group chose to meet and the meeting itself which included speeches
suggesting that Rogozin’s TIGRs may become new entrants in the expanding group of
street fighters in Russia today (novayagazeta.ru/politics/69747.html).
Those who visit the bunker, she
says, find a world which is a curious mixture of the Soviet past and the
current world, where one can see the places Stalin worked and also have WIFI
access, and where, perhaps emblematic of the entire enterprise which is Kremlin
supported, one can purchase t-shirts with pictures of Stalin and Putin
together.
At the founding meeting of the TIGRs
of the Rodina Party which deputy prime minister Dmitry Rogozin sponsored but
did not attend, participants arrived from various parts of Russia, their travel
costs covered by the nationalist party which Rogozin founded.
Most were in business suits,
Khachatryan writes, but she adds that she was struck most by those with short
haircuts and ordinary street clothes. As one of the latter told her, “these are
fighters … we work in the streets, and now it is proposed that we cooperate with
federal structures.”
“What is the government’s problem?”
he asked rhetorically. “To regulate relations between football fans during the run
up to the world cup. This mission has been laid on us. We are making contacts
and will study what one another is doing … We are just normal Russian guys.”
But speakers made clear that the
group and presumably the Kremlin doesn’t see all fan actions as
equivalent. Maksim Chernyakov, a member
of Rodina’s Council on Youth Policy, talked at the meeting about the need to
counter the behavior of Daghestani fans and block attacks on Russian teams.
“It might seem,” he said, “that
football fans are not an important matter. But there were the protests at the
Manezh. Do you want a repetition of this?”
The “Novaya gazeta” journalist notes
that there were “practically no women” at the meeting. One exception was Galina
Khizriyeva of the Russian Institute for Strategic Studies (RISI). She appeared
in traditional Islamic dress, noted that “Islamic youth are fighting in the
Donbas,” and that “the Muslim world awaits the rebirth of Russia.”
The next speaker was Mikhail
Butrimov, the deputy head of the Rodina Council for Youth Policy. He told those assembled that “the basis of
Russia is the Russian family.” He added that “our task is to introduce into the
minds of the new generation the values of the Russian world” and transform boys
into fighters and girls into worthy mothers.
A special role for the Russian
Orthodox Church was also emphasized. Dmitry Lyubomudrov of the Trade-Industrial
Chamber said that faith is “the keystone of the Russian world.” He said he was developing “an Orthodox
financial system” and needed the help of young people to oppose “our enemies,
the liberals.”
But according to Khachatryan, “one
of the most emotional speakers was Vladimir Laktyushin, the chairman of Rodina’s
council for youth policy. He asserted in his speech that “’young people are
coming out of the bunker, because Rodina needs action and even aggressiveness.”
“’Woe to those who stand in our way
and try to occupy positions of power,’” he said. “’For there is no enemy more
horrible than an internal one, that is, a traitor.”
Laktyushin also explained why the group
had decided on the name TIGER. In contrast to the bear, which is the simple of
United Russia, the tiger “’is capable of making a many-meters’ long jump when
no one expects it.’”
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