Another Black Hundreds Group Revived in Putin’s Russia – the Union of the Russian People -- and with Official Support

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 24 – Just as took place in the last decades of the Russian Empire, extreme right and often prepared for violent Russian nationalist organizations are springing up in Putin’s Russia, announcing their intention to fight against all the Kremlin’s enemies so as to defend the Russian people.

            The most prominent of these so far is the Russian Community organization which has branches in 140 Russian cities (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/10/extremist-russian-community-now-active.html), but it and most of its allies have been cautious about highlighting the obvious parallels between themselves and their notorious pre-1917 predecessors.

            Now, a new group has emerged whose leaders say they are not creating something new but restoring these tsarist-era groups. At a congress in Moscow in the Christ the Savior Cathedral, a group of more than 1,000 officials and activists announced the restoration of the Union of the Russian People (tsargrad.tv/news/sojuz-russkogo-naroda-tysjacha-neravnodushnyh-russkih-ljudej-obedinilis-radi-budushhego-rossii_1072812).

            Organizers, led by the Orthodox oligarch Konstantin Malofeyev declared that “we are a union of Russian people who are not indifferent, a union of the Russian people, and that in our movement there are no limits.” They also said that the meting had attracted governors, deputies, business people, scholars, soldiers, priests, students and sportsmen.”

            Among the speakers were Duma vice speaker Pyotr Tolstoy, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mariya Zakharova, Duma deputy Aleksandr Boroday, and former ROC MP priest and now prominent actor Ivan Okhlobystin. Their participation suggests that this new movement enjoys support from the Kremlin.

            On his telegram channel, Malofeyev outlined the group’s goals: “Our ideals and values are simple: Russia is a great Orthodox state-civilization. The Russian people is the state-forming state and on its well-being depends the well-being of all the citizens of our country. The foundation of the people is a strong, traditional, multi-child family, the support of which is the most important obligation of the state” (t.leme/kvmalofeev/3053).

            The Russian nationalist oligarch said that “the overwhelming majority of Russian people” support these ideas. “We are the voice of the Russian Orthodox majority. The revived Union of the Russian People. All who are not indifferent to the future of Russia should join the Society Tsargrad and its Russian Militia.” (On that group, which took part, see t.me/s/russian_druzhina.)

            Not everyone in Russia is thrilled by this development. Moscow commentator Viktor Frolinsky suggests that it “is designed to inherit all the worst in the Black Hundred movement of pre-revolutionary Russia: Ideological obscurantism, aggression and servility to those in power” in the country  (vkrizis.info/russia/soyuz-czarya-i-grada/).

Even the Tsargrad title that the revived Union of Russian People has chosen is indicative, he continues. This word “refers to imperial dreams of Constantinople and the chauvinistic organization” of Aleksandr Dubrovin, an anti-Semite who eaded the predecessor of today’s Union of the Russian People and organized pogroms.

Before he was executed by the Soviets, Frolinsky said, Dubrovin identified himself as “a monarchist communist.” People like Malofeyev and his ilk can say they same thing. Indeed, they are now doing do.