Paul Goble
Staunton, Dec. 4 – During the Spanish Civil War, anti-fascist groups, including many who were allied with the Soviet Union, went into battle with the slogan “They shall not pass.” Last month, on the 50th anniversary of the death of fascist leader Francisco Franco, an extreme right Russian group reversed that and told like-minded people in Spain, “we shall pass.”
This group of Russian extremists, the Brotherhood of Academicists, not only is promoting an expansive view of Russian power and providing its members with military training but is reaching out to radical right groups across Europe (publico.es/politica/ultras-rusos-entrenamiento-paramilitar-figuran-invitados-cumbre-neofascista-domingo-madrid.html).
At the end of September, the Brotherhood joined members of the Russian Society of the Two-Headed Eagle, which is supported by Orthodox oligarch Konstantin Malofeyev who heads the Tsargrad media corporation and has close ties with both the Moscow Patriarchate and the Kremlin (publico.es/politica/ultras-rusos-entrenamiento-paramilitar-figuran-invitados-cumbre-neofascista-domingo-madrid.html).
According to Novaya Gazeta, this is only the latest of an increasing number of contacts between fascist groups in Russia and fascist groups in Spain and elsewhere in Europe, contacts that at least on some occasions have enjoyed the support of Russian officials even though they have not attracted much attention (novayagazeta.ru/articles/2025/12/04/oni-proshli-im-dali-vizu).
Whether this Moscow-supported neo-fascism will be more successful there and elsewhere in Europe than its earlier anti-fascist assistance remains to be seen, but the fact that the Kremlin now is taking a page from a Stalin-era playbook to promote an opposite outcome to the one it suffered at the end of the 1930s certainly deserves more attention.
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