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Moscow Times
February 28, 2005
Kremlin Youth Encourage 'Us' to Get 'Them'
By Masha Gessen
Masha Gessen is deputy editor of Bolshoi Gorod.

Imagine for a minute that in some country other than Russia -- say, in the United States, or in Britain -- there appeared a political organization that called itself "Us." Not U.S. as in the United States, not Us as in Us Magazine, but Us as in "us vs. them." Imagine further that this is an organization that supports, and is evidently supported by, the country's current government. Now imagine the hue and cry, the outrage of all the righteous people who argue that an organization that openly divides its own country into those who are "us" and those who are "them" is despicable -- and a government that supports and even inspires the use of the rhetoric of war against its own citizens is criminal.

Welcome to Russia. A group calling itself "Nashi" held its first congress at a resort hotel outside of Moscow on Saturday. The word nashi, which literally means "ours," references Soviet movies about World War II. It's an inspired choice: On the eve of the 60th anniversary of the end of the war, 1940s patriotism is the only sort that virtually all Russians are willing to own. Nashi is the sort of word that one used in describing a battle scene in one of those movies -- "Nashi just bombed the hell out of them" -- when there could be no question of where the viewer's loyalties lay. Nashi is also the kind of word one can apply to a sports game -- but only, tellingly, when a Russian team is playing a foreign one. In other words, the most accurate translation of Nashi is Us.

The new movement is meant to replace Idushiye Vmeste, or Moving Together, the Kremlin-sponsored youth movement that has outlived its usefulness. The appearance of a counter-movement called "Moving Without Putin" seems to have sounded its death knell a couple of months ago. The leader of Moving Together, Vasily Yakemenko, is to head the new youth movement. But, moving under the new name, he and his young pro-Putin army will have to be more, well, more militant.

A funny thing happened at the group's congress. Two young men from Moscow took the ill-advised step of going there under false pretenses, claiming to be delegates from Kaliningrad. One was Ilya Yashin, leader of the youth wing of the liberal Yabloko party. The other was Oleg Kashin, a reporter for Kommersant. They managed to register and check into their double room before someone recognized them.

Four people forced them back into their room, where they were held for half an hour. Then the journalist was dragged on stage in front of Nashi members, who were told that here was one of "them" -- as in "not one of us" but "one of not us."

"This is Oleg Kashin," whoever exhibited the reporter on stage reportedly told the audience. "He writes poorly of us. He is our enemy. Remember him."

The two trespassers were then taken outside, where, according to eyewitnesses, the leader of Nashi told his people to dunk Yashin in a snow bank. They (Us) apparently took to the task with great enthusiasm, giving the Yabloko activist a thorough beating in addition to the snow bath. Then Kashin and Yashin were told to leave the premises, which, one supposes, they were happy to do.

On their way out, Kashin and Yashin managed to give a couple of phone interviews to interested media, and by the time they were back in Moscow, the Russian-language part of the World Wide Web was abuzz with discussion of the incident. People talked about whether Kashin and Yashin should try to go to the police. They debated whether the incident would damage Nashi's reputation in any way. A number of people suggested it was the interlopers' own fault. One remarkable thing about the discussions was that no one seemed surprised.

After all, this is Russia. It's Us versus Them out there.