The German Flag with Swastika was used from 1920-1945. Polyester is lightweight and flies in slightest Breeze This flag is our Standard Quality in Polyester. The authorities turned a blind eye to RO’s production of a two-hour internet “documentary” titled Russian Resistance, which celebrated these killers as patriotic heroes and called for armed struggle against the regime.Nazi Germany Flag Historical NAZI Flag for Sale with Swastika Choose Your Size: 4×6 inch – handflag perfect for your desk/events/parades 2×3 feet 3 X 5 ft. The problem for the Kremlin was that RO’s leader, Ilya Goryachev, was a fervent supporter of the neo-Nazi underground, the skinheads who committed hundreds of racist murders in the second half of the 2000s.
Perhaps most shockingly, RO also hosted a concert by the infamous neo-Nazi band Kolovrat in Moscow’s Bolotnaya Square, within earshot of the Kremlin. Its leaders held televised public discussions with state functionaries and collaborated openly with Maksim Mishchenko, a member of parliament from the ruling party. In return, RO was granted privileged access to public space and the media. With the assistance of Kremlin supervisors, RO attacked nationalists who were abandoning the skinhead subculture for Navalny’s anti-Putin coalition. In response, the Kremlin began to work with Russkii Obraz (“Russian Image”, or “RO” for short), a hardcore neo-Nazi group best known for its slick journal and its band, Hook from the Right. In 2008-09, the Kremlin was threatened by Russian opposition activist Alexei Navalny’s efforts to build an anti-Putin coalition of democrats and radical nationalists in Russia. MISHA JAPARIDZE/AP Neo-Nazi leaders implicated in killingsĪs I demonstrated in a recent study of the Kremlin’s relationship with Russian fascists, these linkages made possible a bold experiment to create a pro-Putin neo-Nazi movement. Members of the pro-Kremlin Nashi movement celebrate the victory of Putin’s party in parliamentary election in 2007. These organisations became bridges between the neo-Nazi subculture and the Kremlin. While Nashi distanced itself from football gangs, its radical militants migrated to two rival Kremlin proxies, the nationalist “Young Russia” group and the anti-immigration “Locals” group. The resulting scandal provoked a reconfiguration of “managed nationalism”. They were released after a visit to the police station from Nikita Ivanov, the Kremlin functionary who supervised the regime’s loyalist youth organisations. The most violent attack, which left four left-wing activists in hospital, led to the arrest of the assailants.
To insulate Russia against the contagion of pro-democracy protest, the Kremlin transformed Moving Together into a more ambitious project called “Nashi”, or “Ours”.Īs part of its preparations to confront a potential democratic uprising in Russia, Nashi enlisted football gang members, whose subculture overlapped with the neo-Nazi underground.ĭuring 2005, Nashi’s thugs staged a series of raids on anti-Putin youth groups. This cooperation expanded in the aftermath of Ukraine’s Orange Revolution of 2004. Moving Together, a pro-Putin youth organisation notorious for its campaign against postmodernist literature, made the first move by reaching out to OB88, the most powerful skinhead gang in Russia. Second, the Kremlin launched “ managed nationalism”, an attempt to co-opt and mobilise radical nationalist militants, including neo-Nazis, as a counterweight to an emerging anti-Putin coalition of democrats and leftist radicals. Ultimately, this legislation would be used to prosecute Russian democrats. After Putin’s accession to the presidency in 2000, his regime exploited this development in two ways.įirst, it used the neo-Nazi threat to justify the adoption of anti-extremism legislation, a longstanding demand of some Russian liberals. The origins of this relationship date to the late 1990s, when Russia was shaken by a wave of racist violence committed by neo-Nazi skinhead gangs. The roots of neo-Nazism in Putin’s Russia