NASHI CAMP: MOBILIZING YOUTH TO COUNTER "ORANGE FORCES"

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 03 MOSCOW 003808 SIPDIS SENSITIVE SIPDIS E.O. 12958: N/A TAGS: PINR PGOV SOCI RS SUBJECT: NASHI CAMP: MOBILIZING YOUTH TO COUNTER "ORANGE FORCES" MOSCOW 00003808 001.2 OF 003 Summary -------------- ¶1. (SBU) For the third year in a row, the pro-Kremlin youth group "Nashi" held its two-week summer camp from July 16 - 27 at Lake Seliger in the Tver region. A visit by First Deputy Prime Ministers Dmitriy Medvedev and Sergey Ivanov, a meeting of Nashi commissars with President Putin, and a record ten thousand camp attendees kept the camp and Nashi in the press and raised questions about the group's sources of funding. Nashi's connection to the Kremlin and its ability to organize and mobilize youth for campaigns against organizations out of favor with the Kremlin should make it a force to be reckoned with in the upcoming parliamentary and presidential elections. End summary. The Camp -------------- ¶2. (U) The pro-Kremlin youth group Nashi has organized a summer camp, also known as the "All-Russian Youth Educational Forum," every year since the organization's inception in 2005. Over the past three years, attendance has more than tripled, with the number of attendees reaching ten thousand this summer. According to Nashi, the goal of the camp is to support the "modernization of the country by preparing new professionals and by founding a group for the preservation of Russia's sovereignty." ¶3. (U) Participants in this year's session - all between the ages of 18 and 28 - were kept to a strict routine, rising early every morning to exercise together. Sergey Guriev, Director of the Russian School of Economics and guest speaker at the camp, told the press "all of the young participants simply glow from the sense of taking part in a common activity." Alcohol was prohibited on the camp premises, and the participants' attendance at sessions was monitored by personal electronic identification badges. At a press conference on July 31, Vasiliy Yakemenko, the thirty-seven year old leader of Nashi, told reporters that more than one thousand participants had been kicked out of the camp for drinking, skipping lectures, or not participating in the morning workout sessions. ¶4. (U) During the day, participants attended informational sessions and took part in exhibitions and competitions. The themes of some of the sessions included defending human rights, increasing youth participation in elections, promoting inter-ethnic relations in Russia, strengthening the role of the family, improving education, and developing business and political leaders. In addition to educational sessions, the participants were treated to visits by prominent politicians, religious leaders, and pop stars. Most notable was the joint visit by First Deputy Prime Ministers (and potential presidential successors) Dmitriy Medvedev and Sergey Ivanov on July 21. Medvedev and Ivanov took a tour of the camp and talked with the young people present. Other notable figures included the governors of the Ryazan, Tver, Ulyanovsk, and Voronezh regions and Minister of Education Andrey Fursenko. The popular rock group Lyube and award-winning pop group Diskoteka Avariya also performed at the camp. In conjunction with Nashi's campaign to raise the prestige of military service, the Russian Air Force put on an hour-long air show that cost the government an estimated two hundred thousand dollars. Summer Lovin' -------------- ¶5. (U) One of the more striking aspects of the camp was the manner in which it supported the national campaign promoting families with multiple children. A six-foot statue of a mammoth stood in the camp with a sign next to it reading, "If we will not reproduce - we will become extinct like the mammoth." During the first week of the camp, nearly thirty Nashi couples were married in a mass wedding ceremony. The Governor of Ryazan, who was present at the ceremony, expressed his hope that the couples would have no fewer than three children and promised to be the godfather of the tenth child born to the couples. The newlywed couples each received a red tent in the heart-shaped tent village named "Bridal City." One student who had been kicked out of the camp told the newspaper Kommersant Vlast that not all of the marriages had been planned. According to this student, about fifteen couples backed out of their wedding plans on the day of the ceremony, and the Nashi leadership talked a few other couples into getting married so that a large ceremony would still take place. Press and the West -------------- ¶6. (U) Reporters were only allowed inside the camp for a few hours on its opening day, and even then, only in the company of Nashi guides. Guriev explained that even Nashi members who did not attend the camp were discouraged from talking to reporters (especially MOSCOW 00003808 002.2 OF 003 foreign ones) because "journalists may distort and alter every word." When two unaccredited reporters tried to sneak into the camp during the first week, they were quickly removed. ¶7. (U) Prominent themes at the camp were discrediting the political opposition and criticizing the West. Three large photographs of prostitutes with the faces of "Other Russia" opposition leaders Garry Kasparov, Eduard Limonov, and Mikhail Kasyanov hung in a section of the camp called the "Red Light District." Guriev wrote, "the average [Nashi] activist's level of hatred toward Kasparov and Kasyanov...really instills fear." Other camp programs also promoted anti-Americanism. For example, actors dressed as American policemen stood guard at a pair of dilapidated houses called "the Other Russia." In another observation about the camp, Guriev wrote "at practically every lecture they explain that America is an enemy of Russia and that it is striving with England (and of course, Estonia) to humiliate and divide Russia." It's Not All about Politics -------------- ¶8. (SBU) Contacts told us that many young people are involved in Nashi because they see it is a path to success. Participants at the Nashi camp received career counseling, and applied for internships and jobs. More than one hundred Nashi commissars received scholarships to study at universities overseas. Irina Shcherbakova of Memorial told us that for many students, especially poorer ones from the provinces, membership in a group like Nashi was one of the few ways open to them to get ahead in today's Russia. Konstantin Baranovskiy, Editor-in-Chief of a Nizhny Novgorod newspaper Argument Nedely, told us that the young people of his acquaintance who participate in Nashi do so primarily to receive grant money and network. Guriev noted that many Nashi members talk about the ideological indoctrination as a price that they have to pay in order to get the attention of those who made the camp possible. Funding -------------- ¶9. (U) The number of Kremlin-sponsored leaders who have appeared at the camp, and the estimated seventeen million Euros it cost to provide food and shelter for 10,000 people for two weeks, have led to speculation about the sources of funding for the camp, and for Nashi itself. Yakemenko said that the total cost of the camp was "hard to estimate" because financial support came from multiple sources. He explained that each of the regional delegations had to find funding for travel to and from the camp. Some of the funding came from sponsors such as media-company MTS, which advertised at the camp. The third and final source of funding was from the government. Union of Youth -------------- ¶10. (U) There has been speculation in the press regarding a Kremlin-mandated union of all pro-Kremlin youth groups. The participation of the youth movements Young Russia, New People, and Mestnye at the Nashi camp encouraged such speculation. (Noticeably absent at the Lake Seliger camp, however, was United Russia's youth group, Young Guard, which is known for its rivalry with Nashi). This was also the first year that members of youth movements other than Nashi met with President Putin at his summer residence of Zavidovo. Nashi spokesperson, Anastasiya Suslova, repeatedly refuted rumors of a merger. When Yakemenko presented the idea of a central government administration for youth movements, Putin reportedly dismissed it as "a thing of the past." Yakemenko explained that Nashi does not have a strong influence in the Russian Far East and that if necessary Nashi would work with other youth movements to ensure United Russia's victory in the Duma elections. ¶11. (U) A fight between members of the different groups reportedly broke out at the Nashi camp during a mock political protest. In the role-playing game, members of Young Russia and New People were the Orange Opposition, and Nashi members were the special forces troops. Although there was to be no violence, Nashi members attacked members of the other movements and ruined their tents. Yakemenko dismissed the news of the fight saying that it was nothing more than a role-playing game and that "perhaps hysterical girls" confused it for a real fight and spread rumors about it. Future of Nashi -------------- ¶12. (U) On the last day of the camp, participants elected twenty-six year old Nikita Borovikov to lead Nashi after the presidential elections in March 2008. Before the start of the camp, Yakemenko had announced that he would be stepping down. However, at MOSCOW 00003808 003.2 OF 003 a press conference on July 31, Yakemenko said that the leadership elected at the camp is not necessarily the team that will lead Nashi after the 2008 presidential election because the camp election had been "no more than a role-playing game." ¶13. (U) Yakemenko told reporters that Nashi's mission during the upcoming parliamentary and presidential elections is to "stabilize the situation" and counteract any orange forces that might try to disrupt the elections, break the law, or violate the Constitution. One former Nashi activist said that Nashi plans to set up tents on all major squares in Moscow before the elections so that "the Orange Revolution is not repeated and opposition forces do not occupy the squares." ¶14. (U) Nashi is frequently compared to the Soviet Komsomol, and a former Komsomol member told us she agreed with this assessment. A former member of Nashi told reporters about a Nashi "Volunteer Youth Patrol" which reportedly beat up people who distributed literature against Nashi. The member also said that this division pestered the police during the March of the Dissenters in Moscow, but the police were given instructions not to touch them. At Nashi press conferences that we have attended, Yakemenko has been charismatic, but has displayed disturbing personality traits. One moment he can be good-natured and proclaim the benefits of Nashi, and the next moment his mood shifts and he vents his anger towards outsiders. ¶15. (U) Yakemenko, the former head of the failed, Kremlin-sponsored youth organization Walking with Putin, started Nashi in 2005. Nashi was not affiliated with any particular political party until this summer when it agreed to support United Russia in the December parliamentary elections. Nashi has gained notoriety for its ability to organize large groups of students and for its harassment of the British and Estonian ambassadors. However, despite the large number of participants at the Nashi camp and the extensive coverage of Nashi in the press, a recent Levada Center study found that sixty-four percent of the youth polled had never heard of the organization. Comment -------------- ¶16. (SBU) The extent of Nashi's role in the upcoming parliamentary and presidential elections will be one indication of the group's future political influence. Nashi's promises of improving Russia are appealing to a generation searching for its place in the world. Some of Nashi's initiatives are laudable in promoting political activism among youth, strong families, and social responsibility. Unfortunately, anti-Americanism is also part of the Nashi program, and could be absorbed by currents members, some of whom are likely to join Russia's business and political elite. Still, Nashi comprises only a tiny percentage of the Russian youth population, and its real impact on Russian society, for better and for worse, remains to be seen. RUSSELL