Nationalists and liberals opposed to “Putin regime”

By Marina Latysheva, Andrei Soldatov / www.agentura.ru special to The Moscow News 18.08.2004 / 

Public actions by National Bolshevik Party (NBP) activists and the Yabloko youth wing attracted the attention not only of a sympathetic public but also of federal security services.

Today public actions staged by Eduard Limonov's National Bolshevik Party (NBP) no longer look like buffoonery or a cheap show, as the case was just five years ago.*

The sit-in at the RF Health Ministry central office, held by NBP activists, not only became a media event but also evoked understanding in a society outraged by the termination of social security programs. 

Today, political struggles have effectively ceased even in the State Duma and there is no apparent difference in party programs; what is known as parliamentary methods of action have lost its meaning. All that is left to young people in politics is to stage attention-grabbing acts: hurling tomatoes at politicians, dropping leaflets in the Bolshoi Theater, and so forth. 

A Union of Far-Left and Right

Leftists from the Vanguard of the Red Youth use similarly radical methods in staging their public acts. This past June, in protest against the cancellation of social benefits, Vanguard members handcuffed themselves to each other and blocked Ilyinka Street, causing a massive traffic jam in the center of Moscow.

A couple of weeks ago, the Limonovites' experience was tapped by the Yabloko youth wing whose ideology could not be further removed from the one espoused by the NBP. Yabloko activists smeared the Andropov bas-relief on Lubyanka Square with red paint. 

During a joint public rally of the Yabloko and the Union of Right Forces (SPS) youth organizations this past March, Ilya Yashin, the leader of the Yabloko youth wing, referred to the NBP as an ally: "On the one side there is the bureaucratic swamp and on the other there is civil society, including Yabloko, the SPS, and even such radicals as the Limonovites." His position was reaffirmed by Sergei Zhavoronkov, the leader of the SPS youth wing: "We are against the Putin regime; we are united by an objective necessity."

Vladimir Linderman, the second in command in the NBP and leader of the party's branch in Latvia, is confident that "the democrats and liberals will become even more radical." According to him, NBP members established contacts with the Yabloko youth wing following the party's failure in the latest parliamentary election. "At this stage we are communicating on the personal level," Linderman said, "but then we'll see. Yabloko has still to go its part of the way." 

Political Surveillance 

Following the seizure of Mikhail Zurabov's office, the NBP bunker on Maria Ulyanova St. was visited by agents from various federal security and intelligence services - in particular, operatives from the Tsentr-T, a department of the Main Administration for Organized Crime, or GUBOP; Federal Security Service (FSB) officers, and investigators from the Moscow City Prosecutor's Office. As a result, the impression was that the ruling authorities had sent in whoever happened to be ready at hand at the time. As a matter of fact, that was not at all the case: Security agencies had been working long and hard to put in place a political surveillance system. 

Thus, Tsentr-T, formed as a subdivision of the Interior Ministry last year, was assigned, among other things, to combat extremism. For the past six years, the FSB has been creating subdivisions analogous to the political police or the Fifth (ideological) Directorate of the KGB. In 1998, it revived the Constitutional Security Directorate (the so-called K-Directorate). 

The following year, the Anti-Terrorism Department was reorganized to include a terrorist and political extremism directorate (its officers in fact worked on Eduard Limonov's case).

In the meantime, the FSB Moscow Directorate has undergone some rather peculiar metamorphoses. Thanks to its status as a Moscow-based agency, the directorate was assigned the role as an outpost in the fight against free-thinking.

Earlier, the FSB Moscow Directorate incorporated a service for combating terrorism and protecting the constitutional system. In other words, the central apparat structure was replicated on the level of an FSB regional directorate, only a notch below. Whereas at central headquarters there was a department for the protection of the constitutional system and combating terrorism, the regional directorate had a service of the same name. After the Nord-Ost hostage drama, the service was divided into two parts. The FSB Moscow Directorate acquired the so-called BT (i.e., anti-terrorism) service as well as an entirely new structure with an unpronounceable abbreviation SZOKS BPE (the Service for the Defense of the Foundations of the Constitutional System and the Struggle against Political Extremism). It is noteworthy that for the first time in the history of Russian security services, the struggle against political extremism was separated from anti-terrorism activities. Presently, the service is directed by Col. Aleksei Yezhov.

According to some sources, he has at least 70 officers working under his command. As far as is known, most of the service personnel was recruited from among officers who had earlier worked in the anti-terrorism sector.

NBP members themselves know precious little about the agency that is watching them. According to them, one officer in the service is a certain Andrei. He told them in the course of interrogation that he had been keeping tabs on the party for the past five years and had seven full-fledged volumes of documents on its members.

The names of other "curators" are also known: say, FSB officers Streletsky and Dubrovsky. Each time they show different IDs, so, as a matter of fact their real names may be entirely different.

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Whatever the case today Limonov and his associates at the NBP have become exponents of a certain PR technology even if it was not devised by them. This technology is now being tapped by those who only a few months ago rejected the sheer possibility of opening a dialogue with the far-left. 

FACT BOX*

NBP actions, in particular the throwing of foodstuffs and flowers at public figures, began with the hurling of a tomato at Nikita Mikhalkov, in 1999. In television footage shown at the time, the film director and his bodyguards brutally attacked the assailant. 

Then, in 2000, Mikhail Gorbachev was flower-whipped with a bunch of carnations; in 2001, Prince Charles received the same flower treatment, in Riga. Such actions became a regular feature in 2003, the election campaign period when various foodstuffs were sent flying at Aleksandr Veshnyakov, Anatoly Chubays, Mikhail Kasyanov, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, and Gennady Zyuganov. *

Sit-ins at public buildings began with the break-in to the Avrora cruiser in St. Petersburg in 1997, which was followed up with the seizure of a watch tower in Sevastopol in 1999 and then the St. Peter Tower in Riga, in 2000. This summer has seen action abroad a Moscow-Vilnius train, penetration of the Kremlin museum under the slogan "Return Faberge Eggs to the People," a breakthrough into the State Duma, and a sit-in at the Health Ministry central office in Moscow. In the course of a NATO summit in Prague, in 2003.

NBP activists tossed tomatoes at Secretary General George Robertson, thus hitting the radar of international mass media.Groups of NBP sympathizers appeared in 15 Western countries. The party has chapters in Sweden and Israel while another chapter is being formed in Britain among Russian teenagers studying in England.