The Other Russia

Lecture 21

An heir to the throne doesn’t need parties. He doesn’t even need his own party. He came to power thanks to a non-political action: he was appointed premier minister and then recommended to the presidential post not as the representative of a powerful political party that had won the majority of seats in the Parliament, as it is supposed to be in democracy. Putin was appointed as the president’s favorite. After a year or so his appointment as an heir was “ratified” by the TV-processed electors. Even without this there were hardly any politics in Russia, and during the Restoration the last of the political Mohicans were simply slammed. But to be precise politics were thoroughly exterminated even under Yeltsin. The Justice Ministry and the mad hangman Veshnyakov (this guy is certainly a maniac!) tortured Russian politics to death. And here, very recently the triumph and the apotheosis of the Victory over it. The State Duma adopted the “Law about political parties”, whose text is the twin of the text “Rules of maintenance in the SIZO [investigative isolation ward] of Russia’s FSB of suspects, accused and convicted” here it is at my left, a cardboard sheet with rules, next to the cell’s door. “Socks, no more than two pairs…” – croaks the text. We can’t even eat bouillon cubes, and the bones from the fish have to be taken out outside, then they’ll accept it. Likewise is the “Law about political parties”… Only a thickset governor can do politics in Russia, or a bellied general, but not the twenty years old NBP member. Practically clause 6 of the USSR constitution was reestablished – the monopoly of bureaucracy on political activity was reestablished. What we’ve got is viscous pieces of boneless fish…

So what can the naive weirdoes do, who founded their political parties from simple mortal citizens, who had believed in the fact that by assembling themselves into a party of like-minded people, they could influence the fate of the Country – Russia? The answer: all the party members have to go and hang themselves. Just kidding.

The dead soviet types seat again in all the cabinets of the power. People with empty eyes. Employees of the Public Prosecutor office, investigative departments, judiciary, carceral functionaries. The Inquisition – a blind robot – turning around grabs the citizens by their clothes and drags them in prison. The Lefortovo castle is packed with “enemies of the State”. For the record, they are all talented, charismatic individuals. Dead people overtook the country and they put the living in prisons – that’s the fictional image that comes to mind. It is clear that the Restoration is not forever, but what to do now?

The Party thought and is thinking about it. Still a few years back the “Limonka” newspaper declared a “contest on the best Revolution project”. People sent interesting and not very interesting projects. We published the best ones in the paper. For one of them, and exactly, signed by me, if I am not mistaking it was called “Revolution in Crimea” (or “Uprising in Sevastopol”), the paper received a warning from the press committee. So our projects, even in the literary version already provoked the power’s discontent. By 1999 it became clear to the NBP leadership and the regular party members: the functioning of the parry in Russia is not possible anymore. We were convinced in this at every turn. During our meetings and pickets we became surrounded by such a thick police wall from all sides, they even stood behind our backs, like we were prisoners of a concentration camp. Our slogans became censored, police officers forbid to develop, in their opinion, aggressive slogans. Even before we were unlawfully, without our permission, filmed on video cameras by the FSB and the MVD, but the last couples of years the Public Prosecutor office and the Moscow FSB started to open criminal cases about the content of our speeches on meetings, recorded by them on videotape. Once I was proceeded against for the word “revolution”. Simultaneously the mass medias’ behavior changed. More and more dependant from the power, the mass medias simply stopped to appear on NBP actions or appeared but the material was not shown and not published. Therefore we started to think, should we conduct actions, anyway society will not learn about them. We’re not going to work for half a hundred of passers by, are we? Reportages in the mass media were needed to us as a means of communication with the masses, with the country, as a means of propaganda. But the power usurped itself the television and the press, since Kremlin’s little tables, little couchettes and cushions and Kasyanov’s and Putin’s suits are forced on us everyday. They force us to watch every lowering and rising of the president’s ass! It became clear to us that our political existence is censured by the mass media (among these the supposedly “oppositional” NTV impudently censured us) and the power.

Under the pretext of the fight with terrorism they censured the largest youth party in Russia.

The Party decided that it makes sense to bring the political activity on the RF territory to the level of human rights activity. But instead to transfer the burden center of our political struggle on the defense of the Russian speaking population in CIS countries. Besides that nobody did this kind of struggle, not a single political organization. All the struggle was reduced to the demagogic declarations of some deputies of the State Duma or the Federal Assembly and the rare and weak declarations of the MID [Ministry of Foreign Affairs]. The 24 August 1999 our guys – fifteen national-Bolsheviks infiltrated the tower of the Marine club in Sevastopol, barricaded themselves there, hung out NBP flags and the slogan “Sevastopol is a Russian city!” and started to scatter leaflets with the heading “Kuchma, you will choke on Sevastopol!” from the towers’ balcony. The tower was stormed, the nazbols arrested and subsequently spent six months in the Sevastopol and Simferopol prisons. Afterwards, under public pressure, Ukraine authorities handed the guys in Russia, where they were released on liberty. Back then, at the end of January 2000, such a thing was still possible. The Restoration did not yet triumphed completely, didn’t consolidate itself completely. Russia’s special services didn’t yet intervene in our struggle on the territory of CIS countries, or perhaps simply overlooked our activity.

In February, March, April 2000 NBP members and sympathizers conducted a row of spontaneous actions against the embassies of Latvia, Kazakhstan, Poland, Switzerland in Moscow and against Latvia embassies in Saint Petersburg and Pskov. The actions, in their essence, were about human rights. In the case of Poland it was a response to the outrage over the Russian flag in Poznan. In the case of Kazakhstan – the sentence to the “Kazimirchuk groups” made public recently – up to 18 years of incarceration in two cases, 14 years, 11 years to many other participants. But also for the human rights actions against the embassies, criminal cases were opened against the natzbols, although it’s only bottles with paint that were thrown at the embassies’ buildings. It became clearer and clearer that the Restoration is already equal to the reaction. Soon it was discovered that the Restoration does not tolerate concurrence. Notwithstanding the fact that the NBP still back in 1994-1995 put forward and formulated national-patriotic slogans and orientations of its politics, part of which are today successfully used by Putin personally and his restored power, not only they don’t want to acknowledge in us the predecessors, the prophets, the avant-garde! They are persecuting us. From August 1998 NBP started to lead a struggle for the liberation from the Latvian prison of the just recently arrested then Vasili Kononov, a 76 years old red partisan, a demolisher accused of a “military crime”, in the shooting of a polizei detachment in 1944. The NBP developed “Kononov’s case” practically alone, we came out on innumerable demonstrations in his defense, painted the trains who were coming to Latvia with the inscriptions “Free Vasili Kononov!”, bombarded several times the embassy and the consulate of Latvia with paint bottles. It was us who the first in 1998 called for the boycott of Latvian products, escorted by a TV-6 camera went around shops and appealed for a boycott. A month later, Moscow’s mayor called for a boycott, and having understood from where and in which direction the wind blows, some regional heads joined the boycott.

Finally, at the time of Kononov’s trial, by the beginning of 2000, the president himself was forced to notice Kononov’s case and by an edict made Kononov citizen of Russia. The Latvians got scared, since they saw that Kononov’s case has become the symbol of the fight for the rights of the Russians in Latvia and released Kononov from jail. But in Latvia prisons, other old men, partisans and chekists remained: Farbtukh, Savenko, the former chekist Vasili Kirsanov staid there forever, died. Meanwhile they were getting ready to try Russian heroes, participants of the VOV [Great Patriotic War] in Lithuania and Estonia. Again they brought a suit to Kononov, though they left him in liberty. Farbtukh, an 85 years old handicapped, was brought to prison on stretchers. Latvia ignored Russia’s protests. We had to smack them.

It seemed, gentlemen from the government, let’s work on this front together! It is clear for us that you are a restorative, temporary power, but let’s together get the Russians out of prisons of CIS countries and fight for the rights of the Russian speaking people. That, which you can’t do, the status doesn’t allow – stain an embassy with paint, break glass, paint their cities with slogans, scare them a bit, in short, express the anger of the Russian people, we’ll do. To you – the government it is not convenient. And you, the government, pressure them diplomatically, economically. I even met in the beginning of February 2000 with the chief of the FSB administration on the fight with political extremism and terrorism, with the general Vladimir Pronin and offered him our services: “Use us in the CIS countries!” But the restorative power doesn’t suffer concurrence. It doesn’t need the help of the civil society, political parties are annoying to it, following the soviet instinct, it sees enemies in us. During all the summer 2000 the FSB tracked the NBP. (Actually, still a week before the conversation with Pronin they had been in my apartment on Kaloshino Lane in my absence and fixed some kind of long-range instruments for shadowing me. And they set up an external surveillance. I informed then about it the General Prosecution Office, the MVD and… the FSB.) In November 2000 the FSB treacherously warned Latvia’s security police about the fact that a group of national-Bolsheviks went out on the train Saint-Petersburg-Kaliningrad, with the goal of getting out on one of the Latvian stations. FSB’s official version (that got into newspapers), is that the warning was sent through the MID in Latvia’s embassy, they didn’t warned directly, they were still embarrassed to admit last year the direct contacts of the special services. As a result four national-Bolsheviks were arrested and recently received 7 months of jail each. Three national-Bolsheviks still managed to infiltrate Latvia’s territory and captured on November 17 the observatory of the basilica of Saint Peter in Riga. The trial took place in April 2001. The guys were judged on the clause “terrorism”. (Apparently, with a long-range goal.

A provocation against me and my arrest were already being planned. In the future, the FSB hoped that by having a precedent it would be easier for them to judge us in Russia on severe clauses.) A monstrously severe sentence immediately followed: Solovey and Jurkin received 15 years of incarceration, the youngest – Gafarov -5 years. The gloomy paradox of the situation consists in the fact that the FSB handed four boys to the Latvians, who were going to protest against the arrests and the trials of the old Chekists Fartbuck, Savenko, the retired police colonel Kononov! And by the FSB efforts the Latvians stiffened the sentence to the three Russian guys who have captured the observatory with the same goal. The absurd reactionarism of the Restoration regime is seen in this illogical, abnormal behavior of the FSB. These people are not just amoral, they ignore the existence of a moral, a nation, of the fact that there are “our people” and “enemies” and that it is a betrayal – to hand over to our enemies. In the best case they think by clauses of the Criminal Code, in the worst – these are simply dishonorable people.

The 7th of April 2001, an FSB seizure group, about the size of a company, not less then two platoons, arrested me 18 kilometers from Bannoe village in the Ust-Koxinsky region of the Altai republic. We were eight people. I arrived at the hamlet (apiary), which belonged to Mr. Pirogov, the night before the 6th April. I’m accused on clause 222, part 3, even though no weapon was found either with me or with the persons who accompanied me. Among other things, the investigation also concerns “the Second Russia” project, as it was called in the party bulletin NBP-INFO No3. It concerned a project, suggested and directed to the attention of any radical Russian party, it didn’t directly concern NBP. “The Second Russia” project was sent to the “contest for the best revolution project” in the Limonka newspaper, however it arrived to us late. As all the projects sent to the contest, it wasn’t signed. As the third issue of NBP-INFO was dedicated to the book of the Eurasian kniaz Trubetskoy and included excerpts from this book, we thought it interesting to include there the “Second Russia” project, Eurasian in essence. It talked about the fact that a radical party can go on the territory of one of the CIS countries with a significant Russian population and to develop its activities there. In “the Second Russia” text, the anonymous writer also looked at the project of the organization of guerilla warfare with the subsequent seizure from the “CIS republic” territory of the region inhabited mostly by Russians. And the creation of a separatist State – The Second Russia. Three CIS countries were named as the best suited for this goal: Latvia (900 thousand Russians), Ukraine (11 million) and Kazakhstan (5 million and something). Kazakhstan was named as the best option. Naturally, the project wore a theoretic character and was stated in the subjunctive mood. “If there was such a political party… And if it would…”

Leaving aside my own defender’s fate now linked with “the Second Russia” project, I want to note that the project makes sense. The length of the border between Russia and Kazakhstan makes up seven thousand kilometers. Five million of our fellows oppressed Russians and Russian speakers live as hostages in the feudal Kazakhstan, mostly along the border with Russia. There the most industrially developed cities of Kazakhstan are also located: Uralsk, Kustanai, Petropavlovsk, Pavlodar, Semipalatinsk, and Ust-Komenogorsk. Industrialized, densely populated Russian megalopolises located along the border on the RF territory: Astrakhan, Volgograd, Ufa, Orenbourg, Kurgan, Omsk, Novosibirsk, Barnaul can assure a constant inflow of young volunteers for the guerrilla warfare. Considering these circumstances, the project is wholly realizable. A healthy Russian government would have necessarily helped the radical organization in the execution of such a project, would have given money, supplied with weapons. (In their time, the Bolsheviks organized the creation of the Donetsk republic and the Ukrainian republic in Kharkov with the precise goal of undermining the government of the Ukrainian Central Rada in Kiev.) But the Restoration is an unhealthy, sickly regime. This is why its special services cooperate with the anti-Russian regime of Latvia; cooperate with the feudal anti-Russian regime of president Nazarbaev. But Russians in Kazakhstan are expulsed in the best case and those who didn’t leave are thoroughly terrorized!

The Kazakh movement is crushed; its leaders are either in prison or have fled to Russia. One have only to look at the daily internet news of the “Eurasia” agency, to read a dozen of books about Kazakhstan published by the institute of CIS countries, headed by Zatulin. Even from these politically moderate sources it is clear how anti-Russian is the regime that has been established in Kazakhstan. And the accounts of those who have been in Nazarbaev’s prisons of Ismailov and Supruniuk are bloodcurdling. I know the situation quite well, in 1997 I was in Kazakhstan, lived in Koktchetava and Alma-Ata under the surveillance of the special services, I have even met dissidents. Even Nazarbev’s daughter Dariga.

So I also include the “Second Russia” project in the outlines of the future. In any case we’d have to leave Moscovia. Central Russia is decimated by alcohol; there is too much flawed people here, “inhuman” in the entire meaning of the word. He has perfectly right, the original thinker young Sergei Morozov when he writes in his intelligent book “Complot against the peoples of Russia today’ that the Russian nation was and will be, but in the present moment it isn’t. The New Nation will have to be built on the basis of the Russian language, as for the culture and the nation, we will create new ones. Just as a new civilization. This mission is well within our powers. We created a newspaper and with it, the subculture of national-bolshevism. Just as well we’ll create a culture.

The fact that now we are in jail is only one episode of the struggle. Everybody has been in prison. All the worthy great people were. And where else can great social projects be created? Prison imparts seriousness and greatness to social projects.

In the Second Russia, on its territory we could realize some traits of the future. And let the Second Russia and the old Russia – Moscovia, that is, compete for some time, coexist close to one another. All the living people will certainly run to the Second Russia, there is no doubt about that.

All the young people will run away. And in the frozen barracks of Moscovia let live the timid pensioners and for each habitant there will be two personally attached policemen. And one public prosecutor. After all Moscovia is the least free country in the world. Let it all burst and tumble down.

Nazarbaev – the butcher of the Russian people (that’s how we called him in the anti-Mikhalkov leaflet. After all, Mikhalkov, the son of a bitch, had participated in Nazarbaev’s election campaign for president of Kazakhstan in January 1999! Betraying Russians he had acclaimed the butcher!) doesn’t have so many guns. In all only 41 thousand soldiers in the armed forces, 26 thousands in the MVD, 15 thousand serve in the border troops and two or three thousand in the Kazakh national security, in the KNB. So he can put up 82 thousand guns. With a population of 15 million people and with a frontier length of more than 13 thousand kilometers, his army could not hold a huge territory. (The quality of the soldiers is soviet-average) For comparison let’s recall that on tiny Cuba the dictator Batista by 1957 had 40 thousand soldiers, with the Cuban population in those days of 8 million. And it’s not even necessary to capture and to control the entire territory of Kazakhstan, but only to cut out the “Second Russia’s” free territory. After all it’s impossible to live in Moscovia.

I am putting put here the original text “The Other Russia” from the NBP-INFO No3: notice how his author was mistaken, expecting the nonintervention of the Russian authorities in the situation, they intervened even on the stage of a theoretic project.