Sergei Belokonev, head of the Federal Agency for Youth Affairs (Rosmolodezh), said that the Selinger summer camp would be held in one European and one US location in addition to the original Russian one. He named Strasbourg, where the European Court of Human Rights is located, as a possible European site.

The agency has already set up a special commission and working group to organize Selinger abroad. Organizers say the basic goal of the camp is “to rally fellow countrymen living abroad.”

There are an estimated 35 million Russians currently living abroad.

“We are actively working towards this and are planning to initiate work with our compatriots, especially those who did not personally migrate, but were moved out of the country when they were still children,” Belokonev said. “I’ve talked to people who are abroad but are bigger patriots than people here of their same age.”

The agency chief denied that the camp’s expansion was an attempt to bring young émigrés back to Russia. On the contrary, he insisted that it was necessary for Russians to “build up the country’s economic power” from abroad.

“We need to attract our people to economic projects in Russian so that they become intermediaries, earn money working on these projects, get technology and investment into Russia and send products and services overseas,” Belokonev explained. The camps abroad, then, are needed for émigrés to develop projects to aid Russia, he said.

Belokonev also stipulated that Rosmolodezh would not be organizing the overseas camps by themselves.

Dmitri Sablin, a State Duma deputy involved in relations with the Russian diaspora, said that such camps can help the Russian government exercise leverage over foreign policy towards Russia.

“This is a relevant necessity, our compatriots abroad are defending their rights,” he said. “We need to understand that they’re still Russian even if they have passports from different countries.”

“If Russians living abroad are brought together in some sort of organized form, then European countries and the United States are undoubtedly going to think harder and choose more careful statements when making decisions that go against Russian interests. Then we won’t have things like the Magnitsky Act, which doesn’t do anything but satisfy someone’s ambitions. It has no meaning besides to foment hostility,” Sablin explained.

Nadezhda Nelipa, executive director of Verrus, an organization that supports the Russian-speaking population in Europe, suspects that the camp is destined to fail if run by the Russian side.

“There’s a bunch of people in Germany who deal with the organization of such events, but the style of work and life differs so greatly in Europe that none of it was successful,” Nelipa explained. “Even the ones in the consulate don’t understand it, they look at it like this is Soviet territory. There’s an entirely different approach to things here: if they need a lot of students to participate in the camp, it requires a lot of time, you can’t do it in 3-4 months. These students have their own rhythm of life, they study very hard. They don’t have any vacation time before summer; sometimes they can allow themselves a couple of weeks in the summer. They plan their semesters a half year in advance.”

Political analyst Mikhail Vinogradov believes that Rosmolodezh is simply leeching off of the recent popularity in Russia of support for the Russian diaspora. He was also certain that Rosmolodezh’s strategy to stimulate entrepreneurialism among young Russians only has potential in Russia and will not be successful in the West.

“Rosmolodezh has a choice right now between two strategies: it can continue stressing political, ideological projects or it can attract young people by supporting their business projects. The agency has recently been drifting towards the second direction,” Vinogradov said.

The youth camp Seliger was first held at a lake by the same name in Tverskaya region in 2005. Founded as a training camp for Nashi, it only allowed non-members to participate starting in 2009. The camp has been heavily criticized for indoctrinating young Russians with a paranoid Kremlin ideology and comparing human rights advocates to Nazis, as well as for leaving a great deal of garbage at the lake.

“Many participants of the forum, including myself, were confronted with the fact that mobile phone service entirely disappeared at the entrance to the camp in the Khimki Forest,” Belyakov said on the website of A Just Russia on Tuesday. “Certain police officers told me under condition of anonymity that ‘jammers’ are definitely being used. They even told me where one of them was.”

Belyakov added that he took photographs and video footage of the devices used to jam cell phone service.

“I’ve already sent Ministry of Internal Affairs Chief Rashid Gumarovich Nurgaliyev a deputy inquiry demanding an explanation of the goal of the operation to suppress the mobile phone signal in the Khimki Forest,” he said.

ITAR-TASS reported late on Tuesday that the Ministry of Internal Affairs is denying that any jamming devices were used at Anti-Seliger and accused Belyakov of speaking “rubbish.”

The forum, dubbed “Anti-Seliger,” was held in the Khimki Forest outside Moscow from June 17-20. According to organizers, the goal of the event was to give oppositionist, environmental, and other activists an opportunity to share their experiences and learn from one another. Approximately 3000 people took part.

Over the course of the forum, lectures were given by prominent journalists, political analysts, and human rights activists, including Leonid Parfyonov, Artemy Troitsky, Stanislav Belkovsky, Oleg Kashin, Aleksei Navalny, Yelena Panfilova, Valery Panyushkin, and Igor Chestin.

Anti-Seliger was organized as an alternative to Seliger, an annual forum held by Russia’s Federal Agency for Youth Issues (Rosmolodezh) and the pro-Kremlin youth group Nashi. Seliger is notorious for its grotesque displays of anti-oppositionist propaganda; past targets of harassment have included United Civil Front leader Garry Kasparov, leading human rights activist Lyudmila Alexeyeva, and Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves. Nashi leaders have admitted that the group – and, by extension, the forum – were created “to prevent an Orange Revolution” ahead of Russia’s 2008 presidential election. According to public records, Rosmolodezh head Vasily Yakemenko plans to spend no less than 178 million rubles ($6.37 million USD) on Seliger 2011.

Russia 2010: Another Step Towards Catastrophe?
The population is decidedly disappointed in the “tandem”
By Garry Kasparov
December 30, 2010
Kasparov.ru

In summing up the politics events of the year, I would dare to call this year a critical one. There is a trend of mass consciousness: Russian citizens are decidedly disappointed in the ruling party – United Russia – and their skepticism is gradually spreading to Vladimir Putin and Dmitri Medvedev. In 2010, the tandem definitively split up its spheres of influence: while the “national leader” appeals to the most conservative and uneducated segments of society, the function of the head of state is instead to evoke sympathy from the well-informed and dynamic minority focused on global integration.

Medvedev’s mission is falling apart before our very eyes: even a maneuver as impressive (despite the dragged-out waiting period) as firing Yury Luzhkov did not change the overall picture. The pathetic ending to the story of the Khimki Forest, the hopeless situation with the investigation of the attack on journalist Oleg Kashin, the lack of a coherent response to the events on Manezhnaya Square, and, finally, the disgraceful congratulatory remarks to the Belarusian dictator for his “victory” in the elections – Dmitri Medvedev has committed an entire series of acts that are unacceptable for a politician counting on the support of Russian citizens focused on European values.

And, finally, the last and final test for Medvedev “the liberal” was held on December 27. There were no surprises: the Khamovnichesky Court began its historic session by announcing the guilt of Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev. All the colorful words about how pressure on the courts from “other officials” was unacceptable naturally turned out to be just that: words. If anyone was still under any illusions, now they have no grounds for them at all.

But this is not only – and not even so much – about disappointment in Medvedev. General perceptions about forms of protest are changing in the country. People are beginning to realize: under the growth of authoritarianism, there is no point to social protest if it is not accompanied by political demands. The Kaliningrad rallies at the beginning of the year; the springtime wave of Communist demonstrations with slogans calling for the resignation of the government; the ever-growing activeness of Strategy 31; the strong appeal of anti-Putin slogans – all of this testifies to a change in trends.

No “ratings” will compensate for the shock from the summer fires or the ubiquitous Kushchevskaya massacre. Here one may recall the revealing video footage from Nizhny Novgorod, in which fire victims screamed their complaints about the government right into the face of the confused “national leader.”

Disengagement from political demands inevitably leads to a dead end. In contrast, when the need to advance and assert political demands becomes clear to everyone – including trade unions, ecologists, war veterans, and football fans – the government will falter. It is important that, at that moment, it is not opposed by disparate masses of people.

Unfortunately, there is no broad public dialogue going on in this country. This is largely the result of mutual distrust between various social groups, personal ambitions, the lack of a culture of searching for compromise in oppositionist circles, and, naturally, the deliberately divisive actions of pro-Kremlin structures.

Nevertheless, the government itself does promote a general type of politicization – insofar as it establishes that any issue that affects the interests of one civil servant or another is a political one. Very often we see inept management, incompetency, abuses, and even blatant crimes go unpunished only because they are committed under the banner of “United Russia.” This is becoming too noticeable, and the comprehension that Putin’s United Russia is precisely the main source of lawlessness in this country is penetrating the general consciousness.

Given the obvious fall in its level of public support, Putin’s corrupt, bandit-ridden power vertical requires that crackdowns continue – without consideration of the possible consequences – if it is to survive.

The toughening of an authoritarian regime is an entirely logical phase of its development, and in Russia there is no exception. As I’ve already noted in my previous articles, the stability of Putin’s vertical is the result of not only the social apathy of society and well-organized, deliberate propaganda, but also the creation – with the help of prominent representatives of homegrown liberalism – the illusion of a stable economy, which allows, to a certain extent, state finances to be managed in a reasonable way, which compensates for the woeful ignorance of greedy security officials and civil servants.

In this regard, Yevgeny Yasin’s many statements are revealing. This is a man who, after Yegor Gaidar’s departure, could be fully considered a pillar of Russian liberal fundamentalism. On his blog on Ekho Moskvy, he rather frankly sets out the views of the enlightened part of the Russian elite on the state of affairs in the country: “If you’d like – the creation of a democratic Russia is a task that was set aside in ’92 for the sake of radical economic reform. But now that the basic reforms have already been carried out and we have a market economy, its further development is only possible under democracy.” This is an exceptionally valuable admission that establishes that neither Gaidar nor Anatoly Chubais considered a democratic framework to be a necessary condition for Russia’s market economy in general.

It is also not insignificant that Yasin is talking about the successful completion of market reforms precisely now, in 2010. It would be interesting to know, then, how the apologists of “Russian liberalism” picture the market and market economy. The lack of a guarantee of private property? Bureaucratic lawlessness? The lack of independent courts? A level of corruption that is beyond the pale? Or the fact that the majority of students from Yevgeny Grigorievich’s State University – Higher School of Economics want to work in Gazprom and the presidential administration. And that’s an economic result that, from Yasin’s point of view, is entirely acceptable today. This is exactly the result that was achieved by people who continue to call themselves Russian liberals, entirely discrediting the idea of a market economy and liberal democracy.

Talk of democracy has now become relevant because the party of “supporters of enlightened Putinism with a human face” knows perfectly well that the system becomes unstable under Putin’s excesses; but it nevertheless shows no desire to undertake any fundamental reforms.

The pinnacle of their desires is a return to blessed 2002, for the authoritarian form of rule to be softened but the mechanism allowing for the unchanging and supreme power of oligarch groups be preserved, with this group then resolving the power issue amongst themselves. A clear warp has formed on the part of one of the groups – the Putin one. And this has evoked rejection from systemic Russian liberals, since the oligarchical consensus has ceased to function.

I have written many times that Yeltsin’s fatal Decree 1400 in the fall of 1993 drove our country back into the rut of authoritarian development. Although, it’s now becoming clear that the method of carrying out “Gaidar’s great reforms” also brought along the seeds of authoritarianism, which was unavoidably necessary to defend the interests of the oligarchy forming then. And the liberal echelons appearing from the ranks of the so-called “Kamikaze government” are in fact an organic part of the Yeltsin-Putin regime. It is they who are its designers and engineers; it is they who created and nurtured this construct.

Any attempt to divide Putin’s milieu into “liberals” and “security officials” ignores the fact that the two work in harmony – or, in the current political fashion: in tandem. The Baikalfinansgrup fraud was created not so much by Igor Sechin and Sergey Bogdanchikov as by Alexei Kudrin and Sergey Ignatyev. And one can find very “liberal” surnames – Gref, Golikova, Khristenko – on the lists of beneficiaries of corrupt bureaucratic schemes.

The young people who wound up on Manezhnaya Square on December 11 grew up in an era of economic reform that completely changed the way of life of the population of our country. This is the generation that Gaidar’s acolytes dreamed of, insisting that young people who knew nothing of Soviet life would form the nucleus of a free, future Russia. Today it’s become clear what kind of political force makes up the nucleus that these young people have formed.

And this is quite a natural result, given the contemporary Russian conditions of non-functioning social mobility, the oppressive sensation of hopelessness for a large number of Russian citizens, a total lack of prospects, and egregious social differentiation, which also overlap with the unavoidable confessional and ethnic mix of the former Soviet empire. It impossible to think of a better fertilizer to cultivate nationalistic sentiment in a society.

At the beginning of the ’90s, when the newly-formed democratic Russian state was attempting to escape from the quagmire of social and economic chaos, many people thought that a repeat scenario of Weimar Germany was a real possibility. That said, no one considered that the Weimar Republic disappeared not as a result of Hitler’s unconditional electoral victories (the Nazis never took more than 38 percent of the vote), but as a result of the collusion between oligarchical and military circles and the Nazis, who were seen as a natural counterweight to the leftist threat.

All of the entreaties about the red-brown threat of the ’90s have turned out to be untenable. At that historic moment, the red-brown coalition was largely the result of the clumsy actions of Yeltsin’s government. But it is now possible for the red-brown combination to become a reality, as the color brown becomes consumed by shades of the Black Hundreds. And the government’s active battle against the left enables this.

It is interesting to note that the Communist Party’s eternal leader, Gennady Zyuganov, who has continued to emasculate the resources of the left flank of the opposition for all these years, began his own political career in post-Soviet Russia in the ranks of the National Patriots. Numerous purges – carried out by the Communist Party at Zyuganov’s behest and culminating in the total ruin of its Moscow city branch – lead to the domination of nationalistic and clerical views within the party leadership.

Dreams of a Russian Pinochet in the Yeltsin era excited supporters of radical economic reforms. And so only in the Russian reality does General Pinochet somehow acquire the characteristics of Lieutenant Colonel Putin or Colonel Kvachkov.

And it is also obvious that the government, whose consciousness has been dominated by the threat of red revenge since 1995, encourages the development of ultra-right groups. And the actions of left and radical-left groups elicit a brutal response from the police, even though there is not a single hint that they would use any violence. Internal Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev’s finger-pointing of the left – which, in his opinion, is responsible for the riots on Manezhnaya – is quite possibly linked with his unprofessionalism, but it is more likely linked with the simple stereotype that threats to the existing order in Russia always come from the left.

The ultra-right usually does not infringe upon private property and the oligarchical regime fears slogans of social justice more than anything else. And the regime’s reaction to the events on Manezhnaya Square is not connected to the rejection of the process itself, but with the necessity to control such potential excesses – as in the case of Kvachkov. That said, the treatises of the Minin and Pozharsky People’s Militia, which include open calls to overthrow the existing government, appeared more than a year ago. It is obvious that Eduard Limonov would have gotten 10 years without the right of correspondence for each line of that text. Until recently, Vladimir Kvachkov got away with it entirely.

In the midst of a growing socio-economic crisis, the government is going to look at the fascistization of society – most of all of its youth – as the main way to channel any desire to protest. An even more aggressive ideological formation is now beginning to crystallize from the deformed seedlings that grew into the crops at Seliger. Putin spoke in this vein when he discussed the restrictions on registration rules for nonresidents, all the way up to criminal liability. Not for foreigners – specifically for Russian citizens. Here we can once again recall the Russian constitution, which Putin’s OMON have already been wiping their feet on for a long time. But the government is already distinctly aware that, at some point, even the OMON won’t be enough.

In a healthy society, there is an acceptable balance on the scale of social differentiation. But by consciously recreating poverty and hopelessness, the government is inevitably becoming a fascist one.

In my aforementioned article, I wrote nearly three years ago: “Today we must call upon those who still foster any illusions about the current regime, and those who no longer foster any illusions, to openly and honestly declare that it is disastrous for our country. We no longer have the right to pretend that the current Russian government can be humanized through ‘small deeds.’ If we do not halt the growth of this dangerous organism today, tomorrow it will prolong its development and inevitably turn into a fascist beast. The logic of history is inexorable.”

Only by turning away from this oligarchical dead end by dismantling the Yeltsin-Putin regime as fast as possible can we save our country from such a catastrophic scenario.

Translation by theotherrussia.org.

A group of youth activists attending Seliger 2010, a summer-long camp that was founded as a training ground for the pro-Kremlin youth group Nashi but is now run directly by the federal government, erected a row of 13 plastic heads on sticks. Each head has a hats bearing Nazi symbols and a picture of a different Russian public figure, including former Soviet dissident Lyudmila Alexeyeva, musician Yury Shevchuk, and jailed oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky.

The installation was originally thought to be organized by Nashi itself, but was later found to be the work of a smaller pro-Kremlin youth group called Stal (“Steel”). According to the group’s LiveJournal page, Stal is a “patriotic movement created for the unification of thinkers and prepared for decisive action for the sake of its country, for the sake of Russia, of youth.” They also call themselves “the weaponry of Russia.”

According to Ekho Moskvy radio, Russian Human Rights Ombudsman Vladimir Lukin is deeply enraged by the installation. He said that it would be hard to do more damage to Russia’s reputation and that the organizers should be severely punished.

Russian bloggers immediately pointed out that the installation violates a federal law banning the public demonstration of Nazi symbolism.

Members of the Public Chamber, a federal body meant to foster dialogue between civil society and the government, called for a full boycott of the camp.

“I am deeply outraged that our best human rights advocates and well-known public figures – Lyudmila Alexeyeva, Nikolai Svanidze – are compared to Nazis,” said Alla Gerber, Public Chamber member and president of the Interregional Holocaust Foundation. “The authors of this installation are irresponsible hooligans, absolutely insane people who don’t know what Nazis are.”

Nashi defended Seliger 2010 for allowing different youth movements to express different points of view, Stal’s being no exception. In a statement posted on its website on Wednesday, Nashi said that the camp’s administration “does not subject participants’ statements to censorship, does not participate in the preparation of installations, does not pay for art objects that delegations bring along.”

Lyudmila Alexeyeva told Ekho Moskvy that public figures would do best to ignore such incidents, and thus she does not plan to file suit for slander against the installation’s organizers.

“Things like this don’t offend me,” said Alexeyeva. “And really, if they originate with Nashi, then excuse me, who is there to be offended by – those who make do without any human qualities, decency, or intelligence? Let them amuse themselves in this ugly fashion. Put up a caricature of an old woman who already looks sufficiently morose. If my grandchildren did this, then I would explain to them that good children don’t do this. But here I’m not going to explain anything.”