On 4 November fascists and other ultra-nationalists marked the Day of Popular Unity by staging a series of demonstrations and rallies in Russia cities.
The Day of Popular Unity is an official public holiday which commemorates the 1612 liberation of Moscow from Polish occupation. The holiday was celebrated under the Tsars, scrapped by the Bolsheviks in 1917, and reinstituted by Putin in 2005.
Fascists have also “adopted” the holiday to stage their own “Russian March” in the big cities. Organisations involved include the Eurasian Youth Movement, the Movement Against Illegal Immigration, the National Patriotic Front, Russian National Unity, the “Truth Community” and “Russian Order”.
According to police estimates, around 75,000 people took part in Moscow. Speakers at the closing rally included the leaders of the Russian Communist Party and the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia, both of which, despite their names, are right-wing nationalist parties.
Placards on the demonstration read “Novorossiya – We Are With You”. Speakers at the rally called on the Russian government to officially recognize the results of the “elections” held in the Lugansk and Donetsk “People’s Republics” the preceding weekend.
Two Russian Marches were held in Moscow – one (in Shchukino district) organised by supporters of Russian military aggression against Ukraine, and one (in Lyublino district) by its opponents. (Some Russian fascists support the aggression as a step towards the restoration of Russia’s national grandeur. Others oppose it because they see it as an attack on compatriots of the Slav nation.)
The former are split into two factions: those who generally support Putin’s actions; and those who regard Putin as a traitor for not having launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
The latter are also split into two factions: those who simply call for an end to the war; and those who support Ukraine in its conflict with the separatists and their Russian backers.
Around 1,500 people attended the Shchukino march. Strelkov-Girkin, former military commander of the separatists, was due to have spoken at the march but pulled out at the last minute after one of its organisers criticized Putin:
“The worst thing which Russian patriots can do right now is to support slogans calling for the overthrow of the president in a situation of external war. This leads directly to a new war (civil war) which would be of benefit only and exclusively to the enemies of Russia.”
The Lyublino march, organized by the National-Revolutionary Bloc, demonstrated their politics by burning the flag of “Novorossiya”. According to one of its Don Cossack participants:
“It was Jews who provoked the war in Ukraine. Putin is a Jew as well. In any case, a genuine Cossack does not serve the president, only the Tsar. Russia, Ukraine and Belorussia must unite peacefully under a Tsar.”
And according to a speaker at the Lyublino event: “Russia should not get dragged into the affairs of Ukraine. These matters have nothing to do with us. We have not sorted out our own problems. And the main problem is illegal immigration and the sway exerted by migrants.”
The same divisions between and within factions of the far right found expression in the staging of three different demonstrations in St. Petersburg. The slogans included: “Odessa – Russian City!”, “Kharkov – Russian City!”, “Donetsk – Russian City!”, “Long Live Novorossiya”, “Long Live Strelkov!”, and “Long Live Russia!”
While a pro-war Russian March was also staged by the Russian Imperial Movement, the People’s Assembly, and the “Motherland” party, an anti-war “Right-wing Russian March of the Column of White Racists and National-Socialists” was staged by the Slavic Force of the North-West, Russian Right Sector, Edelweiss, and the “Right Faction of the Association ‘Russians’”.
In Saratov – another city which witnessed two Russian Marches – an organiser of the pro-war pro-Novorossiya event explained the difference between the two marches:
“We are for the people, for the militia who are fighting in Ukraine. We want Novorossiya to be a free state… Ours is the traditional march, not the liberal March of Peace.”
“Peace for them is the peace of the junta, which daily murders the people of Novorossiya when they bomb Donetsk and Lugansk. I think that that march should be called the march of the non-traditional orientation. Their orientation is to the west, to same-sex marriages and gay parades.”
Fearing clashes over the issue of Ukraine, organisers of the Russian March in Krasnodar in previous years cancelled the event.
The result was two marches: one (pro-war) organized by the National Liberation Movement, and one (anti-war) organized by former members of Russian National Unity, the Movement Against Illegal Immigration, and miscellaneous Cossacks and football ultras.
The two groups assembled in different venues, merged for the latter part of their demonstrations, and then broke up again at the concluding rally as soon as the pro-war demonstrators began chanting pro-Putin slogans.
The pro-war faction continued with their rally: “After our defeat in the Cold War, Russia is living off just 4% of its potential. The Constitution of the Russian Republic? Made in the USA! We must support Novorossiya!”
The anti-war faction staged its own rally, largely consisting of believers in various forms of paganism and what one journalist called “supporters of non-academic versions of history.”
In Kaliningrad what began as a single Russian March ended up as two. Police had to intervene after supporters of Novorossiya and bikers turned up to a march organized by anti-war monarchists, forcing the monarchists to desert their own demonstration and stage a separate one.(Russian bikers are politically organized and very right-wing. Their leading figure, “The Surgeon”, works closely with the veteran Russian fascist Alexander Prokhanov. For bikers’ pro-Novorossiya campaigning, see this video.)
In Sevastopol (Russian-occupied Crimea) the authorities replaced the planned Russian March by a March of Unity, on the grounds that Sevastopol was now part of Russia, and the word “Russian” was therefore superfluous.
Unsurprisingly, Crimean Tatars did not mobilise for the event. For a number of overlapping reasons, all the Russian Marches staged in these and other cities were smaller than in recent years.
Putin has annexed Crimea and sent troops and military hardware into south-east Ukraine. He has attacked gay rights and other civil liberties. He has faced down the west. The media have whipped up a wave of patriotism, centred on Putin’s actions.
Just as support for the then National Front slumped after Thatcher’s election in 1979 - as so many of her policies catered for the tastes of NF voters - so too many traditional supporters of Russian Marches now see Putin as someone implementing their politics of his own accord, thereby reducing the motivation to turn out for the marches.
Not all Russian March activists share that view. Some see Putin as a traitor. In response, the authorities have cracked down, within limits, on the staging of Russian Marches. This too has impacted on the numbers on the marches.
Most important of all, Russian fascists are fundamentally split over the issue of Ukraine. While fighting on different sides in the same war is a definite sign of political confusion, one thing is for sure: as far as socialists are concerned, these people can’t shoot dead enough of each other.
Photos of the demonstrations here.
Correcting an ommission
Unfortunately, a link paragraph has disappeared into cyberspace. The march in Moscow which had 75,000 people on it was the official Day of Popular Unity march, not a march organised by hard-core out-and-out fascists. Things are bad in Russia with the far right. But not so bad that the fascists can mobilise 75,000 people in Moscow for a demonstration.