Window on Eurasia: Russian Nationalists Urged to Arm Themselves to Defend ’Russian Order'

Paul Goble

Vienna, November 5 – Those taking part in the Russian March in Moscow yesterday – an officially authorized demonstration which organizers claimed attracted 7,000 people but which observers said included only about 700 – were given written instructions on how to acquire guns so that they would be able to defend what nationalist speakers called “the Russian order.”
Such calls in the increasingly overheated atmosphere of the Russian capital given the availability of guns of all kinds there are inherently provocative and could prompt their opponents among non-Russians to arm themselves in response, provide a justification for the authorities to crack down on the nationalists, or, quite possibly, do both.
And while there is as yet no Russian media reporting that Russian nationalist groups who organized similar marches on the Day of National Unity in dozens of places across the Russian Federation handed out the same advice in the same way, it is very probable that the participants received a similar message in one way or another.
Yesterday, Sobkorr.ru’s Anastasiya Petrova and Sofya Krapotkin reported that “each of the participants [in the Moscow Russia March near the monument to the Soldier of the Fatherland} was handed instructions on the acquisition” of gas pistols and others types of “fire arms” (www.sobkorr.ru/news/4AF1714FB8E13.html).
Among the weapons specifically recommended in the handouts given to the Russian nationalists were the OSA, the Makarych, and the Bekas hunting rifle, Petrova and Krapotkin said. And those taking part heard Dmitry Demushkin, the leader of the radical and racist Slavic Union, say that soon “only two things” in Russia will have “real value: food and bullets.”
“Any power,” he continued, “has the right to existence only if it preserves my nation! In Moscow, there are many aliens, but the powers that be consider that there are not any. [These powers] want to bring year yet another million Chinese and yet another million Azerbaijanis,” regardless of what the Russian residents of the city think.
Other speakers offered similarly radical messages. Vladimir Yermolay7ev, a representative of the Movement Against Illegal Immigration (DPNI), said that “the powers that be are afraid that people will demand change.” And because that is so, “we must be together in order to understand our interests and defend them.”
Colonel Vladimir Kvachkov – not otherwise identified but likely a retiree – said that as of December 1, “Russia will not have an army and in March it will not have a nuclear shield.” That means, he continued, “if the powers that be are afraid and do not want to defend our Fatherland, we must do it ourselves.”
The organizers of the Moscow meeting, the Sobkorr.ru reporters said, were the DPNI, the Slavic Union, the Resistance Movement, “and other nationalistic organizations.” The participants shouted out slogans like “A Russian Order for Russia,” “A Russian Power for Russia,” and “Glory to Russia,” and at least some carried Nazi flags.