Revival of the Armbands

Admittedly, I don't have the time I once did to spend hours each day perusing the many insightful blogs and posts on the web. Feedblitzes make life so much easier, and one blog I eagerly await news from is Sean's Russia Blog . I've been following it for some time and the shear amount of snippets and articles that he gets his hands on amazes me. This morning, cup of joe in hand, I checked into my email and grinned wide at the latest feed from his site.

Not that it's anything to grin over, mind you. As Sean's blog reports, Nashi, the Russian youth organization (that ought to be 'THE' in capital letters), has higher plans than simply providing teens with something to do after school. Nashi is in the process of apparently forming a youth militia to keep the streets clean (not talking about 'green' clean, either). No, this isn't exactly the local chapter of Boys and Girls Club. Groups of teenagers in armband colors of red and yellow may well be directly reporting to local police in attempts to clean up the streets of any irksome elements. Particulars are very important here, and Sean's blog provides a wealth of previous and current information for those of you like myself who anxiously eat up every little detail. Nonetheless, my blog is not here so much as an informational form of journalism but rather a place to spew some thoughts without false pretense (and anyone who suggests blogs aren't just that are dearly foooling themselves).

Let's flash back to the Soviet Komsomol- a youth organization that also sported red bandanas and military garb. Many a fine Leninist devotee anxiously lined up outside of the proper meetings day in and day out, hoping to prove their allegiance to the state and motherland. The process of confirmation into this most hallowed organization was not an easy one, but entry would nearly guarantee future success in the Party and consequently in life. Not only had the youth better prove themselves as good communists, but their friends and family best be members of the Party, as well. Under the purges of Stalin and throughout a healthy smattering of years from the 30s-70s, Komsomol members ought to be willing to play the rat role, supplying vital information on the whereabouts, happenings and even thoughts of those around them. This, of course, was a necessary component of ensuring youths play active roles in society rather than wallow in teenage angst. What's more, it kept them off the streets and made them into productive members of society. In a nutshell, it was in the best interest of the state.

Youths who were already on a troubled path (orphans left over from the Great Patriotic War, those whose parents were imprisoned in the vast gulag system and other riffraff) were of course natural targets of state sponsored help. When the world shunned these lost children, Papa Stalin took them in. They were perfect candidates for the menial jobs of the Gulag where warm bodies were always much welcomed and (rather, because) they were just as readily disposed of. It is just these youths who Solzhenitsyn wrote about in his Gulag Archipelago, describing the children like a naturalist would describe a pack of hyenas, making their own destiny in a world of survival of the fittest- at any cost. Forming roaming packs, the kid gangs in gulag and in freedom patrolled the streets, keeping watch over anything that didn't please them. While Comrade Stalin hoped that they might be used to the State's advantage, ultimately they were only out for their own good (we are talking about teenagers, afterall). They would have no coralling by local authorities and often made it a sport to undermine their superiors. In large numbers, they represented what many dubbed the Thieves- those who often took an oath and lived by the Thieves Law (a code which is still evident in Russian organized crime). And so a generation of Soviets came to be grouped into one of two categories for the most part: those who conformed to the State and those who rebelled in their own interest. The third group-humanists- perhaps the weakest of them all, ironically would survive to see the disentegration of the Union. But perhaps they don't have the last laugh, afterall.

Flashing forward, we have the possibility of new roaming band of teens with legal justification and political affiliations. Certainly we could argue that this is better than the roving bands of anarchist kids and extreme leftists who never fail to leave their marks when the time is right. I'm not entirely certain that Nashi street patrols will be detrimental to Russia, though that depends on our assumptions of Russia and its future. Nashi, afterall, views itself as a protectorate of modern Russia, in all of its often diverging and contradicting charm. What's more, Nashi is well organized, trained and ultimately beholden to a greater power outside of themselves. Whether or not that power runs amuck amidst a a problematic legal landscape remains to be seen. Just food for thought for the day, courtesy of the wide world of blogging.