The Russian National Union () was a Neo-Nazi party in Russia. The party should not be confused with Russian National Unity, a larger group with similar roots, although with no direct connection.
Formation The Russian National Union was first formed in 1993 as a hardline splinter group of the nationalist Pamyat organisation.Antisemitism and Xenophobia: Russia 1996 Based in Moscow, the party was jointly led by Konstantin Kassimovsky and Aleksei Vdovin.Vadim Joseph Rossman, Russian intellectual antisemitism in the post-Communist era, U of Nebraska Press, 2002, p. 257 The new group was supported by Aleksandr Shtilmark and his influential far right journal Chernaya sotnya (Black Hundreds), Shtilmark having quit Pamyat in 1992.Antisemitism and Xenophobia: Russia 1998
The party adopted its own flag, which it claimed represented the letters chi and rho in the Greek alphabet, although critics have argued that it is a deliberate attempt to recall the swastika, including in its use of the Nazi colours of red, white and black.Flag image Members of the party have carried swastika flag at far right rallies however.Jonathan Steele, Eternal Russia: Yeltsin, Gorbachev, and the mirage of democracy, Harvard University Press, 1994, p. 375
Ideology Nazism The RNU became noted for its neo-Nazism and it attracted a strong current of White power skinhead support, helping to co-ordinate the activities of skinhead gangs by the mid-1990s. It stressed strong ethnocentrism and racism as part of its political discourse.Parland, The extreme nationalist threat in Russia, p. 74 RNU also formed alliances with like-minded groups elsewhere, particularly in western Europe.Parland, The extreme nationalist threat in Russia, p. 73
It produced its own newspaper, Shturmovhik, which became noted for the strong anti-Semitism which defined its content.Rossman, Russian intellectual antisemitism, p. 258 Named for a Nazi Party publication Der Stürmer this paper, and its sister magazine Natsiia (Nation) were noted for their heavy reliance on German Nazism.Thomas Parland, The extreme nationalist threat in Russia: the growing influence of Western rightist ideas, Psychology Press, 2005, p. 67 The pages of Shturmovhik also contained regular attacks on Black and Caucasian immigrants. Another newspaper, Russky nablyudatel (Russian Observer), began publication in 1995 under the editorship of R. Lobzova.
Orthodoxy As well as Nazism the RNU emphasised the importance of Russian Orthodoxy to its ideology and saw the religion as a central part of its concept of Russian ethnic identity. Amongst the leading members of the party was Anatolii Makeev, who sought to connect the party's neo-Nazi ideas with a distinctly more Russian brand of nationalism. In 1994 he established the Oprichnina Brotherhood of St Iosof Volotsky, a group that has encouraged violent racism in religious terms and which has established groups in Saint Petersburg and Volgograd, as well as amongst émigrés in Sacramento. Its stated aims are to unite the Orthodox Church and to re-establish the monarchy, although its propaganda focuses mainly on anti-Semitism and neo-Nazism. Makeev is a member of the Russian Catacomb Church, an offshoot of the Russian True Orthodox Church, although his brotherhood retains links to members of both the dissident tendencies and mainstream Russian Orthodox Church.Jonathan Sutton, William Peter van den Bercken, Orthodox Christianity and contemporary Europe, Peeters Publishers, 2003, p. 333
Another extremist Orthodox group, the Soyuz 'Khristianskoe vozrozhdenie' (Union of Christian Rebirth), also held joint meetings with the RNU.
Development The party failed to secure the requisite number of signatures to run candidates in the 1993 Duma election and so did not take part.Astrid S. Tuminez, Russian nationalism since 1856: ideology and the making of foreign policy, Rowman & Littlefield, 2000, p. 204 One candidate was elected as an independent however.P. Ester, Loek Halman, Vladimir Rukavishnikov, Vladimir Olegovich Rukavishnikov, From cold war to cold peace?: a comparative empirical study of Russian and Western political cultures, BRILL, 1997, p. 160
Vdovin was expelled from the RNU in spring 1997 with Kassimovsky confirmed as sole leader of the party. The party disappeared in late 1998 or early 1999 when Kassimovsky began to move away from the religious trappings associated with the RNU. He soon emerged with a new more secular, but equally neo-Nazi, party known as the Russian National Socialist Party.Antisemitism and Xenophobia: Russia 2001
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