Russia's Blackshirts

Pamyat: Russia's Blackshirts
The Cutting Edge
SBS television
Tuesday, December 8, 8.30pm
Reviewed by Peter Anderson

They wear black uniforms and are described as fascists and extremists. They are Russia's Blackshirts, members of an extreme nationalist movement known as the National Patriotic Front Pamyat.

This one hour documentary produced by a Finnish film group follows the activities of this small group of fanatics (about 100 members in total) through a range of rather unexceptional daily activities from meetings of the Central Committee to participation in demonstrations and activities in the countryside, to selling their paper in the Moscow underground.

Pamyat is not technically a fascist organisation, and it denounces "national socialism" of the Hitler Nazi type as a "derivation" of Marxism. In fact, Pamyat is royalist and anti-Semetic. Pictures of Nicholas II, the last tsar, adorn their ceremonies, but unhappily for them the line of the Romanov dynasty has long since ended.

These blackshirts are Russian Orthodox fundamentalists and extreme Russian nationalists, opposed to both the former Communists and the Yeltsin administration. "We hate Jews and Freemasons, communists and Democrats", says Pamyat leader Vasilyev.

Pamyat "warriors" believe Russia is collapsing and can only be saved by a fundamentalist leader, a monarch. Their program includes a component of rural, peasant sentimentality looking for a return to benevolent feudalism.

This is an interesting documentary with some stunning footage of Moscow and environs and of the Russian countryside. For that alone it is worth watching. But it also provides an inside view of this bizarre, reactionary organisation.

From GLW issue 82