Russian National Union
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The Russian National Union (Ру́сский Национа́льний Сою́з, Russky Natsionalny Soyuz) 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
The party adopted its own flag, which it claimed represented the letters
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.[6] It stressed strong ethnocentrism and racism as part of its political discourse.[7] RNU also formed alliances with like-minded groups elsewhere, particularly in western Europe.[6]
It produced its own newspaper, Shturmovhik, which became noted for the strong
Orthodoxy
As well as Nazism the RNU emphasised the importance of
Another extremist Orthodox group, the Soyuz 'Khristianskoe vozrozhdenie' (Union of Christian Rebirth), also held joint meetings with the RNU.[3]
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.[12] One candidate was elected as an independent however.[13]
Vdovin was expelled from the RNU in spring 1997 with Kassimovsky confirmed as sole leader of the party.[3] 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.[10]
References
- ^ a b Antisemitism and Xenophobia: Russia 1996 Archived 2011-06-10 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Vadim Joseph Rossman, Russian intellectual antisemitism in the post-Communist era, U of Nebraska Press, 2002, p. 257
- ^ a b c d Antisemitism and Xenophobia: Russia 1998
- ^ Flag image
- ^ Jonathan Steele, Eternal Russia: Yeltsin, Gorbachev, and the mirage of democracy, Harvard University Press, 1994, p. 375
- ^ a b Parland, The extreme nationalist threat in Russia, p. 73
- ^ Parland, The extreme nationalist threat in Russia, p. 74
- ^ Rossman, Russian intellectual antisemitism, p. 258
- ^ Thomas Parland, The extreme nationalist threat in Russia: the growing influence of Western rightist ideas, Psychology Press, 2005, p. 67
- ^ a b Antisemitism and Xenophobia: Russia 2001 Archived 2008-11-20 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ a b c Jonathan Sutton, William Peter van den Bercken, Orthodox Christianity and contemporary Europe, Peeters Publishers, 2003, p. 333
- ^ Astrid S. Tuminez, Russian nationalism since 1856: ideology and the making of foreign policy, Rowman & Littlefield, 2000, p. 204
- ^ 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