Young Guard of United Russia from the city of Bor, Nizhny Novgorod Region. The regional center, Bolshaya Pokrovskaya, the Russian flag holiday.
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Young Guard of United Russia (MGER, Mol. Gvardiya, Mol-gvardiya, Pusomol) — the youth organization of the principal ruling party. Created as a replacement for the previously existing "Youth Unity." The core coordinating membership underwent changes, but all members of "Youth Unity" automatically became members of the "Young Guard of United Russia."

The founding congress of the organization was held on November 16, 2005, in Voronezh, at the Dzerzhinsky sanatorium and on the grounds of the shuttered Voronezh Joint-Stock Aircraft Manufacturing Society (VASO).

In Russia's contemporary political system it serves as the equivalent of the Soviet Komsomol.

The Nature of the Phenomenon

An incubator for future members of United Russia.

It stands guard against orange revolutions. It is tasked with ridiculing socially unsuccessful or dangerous individuals.

Unlike the "Nashi" Movement, it tends more toward paper-based and educational work than toward outdoor field campaigns. It is most prominently represented in large cities.

As the Russian newspaper Kommersant reported in 2006, the leadership of the Young Guard had set before its activists an ambitious and far-reaching task: to identify corrupt officials and politicians among regional United Russia members.

In this way, the newspaper wrote, "the Young Guards were to become a kind of 'special forces' of the Kremlin — engaged not in fighting the 'orange' opposition, as the other youth movement 'Nashi' does, but in initiating personnel purges within the ranks of the ruling party itself."

Useful Activities

It carries out down-to-earth, practical — rather than ritual — recruitment into provincial bureaucratic circles, which favorably distinguishes it from the "Nashi" Movement.

At field sessions, the organization tends to limit itself to flag-waving and writing critical articles.

A reliable springboard for not-particularly-successful young people who wish to build a career "through civic channels."

Regional Structure and Leaders

In the Nizhny Novgorod region there are 59 local branches of the United Russia party. Today, virtually every one of them has a Young Guard branch attached to it.

The Nizhny Novgorod regional headquarters of the organization includes:

  • Bocharov Sergey — Head of the Nizhny Novgorod Regional Headquarters of the All-Russian Public Organization "Young Guard of United Russia"
  • Mironchik Ksenia — Assistant Head of the Regional Headquarters of the All-Russian Public Organization "Young Guard of United Russia"
  • Guryanov Gennady — Deputy Head of the Regional Headquarters for Public Relations
  • Borshchevsky Alexander — Deputy Head of the Regional Headquarters for Ideological Work
  • Fomin Ilya — coordinator of the "Talented Youth" and "Good Will" projects
  • Davydov Maxim — coordinator of the "Youth Expert Club" program
  • Larin Alexey — coordinator of the "Young Regional Leaders" project
  • Guryanov Alexey — coordinator of the "Healthy Alternative" project
  • Markin Daniil — coordinator of the "Healthy Lifestyle" program
  • Baldin Alexander — coordinator of the "Human Rights Protection" program
  • Sazonov Petr — coordinator of the "Voluntary Youth Brigades" project
  • Shafarutdinov Timur — coordinator of the "International Student" project
  • Vargasov Alexey — coordinator of the "Orthodoxy" program
  • Sorokina Ekaterina — coordinator of the "Personnel Reserve" project

Membership figures as of 2009:

Young Guard of United Russia and US State Department Grants

Lenta.ru, 27.01.2012 at 20:34:23:

A representative of the Young Guard of United Russia explained the pro-Kremlin youth movement's participation in US State Department programs as a necessity for "exchange of experience." This was reported on the MGER website.

The Chairman of the MGER Coordinating Council and State Duma deputy Timur Prokopenko stated that the information distributed earlier by the Communist Party regarding MGER receiving grants from the American side "is emotional in nature." "They are trying to turn a possible study trip for the exchange of experience into a 'witch hunt,'" said Prokopenko.

The MGER representative clarified that the ties mentioned by the Communists had been established through Youth Parliament". "The Youth Parliament is a civil society institution; it includes representatives of all political parties represented in the State Duma. On the eve of the State Duma elections, I signed an agreement with the leaders of the youth organizations of the Communist Party, the LDPR, and A Just Russia on equal representation in Youth Parliament events," Prokopenko explained.

On January 27, the Communist Party submitted a proposal to the State Duma requesting that the Russian Foreign Ministry be asked about the participation of young parliamentarians and officials in the "Legislative Fellowship Program" retraining program, funded by the US State Department. The Communists' inquiry drew attention to the fact that the organization managing State Department grants and travel packages is a partner of Russia's Central Election Commission, and that it is headed by MGER activists.

The Communist Party statement also mentioned the "Unified Portal of the Youth Parliamentary Movement of Russia." The Communists claim that it is being used, "in effect, to 'recruit' young parliamentarians and executive branch employees to participate in programs directly funded by the US State Department."

During the course of that Friday, the State Duma considered and rejected the Communist proposal by a majority vote.

The occasion for the Communist Party initiative was the United Russia members' own criticisms accusing A Just Russia and other opposition representatives of ties with the US State Department. In particular, much attention was drawn to the visit by opposition figures to the new American ambassador Michael McFaul, in which Just Russia deputy Ilya Ponomarev participated.

In discussions among Nizhny Novgorod residents

The Dissenting View of Sergey Bocharov

"Member of the virtual Political Council of the Guard" Sergey Bocharov wrote an article describing current trends in the Young Guard of United Russia.

The article was intended for publication on the official Young Guard website, but was rejected by the site's editorial leadership.

We reproduce its text in full.

RES PUBLICA GVARDIYA dedicated to the new Bolsheviks

I am writing this article on the back of the parliamentary mandates that the Guard never received. Understanding that it is pointless to lament lost opportunities, what matters is thinking about the future. About the hide of that bear which is now roaring and industriously snapping young trees in the forest. Does the Young Guard have a future, and what does it look like?

I came to the Guard in 2006, having served as the leader of the Nashi movement in Nizhny Novgorod Region — numerous, strong, overflowing three offices in the city center — and accepted United Russia's offer of assistance in reforming its own youth movement, taking up the role of chief specialist for youth affairs at the Party's regional executive committee. It was an extremely interesting and creative challenge: starting from a virtually zero resource base, explaining to senior comrades that a Young Guard member could do much more than grip the shaft of a flagpole cut from a plastic pipe, to build an organization, to convince creative and charismatic people that their free time could be spent not only on clubs, sports teams, outdoor recreation, or KVN comedy, but on practical work within the Party and for the state. Especially when you genuinely believe in it yourself.

It was the era of mass demonstrations. Vasily Yakemenko, with his Moscow crowds numbering in the thousands — terrifying every foreign journalist — had set a high standard. Hundreds of pickets, dozens of events with hundreds of participants, and of course enormous gatherings. The thrill of young voices in a large crowd of like-minded people chanting slogans in unison, of shouting something into a megaphone from a stage as though no one can hear you at all. At that moment all the pictures in the history textbooks illustrating the disposition of troops on Senate Square, or the arrows marking the movement of sailors through Petrograd's streets in 1917, begin to seem like the staging of a carefully planned mass rally. First Nashi, then gradually the Guard, mastered this instrument — making it not faceless and white, like the identical beards of a multitude of Father Frosts, but finding in it a political purpose. Back then it genuinely seemed that through demonstrations you were saving the country from a foreign venture-capital project — the "Maidan" — and from possible chaos. After all, everyone knows that in Russia any social revolution immediately takes on the color of blood. And that cannot be allowed. But after a year of working in the Party, I could clearly see the abyss separating demonstrations staged for their own sake from real political work — work with ideas and meaning.

A political system was gradually being constructed in the country. A debate arose about fresh cadres. I remember all those talking points written for yet another seasoned newsmaker deputy, laden with idioms like "youth is our future" and "we will raise our own successors." Youth as a vast PR project — an interesting topic for all of society, and many climbed aboard it then. But the Party's need, at least, for fresh blood was genuine. Then, as the rebel Pelevin aptly put it, "the first sputnik — a four-tailed spermatozoon of the future that never arrived" — emerged in the form of the "Politizavod" project. A chance for the chosen few, favored by Fortune, and the shattering of hopes for many. The first experience laying bare the wretchedness and atavism of our public politics and the moss-covered pseudo-political rhetoric of many party leaders. People at Politizavod spoke almost exclusively in slogans, but without notes this time. "In the name of Turchak," under conditions of wild-west politics where the price of a place on many parties' candidate lists was a public document, a twenty-percent quota for youth was "hammered out." Just as barter emerged as a phenomenon of economic life in the wild market conditions of the nineties.

The Guard began to fill with young people — careerists and civic activists, rebels and intellectuals — United Russia had opened the floodgates for youth. True, many cunning regional party operators merely cracked the window, but some youth leaders subsequently managed to climb right through it.

And so the golden age of the Young Guard began. The years 2007–2008. A powerful motivator appeared: "Youth into power" — the Party discovered a feedback mechanism that cynical political technologists would later call "the youth resource." The tangible return was votes added to the Party's tally. Second-order projects emerged, more elaborately organized than mere street actions. "The Factory of Meanings" (and today's nostalgia for Roman Romanov and his still-underappreciated book about yuppies) restored the concept of live discussion and debate to the youth milieu. The "Youth Electoral Campaign Headquarters" produced a host of creative and inventive solutions that drew grimaces of astonishment from the stony faces of well-seasoned and highly paid political technologists. I vividly remember a thousand young people we assembled in the central square of another city in the Volga Region, defending the fate of their own university against a bloodthirsty Socialist-Revolutionary mayor. And, most importantly, just as the tide leaves much of value on the sandbar when it ebbs, so the campaigns of 2007 and 2008, having receded, left behind within the Guard those who now form its core team — Young Guard members hardened in political battles.

It was then that the organization's first heresies arose — the so-called "political departments," which preached complete independence from the Party while reaching an extreme degree of recklessness: rallies with chants of "governor resign," the burning of effigies of unwanted politicians, bandanas covering faces in the glow of flares. In a little article titled "The Soft Path of Breakthrough Politics," contrasting with this phenomenon, I described the Trojan horse and the wolf in sheep's clothing as images of HOW youth should enter power. As was to be expected, this current did not last long, and the overwhelming majority of its adherents — Don Quixotes stubbornly charging at windmills — having made too much noise too quickly, permanently closed for themselves any path into the regional elite or any dialogue with the authorities.

But time passed, as if proving the thesis about the role of the individual in history: with the departure of strong leaders to responsible government posts, something broke inside the organization. The navigable channel of the youth river gradually silted up. Outwardly everything proceeded normally. But gradually we moved from bold electoral decisions to monitoring the situation in the regions; from live hands-on work to writing endless reports; from proposing our own formats for political actions to receiving top-down "templates" (the latest masterpieces of these intellectual exercises — such as dumping garbage at the mayor's door or picketing and thereby destroying the reputation of a town-forming enterprise — simply have to be ignored on grounds of elementary common sense).

The impulse driving the organization's development ceased to emanate from a single point and resonate with regional headquarters; the amplitude of oscillation weakened considerably. This was undeniably a challenge. The Guard's regional headquarters, effectively operating in autonomous mode, built their own policies. Some people left, some headquarters collapsed under the pressure, but those of us who had always understood the priority of regional domestic politics for developing our own team unquestionably grew stronger.

The era of quotas gave way to the era of political competition. Then, suddenly, like a blow — the most recent electoral campaigns. Difficult negotiations with heads of municipalities and sitting deputies, battles for primaries, the party political council as an arena for discussion, grueling campaigns in depressed municipalities. Crisis — and that explains everything.

Despite all this, we brought a sufficient number of young deputies into power. Meeting many of them afterward — relaxed after the elections, asking amid the smoldering ruins of the Youth Federal Assembly, "So what do we do next?" — one grasps the absurdity and ruinousness of the idea of power for power's sake, of all those youth quotas. "Getting in because you're young" is a false goal. A young deputy does not in itself mean a qualitative leap forward, just as having a personal Twitter account does not mean that reading the void inside someone's head will be interesting. Our organization has excelled greatly in matters of technology but has almost entirely collapsed when it comes to ideology and the search for meaning. Sometimes "trolling," like that little mirror, tells the plain truth. While the Guard was sleeping, the agenda changed. Modernization.

I encountered that moment in exile. Of my own free will, having refused to take part in regional political intrigues, I went to work among the youth parliamentarians. In exile I met interesting people, and the all-Russian health resort in Anapa very quickly became a "political hotspot." There it became clearly visible that a few robots made of liquid metal would be guaranteed to defeat rust-eaten Terminators. In response to the state's demand for modernization, a new youth policy — an intellectual one — must emerge. Without the stamp of intellect and subtle political decision-making, the street golem that dropped its flag in 2008 will remain motionless. Not the slogan "the opposition is unconstructive, therefore they are scoundrels," but parliamentary discussion. Not a few forlorn placards against something-or-other, but a new law restricting that something in general. And, finally, not a declaration of the deficiency of reality, but a proposal of new mechanisms for development. "Know-how" — I know how. Those who work professionally in youth politics are well acquainted with this youthful strength — the ability to criticize — and with the corresponding weakness: offering constructive proposals and new solutions. Only the most talented among us are capable of that, just a handful, but many such people are now being drawn together by the giant magnets of networked youth organizations. Squandering such people by offering them a false goal is a crime against the state.

Rolling up our sleeves, we began to work. First we changed the entire system by which youth parliaments are formed: elections only. We proposed a new voting method — by SMS. We spotted a gap in the political system — a personnel famine at the municipal level — and, with the support of the Plenipotentiary Representative's Office in the Volga Federal District, created more than 350 youth chambers in municipalities as a civic school for future local elites. In just one federal district, 250,000 people aged 16 to 30 cast votes — the largest youth project in the country's recent history.

But here lies another serious lesson: the boundaries of subcultures are very blurred, and their growth has a ceiling. The "Kremlin youth subculture," represented by several large civic organizations, will never become a mass phenomenon. One must understand this and see what a sharp rise in negative ratings is provoked by media campaigns. And such campaigns fall very organically on public opinion, regardless of what anyone thinks about "dirty orders."

But the modernization movement is the movement of an entire generation, and so what is needed is not a subculture but shared solidarity. Discussing ideology, at a first approximation we managed to feel our way toward it: it is an image of Russia's future, a dream. A national foresight project for left and right, for the office poor and the state-sponsored privileged.

From this vantage point, the role of the Young Guard in the grand chorus stands out in sharp relief — a loud solo. No one else possesses such political experience and technological arsenal; no one else has come so close to the question of personnel rotation in politics; no one has grasped the dominance of talented youth in the executive branch over deputy activity under current conditions of development; no one else has passed through such fire and such water to the sound of false brass instruments, and yet preserved both the team and political agency.

It is time to recognize that the agenda of today — and indeed of tomorrow — is not about rolling a wheelchair up a rectangular ramp or making noise and shouting outside administrative buildings, but about new solutions and talented personnel across diverse fields and industries.

The questions "How many Young Guard members are now working at Skolkovo?", "How will the proposals of young deputies be quantitatively reflected in an improved quality of life?", "Which of the Guard's regional social projects are being successfully implemented by the Government in the interests of the population?", "What mechanisms have been proposed for attracting investment into a municipality's budget?", "Within what timeframe can we create an e-Government system in a given region?" seem to me more momentous than questions along the lines of "Should the supreme commander-in-chief's clerk head the Association of Bryansk Partisans?"

The main thing is to feel the current of time and to remember the river one cannot step into twice. Only a new agenda and only fundamentally new approaches — that is the last chance and the guarantee of the future of the Young Guard. That team in which, as is well known, there are no former members.

…The sparrows that had been wheeling above the rice field descended and splashed into the warm yellow mud. Filling the sunny morning with loud chirping, they lifted drops of water in their beaks and swallowed them as if gargling a sore throat. Fluffed up, they dipped their feathers into the puddle, and the males proudly displayed the dark streaks on their fanned-out wings.

There was no room for error. Almost without breathing, carefully wiping the sweat from his brow, he crawled several meters, trying not to show himself above the ditch. Then, very slowly, as if moved by an irresistible force, he parted the turquoise grass and, narrowing his eyes, drew back the slingshot, having set a small lead ball in its firing band. An instant, and a light breath of air struck the nearest sparrow in the chest, flinging it into the middle of a large puddle. The flock, chirping in fright, took off and rushed toward Shanghai.

With a joyful shout, the man leapt out of the ditch and, heedless of the mud flying from under his feet, rushed toward the dead bird. His name was Li Chong Yu; he was young and hot-blooded, a faithful Red Guard of the great Celestial Empire…

  • Res publica — the common cause (Lat.)

Member of the Guard's virtual Political Council, Sergey Bocharov

Official website

Nizhny Novgorod branch contacts

Address

Phone numbers

  • Phone/fax: 8 (312) 344-226, 344-250

Email

See also