Monday, July 09, 2007

Went to the New York Times page to check what the hell is going on in Pakistan, but got diverted by this piece by Steven Lee Myers on Putin's youth groups:

Yulia Kuliyeva, only 19 and already a commissar, sat at a desk and quizzed each young person who sat opposite her, testing for ideological fitness to participate in summer camp.

[...]

Nashi’s opponents, in fact, deride the organization as a modern manifestation of Komsomol, the youth wing of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The colors and symbols are similar; members carry red books to record their participation in rallies and lectures. And, like the Komsomol, membership in Nashi is viewed as a stepping stone to jobs in government and state corporations.

[...]


Made me sick, of course.

And there was one mistake in the text - here: "the Grigorevtsy, affiliated with the Russian Orthodox Church." I think the group is called "Georgiyevtsy!" - they became quite famous a few weeks ago, when they decided to prevent gays from gathering at some park in downtown Moscow, but ended up getting their own asses kicked instead. The reason I remember the group's name is because someone in LJ quickly renamed them into Gay-orgy-evtsy. And I think it was the wonderful Sergei Dorenko on Radio Echo Moskvy who said that their attackers must've been some straight thugs who got offended when Georgiyevtsy mistook them for gays.

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