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The Young Guard of United Russia (MGER, Mol. Guard, Mol-guard, Pusomol) is a youth organization attached to the main party of power. It was created to replace the previously existing "Youth Unity." The core coordinating staff underwent changes, but all members of "Youth Unity" automatically became members of the "Young Guard of United Russia."

The founding congress of the organization took place on November 16, 2005, in Voronezh, at the Dzerzhinsky Sanatorium and on the grounds of the closed Voronezh Joint-Stock Aircraft Manufacturing Company (VASO).

In the modern political system of Russia, it is the analogue of the Soviet Komsomol.

The Essence of the Phenomenon

An incubator for adult members of "United Russia".

Stands guard against orange revolutions. Meant to ridicule socially unsuccessful or dangerous individuals.

Unlike the "Nashi Movement," it leans more toward paperwork and educational activity than field actions in the fresh air. It is most strongly represented in large cities.

In the State Duma of the sixth convocation (2011–2016), he was a member of the committee on civil, criminal, arbitration, and procedural legislation.[1]остоящих in "United Russia."

Thus, the newspaper wrote, "the Young Guardsmen are to become a sort of Kremlin 'special forces,' which will deal not with fighting the 'orange' opposition, as the other youth movement, 'Nashi,' does, but with initiating personnel purges within the ranks of the party of power itself."

Useful Activities

Carries out down-to-earth, practical rather than ritual recruitment into provincial bureaucratic circles, which compares favorably with the "Nashi Movement."

On field sessions, the community strives to limit itself to waving flags and writing critical articles.

A reliable springboard for not-so-successful young people who want to build a career "along public lines."

Regional Structure and Leaders

In the Nizhny Novgorod region there are 59 local branches of the "United Russia" party. Today, branches of the "Young Guard" have been established on the basis of nearly every one of them.

The Nizhny Novgorod regional headquarters of the latter organization includes:

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

Membership of the organization as of 2009:

The Young Guard of "United Russia" and U.S. State Department Grants

Lenta.ru, January 27, 2012, 8:34:23 p.m.:

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

Timur Prokopenko, Chairman of the MGER Coordination Council and a deputy of the Russian State Duma, stated that the information previously circulated by the Communist Party about MGER receiving grants from the American side "is emotional in nature." "They are trying to turn possible study for the purpose of exchanging experience into a 'witch hunt,'" Prokopenko said.

A MGER representative explained that the ties mentioned by the Communists were established through the so-called "youth parliament". "The Youth Parliament is an institution of civil society; it includes representatives of all the 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 KPRF, the LDPR, and A Just Russia on parity representation in the events of the youth parliament," Prokopenko said.

On January 27, the KPRF submitted a proposal to the State Duma to send an inquiry to the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs about the participation of young parliamentarians and officials in the "Legislative Fellowship Program," a retraining program funded by the U.S. State Department. The Communists' inquiry drew attention to the fact that the structure that administers the State Department's grants and travel vouchers is a partner of the Central Election Commission of the Russian Federation and is headed by MGER activists.

The KPRF statement also mentions the "Unified Portal of the Youth Parliamentary Movement of Russia." The Communists claim that on it, "in essence, 'recruitment' is carried out of young parliamentarians and employees of executive authorities for participation in programs directly funded by the U.S. State Department."

On Friday, the State Duma considered the Communists' proposal and rejected it by a majority vote.

The occasion for the KPRF initiative was accusations from United Russia members, who reproached A Just Russia and other representatives of the opposition for ties with the U.S. State Department. In particular, there was wide discussion of the opposition figures' visit to the new American ambassador Michael McFaul, in which the A Just Russia deputy Ilya Ponomarev took part.

The Dissenting Opinion of Sergey Bocharov

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

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

We present its text in full.

RES PUBLICA GUARD dedicated to the new Bolsheviks

I am writing this article on the rinds of the deputy mandates the Guard never received. Understanding that it is pointless to mourn lost opportunities, it is important to think about the future. About the hide of that bear who is now roaring and, in a proprietary way, breaking young trees in the forest. Does the "Young Guard" have a future, and what is it?

I came to the Guard in 2006, having been the head of the "Nashi" movement in the Nizhny Novgorod Region — numerous, strong, no longer fitting into three offices in the city center. I accepted United Russia's offer to help reform its own youth movement and was hired as chief specialist for youth work in the Party's regional executive committee. It was an extremely interesting and creative task: with a practically zero resource base, explaining to senior comrades that a guardsman can do much more than clench in his strong fists a flagpole cut from plastic pipe, to build an organization, and to convince creative and charismatic people that free time can be spent not only on a club, a sports team, outdoor recreation, or KVN, but on practical work for the Party and for the state. Especially when you sincerely believe in it yourself.

That was the time of mass actions. Vasily Yakemenko with his Moscow multitudes of thousands, who terrified all the foreign journalists, set a high standard. Hundreds of pickets, dozens of events with hundreds of participants, and, of course, huge events. The drive when young voices in a big crowd of like-minded people chant slogans in unison, when you shout something into a megaphone on stage as if you could not be heard at all. Then all the pictures in the history textbook illustrating the positions of troops on Senate Square, or the arrows marking the movement of sailors through the streets of Petrograd in 1917, you begin to perceive as the staging of a carefully thought-out mass action.

First "Nashi," then gradually the "Guard" mastered this tool, making it not faceless and white, like the Chinese beards of numerous Santa Clauses, but finding a political occasion. Back then it really seemed that with actions you were saving the country from a foreign venture project: "Maidan" and possible chaos. After all, everyone knows that in Russia any social revolution immediately turns the color of blood. And that must not be allowed under any circumstances. But after a year of working in the Party, I began to see clearly the abyss separating actions for the sake of actions from real political work, work with meanings.

A political system was gradually being built in the country. A discussion arose about new cadres. I remember all those talking points written for yet another seasoned deputy-newsmaker, with the idioms "youth is our future," "we will raise our own successors." Youth as a huge PR project. A topic interesting to society as a whole, and many rode it back then. But the need, at least of the Party, for fresh blood was real. Then, as the rebel Pelevin aptly put it, "the first satellite — a four-tailed spermatozoon of a future that never came," the "Politzavod" project appeared. A chance for a few, chosen by Fortune, and the collapse of hopes for many.

A first experience that exposed the wretchedness and atavism of our public politics and the mossy pseudo-political rhetoric of many party leaders. At Politzavod they spoke mostly only in slogans, but without notes by now. "In the name of Turchak," under conditions of wild politics, when the price of a place on the lists of many parties was a public document, a twenty-percent quota for youth was "knocked out." Just as barter appeared as a phenomenon of economic life under the conditions of the wild market of the nineties.

The Guard began to fill with young people, careerists and activists, rebels and intellectuals — United Russia opened a sluice gate to youth. True, many cunning regional party figures only opened a small window pane, but some youth leaders later climbed in precisely through it.

So the golden age of the Young Guard arrived. 2007–2008. A powerful motivator appeared: "Youth into power," and feedback opened up for the Party, which cynical political technologists would later call the "youth resource." A concrete return — votes in the elections, a plus in the party's piggy bank. Second-order projects appeared, more complexly organized than just a set of street actions. The "Factory of Meanings" (and today's nostalgia for Roman Romanov and his book about yuppies, still unappreciated by the generation), which brought back the notion of live discussion and debate to the youth milieu. The "Youth Election Headquarters" and many creative and interesting solutions that provoked grimaces of surprise on the stone faces of seasoned and highly paid political technologists.

I clearly remember a thousand young people we gathered on the central square of a Volga city not our own, defending the fate of their own university against a bloodthirsty SR mayor. And most importantly, just as an ebb tide leaves many useful things on the shoals, so the campaigns of 2007 and 2008, having rolled back, left in the Guard those who now make up its core team — Young Guardsmen tempered in political battles.

Then the first heresies arose in the organization, the so-called "political departments," which preached complete independence from the Party combined with an extreme degree of recklessness: rallies with shouts of "governor, resign," burning effigies of disliked politicians, bandanas covering faces in the light of flares. In a little article, "The Soft Path of Breakthrough Politics," in contrast to this phenomenon, I described the Trojan horse and the wolf in sheep's clothing as images of HOW youth should enter power. As might have been expected, this current did not last long, and the overwhelming majority of its adherents — Don Quixotes stubbornly charging at a windmill, who had managed to carouse too actively — closed off for themselves forever the path into the regional elite and into dialogue with the authorities.

But time went on, as if proving the thesis about the role of the individual in history: with the departure of strong leaders to important government posts, something broke inside the organization. Gradually the navigable channel of the youth river silted up. Outwardly everything was going normally. But little by little we moved from bold electoral decisions to monitoring the situation in the regions, from live work to writing endless reports, from proposing our own formats of political actions to "cells" handed down from above (the latest masterpieces of these intellectual exercises, such as dumping garbage at the mayor's door or picketing a city-forming enterprise and wrecking its reputation, simply have to be ignored out of elementary common sense).

The impulse for the organization's development stopped coming from a single point and resonating with the regional headquarters; the amplitude of oscillations weakened greatly. Undoubtedly, this was a challenge. The Guard's regional headquarters, having effectively found themselves in an autonomous mode of work, built their own policies. Some left, some headquarters burst under the pressure, but those of us who always understood the priority of regional domestic politics for building our own team certainly became stronger.

The time of quotas passed and the time of political competition came. Suddenly, like a blow, the latest election campaigns. Difficult negotiations with heads of administrations and sitting deputies, the battle for primaries, the party political council as a place for discussions, difficult campaigns in depressed municipalities. The crisis, and that explains everything.

But despite this, we got a sufficient number of young deputies into power. Later, meeting many of them, relaxed after the elections and asking, amid the smoking ruins of the Youth Federal Assembly, "So what do we do now?", you understand the absurdity and fatality of the idea of power for the sake of power, of all the quotas for youth. "Getting through because you are young" is a false goal. A young deputy does not yet mean a qualitative leap forward, just as having a personal Twitter does not mean that reading the emptiness in someone's head will be interesting. Our organization greatly succeeded in matters of technology but almost completely fell short in matters of ideology and the search for meanings. Sometimes "trolling," like that little mirror, tells the plain truth. While the Guard slept, the agenda changed. Modernization.

I met this event in exile. Of my own will, having refused to take part in regional political conspiracies, I left to work among youth parliamentarians. In exile I met interesting people, and the all-Russian resort in Anapa very quickly turned into a "political hot spot." Here it became clearly visible that a few liquid-metal robots would certainly defeat rusted Terminators. In response to the state's demand for modernization, a new youth policy must come, an intellectual one. Without the seal of intellect and subtle political decisions, the street golem that dropped the flag to the ground in 2008 will remain motionless. Not the slogan "the opposition is unconstructive, therefore they are jerks," but parliamentary discussion.

Not a few forlorn pickets against something or other, but a new law restricting that something as a whole. And, finally, not a statement of the defectiveness of reality, but a proposal of new mechanisms of development. "Know how." Professionals of youth politics are well acquainted with this youthful strong side — criticizing — and weak side — offering constructive proposals and new solutions. Only the most talented of us are capable of that, a handful, but many such people are now gathered together by the giant magnets of networked youth organizations. To lose such people by offering them a false goal is a crime against the state.

Rolling up our sleeves, we began work. First we changed the entire system of forming youth parliaments: elections only. We proposed a new way of voting — by SMS. We saw a gap in the political system — a personnel shortage at the municipal level — and, with the support of the Presidential Envoy's Office in the Volga Federal District, created more than 350 youth chambers in municipalities, a public school for future local elites. In just one federal district, 250,000 people aged 16 to 30 voted — the largest youth project in the country's recent history.

But here there is another serious lesson: the boundaries of subcultures are very blurred, and their growth has a limit. The "Kremlin youth subculture," represented by several large public organizations, will never become a mass phenomenon. This must be understood, and one must see what rapid growth in negative ratings a media campaign provokes. And this campaign lies very organically on public opinion, however anyone may regard it as a "dirty commission."

But the modernization movement is the movement of an entire generation, so what is needed is not a subculture but general solidarity. Debating ideology, in a first approximation we have managed to grope our way toward it: it is the image of Russia's future, a dream. A national foresight project for left and right, for office paupers and state-fed rich kids.

And from this standpoint, the role and the loud solo of the "Young Guard" in the great choir stand out in relief. No one else has such political experience and such an arsenal of technologies, no one else has come so close to the question of rotating personnel in politics, no one else has grasped the dominance of talented young people in the executive branch over legislative activity in modern conditions of development, no one else has gone through such fire and such water to the sound of false brass trumpets while preserving their team and their political agency.

It is time to realize that today's agenda is not about rolling a wheelchair onto a rectangular ramp, nor about noise and shouting beneath the windows of administrative buildings, but about new solutions and talented personnel in various spheres and sectors.

The questions "How many Young Guard members are working in Skolkovo now?", "How will the proposals of young deputies quantitatively affect the improvement of quality of life?", "Which regional social projects of the Guard are being successfully implemented by the Government in the interests of the population?", "What mechanisms have been proposed for attracting investment into the municipal budget?", "How soon can we create a system of electronic government in a single given region?" seem to me more momentous than questions like "Should the supreme commander-in-chief's scribe head the Association of Bryansk Partisans?"

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

…The sparrows that had been circling over the rice field dropped lower and plopped down 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 rinsing a sore throat. Fluffing up their feathers, they dipped them in the puddle, and the males proudly displayed the dark streaks on their outstretched wings.

He could not afford to miss. Barely breathing and carefully wiping the sweat from his forehead, he crawled several meters, trying not to show himself above the ditch. Then, very slowly, as if under the action of some irresistible force, he bent back the turquoise grass and, squinting, drew his slingshot, setting a small lead pellet into its firing band. An instant later, a light stream of air struck the nearest sparrow in the chest, throwing it into the middle of the large puddle. The flock, chirping in fright, took off and raced toward Shanghai.

The man leaped out of the ditch with a joyful yell and, heedless of the mud flying from under his feet, rushed to 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 (Latin)

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

Official website

Address

Phone numbers

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

Email

See also

Links

Sources

  1. rus.team — (biographical portal) — Bulavinov Vadim Evgenyevich — State Duma deputy — biography, 2023-01-01 (archive)