“Stalin, Beria, Gulag!”: The Natsboly Oppose Gaidar and Mikhalkov

During the 1990s, young members of Limonov’s National Bolshevik Party—also known as natsboly—reclaimed totalitarian symbols and ideas, in part ironically and in part very seriously, as a form of protest against Yeltsin’s radical economic reforms. When it came to the natsboly’s “direct actions” and their media coverage, this paradoxical political style translated into two opposite trends. On the one hand, the NBP’s aggressive rhetoric presented additional proof of a “red-brown” (i.e., “fascist-communist”) threat to democracy, an argument which, in its turn, was frequently used to dismiss any form of dissent. On the other hand, the NBP’s activism soon acquired elements of heroism and martyrdom—in the sense that the natsboly made themselves victims of political violence to amplify the impact of their actions. A good example is the coverage of two famous early actions organized by the natsboly. The first was the confrontation with the main architect of economic “shock therapy,” Yegor Gaidar (1956-2009), in January 1999. In the middle of Gaidar’s speech at the yearly convention of his party, Demokraticheskii vybor Rossii (Democratic Choice of Russia), at the exact moment he invoked the “real threat” to democracy from the national-communist alliance, a group of natsboly in the audience stood up and, raising their fists, began shouting, “This is how we will implement our reforms: Stalin! Beria! Gulag!” Security intervened, and a struggle ensued. When ORT, then Russia’s premier television channel, covered the incident that night, the anchor described the skirmish as “a brilliant confirmation that Gaidar was right,” claiming that any weakening of Yeltsin’s presidential power would result in a “red-Nazi” totalitarian state enacting widespread political repressions. The second NBP direct action occurred a few months later (footage from the incident appears above). This time, the target was film actor and director Nikita Mikhalkov (1945-). The natsboly objected to Mikhalkov’s public support of then-president of Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazarbayev (1940-), whom they accused of discriminating against Kazakhstan’s Russian minority. During an event at the Central House of Cinema in Moscow on 10 March, two NBP activists threw rotten eggs at Mikhalkov, who in turn ran into the audience, then kicked one of the attackers in the head as two security guards held him down. Both natsboly involved in the incident ended up spending a few months in prison, with the victim of Mikhalkov’s assault suffering serious injuries. The brutality of the director’s reaction scandalized the public and won the two activists sympathy. Both tendencies— dismissing all political opposition as a red-brown, communist-fascist “plague,” and the heroic, self-sacrificing style of Russian protest actions—became defining features of public culture in the Putin era. An example of the former tendency is the pro-government media’s delegitimization, in the early 2000s, of The Other Russia, an anti-Putin coalition, and the Dissenters’ Marches (2005-2008). Pro-Putin outlets frequently described these movements—and, by implication, any independent media and political groups—as the product of an anti-Russian, “liberal-fascist” alliance with Western roots. The “Nazi-communist” or, in its newer incarnation, “Nazi-liberal” label was used to justify systematic political repressions and later applied to the Movement for Fair Elections in 2011-13, the anti-corruption activism of Alexei Navalny (1976-2024), Euromaidan, and, as of 2022, to Ukraine in its entirety. Heroism and martyrdom became hallmarks of the NBP’s political style. Natsboly cast themselves as the protagonists of what poet Kirill Medvedev called a “tragic street theater” by incurring state violence and thus demonstrating that Putin’s Russia was indeed a police state. Some of these men went on to fight as volunteers in Eastern Ukraine in what they considered a similar search for authenticity. The NBP’s style of political activism, including the elevation of political martyrdom and heroism to an art form, strongly influenced Putin-era movements lying at the intersection of art and politics, but unaffiliated with the NBP. Examples include the art collectives Voina and Pussy Riot and performance artist Petr Pavlensky (1984-).