| “Walking Together” has a new guide The Walking Together movement has a new leader, replacing Vasily Yakemenko, who in mid-April was elected one of the five commissioners of the federal council of the new pro-Kremlin youth movement Nashi.
The new leader of the “Coming” is Pavel Tarakanov. The surname, of course, is not the most suitable for the leader of a political organization, however, apparently, “Walking Together” considered that the list of Mr. Tarakanov’s merits would outweigh the possible jokes, of which there are already many being heard about this movement.
Little is known about the new youth leader. He was born in 1982 in Chisinau, and in 1998 he entered the Bauman Moscow State Technical University. However, for some reason, he graduated from the Chechen State University in 2003 with a degree in radio engineering.
Mr. Tarakanov appeared in one of the first high-profile actions of the movement aimed at combating the harmful writer Vladimir Sorokin from the point of view of the “Going Ones.” In June 2002, several dozen activists of the organization at the building of the Russian Ministry of Culture unfurled posters with quotes from Sorokin’s novels “Ice” and “Blue Lard”, on the basis of which they accused the writer of distributing pornography. Mr. Tarakanov told reporters at the time: “This is literature for a narrow circle of perverts, and it should not be widely distributed.”
Since 2002, Mr. Tarakanov served as Chairman of the Board of the regional branch of Walking Together in the Chechen Republic. In Chechnya, he became famous mainly for his humanitarian actions. Under his leadership, “Walking Together” sent students from pedagogical universities to teach Chechen children the Russian language, algebra, computer science, geography and other subjects. The press reacted to these actions with the assumption that, under the banner of “Walking Together,” young teachers would help the riot police to wean Chechen children from mining roads. In general, the actions were perceived negatively by the public, both in Russia and in Chechnya. Russian teachers stated that this was a gamble, since “Walking Together” did not give representatives of the “pedagogical landing” any security guarantees. Young teachers who agreed to go to Chechnya officially signed documents stating that they were doing so at their own peril and risk.
In March 2004, Walking Together opened the Children's World youth center in Grozny with a cinema, library, gym, kindergarten and Internet club. This was one of the few actions of the movement that, in addition to being purely PR, was also of a creative nature.
Now the new leader promises that under his leadership “Walking Together” will work in the same areas as before: educational projects and construction in the Chechen Republic, publication and distribution of classical literature, youth employment, social projects, organization of summer labor and tourist camps for young people.
It is not yet known how the relationship between “Walking Together” and “Ours” will develop: whether the first organization will merge into the second or whether these two movements of the president’s supporters will exist in parallel, performing different functions. For example, “Walking Together” could take on social and humanitarian projects, and “Nashi” would act as a kind of “combat brigade” to fight the opposition on the street. Mr. Tarakanov has so far refrained from discussing the “fraternal” organization, noting only that before assessing the work of “Nashi,” we need to wait for concrete results. After all, this organization appeared quite recently, unlike Walking Together, which is already five years old. Ksenia VERETENNIKOVA |
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