Alexander Barkashov is a leader of a most well-known far-right and a neo-Nazi organisation Russian National Unity (RNE). The group was banned in Moscow in 1999 after which the RNE gradually split up in smaller groups and their webpage became defunct in 2006. RNE’s activities have now been frozen.

**Early career**

In 1985, Aleksandr Barkashov joined the Russian monarchist Memory society. Its leader Dmitri Vasiliev offered him the chance to become his personal bodyguard. Barkashov agreed, and two years later became the leader of a militant “thousand”. In fact, according to experts from the security services, the number of Memory activists throughout Russia never exceeded a thousand, and Barkashov was in charge of just a few dozen people.

In 1990, Vasilyev tried to use his fellow party members to work at the agricultural cooperative Teremok, which Barkashov and his supporters did not like so much that they quit Pamyat and set up a new organization called National Unity for a Free, Strong and Just Russia in September 1990 (“NOT for the USSR”). A few weeks later, NOT for the USSR dissolved, and one of the factions formed after the split began calling itself Russian National Unity.

RNE is a movement focused not on state patriotism but on narrowly ethnic Russian nationalism. Barkashov’s motto “Glory to Russia!” originated seventy years ago, when it was used by Russian fascists Konstantin Rodzaevsky, from whom RNE apparently borrowed this fashionable slogan. The organisation’s emblem was the swastika, which RNE members refer to as the “kolovrat”. The choice of symbols and motto was not accidental – Barkashov told a lot about the Third Reich and Nazism. For example, he once suggested that World War II had begun because the peace-loving Germany, in which the “national movement” was in power, was supposedly “to be brought to its knees, denigrated and destroyed”. On another occasion Barkashov declared: “I am not a fascist, I am a National Socialist”, then argued that Hitler had “breathed life into the nation, lifted it up”.

In 1990 and early 1993, Barkashov’s movement operated mainly in Moscow and the Moscow region and stayed out of big politics. By the autumn of 1993, RNE had managed to register its Moscow organization and build several groups of “comrades-in-arms” in the regions, enabling up to 150 Barkashovs to take to the streets and defend the White House during the [1993 Russian constitutional crisis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1993_Russian_constitutional_crisis).

The involvement of RNE in those events is assessed differently. Some leaders of the White House defense in general believe that the Barkashovites willingly or unwillingly played the role of provocateurs. Supposedly the supporters of the president needed a reason to shoot the parliament and therefore all TV channels started showing young men in black shirts, who in addition were not shy about stretching out their arms in a Nazi salute. Whether this was true or not, there were reports that before the storming of City Hall the “comrades-in-arms” were allowed into the surrounded White House through police cordons.

After leaving the White House through a cordon, Barkashov fled from the authorities. On 22 December 1993, according to Barkashov, he was shot at in a street in Krasnogorsk by unknown persons. A criminal case was initiated by the internal affairs authorities of Krasnogorsk. On December 31, 1993, Barkashov, with a gunshot wound to the hip, was found by police at the Krasnogorsk hospital in Moscow Region and transferred under guard to the Interior Ministry hospital, and from there to the Matrosskaya Tishina pre-trial detention facility. Barkashov was charged with organisation of mass riots and illegal possession of weapons. He was granted an amnesty in February 1994.

**After 1993**

After his release, he continued to work to extend RNE’s influence, using not only print media (such as the newspaper Russian Order) but also taking part in the presidential and parliamentary elections in 1996 and 1999. In 1999 he ran for the Russian State Duma on behalf of the Spas bloc, which was not allowed to participate in the elections. In 1996, Barkashov [praised](https://flb.ru/info/5719.html) Boris Yeltsin’s victory in the presidential election.

From the outset, the movement has been constantly split. RNE was then highly influential in the opposition, so there was no problem with “comrades-in-arms”. The organisation was growing rapidly, but discipline began to decline. The situation was particularly difficult in the regions, some of which had two or even three competing RNE organisations. The most interesting thing was that the Moscow office were often in no hurry to take the side of any one organization, and preferred to drag out the conflict. Perhaps Barkashov thought that mutual bickering helped to distract them from idleness – after all, RNE does not hold rallies, and their “comrades-in-arms” fail in elections.

In some places, however, local “gauleiteras” have managed to establish weekly trips to the shooting range, and in Stavropol Krai some Barkashovites have even completed courses in driving tanks. In Moscow Barkashov managed to register the Victoria club and under this banner, under contract with the municipal authorities, guard the territory of Terletsky Park. RNE’s Moscow headquarters moved there.

In the autumn of 2000, RNE split again, with Barkashov calling on its comrades-in-arms to support the Russian government and newly elected President Putin. The commanders of sixteen major regional branches met in a closed plenum and announced Barkashov’s expulsion from RNE. However, according to the RNE constitution this plenum had no legal force whatsoever. Barkashov did not react in any way to this event, after which his comrades-in-arms continued to act as RNE’s OOPD. Rumours of a split in the movement gave birth to such organizations as VOPD RNE, Russian Revival and Slavic Union, each of which proclaimed a transition to more “active action”.

In 2003 Alexander Petrovich announced that he considered the main task of the movement he led to be to point the people to its mission. The mission is to “preserve the purity of Orthodoxy until the Second Coming and the resulting opposition to the rest of the world…” This explained the non-participation in political activities of both Barkashov himself and the movement he leads. On 16 December 2006, associates of the Moscow regional organisation of RNE founded the Alexander Barkashov movement, which definitively established the supremacy of the religious component in the movement’s ideology.

**War in Ukraine**

In 2014, Barkashov supported the annexation of Crimea to the Russian Federation and opposed any negotiations between Russia and the new Ukrainian authorities. During the Russian-Ukrainian war, Barkashov actively supported pro-Russian forces. According to Barkashov, his own son [fought](https://incident.obozrevatel.com/crime/moj-syin-byil-tam-storonnik-dnr-priznalsya-v-prisutstvii-rossijskih-naemnikov-na-donbasse.htm) as part of pro-Russian forces against Ukraine. On 10 July 2022 he [announced](https://vk.com/ap_barkashov?w=wall247656085_123071) the recruitment of volunteers to go to war with Ukraine.