Walking Together
Walking Together was a Russian youth movement that was created by Vasily Yakemenko in May 2000. The group, which had over 50 thousand members in January 2002, was strongly pro-Putin and openly endorsed by President Vladimir Putin's administration. It had strict rules and indoctrination methods, and was openly criticized for its similarity to the Soviet Young Pioneers established by the Communist Party in 1922. The senior patron of the movement was Vladislav Surkov, the deputy head of the presidential administration. The group was transformed into "Nashi" youth group in 2005 after a scandal involving the dissemination of pornography.
Background
Before creating Walking Together, Yakimenko was the overseer of state-run charities. The group's first action in November 2000 was to celebrate Putin's administration with a rally in front of the Kremlin. Group organizers cite a long history of such groups in Russia.Many liberals in Russia feared that the organization was designed to set up a cult of personality around President Putin. Some of the groups requirements included commands to read six Russian classics a year and to visit the site of a battle where Russia was victorious. The reading of modern "liberal" works was discouraged by Walking Together. At one rally, members were encouraged to tear apart copies of Vladimir Sorokin's Blue Salo, which was deemed pornographic for a passage depicting gay sex between Joseph Stalin and Nikita Khrushchev. The group brought formal charges against the author for writing pornographic literature.