A "restorative" congress of the Union of Russian People was held in Moscow

On 21 November 2005, a "restorative' congress of the Union of Russian People was held in Moscow. The Union declared itself the successor of an organization which existed in the early 20th century under the same name, but was widely known as The Black Hundred. The new organization elected the Chairman, sculptor Vyacheslav Klykov, a man of openly ethno-nationalistic views.

A total of 800 people coming from 70 cities of Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Abkhazia attended the Congress and adopted the founding documents of the newly formed organization - its Charter and declarations on a wide range of issues. The overall attendance, including guests, exceeded 1,000.

The congress was attended, in particular, by the Deputy Speaker of the Russian Federal Duma Sergey Baburin ("Rodina' National Patriotic Union), the Duma member from a different (Dmitry Rogozin's) "Rodina' [Motherland] Party Sergey Glazyev, and the Duma member from the Liberal Democratic (Zhirinovsky) Party Nikolai Kuryanovich (famous for his proposal of a bill about stripping Russian women marrying foreigners of their Russian nationality for "damaging the gene pool', as Mr. Kuryanovich put it).

The congress elected the governing bodies consisting mostly of veterans of the Russian ethno-nationalist, Orthodox Christian, monarchy-oriented movement that have been actively promoting their nationalist views since late 80ies, and some - such as Vladimir Ossipov - since Soviet times. Virtually all of them have been vocally anti-Semitic, and some have been sued - though in most cases unsuccessfully - for publishing explicitly xenophobic books and newspapers.

In particular, the board of the Union includes Mikhail Nazarov - the author of an anti-Semitic appeal to the public prosecutor demanding a ban on all Jewish organizations in Russia; Konstantin Dushenov - the publisher of the said appeal; Boris Mironov - a former co-chairman of the National Power Party of Russia, who is currently wanted under charges of incitation of ethnic hatred; Leonid Ivashov - a retired General, leader of the Military Power Union bringing together retired military officers with ethno-nationalist views, plus a panoply of leaders of Orthodox Christian, monarchy-oriented, openly anti-Semitic, ethno-nationalist groups.

The congress marked the first attempt, in a number of years, to build a broad coalition of groups sharing this part of the political spectrum. Until recently, internal differences and personal agendas kept potential members of the coalition apart, but apparently, lengthy negotiations - preparations for the congress took one year, since November 2004 - helped the parties to overcome their differences.