Background / information on Aleksei Tsvetkov (written in April 2004, slightly updated in September 2005)

Alexei Tsvetkov in National-Bolshevik Party bunker, 1998

Aleksei Tsvetkov (born 1975) was taking part in different anarchist and countercultural initiatives in Moscow since early 1990s. Published some number of articles in various anarchist publications, participated in actions of anarchists, leftists and radical environmentalists in Moscow and other towns. In winter of 1995 when the first Chechen war began, Tsvetkov agitated for antiwar activities and creation of youth antiwar committees, but in some months his opinions changed. In spring 1995 he started cooperating with National-Bolshevik Party's (NBP) newspaper "Limonka". NBP supported the war in Chechnya and Russian imperialist politics in other regions. First Tsvetkov published his articles under pseudonyms (most well known being Pavel Vlasov), later he started using his real name. Tsvetkov claims that he never was a member of NBP party, but this does not matter much, because he was one of the crucial figures in "Limonka" newspaper for more than 2 years. In summer 1998 NBP split up when Alexander Dugin, one of the main ideological architects of NBP and the whole new right (in Russia and Europe as well), left the party after a conflict with another leader Eduard Limonov. Tsvetkov and some other NBP activists followed Dugin, most stayed with Limonov. In July 1998 Dugin's faction published first issue of its paper called "Eurasian Invasion", Tsvetkov was editor-in-chief of this publication. Later "Invasion" was being issued as a supplement to "Zavtra" - biggest nationalist-patriotic newspaper in Russia. In 1999 Tsvetkov leaves Dugin and publishes a book called "Anarchy non stop", thus trying to mark his return to anarchist movement. In fact, most articles in the book were just taken from "Limonka" and reworked. During these years Tsvetkov had numerous contacts with different far right parties - neostalinist NBP seems pretty internationalist in comparison with them. He also helped one nationalist politician (Lychakov) participate in some elections. In 2000 Tsvetkov published some articles on far right organizations, NBP and Rainbow Keepers (radical environmentalist, mostly anarchist movement) on the website www.russ.ru under pseudonym Valeriy Stroev.

Tsvetkov continued his "return" to anarchism and left movement creating a website www.anarh.ru in spring 2000. On the website and in some other articles he tried to promote the ideology of "new Russian anarchism". In fact the idea was the same new right / national-bolshevik - trying to synthesize some new "antisystem" ideology combining left-wing and right-wing radicalism (now with more left-wing and anarchist features). Tsvetkov also became journalist of the website www.left.ru, maintained by Stalinist leftists / antiimperialists, who also don't object to cooperating with NBP and other nationalist people. One of Tsvetkov's favorite ideas in last years was that it is necessary for the left to cooperate with various religious movements. For example, he approves of Islamic fundamentalist's Geidar Dzhemal cooperation with various left-wing organizations, including ATTAC-Moscow (we also got information that Tsvetkov is a member of ATTAC since 2001, but we don't know if it is true). Another author of left.ru and a good friend of Tsvetkov is Israel Shamir, whose anti-Israel sentiments sometimes turn really anti-Semitic (e.g. see http://www.nigelparry.com/issues/shamir/).

Nowadays Tsvetkov works as an editor in UltraCulture?" publishing company (http://www.ultraculture.ru), which is also promoting new right politics, publishing books by right wing and left wing authors at the same time. The former are Eduard Limonov (a number of titles), Geidar Dzhemal, Andrew Macdonald's (William Pierce's) "Turner's Diaries", Dmitry Nesterov's "The Skins: Russia Wakes Up" etc.; the latter Huey Newton, Boris Kagarlitsky, Anthology Of Anarchism And Left Radicalism, subcommandante Marcos etc. UltraCulture?" also publishes some fiction like Lydia Lunch, William Burroughs, Bret Easton Ellis etc.

No to the infiltration of the new right into Indymedia (Written during the ESF in London, October 2004)

During the European Social Forum and some alternative events in London well-known representative of Russian new right Alexei Tsvetkov was presenting himself as a part of Russian Indymedia. The collective of Russian Indymedia (activists based in Moscow, StPetersburg? and Kiev) declares that Alexei Tsvetkov has never been a part of our collective. Otherwise, he was involved in some different political structures. Below is a background of his political activities.