Pamyat, the ultra-nationalist anti-Semitic movement active in recent years in the Russian republic, publicly announced the official registration of its newspaper at a June 1 rally in Moscow, two Jewish groups here said.
The meeting, held at a club at Moscow’s Steel and Alloys Institute, drew some 1,500 supporters and was Pamyat’s largest to date, according to the World Jewish Congress.
The group’s newspaper, also called Pamyat, has published two editions since January. The newspaper first appeared in 1989 as a four-page underground publication, according to sources here.
The paper has a circulation of 100,000, a refusenik in Moscow reported to the Bay Area Council for Soviet Jews, a member group of the Union of Councils for Soviet Jewry.
Pamyat’s leader, Dmitry Vasiliev, said the paper is financed by a “very patriotic” agricultural cooperative which he heads.
Vasiliev, whom the Union of Councils described as a journalist and photographer and leader of an especially militant faction of Pamyat, described the crowd of 1,500 as just the “back-bone” of the movement, the World Jewish Congress reported. “If necessary,” said Vasiliev, “we could fill a stadium.”
Vasiliev sidestepped reporters’ questions about Pamyat’s attitude toward Jews, the World Jewish Congress said. “We are launching a Russian newspaper today and I am more interested in the Russian question,” he said.
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