The People's National Party (PNP or NNP; ; Narodnaya natsionalnaya partiya, NNP) was a minor far-right political party in Russia. Its leader was Aleksandr Ivanov-Sukharevsky, who founded the party in 1994 with, it has been alleged, the aid of two veterans of the Black Hundreds Vladimir Osipov and Vyacheslav Demin. Origins The party grew from an attempt by Ivanov-Sukharevsky to get himself elected to the Co-ordinating Council of the Russian All-People's Union in January 1994. Although a fairly well-known figure he was not a member of this party and in a vote he was narrowly defeated in his aspiration. He linked up with Vyacheslav Demin, the editor of the journal Zemshchina and the two set about establishing a party that they claimed would represent the Russian Orthodox Church. The new group adopted the name Movement of Popular Nationalists and Ivanov-Sukharevsky was chosen as chairman upon its establishment in October 1994. In December the group merged with a group based around Vladimir Popov's Era Rossii magazine, the National-Socialist Movement(a group that fused neo-Nazism and monarchism in what was a not uncommon feature of the Russian far right), to form the NNP proper. Support In March 1999 Ivanov-Sukharevsky was arrested for promoting national hatred and whilst awaiting trial he was held in the same cell as Semyon Tokmakov, the head of the white power skinhead group Russian Goal. The two became allies in prison leading to a close link being forged between Tokmaov's skinheads and the NNP. Tokmakov eventually fused his group into the NNP's youth movement and took over editing duties on the fourth page of the party organ Ya-Russky, in the process making the paper one of the widest read amongst Russian skinheads. Ideology The NNP ideology is based on the ideas of 'Russism', a creation of Ivanov-Sukharevsky. It seeks to link earlier ideas of Russian Orthodox monarchism to Nazism, with Nicholas II of Russia and Adolf Hitler the two great heroes of Russism as, they claim, Hitler sought to revenge the Tsar for his killing by Jewish Bolsheviks. However, although Russism avowedly links itself to Russian Orthodoxy, in practice the NNP has also been open to those elements of Neopaganism favoured by many of its skinhead followers. In contrast to some groups on the Russian far right, where bitter factionalism has often predominated, the NNP has been keen to work with other like-minded groups. As a result of one