Edited by Alexander Verkhovsky
This report continues a series of seasonal analytical reviews focusing on manifestations of radical nationalism and on efforts by the Russian society and government to counteract them. The SOVA Center has been publishing such reviews for two years; as before, this report is based on materials published on SOVA's website at http://sova-center.ru.
Manifestations of radical nationalism : Violence : The events in Kondopoga and their impact on the official policies : The Anti-Georgian Campaign : Expansion of nationalism in public life : Activity of right-wing radical organizations
Counteraction to radical nationalism : NGO activities and individual activism : Criminal prosecution of nationalists : Other counteractive measures taken by the state
Excessive and unfounded actions against extremism
Conclusions
Appendix 1. Consolidates Statistics of Racist and Neo-Nazi Attacks between 1 January and 30 November 2006 (by the city)
Appendix 2. Consolidated Statistics of Racist and Neo-Nazi Attacks in 2004-2006 (by the season)
Appendix 3. Consolidates Statistics of Racist and Neo-Nazi Attacks in 2004 and 2006 (by the object of attack)
Appendix 4. Statistics of Convictions Taking into Account the Racial Hate Motive of Violent Crimes in 2004-2006 (November 30)
Appendix 5. Statistics of Convictions for Hate Propaganda in 2004-2006 (November 30)
The autumn of 2006 was marked by various manifestations of xenophobia, including racist violence, massive riots in Kondopoga (Karelia), state-sponsored anti-Georgian campaign and many other events showing that the situation in this sphere is getting progressively worse. Counter-action to radical nationalism - both by the government and by the Russian society - is obviously in-adequate, while many problems need a serious public discussion.
MANIFESTATIONS OF RADICAL NATIONALISM
Violence
Just like in the spring of 2006, we observed a minor drop in violent racist crime statistics as compared to the same period of the previous year - according to data available to us, the total num-ber of victims in the three autumn months was at least 94, nine of them were killed, whereas in the same period of 2005 109 victims were reported, 21 of them killed. The number of victims over the 11 months of 2006 totaled 439, including 44 deaths. So the number of victims approached last year's statistics, while the number of deaths exceeded last year's statistics (in 2005, by our updated information, 448 people were affected, 42 of them killed).
These statistics, just as in the spring of 2006, are unusual. Racist violence traditionally peaks in Russia in autumn, largely because during this season, novice foreign students come to Russia, who do not speak fluent Russian and cannot detect signs of danger early enough. Also in autumn, skinheads (mainly students of general and vocational schools) come back from summer holidays.
Anyway, while in spring we might have had doubts concerning the reasons for this "down-ward trend," now it is clear that the main reason is underreporting by mass media. Media failed to report attacks against ethnic Georgians during the official anti-Georgian campaign[1] and attacks against people with non-Slavic appearance in a number of Rus-sian cities on the eve of 4 November. [2] As proof of high la-tency, the percentage of anti-fascists and other informal youth activists is disproportionally high among the casualties (34 out of the 94[3] victims) meaning - as we noted before on many occasions - that young people with access to internet have higher chances of having their cases known.
The underreporting[4] was apparently caused by a number of reasons. On the one hand, law enforcement authorities - the main source of crime reports in mass media - and the executive government officials seek to avoid criticism for failure to coun-teract xenophobic attacks (in fact, sometimes they provoke such attacks). On the other hands, jour-nalists find racist attacks so common and mundane that they do not consider them newsworthy.
To remind, our statistics do not include acquisitive crimes, other than those where the police explicitly found racist motives. However, our analysis of hate crime-related jurisprudence suggests that skinhead attacks are often associated with robbery. At least eight[5] of the 25 sentences for racist violence meted out in the 11 months of 2006 include acquisitive crimes, such as robbery. In such cases robbery may be used as camouflage rather than the main motive of the crime.
Acts of vandalism against religious and memorial installations continue to be very common. Vandals targeted the World War II memorials as well as buildings owned by various religious de-nominations. So in the autumn of 2006 alone, at least 27 acts of vandalism were committed, mostly against Jewish (10), Moslem (6) and Orthodox Christian (5) installations. In Volgograd, a security guard of the Jewish school was injured in the attack.
The events in Kondopoga and their impact on the offi-cial policies
It would not be an exaggeration to suggest that the events in Kondopoga, a city in Karelia, in early September were the central development of this autumn, not only due to the public resonance that they produced, but also due to their far-reaching consequences at various levels.
There are virtually no differences in the way the events are reported - diners in a local res-taurant provoked a massive fight by their offensive behavior; the fight was obviously a "criminal showdown" involving ethnic Chechen bandits; two people were killed and six seriously injured. [6] This, and blatant inaction of the local police, caused massive protests and numerous, lasting for many days, arson attacks against the property of local residents of the Caucasus origin. There were at least 20 arson attacks in the city of Kondopoga and neigh-boring districts in the first week of September. By unofficial data, at least eight people whose ap-pearance suggested their Caucasus origin were injured in the pogroms.
The scenario was typical of spontaneous protests with an explicit xenophobic component. It was not the first attempt by the right-wing radicals to join and lead such attacks - just two months before Kondopoga a similar attempt was made in Salsk, Rostov Oblast. None of the previous crises, however, was as long as that in Kondopoga - the "active phase" of arson attacks lasted for three days, while random incidents continued for a week. [7] Even a superficial analysis of the Kondopoga events[8] and their fol-low-up suggests a very sad picture.
On the one hand, Kondopoga was an obvious and probably the biggest victory won by right-wing radicals, in particular by the Movement against Illegal Immigration (DPNI), not only in the current year, but over the last few years: the ethnic cleansing in Kondopoga was effective and did not cause substantial losses in the ranks of attackers; moreover, it was widely publicized by mass media highlighting the role of DPNI. Notably, DPNI, in addition to mobility and high level of or-ganization, also demonstrated that they learned their lessons. Earlier, they took almost two weeks to become involved in Salsk, and by that time they arrived local protests were almost over. In contrast, DPNI led by Potkin (Belov) arrived in Kondopoga on the first of September, i.e. one day following the fighting. Belov did not only lead the local residents' meeting - the DPNI website was effectively used as coordination center to prepare the meeting and the follow-up activities (planned meetings in Olonets, Petrozavodsk, and a subsequent "all-Russian action in support of Kondopoga" consisting in a series of "community gatherings" in a number of Russian cities[9]). It is important to note that DPNI, of course, had not "organized" the riots in Kondopoga, but made maximum use of the opportunity to "lead" the process using its prior expe-rience, having learned the lessons, and mostly within the boundaries of the Russian law.
On the other hand, the local (city and Karelia Republic) governments, as well as the law en-forcement authorities, were obviously unprepared to such events; moreover, they distanced them-selves from the conflict when it broke out and by doing so effectively encouraged the pogroms. For example, one can see in a video available that OMON peacefully watched the mob riot in the ill-fated Chaika Café. The city authorities agreed to accept and consider the blatantly unlawful, dis-criminatory petition of the residents. Leader of Karelia Republic Sergey Katanandov used the wording "our people" and "alien people" in public, obviously to distinguish between Russian na-tionals of different ethnicities living in Karelia (Ramzan Kadyrov added fuel to the fire by declar-ing his commitment to defending "his citizens" thereby acting as a separatist who did not consider Chechnya to be part of Russia). It is also worth noting that no one charged with arson is currently in custody.
There was a follow-up to both the "right-wing radical" and the "official" actions.
It would have been absurd to expect the right-wing radicals to stop short of further exploit-ing their victory in Kondopoga, especially that hysterical media reports[10] and official rhetoric supported their expectations of new xenophobic inci-dents: virtually every crime involving more than three persons of various ethnicities was described by mass media as "a new Kondopoga." Of course, the right-wing radicals were intoxicated by their own success[11] and as a result they overestimated the "xenophobic potential" of the public and underestimated the government's ability to mobilize a re-sponse. Inspired by their victory in Kondopoga, DPNI attempted to revive the conflict in Salsk (but failed, partially due to interference of the local police[12]). Secondly, they attempted to provoke pogroms in Volsk, Saratov Oblast, using an ordinary fight in a restaurant which involved local residents - ethnic Russians and Armenians. [13] As part of their efforts, leader of the Saratov DPNI chapter and local Cos-sack ataman Andrei Fetisov visited Volsk, and at the same time a local paper published a series of strongly "anti-Caucasus" articles obviously designed to trigger further conflict escalation. [14] Fortunately, the regional DPNI leaders lacked Belov's cha-risma and talent. The Kondopoga events were not repeated in Volsk.
For six weeks afterwards, there were several publications on DPNI website attempting to depict interpersonal conflicts or criminal fights as "a new Kondopoga," but all were unsuccessful. However, we reiterate that DPNI used the Kondopoga pogroms to maximum benefit for themselves, and acquired some experience of organizing and mobilization, which they are likely to exploit in the future.
In fact, DPNI tried to make use of these skills when they organized "students' protests" in Moscow on 14 September. Formally, the protests were organized by an unidentified "group of stu-dents" upset about "the outrageous behavior" of Caucasus natives. Their official demand was to improve police performance in fighting corrupted administrators of student dormitories; but in ef-fect, the protests explicitly targeted Caucasus natives. The action was coordinated by DPNI, while Belov was an official spokesman authorized to present the protesters' demands to the Ministry of Education. It is difficult to estimate the number of participants: almost all of them were unlawfully stopped by police. We can conclude from various reports that there may have been around 300 protesters. Similarly, it is not clear whether the action can be counted as DPNI's success. The Mos-cow police used massive arrests (we do not discuss here whether the police conduct was legal) to detect a number of neo-Nazi activists among university and college students who formed the ma-jority of protesters. Belov's reputation staggered: a number of neo-Nazi web forums directly ac-cused him of being a "police agent," while the protest was retrospectively described as provocation specifically designed to identify right-wing radical student groups.
Since then, DPNI has been less active in Moscow, shifting their focus to the regions, mainly to coordinate the mentioned "action in support of Kondopoga." It is clear by now that DPNI is in-creasingly targeting their propaganda and organizing efforts at smaller cities and communities.
DPNI stopped their mobilization around Kondopoga by early October to reallocate re-sources to the preparation of the Russian March. In contrast, administrations and police at various levels continued their explicitly negative, discriminatory statements and actions throughout the autumn. The authorities themselves may not be aware of the potential long-term negative effect of their rhetoric and initiatives.
We already noted the inappropriate statements by Karelian Governor Sergey Katanandov, as well as Kondopoga authorities' vague reaction to the illegal, discriminatory demands voiced by lo-cal residents. This inappropriate behavior could have been explained by poor professional skills of local bureaucrats which caused their confusion when they faced an emergency, if this behavior had not received unexpected support at the top government level.
On 5 October 2006, president Putin addressing the Council for National Projects spoke about the problem of protecting domestic agricultural producers and urged the audience to establish order in produce markets and protect the interests of "indigenous Russian population." In-terestingly, media reports quoting the speech rearranged the paragraphs of Putin's statement, so that "indigenous population" closely followed his reference to Kondopoga, even though these two epi-sodes were farther apart in his actual statement. So the official media (official videos of the presi-dent's speech were televised on all main channels) increased the "ethnic" element of the president's statement. [15] (It followed from the context of Putin's speech that by saying "non-indigenous" he meant actual foreigners, while the Kondopoga crisis did not involve any foreigners and moreover, the venue was not a produce market).
The president's speech, understandably, was perceived as a signal to action by bureaucrats of various levels who followed up with statements concerning protection of "indigenous" popula-tion from "non-indigenous," effectively legitimizing DPNI's rhetoric. All this was accompanied by media reports "from the field" about ethnicity-based checks and quotas in produce market, amounting to official encouragement of ethnic discrimination. At the same time, a massive cam-paign was underway to promote the adoption of national-level administrative regulations designed to "establish order" in produce markets and in the entire sphere of immigration. The latter endan-gered the enactment of liberal amendment to the immigration law[16] expected in January 2007. [17] We should emphasize that the proposed administrative acts do not contain any explicit elements of eth-nic discrimination, but the accompanying indigenous vs. non-indigenous rhetoric is uni-formly understood as ethnicity-related, as evidenced by most official comments.
Here are just a couple of graphic examples. On 13 October, the local Department of Interior in Irkutsk Oblast officially reported that the local OMON checked some "popular venues in Leninsky District of Irkutsk to detect natives of the North Caucasus region who are illegally in the Russian territory." [18]
On 16 November, the Russian Government published official quotas for foreign labor, whereby starting on 1 January 2007 foreigners are totally banned from working in retail sales of alcohol (including beer) and pharmaceuticals, and starting on 1 April 2007 they cannot be employed in "retail sales in kiosks and [produce/open air] markets" and "other types of retail com-merce outside stores." [19] Commenting on this regulation on the day of its official publication, Vyacheslav Postavnin, Deputy Director of the Federal Migra-tion Service, said that "compact settlement of other countries' nationals in any [Russian] com-munity, at the national or regional level, should not exceed 17 to 20% proportion [in relation to Russians], particularly where [foreigners] belong to a different ethnic culture or faith. Exceeding this norm creates discomfort for the indigenous population." [20] On the next day, the general clarified his position. His clarifications in an interview to Moscow News showed that he understood "comfort" from the perspective of "cultural racism"[21]: "The role of citizenship [nationality] here is not as important as the ethnic background or cultural differences. The conflict in Kondopoga or any other community might have broken out even if a large group of Americans or Dagestan na-tives had come to that community for permanent residence, creating a cultural and religious dis-tance between them and the local population." [22]
The Anti-Georgian Campaign
Between end-September and early October, a discriminatory anti-Georgian campaign was unleashed in Russia. It was triggered by external political events, namely the arrest of Russian offi-cers in Tbilisi on charges of espionage. A few days later, the officers were released following OSCE's mediation, and returned to Russia. Nevertheless, Russia introduced extremely tough politi-cal sanctions against Georgia, refusing to issue visas to Georgian nationals and cutting off trans-portation and postal communication. Without any reference as to whether the Russian sanctions were appropriate under the circumstances, we note that initially they were of purely political nature, but very soon the external political conflict generated an explicitly discriminatory anti-Georgian campaign in the country, targeting ethnic Georgians - Russian citizens as well as foreigners. Mas-sive, demonstrative inspections of commercial enterprises owned by ethnic Georgians were launched across the country, accompanied by a wave of media reports about arrests of "Georgian thieves," apprehension and deportation of many "illegal immigrants" - ethnic Georgians. [23] It is known that at least in one Russian city - St. Petersburg - people awaiting deportation were not given virtually any food for a few days in custody. One per-son died while being transported to the airport.
Any remaining doubts concerning discriminatory nature of the campaign disappeared after a school scandal: the Moscow police demanded that general schools should report any students with "Georgian last names." To give credit to the Moscow Department of Education, its director Lyubov Kezina made a public statement disclosing the police demands and refusing to comply. [24] However, in a number of other regions, local educational authorities readily complied with similar demands to report students with Georgian names. [25]
By mid-November, the campaign assumed a latent form disappearing from media reports, but it was not over. On 2 December, Manana Dzhabelia, a refugee from Sukhumi aged 52, died from a heart attack awaiting deportation in a Moscow holding center - by the time of her death, the decision to deport her had already been overruled as unlawful.
Expansion of Nationalism in Public Life
Of course, this official policy was picked up and carried on by pro-governmental political groups. So in end-November 2006 the Movement of Young Political Ecologists of the Moscow Re-gion - The Locals (a regional clone of Nashi) undertook a series of "anti-migrant" actions virtually identical to those organized by DPNI. The Locals assumed the function of "lay police" and patrolled produce markets and streets in communities outside Moscow, checked papers and stopped ("arrested") people who they perceived to be "illegal migrants" - explicitly based on anthropological characteristics. Such actions were obviously illegal, and The Locals ad-mitted that their "patrolling" was not supervised by police and they were not authorized to perform document checks, not to mention arrests. Besides, while "patrolling" produce markets, they tried to provoke traders to fighting. The local prosecutorial office, of course, failed to respond to such be-haviors of The Locals, who are known to enjoy direct patronage of Governor Boris Gro-mov. But we should give credit to the police of Moscow metropolitan area, who arrested and brought administrative charges against members of The Locals involved in fighting.
All of the above suggests that the government and pro-governmental groups seek to take over the lead in "nationalist initiatives" - adopting the methods as well as the slogans - prior to the election season.
Another disturbing tendency - suggesting some sort of "the Kondopoga effect" - was a lack of uniform position among the liberals concerning "acceptable boundaries of xenophobia." So for example, in September, the Karelia branch of Garry Kasparov's United Civil Front (UCF) ex-pressed virtual solidarity with perpetrators of pogroms in Kondopoga by praising their actions as a "manifestation of civic self-government." Notably, the UCF leaders - even though civil society ac-tivists specifically tried to draw their attention to unacceptability of such pronouncements - failed to respond to, or denounce, the statement of their members in Karelia.
In November, a scandal broke out involving Alexei Navalny, a leader of the Yabloko Party Moscow branch who reportedly attended a meeting of the Russian March organizing committee as an observer. While there is nothing wrong with "observing" any phenomena, Navalny also said publicly that he did not denounce any of the Russian March slogans. And while Deputy Chair of the Yabloko Party Sergey Ivanenko responded with a critical statement, his promise to "look into" the incident remained a mere declaration.
The Yabloko leadership also failed to respond to the ads Russia for [ethnic] Russians! and For Democracy! For the Power of [ethnic] Russians! posted by Vladimir Abrosimov, their regional party leader in Krasnoyarsk, on an office building in the city.
Admittedly, the argument about the extent and forms of patriotic and nationalist slogans (with the boundaries between them often unclear) acceptable to liberals is far from new. But the Russian March brought these debates to the foreground. In particular, there was an ambivalent re-action to the fact that SPS leader Nikita Belykh finished his address to the anti-fascist meeting on 4 November with words Long Live Russia!
Equally debatable and relevant in the context of increasingly active nationalism is a question about boundaries and principles concerning relationships with nationalists of various types. This question was actively discussed following A. Belov's participation in political debates organized by the Democratic Alternative and chaired by the mentioned A. Navalny.
Nonetheless, on 20 November, a round table on Civil Society and Protection of Russian People's Rights held in the Realists Club attracted leading representatives of democratic forces, such as Alexander Auzan and Georgy Satarov, who came to mingle with right-wing radicals rang-ing from Dmitry Rogozin to Andrei Savelyev and Alexander Belov. UCF leader Garry Kasparov sent a welcome letter to the participants of the roundtable, while other public figures, such as Lyudmila Alexeyeva, third co-chair of the Other Russia and the All-Russian Civil Congress, re-fused to attend a meeting with Rogozin.
Activity of right-wing radical organizations
In addition to involvement in Kondopoga and related events described above, the main ac-tivity of right-wing radicals was the preparation to the 2006 Russian March. It was extremely im-portant for right-wing radicals to organize a march again, on a wider scale, because the main idea behind the march was to demonstrate the growing popularity and consolidation of the nationalist movement.
That said, the organizers probably recognized the difficulty of achieving the set objective. It was obvious that the success of the last year's Right March was largely due to reasons other than good organizing, including pure luck, such as good weather and total inaction of authorities.
While it may be impossible to predict the weather, the increased awareness of the Moscow city authorities and police concerning the right-wing radicals was easily predictable. Besides, in-spired by last year's success, the organizers raised their ambitions; apparently, the fight for leader-ship escalated - we should not forget that most these organizations had emerged as "Fuhrer-led." The danger of dissent was imminent, and in fact was actualized during the first open-access meeting held as part of organizing the march. During the meeting, co-chair of the National Imperial Party of Russia (NDPR) neo-pagan Alexander Sevastyanov offended Patriarch Alexei, causing Cyril Frolov, representative of the Union of Orthodox Christian Citizens (maybe the most moderate organization among those involved in the march), to leave the meeting room, saying that his organization refused to participate. In the next few days, four dwarfish Orthodox-monarchist groups left the organizing committee stating that they could not accept cooperation with neo-Nazi Dmitry Dyomushkin who had been admitted to the Committee (on 4 November, the "dissenters" held their own Right March in the form of a small, meeting in Slavyanskaya Square, which attracted around 200 participants). The real reason behind the dissent was apparently their unwillingness to demonstrate aggressive confrontation with the authorities, as was the plan of the "main" march organizers. Incidentally, the same reason was probably behind the decision to oust Nikolai Kuryanovich from LDPR. No one doubted that Vladimir Zhirinovsky was not going to tolerate competition with the solicitor from Irkutsk much longer, but the act of his expulsion was obviously linked to the authorities' concerns regarding the march.
Under the circumstances, it would have been much more beneficial for the organizers to do something at the very beginning to make sure that the authorities ban the march. Their desire was objectively supported by a certain portion of the liberal public - of course, the latter demanded a ban of the march for entirely different reasons.
Eventually, a group of the State Duma members were included in the organizing committee, among them Dmitry Rogozin - recently a "taboo" figure for authorities at all levels, especially in Moscow. Then the organizers tried to intimidate the Moscow city government, first by threatening the authorities with pogroms, and then by declaring their intention to paralyze the Moscow metro; DPNI website also published personal attacks against Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov.
There is little doubt that the march would have been banned anyway, even without the threats, which are normally not characteristic of DPNI, the main organizer and coordinator of all preparations for the march. But the public resonance triggered by the preparation to the event sur-passed all expectations. In fact, right-wing radicals achieved more by the preparation alone than by the actual rally on 4 November. Admittedly, increased attention to the march was largely caused by their last year's success, but their threats against the city government caused virtually all mass me-dia to cover the preparation this year. The hysterical style of this media coverage incited even big-ger interest in the event and therefore was exactly what the organizers wanted. Belov strengthened his positions as the main "talking head" of the right-wing radicals, while the dissenting MPs for-merly ignored by mass media enjoyed frequent coverage and higher profile, even though they were not allowed to make public statements. Besides, unlawful actions taken by authorities - in particu-lar, the illegal ban of the event - transformed the participants into "political victims."
In and of itself, the march on 4 November was not a high-profile event. The attendance was relatively small, and the marchers eventually joined the permitted meeting organized by Sergey Ba-burin's People's Will. The meeting attendance totaled about one thousand. It is worth mentioning the law enforcement response: on 4 November, there were reports of massive preventive arrests of persons perceived as potential participants of the meeting, and later the media reported unlawful arrests of the actual meeting participants, sometimes involving administrative penalties for "cross-ing the street in the wrong place." Ironically, both the organizers and the participants of the meet-ing, on many occasions, did things that could have caused them to be arrested on perfectly legiti-mate grounds. Suffice it to mention Belov's speech - amplified by two megaphones and packed with obscenities - which could have given the police a legitimate reason for his arrest. And there were also people yelling racist slogans, displaying anti-Semitic and neo-Nazi posters and raising their arms in a Nazi salute - all these things can be legally suppressed by police. But police, for some reason, chose to act unlawfully, thereby transforming the neo-Nazi into victims of police abuse, and more importantly, preventing any possibility of legitimate prosecution for the actual of-fences.
Even though the 2006 Russian March was not numerous or dynamic, the developments around it marked a victory, rather than defeat, of the right-wing radicals. Firstly, they received am-ple, sustained coverage by virtually all mass media. Given that the coverage was already substantial during the Kondopoga events, we must admit that the massive PR campaign of the right-wing radi-cals lasted for almost three months.
Besides, they successfully transformed their action into a nation-wide event. While the 2005 march was only held in Moscow and failed in two other cities due to poor organizing, rather than government counteraction, this year the march took place in at least some form in 11 other cities in addition to Moscow (St. Petersburg, Vladivostok, Irkutsk, Chita, Novosibirsk, Krasnoyarsk, Stavro-pol, Kaliningrad, Maikop, Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, and Chelyabinsk), and in three other cities (Syk-tyvkar, Nizhny Novgorod and Blagoveschensk) it was suppressed by illegal means (preventive ar-rests of potential participants and arrests of organizers at the beginning of the meetings). Only in Volgograd, the action was suppressed on a legitimate ground: the marchers did not follow their of-ficially announced route. In St. Petersburg, the march was marked by massive fighting between the marchers and a group of around 50 anti-fascists who attempted to stop the march (notably, the march was banned in St. Petersburg, and there was enough OMON (riot police) at the starting point, but the right-wing radicals simply broke into groups and walked to a different venue, where they started their action without any hindrance).
Besides, we should bear in mind that the march was significant for "internal use," as well as external propaganda. From the perspective of its grassroots participants who are not inclined to analysis, the mere fact that the march took place was a success. Moreover, unlawful police actions, on the one hand, allowed the 17 to19 year-old youngsters to feel as if they were "victims of the re-gime, baptized in combat" - i.e. strengthen the romantic image of a neo-Nazi and their sense of im-punity.
On the other hand, the march resulted in serious loss of Belov's reputation amongst skin-heads. His role of "agent provocateur" was first discussed following the "students' meeting" in Do-bryninskaya, Moscow, and then again following "the Metro threats" - i.e. his announcement of the march to take place right in the Moscow Metro, in a busy Komsomolskaya Station. A significant part of the neo-Nazi web-based community interpreted the idea of getting together in Komsomol-skaya Station prior to the march as a sort of "Bloody Sunday revisited" - unavoidable casualties in a crowded underground station would have given the authorities a perfect reason to launch massive reprisals against the neo-Nazi with full support of the general public blaming - and rightly so - the neo-Nazi for the tragic event. Some neo-Nazi compared Belov to Gapon (priest and police in-former who led a peaceful march to the Winter Palace on the "Bloody Sunday" of 22 (9) January 1905 to submit a petition to the Tsar; the march was met by police and Cossacks, and over 100 marchers were killed), while later in mid-November some people once again brought up the issue of DPNI leader's "Jewish origins," his alleged "work for security services," [26] etc. In fact, the current debates around Belov's figure are evolving along the same lines as the longstanding internal neo-Nazi discussion focused on D. Dyomushkin.
In addition to the Russian March, it is worth mentioning another event which took place in late autumn and concerned the activities of the Orthodox monarchist right-wing groups.
On 27 November, a congress of the Union of Russian People (SRN), an umbrella of right-wing Orthodox monarchist groups, was held in Moscow to elect a new chairman replacing the late Vyacheslav Klykov who died in the summer of 2006. The congress was preceded by a serious in-ternal conflict verging on a breakup of the Union. Some recent supporters of the Black Hundred found the anti-Semitic campaign led by initiators of the "letter of 500" Mikhail Nazarov and Kon-stantin Dushenov - founders of Living Without Judaic Fear radical group - much too aggressive and provocative. Besides, it was announced virtually on the eve of the congress that an "alternative" SRN was established, led by Nikolai Kuryanovich ousted from LDPR and Leonid Simonovich (Nikshich), chairman of the Union of Orthodox Gonfalon-carriers. However, the congress (where, incidentally, Boris Mironov, while being on a federal list of wanted suspects, took the floor without any negative consequences for himself or his organization) managed to avoid a breakup, even though fundamental differences, judging by reports, remained unresolved and were not even dis-cussed. Acting chairman, General Leonid Ivashov was officially elected SRN Chairman. In fact, preserving apparent unity and electing a chairman were the main outcomes of the congress.
COUNTERACTION TO RADICAL NATIONALISM
NGO activities and individual activism
The biggest public event in the autumn of 2006 aimed at counteracting xenophobia was the anti-fascist rally held on 4 November in Bolotnaya Square, Moscow, and attracting around 800 par-ticipants. The rally was initiated by the Russian Anti-Fascist Front, but towards the end it was a joint meeting with the Left-Wing Anti-Fascist Front (LAF). During preliminary negotiations, the organizing committee was finally able to reach what we believe to be a fundamentally important agreement banning the use of any party symbols during the non-partisan event (and also giving up the official Russian three-color flag at LAF's insistence). A group of skinheads also came to Bolot-naya Square in an attempt to disrupt the rally (there was a prior warning of their attack), but the po-lice forced the attackers into side-streets and then arrested some of them.
A few days before the event, on 26 October, a traditional March Against Hatred was held in St. Petersburg, attracting about 500 people. Also traditionally, a number of nation-wide events were held by Russian NGOs during the International Week of Tolerance between 9 and 16 November. NGOs continued to engage in various awareness-raising, educational, and research activities tar-geted at diverse audiences.
But unfortunately, the educational campaigns and peaceful protests were less noted than the radical anti-fascists' attacks against right-wing radicals in Moscow and St. Petersburg. Of course, such attacks are nothing new, but in 2006 opposition between neo-Nazi and Antifa almost amounted to a street war.
In Moscow, the first serious attack occurred on 14 September outside Oktyabrskaya Metro Station, where a group of Antifa first attacked people attending a concert of ultra-right groups out-side the Tochka Club, and then assaulted some right-wing radicals coming back from the "students' meeting."
On 17 September, around 30 radical anti-fascists attacked a DPNI meeting in St. Petersburg. Police rushed to the site and arrested some participants of the fighting, but only two faced "hooli-ganism" charges.
In both cases, onlookers were affected, as well as the actual targets of the attacks. Besides, some Antifa members were stabbed during the fighting in St. Petersburg.
The anti-fascists explain their attacks by the government inaction and failure to respond to the neo-Nazi threat, which forces the Antifa to take initiative. But whatever the motives, violent at-tacks perpetrated by radical anti-fascists are as illegal as similar actions of their opponents, not to mention innocent bystanders victimized by such attacks.
Criminal prosecution of nationalists
Criminal prosecution of individuals who commit violent crimes motivated by racial hatred continues to increase. At least 8 convictions for violent crimes were passed in the autumn of 2006, where the hate motive was recognized by the court (two in Moscow, and one each in Altai Krai, Belgorod, Yekaterinburg, Birobidjan, Kostroma, and St. Petersburg). [27] Overall, at least 25 sentences were meted out to about 80 people convicted of such offenses in the first 11 months of 2006. [28] It marks an improvement, as in the previous year, by our information, 15 sentences were meted out to 55 in-dividuals.
However, the situation is not as positive as it may appear.
On the one hand, with more trials of this type, investigators gain experience and legal quali-fication of offences improves, particularly in the absence of serious political resonance - as, for ex-ample, happened with Alexander Koptsev's case involving a violent attack inside a Moscow syna-gogue. We believe that finding him guilty under art. 282 of the Criminal Code, in addition to charges of attempted murder motivated by racial hatred, was unfounded, even though the Supreme Court reconsidered and upheld the Moscow City Court judgment of September 2006.
We would like to mention in particular a sentence passed in Belgorod, where on 12 Septem-ber a local court passed a guilty verdict on 11 defendants charged with organizing an attack against a Roma household in August 2005, resulting in serious injuries of three people. The court found the defendants guilty of a racist offence, and also found the group of attackers to be an extremist com-munity. So this was historically the fourth sentence under art. 282-1 (organization of, and involve-ment in, an extremist community) over the four years since this article was added to the Russian Criminal Code. It is also important that all perpetrators, except one, who actively cooperated with the investigators, were sentenced to substantial prison terms.
We should also mention the response mounted by the law enforcement of Tatarstan in the case (still pending) of the local Russian National Union (RNE) chapter. For the first time since 2002, investigation under art. 282-2 (participation in illegal organizations found by court to be ex-tremist), formerly applied only against members of Khizb ut-Tahrir (members of this Islamic or-ganization are the only ones convicted under art. 282-2 in Russia), was launched against activists of a local RNE chapter, based on a prior judgment of the Tatarstan Supreme Court finding RNE an extremist organization in 2003. Moreover, the same judgment was applied by the Tatarstan law en-forcement authorities acting through the Interpol to force a Canadian hosting provider to close the organization's website (related subdomains, including the Russia-wide RNE web forum, were also closed).
On the other hand, prosecution of racist violence is still associated with a number of nega-tive phenomena we described before on many occasions.
Firstly, failure to find a racist motive, even though it may be recognized informally, persists. For example, in Togliatti, members of Pitbull skin group were convicted for racist attacks, but the hate motive was not mentioned in the indictment, and charges of participation in an extremist com-munity were never brought up, even though the prosecutor's official press release mentioned an "extremist-oriented adolescent criminal gang Pitbull."
Secondly, suspended sentences to skinheads are still common. While they were less com-mon this autumn, some sentences are nothing short of shocking. So for example, in Kostroma, four skinheads who physically assaulted five people within two days got away with suspended sen-tences. Again, we need to remember the sense of impunity shared by young neo-Nazi and further promoted by virtual punishments. Incidentally, only some perpetrators of such offences are brought to court, and others never face charges just because they have not reached the age of criminal re-sponsibility for such offences.
And finally, the epicenters of skinhead violence - Moscow and St. Petersburg - contribute little to the overall increase in sentencing for hate-motivated violent crimes; rather, the increase is due to active prosecution in other regions, where such attacks are less frequent.
Above all, we should mention the impunity of skinheads in St. Petersburg, the only city where jury courts have acquitted violent skinheads. This situation - caused, we believe, only by poor performance of public prosecutors[29] - persists from trial to trial (notably, no one has been held responsible for it) and raises questions about the appro-priateness of jury trials in such cases, which, in turn, is a serious threat to the overall judicial re-form.
Similarly, negative as well as positive developments were observed in the sphere of prose-cution and suppression of right-wing radical propaganda.
While we did not see a substantial increase of new sentences, for the first time in years we found the quality of sentencing improved.
We used to report that a guilty verdict did not necessarily mean (or, rather, never meant) that someone responsible for hate propaganda would eventually face a real punishment, but in the autumn of 2006 we observed a radically different picture - out of the five convictions for hate propaganda under art. 282 (in Chelyabinsk, [30] Kirov, Sam-ara, Syktyvkar and Moscow), it was only in Samara that the convicted offender got away without a serious punishment.
Only in one of the five cases (Boris Stomakhin's case, see below) the defendant was sen-tenced to a prison term. In other cases, the courts chose - and we support this choice - other methods of punishment, such as fines, corrective labor, or a prohibition to engage in journalism/publishing for a certain period. This can be illustrated by the revised sentence meted out to ex-National Bol-sheviks in Chelyabinsk. To remind, on 31 July, two members of the National Bolshevik Front (NBF) - the right-wing radical spin-off of the National Bolshevik Party (NBP) - were sentenced to two years of prison each, with a subsequent ban on professional occupation. The case, however, was later reconsidered, resulting in suspended sentences between 12 to 18 months for three[31] - rather than two - NBF members, combined with a year-long ban on journalism and dissemination of newspapers. We believe it to be sufficient punishment for contributing an article to Parabellum paper and distributing the paper.
Another positive trend worth mentioning is that four years since the adoption of the anti-extremist legislation, there is an emerging body of positive jurisprudence increasingly applied in relevant cases. So, in Makhachkala, the author of a text - which a court found extremist back in 2004 - faces trial at the time of this writing. The trial is likely to have no effect in this case, because its statute of limitations expired in the summer of 2006; however, reliance on a judgment finding a certain material extremist is important in and of itself.
It is unclear yet whether these positive shifts will result in sustainable progress, given that good news is offset by bad news.
On 20 November, a court convicted Boris Stomakhin, editor of the Radical Politics Bulletin. We should make a disclaimer at the outset that we disagree with a number of human rights defenders and believe that charges brought against B. Stomakhin are legitimate. Indeed, Sto-makhin engaged in openly xenophobic propaganda against ethnic Russians, expressed solidarity not only with the Chechen separatists in general, but also with terrorists (in particular, at the time of the Nord-Ost Theater hostage-taking crisis in Moscow), urged President Bush to drop bombs on Mos-cow, etc.
Interestingly enough, charges brought against Stomakhin included incitation of hatred against social, rather than ethnic or religious, groups, such as "Russian army servicemen," "Com-munist Party members," and "KGB/FSB agents," but during the trial, the prosecutor asked to de-lete "Communist Patty members," and the judges also deleted "KGB/FSB agents." The prosecutor also chose to withdraw the charges related to the use of Nazi symbol (swastika) in what was clearly an anti-Putin, rather than pro-Nazi, cartoon. (The motive of anti-Christian Orthodox campaigning, which played an important role when the case was opened back in December 2003, was hardly mentioned in the sentence).
So while some parts of the judgment are controversial, in general, its text looks appropriate. But the cruelty of the sentence is shocking - Stomakhin was sentenced under part 1 of art. 282 and part2 of art. 280 to five years of prison and three years' ban on journalism. As of today, it is the toughest sentence under art. 282 and 280 (in absence of other criminal charges) during the entire post-Soviet period.
What made Stomakhin different from most radical propagandists was his (a) unconditional support of the Chechen separatists; (b) extreme antagonism toward the current political regime, and (c) negative publications targeting ethnic Russians. We should admit that the exceptionally harsh sentence was probably triggered by one or more of these distinctive characteristics. The public opinion overwhelmingly interpreted it as selective enforcement and political bias of the court.
This interpretation was further supported by the context of Stomakhin's conviction and sen-tence. A couple of weeks before the judgment, the law enforcement authorities in Moscow did not find sufficient reasons to launch a criminal investigation into neo-Nazi calls to violence against a number of high-profile Russian human rights defenders, whose photos and home addresses were published by the ne-Nazi on the Web. At the same time, the Moscow Prosecutor's Office refused to open a criminal case against the neo-Nazi Slavic Union, failing to find anything illegal in the group's activities.
The perception of disproportional punishment further increased a few days later, when Ruslan Melnik, leader of Mad Crowd, probably the most odious skin gang in St. Petersburg, was found guilty of setting up an extremist community and personal involvement in two racist attacks, and sentenced only to 3.5 year of settlement colony.
Besides, anti-Semitic propaganda is hardly ever punished: criminal investigations are never opened into such cases, or the cases never reach courts, or else the trials never result in tangible sentencing of anti-Semitists.
Other counteractive measures taken by the state
The state also made other attempts to counteract the activity of right-wing radical groups and to suppress xenophobic propaganda in the autumn of 2006.
We should mention in particular a warning for extremist activity issued by Zheleznodoroz-hny District Prosecutor's Office to the Ryazan chapter of RNE on 26 September; such warnings are extremely rare in the context of counteraction to right-wing radical groups.
Warnings by Rosokhrankultura and prosecutorial offices are effectively used to suppress hate speech in mass media. For example, following the events in Volsk (where a fight between eth-nic Armenian and ethnic Russian patrons of a restaurant nearly triggered local riots), a local paper, Saratovsky Vzglyad, published a series of explicitly "anti-Caucasus" articles and was duly warned by the Oblast Prosecutor's Office.
In October, Rosokhrankultura published official statistics of warnings issued to mass media in 2006 for extremist and nationalist publications. There were a total of 29 warnings since the be-ginning of 2006; two right-wing radical papers - Yuri Mukhin's Duel and National-Socialist Society's Corpus - were warned twice over the period, and currently Rosok-hrankultura is seeking their liquidation through judicial proceedings. We should note, however, that we find some of these warnings unfounded - for example, three warnings to media outlets for their publication of the Danish cartoons; two warnings for the use of swastika as illustration to anti-fascist articles, and some others. Nevertheless, we have to admit that Rosokhrankultura is currently the only government agency which has published factual information about its efforts to counteract extremist activities.
EXCESSIVE AND UNFOUNDED ACTIONS AGAINST EX-TREMISM
In the autumn of 2006, Russian lawmakers continued amending the legislation ostensibly designed to counteract extremism, but effectively enabling persecution and suppression of political opponents.
On 17 November, the State Duma adopted amendments to the Federal Law on Main Guar-antees of Electoral Rights and the Right to Participate in a Referendum and to the Civil Procedure Code. On 24 November, the amendments were approved by the Federation Council, and on 5 De-cember they were signed by the Russian President.
Under this law, currently in effect, a candidate or a list of candidates may be denied regis-tration, or their registration may be withdrawn, if they are found to have engaged in extremist ac-tivities; moreover, candidates can be punished "for extremism" retroactively, because the amended law allows looking into their past activities over a period equal to their prospective period in office, if elected. [32] Anyway, the amended law is more liberal than the original version adopted in the first reading in end-June: by the current version, a list of candidates may be denied registration for "extremism" only if the entire electoral association has engaged in such activities, but (unlike the earlier version) registration cannot be denied to a group based on extremist activities of a single candidate - in such cases, the group should banish their ex-tremist member before (re)applying for registration. Besides, denial or withdrawal of candidate registration is subject to prosecutorial action and judicial proceedings; it cannot be effected by the election committee alone.
Another landmark event took place in the autumn of 2006. In October, a Russian court or-dered closure of the Russian-Chechen Friendship Society (RCFS) pursuant to the Law against Ex-tremist Activity and the amended Law on NGOs. The liquidation was triggered by the group's fail-ure to distance themselves from executive director Stanislav Dmitrievsky convicted of "inciting ra-cial hatred" in February 2006.
We have stressed repeatedly that we consider Dmitrievsky's conviction unfounded. Public opposition, however, does not change the formal status of the case, and the conviction came into force (since then, Dmitrievsky has taken the case to the European Court of Human Rights in Stras-bourg). The prosecutors argued their move to liquidate the RCFS by the following:
1) As long as Stanislav Dmitrievsky was convicted to a (suspended) sentence, he cannot be an official founder of the group, according to the amended Law on NGOs. But the group failed to oust him from the list of founders.
2) As long as he was sentenced under art. 282 of the Criminal Code for an extremist offense, the amended Law against Extremist Activity required in art. 15 that the group had to renounce pub-licly its affiliation with Dmitrievsky following his conviction, but the group did not.
The proceedings were hasty: on 9 October, the group was notified of the court hearing, on the 12th, the first hearing was held, and on the 13th, the court ordered closure of the organization, leaving the SRCF virtually no time to prepare for the proceedings.
We can see how an unfair conviction of the leader enabled authorities to liquidate, through a formally legal procedure, an organization which since a long time had been targeted for politically motivated law enforcement attacks (to remind, the SRCF faced all sorts of charges ranging from extremism to tax evasion).
At the time of this writing, the Russian-Chechen Friendship Society appeals the ruling of the Nizhny Novgorod Court to the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation.
CONCLUSIONS
Looking back at the autumn of 2006, we can say that the main trends and events relevant to manifestations of radical nationalism and efforts to counteract it were controversial.
On a positive note, criminal prosecution of racist offenses was more consistent than before, expressed in a dynamic growth of convictions for violent racist crimes and in improved legal quali-fication of such offenses. Moreover, for the first time ever, we noted better quality of sentences for hate propaganda and extremist organizing. There is hope that courts will increasingly rely on the emerging jurisprudence in the area of banning extremist groups and materials.
On the other hand, negative tendencies were much stronger in autumn.
In addition to growing public activity of right-wing radical groups (the campaign around the Russian March), and their persistent efforts to lead, rather than merely join, spontaneous public protests, and to transform social discontent into xenophobic aggression (Kondopoga), we can ob-serve even more serious threats.
In the autumn of 2006, for the first time in Russia, a campaign of ethnic discrimination en-dorsed by federal authorities was unleashed against ethnic Georgians.
At the same time, a discriminatory campaign of "establishing order in the marketplace" was launched under ostensibly economic slogans of "protecting local producers"; among other things, this campaign almost undermined efforts to liberalize immigration laws. The same campaign effec-tively legalized not only the xenophobic rhetoric, but also the methods used by right-wing radical groups and promptly adopted by pro-government NGOs.
The official fight against extremism is used to toughen legislation enabling the authorities to suppress political opposition and impose unfounded limitations on civil liberties. Recent amend-ments are increasingly used as an instrument of repression (liquidation of the RCFS).
In dealing with right-wing radicals, authorities often resort to unlawful measures of sup-pressing xenophobic activity, which makes legal prosecution of radical offenders more difficult and gives them an aura of "victims of police abuse."
A combination of anti-fascist demagogy, discriminatory rhetoric and actions, as well as abu-sive methods of suppressing right-wing radical activity, is likely to confuse the Russian society - with its already vague views on "fascism" - even more, and encourage more xenophobia and dis-crimination effectively legitimized by official policies and practices. We have serious doubts that the law enforcement will be able to improve fast enough to catch up with the consequences of such policies.
Appendix 1. Consolidates Statistics of Racist and Neo-Nazi Attacks
between 1 January and 30 November 2006 [33] (by the city)
| 2004 | 2005 | 1.01-30.09.2006 | |||||||
| Killed | Beaten, wounded | Total victims | Killed | Beaten, wounded | Total victims | Killed | Beaten, wounded | Total victims | |
| Moscow | 15 | 59 | 73 | 12 | 177 | 188 | 30 | 181 | 211 |
| St. Petersburg | 9 | 32 | 41 | 4 | 45 | 49 | 5 | 42 | 47 |
| Abakan | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Astrakhan | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Barnaul | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 3 |
| Belgorod | 0 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 3 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Biribidgan | 0 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Blagoveschensk | 0 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 7 | 7 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| Bryansk | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| Cheboksary | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 3 |
| Chelyabinsk | 1 | 4 | 5 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| Chita Oblast | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| Irkutsk Oblast | 3 | 0 | 3 | 2 | 5 | 7 | 0 | 8 | 8 |
| Ivanovo | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Izhevsk | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Kaliningrad | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 11 | 11 |
| Kaluga | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 11 | 11 | 1 | 2 | 3 |
| Kazan | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 6 | 6 |
| Khabarovsk | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Kirov | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Kostroma | 0 | 5 | 5 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 10 | 10 |
| Krasnodar | 2 | 32 | 34 | 1 | 3 | 4 | 0 | 3 | 3 |
| Krasnoyarsk | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 3 | 3 |
| Kurgan | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 6 | 6 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Kursk | 0 | 5 | 5 | 0 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Lipetsk | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 3 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Maikop | 0 | 3 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Murmansk | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| Nizhny Novgorod | 1 | 5 | 6 | 4 | 12 | 16 | 0 | 25 | 25 |
| Novgorod | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 5 | 5 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Novosibirsk | 2 | 12 | 14 | 1 | 9 | 10 | 0 | 9 | 9 |
| Omsk Oblast | 0 | 3 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 3 | 4 |
| Oryol | 0 | 8 | 8 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 8 | 8 |
| Perm | 0 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 2 | 5 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Petrozavodsk | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Pskov | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Rostov-on-the-Don | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 10 | 10 | 0 | 2 | 2 |
| Ryazan | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 4 | 4 |
| Samara | 1 | 3 | 4 | 3 | 4 | 7 | 0 | 2 | 2 |
| Saratov | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 3 |
| Smolensk | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Stavropol | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 21 | 21 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Syktyvkar | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 3 | 0 | 2 | 2 |
| Tambov | 0 | 3 | 3 | 0 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Tomsk Oblast | 0 | 3 | 3 | 0 | 6 | 6 | 0 | 4 | 4 |
| Tula Oblast | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 3 |
| Tver Oblast | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 3 |
| Tyumen Oblast | 3 | 1 | 4 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 11 | 11 |
| Ufa | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 2 | 2 |
| Vladimir Oblast | 0 | 4 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Vladivostok | 5 | 9 | 14 | 0 | 3 | 3 | 0 | 15 | 15 |
| Volgograd | 0 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 5 | 7 |
| Vologda | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| Voronezh | 1 | 2 | 3 | 1 | 21 | 22 | 1 | 6 | 7 |
| Yaroslavl Oblast | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 5 | 5 |
| Yekaterinburg | 1 | 7 | 8 | 6 | 6 | 12 | 0 | 4 | 4 |
| Yoshkar Ola | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 15 | 15 | 0 | 5 | 5 |
| Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Total | 47 | 212 | 259 | 42 | 406 | 448 | 44 | 395 | 439 |
Appendix 2. Consolidated Statistics of Racist and Neo-Nazi Attacks in 2004-2006 (by the season)
| 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | |||||||
| Killed | Beaten, wounded | Total victims | Killed | Beaten, wounded | Total victims | Killed | Beaten, wounded | Total victims | |
| Winter (December/January+
February/no date ) [34]) | 9 (0/9/0) [35] | 22 (0/22/0) | 31 (0/31/0) | 7 (3/4/1) | 72 (14/52/6) | 79 (17/56/7) | 8 (4/4/0) | 102 (53/44/7) | 110 (57/48/7) |
| Spring | 10 | 77 | 87 | 5 | 119 | 124 | 14 | 96 | 110 |
| Summer | 16 | 20 | 36 | 7 | 69 | 76 | 17 | 163 | 180 |
| Autumn | 9 | 79 | 88 | 21 | 107 | 128 | 9 | 94 | 103 |
| Year total | 47 | 212 | 259 | 42 | 406 | 448 | - | - | - |
| Note | Besides, we know of 13 killings of homeless people where the law enforcement authorities suspect an ideological (neo-Nazi) element. | Besides, we know of 5 killings and 4 beatings of homeless people, where the law enforcement authorities suspect an ideological (neo-Nazi) element. | Besides, on May 27-28, 2006, in Moscow alone, skinheads and other homophobes battered at least 50 gays.
The statistics include 12 killed and 54 wounded by the blast attack in Cherkizovsky Market in Moscow on 21 August 2006.. | ||||||
Appendix 3. Consolidates Statistics of Racist and Neo-Nazi Attacks in 2004 and 2006 (by the object of attack)
| 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | ||||
| Killed | Beaten, wounded | Killed | Beaten, wounded | Killed | Beaten, wounded | |
| Всего | 47 | 212 | 42 | 406 | 44 | 395 |
| Including: | ||||||
| Dark-skinned people | 1 | 33 | 3 | 37 | 2 | 23 |
| People from Central Asia | 8 | 20 | 13 | 33 | 10 | 48 |
| People from the Caucasus | 14 | 37 | 10 | 52 | 13 | 57 |
| People from the Middle East and North Africa | 4 | 12 | 1 | 16 | 0 | 10 |
| People from Asia-Pacific Region (China, Viet-Nam, Mongolia, etc.) | 8 | 29 | 4 | 57 | 2 | 37 |
| Other people of "non-Slav appearance" | 2 | 20 | 3 | 70 | 3 | 38 |
| Members of youth subcultures and leftist youth | 0 | 4 | 3 | 121 | 1 | 96 |
| Others, or not known | 10 | 57 | 5 | 20 | 13 | 86 |
Appendix 4. Statistics of Convictions Taking into Account the Racial Hate Motive of Violent Crimes in 2004-2006 (November 30)
| Number of convictions | Number of offenders convicted | Including conditional sentences or release from punishment | |
| 2004 | |||
| Moscow | 3 | 6 | unknown |
| Moscow Oblast | 1 | 9 | 6 |
| St. Petersburg | 2 | 10 | 3 |
| Voronezh | 1 | 3 | 0 |
| Novgorod | 1 [36] | 1 | 0 |
| Vladimir Oblast | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| Total | 9 | 30 | 10 |
| 2005 | |||
| Moscow | 2 | 4 | 0 |
| Moscow Oblast | 2 | 8 | 0 |
| St. Petersburg | 2 | 10 | 4 [37] |
| Blagoveschensk | 1 | 4 | 0 |
| Vladivostok | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| Volgograd | 1 | 7 | 0 |
| Yekaterinburg | 1 | 3 | 0 |
| Lipetsk | 1 [38] | 4 | 0 |
| Murmansk | 1 | 2 | 1 |
| Perm | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| Tyumen Oblast | 1 | 5 | 0 |
| Tambov | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| Total | 15 | 50 | 5 |
| 2006 | |||
| Moscow | 5 | 11 | 1 |
| Moscow Oblast | 1 | 2 | 0 |
| Oryol | 2 | 6 [39] | 24 |
| Tomsk | 1 | 3 | 0 |
| Kostroma | 2 | 7 | 5 |
| Saratov | 1 | 5 | 0 |
| St. Petersburg | 2 | 6 | 1 |
| Nizhny Novgorod | 2 | 4 | unknown |
| Yekaterinburg | 2 | 6 [40] | 0 |
| Novosibirsk | 1 | unknown | неизвестно |
| Kaluga Oblast | 1 | 2 | 0 |
| Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| Voronezh | 1 | 13 | 7 |
| Belgorod | 1 | 11 | 1 |
| Birobidgan | 1 | 3 | 0 |
| Altayskiy kray | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| Total | 25 | 78 [41] | 13 [42] |
Appendix 5. Statistics of Convictions for Hate Propaganda in 2004-2006 (November 30)
| Number of convictions | Number of offenders convicted | Including conditional sentences or release from punishment | |
| 2004 | |||
| Novgorod | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| Izhevsk | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| Novosibirsk | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| Total | 3 | 3 | 2 |
| 2005 | |||
| Moscow | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| Yekaterinburg | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| Kemerovo Oblast | 4 | 4 [43] | 1 |
| Kirov | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| Novgorod | 1 | 3 | 0 |
| Oryol | 1 | 2 | 2 |
| Syktyvkar | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| Khabarovsk | 1 | 1 | 0 [44] |
| Total | 11 | 14 | 5 |
| 2006 | |||
| Syktyvkar | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| Москва | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| Saratov | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| St. Petersburg | 2 | 2 | 1 |
| Krasnodar | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| Kemerovo Oblast | 2 | 2 | 2 |
| Kirov | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| Samara | 2 | 2 | 2 |
| Yekaterinburg | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| Novgorod | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| Chelyabinsk | 1 | 3 [45] | 0 |
| Total | 14 | 16 | 5 |
=======================
[1] The fact that attacks, indeed, occurred is evidenced by random media reports as well as information available to our Center. Anyway, during this period, law enforcement authorities may have been more dangerous to ethnic Georgians than skinheads.
[2] So, for example, in Vladivostok, ambulance person-nel reported that between 1 and 3 November they had to respond to numerous medical emergencies resulting from such attacks, but we were not able to find any reports of the attacks (A. Grachyov. Vladivostok resi-dents are beaten to Save Russia! slogans // Zolotoy Rog (Vladivostok). 2006. 7 November (http://www.zrpress.ru/zr/2006/86/16/); according to St. Petersburg human rights defenders, skinheads re-sumed their activities after a summer recess caused by the G8 Summit in the city, but reports of explicit rac-ist attacks in the city are very rare now.
[3] To note, as before, we include only victims of or-ganized attacks, but not massive fights between skinheads and lefties.
[4] Underreporting is also evidenced by the current 25% increase of the initially low spring crime statistics between June 2006 and the time of this writing, and new reports continue to arrive. Formerly, we did not observe such a massive retrospective rise in crime statistics, except the number of deaths in 2005.
[5] Accurate wording of the indictment is not always known.
[6] Right-wing radicals insist that four people were killed in the fight. However, it was revealed soon after the events that it was a promotional lie. The names and funeral dates of the two victims were reported many times by the media; it seems strange that right-wing radicals, condemning the "official lies," physically present on the site (and effectively coordinating the riots) could not find out the names of two other alleged victims.
[7] We do not include the arson attacks which occurred in October and November in Karelia, because their circumstances are not quite clear.
[8] See a description of events in Karelia in: Marina Latysheva, Coverage of the Kondopoga (Karelia) conflict by the Russian mass media // Center for Journal-ism in Extreme Situations. 2006. September (http://www.cjes.ru/bulletin/?bulletin_id=2169).
[9] They managed to organize actions in at least six Rus-sian cities, including Petrozavodsk, Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, St. Petersburg, Syktyvkar, Stavropol, and Togliatti.
[10] We have mentioned repeatedly in connection with our research of hate speech that many Russian journalists lack professional skills of responding to crisis.
[11] Obviously, a tendency with DPNI - just as it was the case with the 2005 Right March followed by empty declarations of many more such actions forthcoming.
[12] It is unclear to what extent police actions were lawful, because all available reports come from the right-wing radicals.
[13] In addition to the fighting in Volsk, right-wing radicals attacked an ethnic Armenian teenager and a Roma family. They also destroyed a kiosk owned by a non-Slav trader.
[14] Which triggered what we believe to be a well-deserved warning from the Oblast Prosecutor's Office.
[15] Compare the transcript of V. Putin's speech pub-lished on the President's official website (http://president.kremlin.ru/appears/2006/10/05/1906_type63378_112062.shtml) and Vesti TV news broad-cast of 5 October 2006 (http://www.vesti.ru/comments.html?id=51676&date=05-10-2006).
[16] See, for example, Dmitry Vladimirov, Tamara Schkel. Pushkin for Migrants: Lawmakers Draft New Proposals to Fight Illegal Migrants // Rossiiskaya Gazeta. 2006. 5 December (http://www.rg.ru/2006/12/05/migranty.html); Lydia Grafova. Stop, Migration! SOS: Migration! // Ibid. 5 December (http://www.rg.ru/2006/12/06/grafova.html); Olga Pavlikova. Banish-ing an Immigrant // Gazeta. 2006. 4 December (http://gzt.ru/politics/2006/12/04/220203.html).
[17] A new version of the Federal Law on the Legal Status of Foreigners (signed into law by the President on 18 July 2006) will enter into force on 15 January 2007. During the summer months, nationalists strongly and consistently criticized the liberal amendments. Indeed, in December, some of the amendments signed by the Presidents were effectively "reverted."
[18] Notably, the Irkutsk Department of Interior never offered retractions or apologies.
[19] The Russian Government Decree of 15 Novem-ber 2006 (No 683) on establishing in 2007 a permitted proportion of foreign workers employed by economic operators engaged in retail trade in the territory of the Russian Federation // Rossiiskaya Gazeta. 2006. 16 November (http://www.rg.ru/2006/11/16/kvota1-doc.html).
[20] Exceeding 20% quota of newcomers creates dis-comfort for the indigenous population // Vremya Novostei. 2006. 16 November (http://www.vremya.ru/2006/211/51/165741.html).
[21] See details about the concept of "cultural ra-cism" and a corresponding practice in contemporary Russian discourse in: Victor Shnirelman. Incompatibil-ity of Cultures: from National Concepts and School Education to Real Politics // Russian Nationalism: Ideol-ogy and Sentiments. М.: SOVA Center, 2006. pp. 183-222.
[22] Tamara Zamyatina. There is no such thing as 20% quota for immigrants // Moscow News. 2006. 17 November (http://www.mn.ru/issue.php?2006-44-67).
[23] "Illegal immigrants" included, among others, refugees from the Georgia - Abkhazia conflict zone who had lived in Russia for more than a decade holding USSR passports, prevented by arbitrary administrative practices from either becoming Russian nationals or obtaining official refugee status, and also people who legally came to Russia from Georgia and purchased return tickets, but could not go back to Georgia, because transportation was cut off.
[24] The law enforcement authorities in Moscow de-nied any official instruction to "detect" ethnic Georgians among school students. However, a lot of plausible police instructions and orders concerning Georgians were posted on unofficial websites. See details, for ex-ample, in: Maria Zheleznova, Yevgenia Pismennaya, Artem Vernidub, Alexander Raskin, Shapeshifters in Tigerskins // Russian Newsweek. 2006. № 49. (http://www.runewsweek.ru/rubrics/?rubric=country&rid=1403).
[25] See a collection of news items about the anti-Georgian campaign in: Discrimination-2006. // Human Rights in Russia. (http://www.hro.org/actions/nazi/2006/ge/index.php).
[26] For example, active debates were triggered by a web publication of Belov's photo taken during a Kremlin-hosted reception celebrating the Police Day.
[27] The Vietnamese student case. To remind, there were 17 defendants facing charges for a number of other attacks, as well as the murder of a Vietnamese stu-dent. The jury did not find any defendants guilty of this murder, but three of the 17 were found guilty of rac-ist attacks against nationals of Ghana, Azerbaijan, Palestine Autonomy, and China.
[28] To remind, the racial hatred motive is not always recognized in this type of cases.
[29] However, a possible explanation of the jury ver-dict is the overall situation in the city where no one is protected from neo-Nazi attacks.
[30] The judgment was by a court of second instance.
[31] When the first sentence was overruled, the prosecutor combined two cases into one.
[32] This provision is camouflaged in the text of the law by cross-references to various articles of electoral legislation and the Law against Extremist Activity, so we do not pro-vide a direct quote here. See details in: "Anti-extremist" amendments to electoral legislation are adopted in the third reading // SOVA Center. Nationalism and Xenophobia in Russia. 2006. 18 November (http://xeno.sova-center.ru/45A2A1E/8462031).
The new provisions must only apply to acts committed after the law came into effect - those who had committed earlier acts which can be retrospectively found extremist do not need to worry, at least now.
[33] In alphabetic order, except Moscow and St. Petersburg as the main centers of racist violence.
[34] All attacks where we only know the year of the incident are classed under "January".
[35] January and February 2004.
[36] For threats to blow up a synagogue.
[37] Still another individual was acquitted for lack of evidence.
[38] With a judicial determination addressed to the City Administration.
[39] Estimated minimum; in one case, it is only known that a sentence has been passed.
[40] Including 3 convicted for setting up an extremist community, and also for a murder where the hate motive was not recognized.
[41] Estimated minimum.
[42] Estimated minimum.
[43] One individual was convicted twice within one year; he faced the same charges, but for different incidents.
[44] The sentence was lifted due to expiry of the statute of limitations.
[45] Combined with a ban on engaging in professional occupation.
English translation by Irina Savelieva
