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RUSSIAN PAPER NOTES GROWING RADICALIZATION OF NATIONALIST YOUTH GROUPS
Moskovskiy Komsomolets, Moscow
8 May 07
Text of report by Russian newspaper Moskovskiy Komsomolets on 8 May
[Report by Oleg Fochkin: "Moscow's Skinhead Population Counted. Over
5,000 Racists Live and Flourish in the Capital" - taken from HTML
version of source provided by ISP]
Twenty-five racially-motivated murders were committed, and 80 persons
were wounded in the first four months of this year. For comparison:
In the first half of 2004 seven persons died after skinhead attacks,
and 17 in the same period in 2006. These figures were cited on Monday
[7 May] during the launch of a research work entitled "Cleansers of
Moscow's Streets: Skinheads, the Media, and Public Opinion."
Aleksandr Brod, the head of Moscow Human Rights Bureau, commented that
the number of murders is very approximate. For example, he said that
a person suspected of murdering an Armenian youth named Abramyan was
arrested 17 April.
The detainee stated that he had been solely responsible for 22 deaths
in one year.
Incidentally, the radicals are expanding the list of their
victims. Whereas previously these were representatives of
ethnic minorities, nowadays they are primarily anti-fascists and
representatives of youth subcultures. The Prosecutor's Office is,
of course, doing something about it. The meeting was, incidentally,
attended by a representative of the Russian General Prosecutor's
Office Academy. Brod said that 21 members of the skinhead culture and
nationalist organizations had already been convicted in 2007. But as
yet there are no other preventive methods. According to human-rights
campaigners, the authorities see the opposition, not the skinheads
or xenophobia, as a source of great evil.
In the opinion of researchers, the skinheads themselves have changed.
Previously they were an ordinary network community, but now they
have created structures with leaders. Several years ago teenagers
"outgrew" the skinhead movement - now they stay within it. And they
now engage in full-blown terrorism - for example, blowing up markets. A
sociological survey was conducted among schoolchildren quite recently,
and it showed that many of them, even if they are not skinheads, share
the race-hate ideology. "Toughening up the laws will not help here,"
researcher Victor Shnirelman, the book's author, believes.
"First and foremost we need to radically change the educational
system."
The number of skinheads in the country, incidentally, is constantly
rising.
Whereas they numbered only around 200 in 1995, today there are
5,000-5,500 in Moscow alone, 3,000 in St Petersburg, and several tens
of thousands countrywide.
Moskovskiy Komsomolets asked the historian and author which he thought
was the more dangerous - "Nashism" or the skinhead and nationalist
movement.
Shnirelman was hard put to answer this question. According to him, the
hysteria that was whipped up over Estonia, while in no way justifying
the Estonian authorities, showed that the "Nashists" and the Young
Guard are in many respects a repetition of the Chinese Red Guard
and the Stormtroopers. "In Russia we have many destroyed monuments
and unburied remains of fallen soldiers, but the leaders of these
organizations, for some reason, pay no attention to them. I know of
cases where young people from other cities come to these movements'
demonstrations solely for the purpose of looking around Moscow. They
totally fail to understand the purpose of the gathering. That is
known only to the movement's leaders. And in this respect Nashi is
far more dangerous than the skinheads or nationalists."
Moskovskiy Komsomolets, Moscow
8 May 07
Text of report by Russian newspaper Moskovskiy Komsomolets on 8 May
[Report by Oleg Fochkin: "Moscow's Skinhead Population Counted. Over
5,000 Racists Live and Flourish in the Capital" - taken from HTML
version of source provided by ISP]
Twenty-five racially-motivated murders were committed, and 80 persons
were wounded in the first four months of this year. For comparison:
In the first half of 2004 seven persons died after skinhead attacks,
and 17 in the same period in 2006. These figures were cited on Monday
[7 May] during the launch of a research work entitled "Cleansers of
Moscow's Streets: Skinheads, the Media, and Public Opinion."
Aleksandr Brod, the head of Moscow Human Rights Bureau, commented that
the number of murders is very approximate. For example, he said that
a person suspected of murdering an Armenian youth named Abramyan was
arrested 17 April.
The detainee stated that he had been solely responsible for 22 deaths
in one year.
Incidentally, the radicals are expanding the list of their
victims. Whereas previously these were representatives of
ethnic minorities, nowadays they are primarily anti-fascists and
representatives of youth subcultures. The Prosecutor's Office is,
of course, doing something about it. The meeting was, incidentally,
attended by a representative of the Russian General Prosecutor's
Office Academy. Brod said that 21 members of the skinhead culture and
nationalist organizations had already been convicted in 2007. But as
yet there are no other preventive methods. According to human-rights
campaigners, the authorities see the opposition, not the skinheads
or xenophobia, as a source of great evil.
In the opinion of researchers, the skinheads themselves have changed.
Previously they were an ordinary network community, but now they
have created structures with leaders. Several years ago teenagers
"outgrew" the skinhead movement - now they stay within it. And they
now engage in full-blown terrorism - for example, blowing up markets. A
sociological survey was conducted among schoolchildren quite recently,
and it showed that many of them, even if they are not skinheads, share
the race-hate ideology. "Toughening up the laws will not help here,"
researcher Victor Shnirelman, the book's author, believes.
"First and foremost we need to radically change the educational
system."
The number of skinheads in the country, incidentally, is constantly
rising.
Whereas they numbered only around 200 in 1995, today there are
5,000-5,500 in Moscow alone, 3,000 in St Petersburg, and several tens
of thousands countrywide.
Moskovskiy Komsomolets asked the historian and author which he thought
was the more dangerous - "Nashism" or the skinhead and nationalist
movement.
Shnirelman was hard put to answer this question. According to him, the
hysteria that was whipped up over Estonia, while in no way justifying
the Estonian authorities, showed that the "Nashists" and the Young
Guard are in many respects a repetition of the Chinese Red Guard
and the Stormtroopers. "In Russia we have many destroyed monuments
and unburied remains of fallen soldiers, but the leaders of these
organizations, for some reason, pay no attention to them. I know of
cases where young people from other cities come to these movements'
demonstrations solely for the purpose of looking around Moscow. They
totally fail to understand the purpose of the gathering. That is
known only to the movement's leaders. And in this respect Nashi is
far more dangerous than the skinheads or nationalists."