"Tolerance Week" as a Cause for Racist Violence

On November 9-16, 2006 in a number of Russian cities and towns a series of actions took place within the framework of the "Tolerance Week". NGOs of Moscow, Samara, Petrozavodsk, Kirov and other cities organized antifascist pickets and meetings for students, painted over neo-nazi graffiti, etc., in order to counteract xenophobic tendencies in Russia.

Meanwhile, the second and the third week of November happened to be also a period of a sudden outburst of neo-nazi violence. On November 5-19, the SOVA Center recorded at least 9 attacks of this sort with 20 people suffered as minimum, including 2 people dead and at least 7 hospitalized. These attacks took place in 4 cities: Moscow, St. Petersburg, Vologda and Voronezh.

It is noticeable, that the major part of the victims (15 out of 20 people) are representatives of youth antifascist subcultures or activists of antifascist organizations. There are considerable reasons to believe, that at least St. Petersburg attacks were timed to the "Tolerance Week" and the anniversary of Timur Kacharava's murder (he was murdered on November 13, 2005). Moreover, one of the attacks happened directly after a "Tolerance Week" action: on November, 15 Dmitry Dubrovsky was beaten on his way home from the event. Dubrovsky is an expert on xenophobia and right-wing extremism and a follower of Nikolaj Girenko murdered in St. Petersburg in 2004.

There is a tendency, that skinheads seem to time their attacks to some particular dates or events, which had become remarkable in the middle of 2005, and became obvious in 2006.