Radical nationalism in Russia and efforts to counteract it in 2006

We publish our annual analytical report on radical nationalism and public and state counteraction to it. This report has been compiled on the basis of the SOVA center's daily monitoring. The presentation of the report took place in the Independent press-center in Moscow, on March 26, 2007.

Summary

Manifestations of Radical Nationalism : Violence : Vandalism : Spontaneous Mass Conflicts : Activity of Right-Wing Radical Organizations : Nationalism and Xenophobia as Electoral Resource : Expansion of Nationalism in Public Life

Counteraction to Radical Nationalism : NGO activities and spontaneous opposition : Cases Brought before the European Court of Human Rights : Criminal Prosecution of the Right-Wing Radicals : Other Measures of Counteraction :

Excessive and Unfounded Actions against Extremism : Lawmaking : Persecution of NGO and Civil Society Activists : Pressure against Mass Media : Antifascist Rhetoric as a Political Resource :

Appendixes. Statistics

Appendix 1. Consolidates Statistics of Racist and Neo-Nazi Attacks between 1 January and April, 30 2007 (by the city)

Appendix 2. Consolidated Statistics of Racist and Neo-Nazi Attacks in 2004-2007 (by the season)

Appendix 3. Consolidates Statistics of Racist and Neo-Nazi Attacks in 2004 and 2007 (by the object of attack)

Appendix 4. Statistics of Convictions Taking into Account the Racial Hate Motive of Violent Crimes in 2004-2007 (April, 30)

Appendix 5. Statistics of Convictions for Hate Propaganda in 2004-2007 (April, 30)

SUMMARY

The year 2006 was marked by substantial developments in the sphere of ethno-religious xenophobia and radical nationalism in Russia. Unfortunately, most of these developments accelerated negative trends of the past, and even caused some new ones to emerge.

Alongside the stable quantitative growth of racist violence (at least 17% as compared to 2005) we observed some qualitative changes, such as the introduction of firearms and explosives, as well as the new demonstrative and explicit nature of such xenophobic crimes.

Public activism of right-wing radical groups was on the rise in 2006. The characteristic features of the past year in this respect included: massive public events; efforts to make a link with social issues and reorient demonstrations into ethno-religious protests; the emergence of new, formerly unthinkable, alliances; and the strengthening and explicit manifestation of links between political groups and skinheads (in particular, some members of the State Duma and regional legislatures openly collaborated with skinheads and offered them direct legal assistance).

Moreover, since the second half of 2006 - i.e. the Kondopoga riots - we have witnessed the active and ubiquitous expansion of ethno-nationalism both in public life (even some politicians formerly regarded as "liberal" used nationalist rhetoric) and in official domestic policies, such as the anti-Georgian discriminatory campaign and the populist ban on foreign traders (commonly understood as "ethnic aliens;) selling goods in the Russian retail markets.

The past year also generated some positive developments, such as consolidation of anti-fascist forces; the increasingly active criminal and administrative prosecution of right-wing radicals; the improved legal codification of such offenses; and the emergence of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) case law as an instrument useful to adjudicate ultra right-wing activity in Russia. Unfortunately, the achievements in all these areas were weak and more importantly, inconsistent. They failed to slow down - let alone stop - the rapid escalation of xenophobic manifestations.

Moreover, in 2006, the practice of using anti-extremism rhetoric and legislation to discredit and harass political opponents or independent groups and publications not only expanded, but also became an increasingly apparent and permanent feature of domestic policy. At the same time, pseudo-antifascist activities further confused Russian society's already vague conceptions about the unacceptability of public xenophobia.

Unfortunately, our analysis of the 2006 events and phenomena did not reveal any overall improvement of the situation with regard to manifestations of radical nationalism in Russia. Unless consistent, proactive and politically unbiased measures are taken to counteract hate crime and xenophobic propaganda before the federal elections, the situation cannot but deteriorate even further.

MANIFESTATIONS OF RADICAL NATIONALISM

Violence

The most notable - and, fortunately, still the least acceptable to the public - manifestation of aggressive nationalism was racist and neo-Nazi violence which, just as in past years, continued its steady growth. As of this writing (March 2007), we know of 539 victims of such attacks, of which 54 lost their lives. These findings show a 17% increase in comparison to 2005 (461 victims, 47 deaths) and the numbers, of course, will eventually be adjusted.[1]

Keep in mind, these numbers are known to be underestimated. For example, they do not include attacks against homeless people, even though the law enforcement authorities officially stated in many such incidents that skinheads were behind the attacks (we know of seven such killings and one beating in 2006). Likewise, these statistics do not include victims of massive fights (simply because it was impossible to count the victims), and victims of anti-homosexual attacks during May 2006 attacks in Moscow (on 27 and 28 May 2006 alone skinheads and other homophobes battered at least 50 homosexuals). These stats also do not include victims of :acquisitive; crimes, except those in which the police explicitly found racist motives. Incidentally, the latter have been increasingly recognized by courts, on top of being identified by investigators. For example in 2006, out of the 31 convictions where the racist motive was recognized by courts, at least nine [2]included :acquisitive; charges - it is likely that the offenders increasingly used robbery to conceal the real reason behind the attacks.

In addition to such assaults being more numerous, there are some noticeable qualitative changes.

Firstly, violence by organized skinhead gangs was more open and demonstrative. This explicit nature can take various forms; whereas before it was mainly expressed by claiming responsibility for violence (not to mention vandalism), attacks to mark certain events are now more common (in addition, of course, to skinheads' long-standing tradition of :celebrating; Hitler's birthday on 20 April). Such explicit attacks are particularly common in St. Petersburg where diverse skin groups are organized and coordinated better than elsewhere. To give one example, a nine-year-old black girl Lillian Sissoco was assaulted shortly after the end of the trial over the killing of another nine-year-old girl, Khursheda Sultonova. This trend has been gradually spreading to other communities, particularly to Moscow. For example, at the 40 day anniversary of the death of Dmitry Borovikov, leader of an odious skin-group in St. Petersburg, skinheads in Moscow staged a series of attacks, targeting at least seven people.

The attackers sometimes demonstrate that they are not afraid to be stopped. They commit crimes in broad daylight, in public places and/or in front of surveillance cameras. For example, skinhead assailants blatantly killed young Armenian Vigen Abramyants on the platform of Pushkinskaya Metro Station on 22 April 2006.

The explicit manner of neo-Nazi offenses was obviously designed to attract media attention and to promote skinhead groups from marginality and criminality to the public sphere. Skin group leaders aspired to reach the level of popular media figures represented in print and broadcast media alongside the so-called respectable politicians. Their strategy worked. Starting in the spring of 2006, mass media - particularly TV - coverage of the problem of racist violence, combined with some journalists' lack of professional skills, created a situation in which skinheads were allowed to participate as equals in the debate on the growth of xenophobia in the country. Videos of racist violence formerly published on banned or scarcely ever visited websites, were broadcast all over the country without anything to balance the impact - such as reports of trials and sentences meted out to racists. [3] The apotheosis of skinhead campaigning was the NTV program on 30 December 2006 featuring a 15-minute film about Russian right-wing radicals, which can only be interpreted as a neo-Nazi promotional film. [4]

The objective of penetrating mass media - which had been set by neo-Nazi activists in earlier years - was met over and above, so that Dmitry Dyomushkin's Slavic Union abandoned website hacking, a tactic earlier seen. as a cheap and safe method of self-promotion. They did not need it any more; D. Dyomushkin, just like other neo-Nazi activists, gained access to a much more powerful instrument of promotion - the Russian TV.

Secondly, in 2006, the nature of violence also changed. Skinheads used guns and explosives instead of bare fists and knives. The most serious damage was caused by the explosion in Cherkizovo market in Moscow on 21 August 2006. There, a handmade bomb in the market killed 13 people, including two young children, and wounded 53. [5] Admittedly, there had been other incidents of Nazi crimes involving firearms and explosives in the past (such as a series of anti-Semitic posters wired to explosive devices in 2002, the attempted assassination of Anatoly Chubais, and the blast attack against a Grozny-Moscow train on 12 June 2005). But these actshad been either manifestations of :interpersonal; xenophobia (sometimes combined with common banditry[6]) or terrorist attacks committed by mature adults, veterans of local wars and conflicts of the 90-ies. In addition, usually these were one-time occurrences. Now, terrorist suspects are young people who have not served in the army, but who are closely linked to law enforcement authorities - although indirectly (the suspects include children of high-ranking police officers, students of police academies, etc.), and to the so-called :military patriotic; clubs. Plus, they are suspected of systematic, rather than one-time, terrorist activities (:the Cherkizovo bombers; are suspected of at least nine blasts).

The activity of right-wing controlled, :military patriotic; clubs has increased, rather than decreased, notwithstanding the investigation into the SPAS club where the leader was one of the suspected Cherkizovo bombers(unclear sentence). In addition to ideological conditioning, young members of such clubs are trained in contact fighting and the use of firearms and explosives. Taking advantage of the popular rhetoric of national insularity and militarism, right-wing radicals enjoy the United Russia Party endorsement in the creation of such clubs. In light of the above, we can expect further, and quite possibly dramatic, escalation of right-wing terror.

The new methods and means of racist violence are accompanied by substantial changes in the membership of such groups. New phenomena have emerged from inside the skinhead subculture populated mostly by teenagers. They no longer leave skinhead gangs as they grow older. It was very unusual in the past to see a 20-year-old skinhead, but now it is quite common. Moreover, as older members come back from penitentiaries (also a recent development), their prison experience is translated to other members of the gangs. The above-mentioned :military-athletic clubs; transform isolated and undisciplined local teen gangs into prototype Storm-troopers, which the :adult; ultra-right seem prepared to rely on. As the skinhead movement :matures,; its members' educational and social status improves, facilitating access to schools, contacts with law enforcement, and financial and legal support from the ultra-right. All these developments have not been fully realized, but they are increasingly manifested.

And finally, racial violence by single-handed attackers is more common than in the past. The case of Alexander Koptsev - perpetrator of a stab attack on 11 January, 2006, in a Moscow synagogue, injuring nine people - though thankfully not killing anyone - is just one odious, high profile case, but by no means unique. On 25 June in Novosibirsk a man armed with a hunting rifle spent an hour shooting at people whom he judged by their appearance to be from the Caucasus. We increasingly hear reports of nationalist violence caused by the so-called :Chechen syndrome; where Chechen war veterans attacked people with non-Slav appearance and explained their aggression by saying that :our guys lost their lives in Chechnya, and now we need to get square with all 'blacks.; [7] This occurred on 12 June 2006 in Kaliningrad, where a series of attacks perpetrated by employees of a private security agency affected ten migrant workers from the Central Asia. The fact that such incidents have multiplied indicates an expansion and heightening "intensity" of xenophobic propaganda, thereby inciting mentally unstable individuals to commit violent crimes.

Vandalism

Vandalism is a traditional manifestation of xenophobic and neo-Nazi aggression. Vandalism commonly affects religious buildings and installations. It is important to note that no religious denomination or faith is immune.

In 2006, at least 70 acts of vandalism were reported in Russia[8] where religious hatred was the main motive (out of the total 96 in which we found to be motivated by neo-Nazi or xenophobic attitudes). As was the case with the above incidents of violence, this estimate is very conservative and takes into account only those episodes in which the hate motive was evident (selective targeting, offensive graffiti, no valuables stolen, etc.).

Jewish organizations are particularly targeted by such attacks, with over half incidents of vandalism(36)- a major increase since the previous year, when we documented 27 acts of vandalism against Jewish facilities. In Volgograd, a security guard was injured in an attack against a Jewish school. Three attacks - in Surgut (Tyumen Oblast), Khabarovsk and Astrakhan - were combined with arson attempts.

Attacks against Orthodox Christian installations came second with 12 incidents, which is a substantial drop as compared to the previous year which had 30 incidents of anti-Orthodox vandalism. As opposed to other faiths, Orthodox Christian sites are not targeted by skinheads, but mainly by those who call themselves "Satanists.; They destroy crosses in cemeteries and cover installations with offensive graffiti, :Number of the Beast; etc. Neo-Pagan skinheads also target Orthodox sites. In 2006, there were two such cases - one in Yelabuga, where a swastika was painted on the wall of the Spas Cathedral, and one in Rybinsk, where skinheads covered the walls of a local museum housed in a former Orthodox monastery with offensive graffiti.

The third on the list of targets are Moslem religious installations, [9] attacked by vandals 11 times, including two incidents (in Yaroslavl and in Vladimir) of Molotov cocktail bombs thrown at mosques, and a strong blast outside a mosque in Yakhroma, a town near Moscow. The latter is suspected to involve the Slav Union, its leader D. Dyomushkin and the :Cherkizovo bombers.;

Very often, such offenses revealed a complex form of xenophobia. To give an example, anti-Caucasus graffiti was painted on a Protestant church and an Orthodox church was covered with anti-Semitic slogans. The best known illustration of the latter combination is the :anti-Semitic; theory of the fire in the Troitsky (Trinity) Cathedral in St. Petersburg (featuring six-winged stars on its domes). The fire broke out on 25 August. According to representatives of the Orthodox eparchy, they had received several threatening phone calls in August, with the callers specifically mentioning the stars, while after the fire, the cathedral was visited by :bulky, aggressive looking young men" who asked the staff whether it had occurred to them that the fire might have been their :punishment for restoring six-winged stars on the domes.;

We documented at least 8 acts of vandalism motivated by the neo-Nazi ideology, including desecration of memorials to World War II victims and anti-fascist memorials (for example, in Pushkin {St. Petersburg} offensive graffiti was painted over a monument to Ernest Telman). Some attacks targeted the offices of :ideological; opponents, as in Ukhta (Komi), where the city committee of the Communist Party came under attack in January, or in Samara, where the headquarters of the Union of Communist Youth was targeted in March.

Similarly to the racist violence, vandalism is increasingly demonstrative and explicit. A series of attacks may occur over a few days (e.g. the Yaroslavl mosque was vandalized twice over one week, and the Ulyanovsk synagogue was targeted twice over three days) or vandals may show off (by acting in broad daylight, watched by witnesses or surveillance cameras). For example, it is known that at least twice neo-Nazi vandals targeted buildings located next to FSB offices (in Vladivostok and Rybinsk, Yaroslavl Oblast).

Spontaneous Mass Conflicts

The highest-profile mass conflict with a distinct nationalist flavor was reported in Kondopoga, Karelia, in early September 2006, but this conflict - which we will cover below - was by far not the only one in the past year.

In the spring of 2006, a pogrom targeting ethnic Azerbaijani villagers occurred in Kharagun, Chita Oblast, In this incident, a drunken fight escalated into massive riots against ethnic Azerbaijanis living in the community, killing one and injuring at least four. In addition, a few cars and eight houses owned by ethnic Azerbaijanis were set on fire. Regional media reported that all Azerbaijanis left the village following the events.

The second conflict occurred in June 2006 in Salsk, a city in Rostov Oblast where, fortunately, the disturbances stopped short of pogroms. A quarrel between two young men - an ethnic Russian and an ethnic :Dagestani; - led to a series of apparently criminal clashes, and then to a massive fight involving guns, killing one and injured several people.

As opposed to Kharagun, the latter incident evolved over a relatively long period, so it is obvious that police inaction and failure to interfere in a timely manner allowed the conflict to progress and result in casualties. Angry over the law enforcement inaction, local residents came out for a meeting where, we should emphasize, no nationalist slogans were voiced. Even though anti-Caucasus leaflets were disseminated in the city immediately after the killing, nationalists did not dare to come to the first meeting. After a short time, the Movement against Illegal Immigration (DPNI) led by Alexander Belov (Potkin) and supported by local Cossacks intervened in the Salsk conflict and succeeded in framing the social protest as an interethnic one. However, by the time DPNI intervened, some time had elapsed since the conflict allowing strong emotions to subside. Furthermore, local authorities had made a genuine effort to prevent any further escalation.

And finally, the events in Kondopoga were triggered by drunken behavior of two patrons in a local restaurant (both with a criminal history). A mass fight erupted which involved the restaurant's :krysha; (criminal protection) due to total police inaction. The fighting killed two and heavily injured six; a large part of local residents interpreted it as an :interethnic conflict; leading to many days of pogroms which targeted people from the Caucasus.

All such conflicts follow the same pattern which we have described on many occasions: an interpersonal (often :drunken;) quarrel understood as an :inter-ethnic conflict;; the inaction of police or local administration; and finally riots. In 2006, however, we observed three distinct types of official responses to such incidents. In Kharagun, the entire conflict was relatively short (it was over in one day), the law enforcement intervened promptly, while the right-wing radicals were not allowed to get involved. All suspected perpetrators were promptly arrested, and subsequent attempts by local national-patriots to seize the initiative and to reinterpret the conflict, in the spirit of DPNI, as :national liberation struggle of the Russian people against occupants," were decisively suppressed by the Oblast prosecutor's office which made a public statement specifically for the occasion.

In Salsk, the police eventually intervened, and the suspected killer was arrested almost immediately. DPNI became engaged in the conflict at a later date, after the emotions had cleared - partly because they had been aired during the anti-police meeting. At the same time, authorities made tremendous efforts (it appears that sometimes these efforts were not entirely legal) to suppress any right-wing radical propaganda, to the extent that someone directly involved in the conflict (in fact, the local DPNI leader) was forced to speak on local TV with a conciliation message for the community.

In Kondopoga, the police procrastinated, the local administration refused to act, wile the right-wing radicals engaged in the conflict virtually all at once and coordinated all their steps over the DPNI website. We are aware of the immediate outcome, but long-term consequences of the conflict are not yet obvious - or resolved.

Activity of Right-Wing Radical Organizations

The last year was marked by the growing activity of ultra-right organizations, particularly, as before, the Movement against Illegal Immigration (DPNI). However, alongside and in close association with DPNI, other right-wing radicals were increasingly active and often made public appearances as a fairly sustainable coalition - DPNI, the Russian All-National Union (RONS), the National Imperial Party of Russia (NDPR), the Slavic Union (SS), and the Russian Order. In provinces, similar nationalist actions, while invariably involving DPNI, also engaged local activists from Rodina, Narodnaya Volya, the Union of Russian People, and some local national-patriotic groups.

Mass Actions and Riots

The two biggest successes of the right-wing radicals in 2006 were the homophobic campaign in April and March and the mentioned events in Kondopoga. Incidentally, the former was also a rare case where DPNI was not the leading group in the campaign.

The homophobic campaign was related to the widely advertised gay festival planned in May and which was expected to feature the first-ever Gay Pride March in Russia on 27 May. In early and late May, two waves of homophobic violence swept across Russia, including violent assaults against homosexuals, attacks against gay clubs, etc. The police conduct on the night of the 1 May (the beginning of anti-gay riots) effectively encouraged the homophobes: instead of controlling the aggressive, but small, mob surrounding the gay club where the festival was planned, police only kept the mob off the entrance to the club (but did not protect the patrons coming in), and then escorted everybody out of the club. On the following days police actions were adequate (maybe even too harsh), but they failed to stop the homophobes. The assailants took advantage of this license (notably, one of the clubs was burned down in these days). Token administrative fines imposed on some detained attackers (instead of criminal prosecution for violent assaults) also strengthened the sense of impunity in the right-wing radicals and failed to deter them from further violence. Suffice it to say that the detained attackers included at least one of suspected Cherkizovo market bombers. [10]

Given the high level of homophobia in the Russian society, a harsh reaction by anti-homosexual activists was predictable, but no one expected that their protests would grow into open and organized violence. We should note here the key role played by RONS leader Igor Artyomov, who led and coordinated the homophobic actions. [11] However, the massive attack against the Gay Pride marchers on 27 May involved a diversity of nationalist activists.

To reiterate, the May events around the Gay Pride were one of the most successful actions undertaken by right-wing radicals in 2006 and in previous years. By picking an issue likely to attract media attention and relying on widespread homophobia in society, RONS with its partners gained maximum possible exposure. Moreover, they secured endorsement of the riots by a part of Russian society which would have never supported racist violence of the same type. These right-wing radicals garnered the vocal support of those people who generally disapproved of their other activity (such as the Union of Communist Youth (SKM) activists or singer Yuri Shevchuk).

In addition, the organization of their action in Moscow was the first and a fairly successful lesson in the open coordination of violent attacks over the Internet, and the first (and so far, the only one) lesson in joining efforts with other forces - skinheads and Orthodox fundamentalists, with whom they had had no contacts before.

Another major success of the right-wing radicals were the mentioned events in Kondopoga. Admittedly, their success was short-lived, because following the riots in Karelia, the :nationalist initiative; was snatched from the ultra-right by the government. [12] However, in terms of publicity and program goals (i.e. to promote and legitimize ethno-nationalist, discriminatory practices), the right-wing radicals won a victory in Kondopoga. Admittedly, these radicals could not organize such riots themselves, lacking the means and resources. But they were mobile and used an effective campaigning strategy. The right-wing radical activity in Kondopoga was the culmination of DPNI's prior experience in organizing diverse actions (including failures as well as successes). They showed their ability to engage promptly (within 24 hours) in a local conflict, to coordinate their efforts over the internet, to organize a promotional campaign on the web and in mass media, to stage :support actions" in other Russian regions, and to campaign effectively in the streets (DPNI produced and distributed Kondopoga stickers in less than one day!) - and to do all of the above simultaneously.

But on the other hand, the success achieved in Kondopoga had a downside for DPNI and their leader. Upon his return from Karelia, A. Belov appeared to have thrown all caution to the wind. In an attempt to repeat their Kondopoga success and to take advantage of the public hysteria skillfully fueled by adept use of mass media, he organized a serious of explicit provocations - ranging from a right-wing radical student rally in Moscow to announcing a Russian March in the Moscow Metro. These actions undermined his reputation with skinhead groups (DPNI's key supporters), and also placed him in a position of confrontation with the government, which had never been the case before.

In addition - and we reiterate - the authorities were worried over the Kondopoga events and effectively snatched the nationalist initiative from the right-wing radicals. The latter found themselves in direct competition with government for the xenophobic sentiments of the Russian public, which should be seen as part of campaigning for the forthcoming elections. Therefore, DPNI (as competitors, rather than a destructive, unlawful group) came under increased law enforcement pressure. In particular, A. Belov, among others, faced prosecution for incitement to ethnic hatred in a criminal investigation launched by the prosecutorial office of Karelia into the Kondopoga events.

Nevertheless, since November 2005, DPNI, newly encouraged by the scale and resonance of the neo-Nazi march in Moscow, attempted nearly every month to organize various meetings and pickets. Mostly using social slogans (such as protests against illegal drugs, against the installation of a monument to Geidar Aliev in Moscow, etc.), the organization claimed each time that the action was expected to equal the Russian March in its scale. But they never succeeded in attracting more than two hundred people For example, a rally in Oryol :in the memory of General Yermolov; was preceded by heavy promotion and co-organized on 24 May by four groups - DPNI, Narodnaya Volya, RONS, and the Union of Russian People, but failed to attract a substantial number of marchers even though it featured Belov and a number of activists coming in from other cities.

On 4 November 2006, they failed to attract as many people as the year before: their meeting in Devichye Pole gathered around a thousand people, but only if we count Baburin's supporters and other national patriots who kept aside from DPNI, and other right-wing radicals (i.e. even taking into account the preventive arrests of potential marchers, the number of participants was not anywhere near that of the previous year). Admittedly, the success of the 2006 Russian March was not determined by the number of people attending the meeting in Moscow, but rather by the fact that similar marches were held in 13 Russian cities (and in three other cities they had been unlawfully suppressed by police). In fact, various nationalist-patriotic groups had attempted, on a number of occasions, to hold coordinated public events across the entire Russian territory, but in recent years they were not able to organize any noticeable meetings in more than three regions at once. [13] The geographic dispersion of the 2006 Russian March suggests that right-wing radicals are shifting their attention from Moscow to provinces.

The right-wing radicals have abandoned the idea of constructing their :parties; from the top down and have adopted a more realistic (proto)party-building approach - well-coordinated, systematic, and diversified both in geographic reach and content: from legal support of convicted :comrades-in-arms" in prisons to assistance to orphanages. Last year's march, as the first public event of a national scale organized by the ultra-right in recent years, was the culmination of their organizing efforts.. Admittedly, the xenophobic subtext of National Unity Day - immediately accepted by the Russian ultra-right as "their holiday; - played a certain role. However, another nation-wide public action "in defense of political prisoners" held in early 2007 showed that a convenient holiday is just one factor of success, among others.

Political Maneuvers of the Right-Wing Radicals

In 2006, right-wing organizing was not particularly eventful. Arguably the most notable development was the formation of the National-Bolshevik Front (NBF) by National Bolsheviks who shared right-wing radical (at times explicitly Nazi) views and who had left Eduard Limonov's party (the main target of government-endorsed "anti-fascism;) for ideological reasons. [14] The NBF founding conference was held in Moscow on 29 August - a symbolic date marking an anniversary of a cruel attack against National-Bolshevik Party (NBP) [15] activists the year before. Members of the pro-Kremlin party Nashi were believed to be behind the attacks. As soon as the NBF was announced, its members immediately declared that they were forming a coalition with Alexander Dugin's Eurasian Youth Union (ESM). The front and the coalition declared their common goal of "combating the orange threat" in support of the current government. The fact that the National Bolshevik ultra-right came back to Dugin appears logical, given that Dugin was the originator of those ideas and diatribes which caused some observers to consider National Bolsheviks a fascist party. It is widely known that members of the ESM who declare loyalty to, and enjoy favors from, the current government were the official organizers of the 4 November 2005 Right March in Moscow. These members also committed a series of violent attacks against various opponents, which they do not even attempt to hide, but rather tend to publicize as much as possible. So we are observing a paradox, characteristic of the :state-sponsored anti-fascism" in Russia: Limonov's NBP, increasingly left-wing and openly oppositional, is labeled :fascist; by the official propaganda, while the actual right-wing radicals of BNF and ESM have abandoned their oppositional views and can now claim government support.

The first half of 2006 was also marked by attempts of the right-wing radicals (DPNI and their allies) to establish closer links with the Communist Party by taking advantage of all mass meetings organized or attended by Communists, such as protests against the housing reform, celebrations of :Soviet; holidays - 23 February, 1 May - meetings in the memory of Serbian ex-President Slobodan Milosevic, etc. Initially, right-wing radicals simply joined meetings and marches - and the Communist organizers did not object, unlike in 2005.Later, the right-wing members were accepted as full participants to the extent that some CPRF meetings featured A. Belov as an official speaker.

However, there was no noticeable follow-up, and in the second half of 2006 DPNI sought a closer relationship with Dmitry Rogozin, resulting in :revival; of the Union of Russian Communities (KRO) on 9 December 2006. [16] (A. Belov joined the Presidium and the Central Council of KRO as :the KRO Council leader for propaganda;).

Other events in the sphere of organizing included a congress held on 27 November by the Union of Russian People, a coalition of Orthodox-monarchist groups formed in November 2005. The congress sought to overcome the differences which had brought the organization to the verge of splitting up since the death of its leader sculptor Vyacheslav Klykov in early June 2006. Formally, they were able to reconcile and elected General Leonid Ivashov from the Military-Imperial Union to SRN Chairman. But internal conflicts continue to paralyze the organization.

On 16 December 2006, the Russian National Unity announced the establishment of a new movement named after Alexander Barkashov. It made no real difference: the part of RNE led by Barkashov remains in crisis, while RNE groups independent from Barkashov act each on their own.

Certain nationalist MPs of the State Duma are more active and, importantly, more explicit than before about their collaboration with the ultra-right groups. We should mention Nikolay Kuryanovich in the first place - who is effectively "a pocket State Duma member; for the neo-Nazi groups and assists them with his parliamentary enquiries which he uses to pressure investigators of cases against hate promoters and skinheads accused of violent crimes. His MP status allows him to voice ultra-right slogans and get away with it, as well as to organize nationalist events, etc. He was ousted from the Liberal Democratic Party on the eve of the Russian March, leaving him no chance of being re-elected. But N. Kuryanovich, in addition to being a member of DPNI, is also a member of the Orthodox fundamentalist Union of Orthodox Gonfalon-carriers (UOG) and a member of the Central Council of the neo-Nazi SS (giving up his position in KRO leadership).

In 2006, more State Duma members openly demonstrated their links with right-wing radicals. Victor Cherepkov (Baburin's Rodina Party) did not only take part in the right-wing radical meeting on 23 February 2006, but also, as neo-Nazis claimed, hired an SS skinhead as his assistant. In January 2006 it was revealed that S. Baburin himself joined the Union of Russian People founded two months before. MP Sergei Ivanov of LDPR openly collaborates with the National-Socialist Society. Andrei Savelyev, the ideologist of Rogozin's Rodina, officially joined DPNI in 2006.

To repeat, the links between members of the Duma and neo-Nazis had always been known, but before 2006 they had not been demonstrated so explicitly. The current situation shows that the boundaries of what is permitted in the Russian politics are expanding.

The same is evidenced by the maneuvers around the Russian March. Firstly, the preparation for the event, which was perceived as a neo-Nazi march from the start (as seen from the publicized membership of the Organizing Committee, which included SS leader D. Dyomushkin) involved at least seven Duma members. [17] Secondly, MP Sergei Baburin enabled the neo-Nazis to hold their "march" legally by obtaining permission for his own party to hold a public meeting and allowing DPNI and skinheads, as well as Makashov and supporters of Colonel Kvachkov (charged with attempted assassination of Anatoly Chubais) to participate. The important thing is not that Baburin, a relatively moderate politician, dares to collaborate openly with right-wing radicals - it is not unusual - but that he (like Victor Alksnis who is not an ethno-nationalist at all) is prepared to collaborate even with explicitly neo-Nazi groups.

So we have been observing a change of configuration in the potential alliances of right-wing radicals in comparison to the previous decade.

Nationalism and Xenophobia as Electoral Resource

Even though the electoral process is heavily regulated, nationalist slogans and provocations are still actively used in election campaigns, both as "negative publicity; and as a way to attract voters.

So, for example, during additional elections to the State Duma from Medvedkovsky Electoral District No 196 in Moscow, held on 12 March 2006, there were three ultra-right candidates - Colonel Vladimir Kvachkov; Russkaya Pravda paper founder and publisher Alexander Aratov and political writer Igor Dyakov know for his neo-Nazi views. The first two were under criminal investigation at the time. Even though the three had no chance of being elected, [18] they promoted right-wing radical propaganda under the cover of election campaigning (Kvachkov's campaigners, for example, were arrested by police for disseminating SRN brochures which had nothing to do with the candidate) [19].

Nikolai Kuryanovich was involved in the election campaign of LDPR MP Alexei Mitrofanov for the position of the Mayor of Dzerzhinsk, a city outside Moscow. Speaking at a campaign meeting, he advocated for a residential policy favoring "an ethnically clean community."

In contrast, candidate to Saratov city legislature Andrei Palaznik from United Russia, to the best of our knowledge, did not voice any nationalist slogans of his own, but he made Ilya Lazarenko, a veteran of the Russian right-wing radical movement[20], head of his election campaign headquarters. A few days after the elections, the law enforcement authorities in Saratov announced that they had :prevented a serious nationalist provocation" which, they asserted, Lazarenko had been preparing on the eve of elections.

In addition, it is interesting to note the way nationalist rhetoric is used in election campaigning indirectly, by reference to past scandals still on the public mind. For example, Sergei Lectorovich, a well-known and rather popular nationalist in Samara who used to be the local Rodina Party leader for a while when he ran (unsuccessfully) for the mayor of Samara, used a promotional poster featuring his own photo and a slogan "Let Us Clean Samara from Trash", closely associated with Rodina's scandalous promotional video entitled :Let Us Clean Our City from Trash.; On 12 March 2006, Alexander Kuzmin was elected mayor of Megion, a city in Khanty-Mansiisky Autonomous District after three unsuccessful attempts; in 2005, he was accused of nationalist propaganda and of bribing the voters and banned from campaigning just one day before the second tour of elections. We are not sure whether Kuzmin used nationalist slogans in 2006. But it is certain that even before his first election campaign he had been known to most local residents for his nationalist slogans - it was only in this context that this candidate was discussed on local web forums in 2005.

We can see in both cases - Lectorovich, and to a lesser extend, Kuzmin - that they referred in their campaigning to the same nationalist manifestations which had been officially repressed earlier. The cases of Kuzmin and the Moscow Rodina Party - i.e. candidates being removed from elections for nationalism - are extremely rare in the Russian electoral practice. [21] Reference to these past cases, on the one hand, was self-explanatory, and on the other hand, tapped into public discontent with the government's authoritarian practices.

Expansion of Nationalism in Public Life

The year 2006 revealed an inconsistency between the anti-xenophobic rhetoric of government officials and actual government practices.

On the one hand, officials at various levels - from President Putin to governors and mayors - and also pro-governmental political parties and organizations have declared so often that xenophobia and racial intolerance must be suppressed, that these declarations are perceived as well-polished clichés.

But on the other hand, the government officials and pro-governmental figures rarely set a good example in this respect. Since 2006, questionable statements, initiatives and contacts of the so-called respectable politicians and statespersons have been increasingly reported. For example, in May, a transcript was published of the April meeting held by the parliamentary party Council, St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly; it featured openly nationalist pronouncements not only by LDPR members, but also by United Russia MPs.

Admittedly, some events can be explained by mere ignorance. It is unlikely that the United Russia Party knowingly provided a gym for Slav Union training (as D. Dyomushkin said on REN-TV). It is more likely that they had thought the space would be used by some :military-patriotic club.; But more frequently, their contacts with, or endorsement of, nationalists appear to be a conscious choice. So, for example, we can hardly assume that the Moscow city government was unaware of the fact that the mentioned A. Aratov faced civil and criminal proceedings for propaganda of racial and religious hate content The participation of his Russkaya Pravda with its racist and anti-Semitic publications in the Moscow International Book Fair had provoked scandals more than once. However, this history did not prevent A. Aratov and his publishing company from winning a Moscow government-sponsored mass media award twice within two months.

The Russian Football Union (RFU) [22] and its conduct in 2006 are also worth mentioning. In early 2006 football season, RFU joined the FIFA agreement providing for serious punishment of football clubs for racism should it manifest in their own practices and their fans' behavior. :FIFA requires that a team be stripped of six points for racist manifestations. All our clubs have been warned, and I cannot rule out that we may apply such measures,; said RFU President Vitaly Mutko at the time. But no clubs were punished over the 2006 season, even though all Russian tournaments are known to take place in a racist atmosphere, and in the summer of 2006 an international scandal broke out over an interview given by Locomotive player Stefan-Andre Bikey of Cameroon to a UK paper; he said that he was planning to leave Russia because of continuous racist manifestations. But neither this, nor the Nazi flags in the stadiums, nor even the records of fans' racist behavior in the game reports[23] triggered any real measures by RFU.

On the other hand, there is a persistent tendency to deny the problem and dismiss the demands to investigate racist crimes as some :political agenda.; This tendency is particularly noticeable in St. Petersburg. In the spring of 2006 the city prosecutor Sergey Zaitsev (maybe the only high-ranking government official in Petersburg who had previously admitted a systemic problem of racism in the city), Mikhail Vanichkin (at that time the head of the City Department of Interior) [24], and Tatiana Linyova (chair of the Governor's Human Rights Commission) used virtually the same language to declare that increased attention to St. Petersburg due to a series of outrageous racist attacks was nothing more than :provocation against the city.; Eventually, Governor Valentina Matvyenko, commenting on the arrests of racist suspects, made a reference to :threads leading to Moscow.;

Following the events in Kondopoga, efforts to legitimize xenophobic (particularly anti-migrant) rhetoric and discriminatory practices became a mainstream trend in domestic politics.

Initially it was voiced by regional officials and public figures. Karelian Governor Sergey Katanandov responded to the Kondopoga events with statements comparing the characteristics of :us (our people); and :them; - apparently, forgetting that all people involved in the conflict were Russian citizens. In Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov immediately responded, saying that he would protect :his people; in Karelia, and by doing so both high-ranking officials assumed the roles of tribal chiefs. Head of Murmansk Department of Interior Valery Zvontsov offered his recipe of :inter-ethnic harmony": :... adopt legislation establishing quotas: 30 percent of places in the market may be held by Azeri, and 70 percent must belong to locals." This kind of statements inevitably triggered a massive anti-migrant campaign under the slogan of "cleansing the marketplace from non-Russian traders," especially made possible since the Russian President spoke on 5 October about protecting the interests of :indigenous Russian population; in retail markets. Of course, the President meant Russian citizens (rather than ethnic Russians), but his entire statement was structured in such a way that many people, and not only right-wing radicals, interpreted it as an expression of solidarity with the DPNI rhetoric.

Following this presidential statement (it was not :a slip of the tongue,; because the President repeated it on two occasions), a massive campaign of discrimination was unleashed, including a Decree issued by the federal Government in December which banned foreigners from certain roles in retail trade starting on 1 April 2007. Chronologically, these events were a follow-up of the dwindling anti-Georgian campaign - the first incident of officially endorsed ethnic discrimination in contemporary Russia. The campaign targeted ethnic Georgians with Russian passports, as well as citizens of Georgia. Ethnic discrimination campaigns had occurred in Russia before on many occasions (particularly those targeting Chechens after major terrorist attacks), but they had never been publicized. This time, however, TV outlets and part of the print media establishment were directly involved in racist propaganda. [25]

This official policy was picked up and carried on by pro-governmental political groups, who adopted both the right-wing radical practices and their rhetoric. So, in end-November 2006 the Movement of Young Political Ecologists of the Moscow Region - The Locals (a regional clone of Nashi) undertook a series of :anti-migrant; actions virtually identical to those organized or proposed by DPNI, such as unwarranted patrolling of the streets, ID checks, stopping people of certain ethnicity, and provocation to fighting. [26] As opposed to DPNI, The Locals did not risk being suppressed by police (administrative arrests of a few activists did not make much difference).

All of the above suggest that the :nationalist initiative; - methods as well as slogans - is increasingly shifting to government and pro-governmental structures in anticipation of elections (not only the future federal elections, but also regional elections, as was the case with The Locals in Moscow Oblast, where the elections were held on 11 March 2007).

It has been obvious since Kondopoga that the liberals lack a uniform position concerning "acceptable boundaries of xenophobia." For example, the leadership of Garry Kasparov's United Civic Front (UCF) failed to respond to their Karelia chapter, which effectively expressed solidarity with the Kondopoga rioters by commending their actions as a "manifestation of civic self-government." Even Garry Kasparov himself did not see any problems last spring with having one of Russia's infamous ultra-right figures - Andrei Savelyev - speak as a guest at the first UCF conference.

Yabloko Party leadership failed to dissociate themselves from the nationalist election campaigning of their Krasnoyarsk leader Vladimir Abrosimov; likewise, there was no reaction (except Sergei Ivanenko's promise to :sort it out;) to Aleksei Navalny of Moscow Yabloko saying that he did not denounce any of the Russian March slogans.

COUNTERACTION TO RADICAL NATIONALISM

NGO activities and spontaneous opposition

NGO Activity and Non-Violent Public Counteraction

In addition to traditional implementation of educational, awareness-raising, information and research projects aimed at counteracting xenophobia, Russian NGOs increasingly have realized the need for consolidation of all forces interested in counteracting xenophobia, and the importance of maximum publicity of public initiatives and events. Obviously, this awareness came in end-2005 following the Right March, when an anti-fascist march was organized in Moscow on 18 December 2005.

In 2006, this work continued. On May 14, 2006, a conference was held in Moscow entitled Fascism is a Threat to Russia's Future and was attended by more than 150 representatives of NGOs, youth associations, democratically-oriented political parties, informal anti-fascist groups, national-cultural associations, experts, journalists, and workers of culture. The participants adopted a Program of Action to guide the Russian Anti-Fascist Front (RAF) founded on 22 June in Moscow.

RAF's first major public event was an anti-fascist meeting held on 4 November 2006 jointly with the Left-wing Anti-Fascist Front (LAF) [27] in Bolotnaya Square in Moscow and attended by approximately 800 people. The organizers reached 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) [28]. A group of neo-Nazis had planned to attack the meeting, but the police blocked their access to Bolotnaya Square and then stopped their activists.

Mass events were held in other Russian cities as well. We should mention the traditional March Against Hatred held in October in St. Petersburg in the memory of anti-fascist researcher Nikolai Girenko (in 2006, the march attracted 500 participants), and the Patchwork of Peace[29] organized by the Perm Memorial chapter as part of the City Day celebration on 12 June, attracting a few thousand people.

The anti-Georgian campaign in the autumn of 2006 triggered active public protests, from meetings in Moscow to individuals changing their last names to Georgian names, to the I am a Georgian web-based campaign, etc.

Spontaneous protests against the government's failure to counteract racist violence continued. Even though racist violence is a fact of everyday life in Russia, the law enforcement agencies rarely recognize racist motives of crimes; therefore only vigorous public protests give any hope of changing the investigators' attitudes. For example, on the night of 24 to 25 April, members of the Armenian Diaspora blocked the traffic at the crossing of the Garden Ring and the New Arbat in Moscow, protesting against the investigators' denial of racist motives in the murder of a young Armenian in the Moscow Metro. The Prosecutor's Office in Moscow insisted, against comprehensive evidence, that it was a mere interpersonal conflict. In St. Petersburg in autumn, soon after the killing of an Indian student, foreign undergraduate students held a meeting and demanded that the authorities protect them from neo-Nazis.

Activity of Left-Wing Radicals and Antifa

In 2006, anti-fascist activities of more or less radical left-wing groups, previously noticed only by social researchers, came strongly into the public focus.

SKM, AKM, and other youth organizations made a number of statements in spring protesting against collaboration between CPRF and DPNI. We note the absence of response to these protests by the Communist leaders; however, there was no continuation of their attempts at collaboration. [30]

But the lefties did not limit themselves to statements, and on 1 May, right in front of the State Duma building, a fight occurred between skinheads trying to join the Communists at a rally, and anti-fascist leftist youth who would not let them do so. It was just one of the first episodes of the street war between right-wing and left-wing radicals. Of course, more or less violent clashes between these youth groups had been reported before, but most of them had not come into the public eye before 2006.

The lefties had usually been targeted alongside various youth subcultures seen by Nazi skinheads as enemies (including the :red; skinheads). Counter-attacks had been rare. The situation changed as new groups emerged, bringing together members of diverse political and non-political movements around their common goal of counteracting Nazi skinheads. Such groups are usually termed :antifa; - and they often use this term to describe themselves. Not unexpectedly, some such groups opt for violence as the main method of "re-educating" the neo-Nazi. We will call them :militant antifa" - as opposed to those who do not accept violence as a method of protest.

The opposition between "militant antifa" and neo-Nazis was particularly felt in the autumn of 2006, when two peaceful meetings of right-wing radicals were attacked: the attackers targeted the audience of a music concert organized by right-wing radical groups and the participants of an :anti-Caucasus" meeting outside Oktyabrskaya Metro Station in Moscow on 14 September, and then a DPNI meeting in St. Petersburg on 17 September.

The anti-fascists explained their attacks by the government inaction and failure to respond to the neo-Nazi threat, but the violent acts committed by anti-fascists are as illegal as similar actions of their opponents, not to mention that usually random bystanders are also victimized by such attacks. In addition, attacks by militant antifa do not seem to suppress the right-wing radical activity: on the contrary, they provoke further escalation of the street war between Nazi skinheads and militant antifa, and thus more neo-Nazi terror. For example, in December 2006 in Moscow there was an attempt at the life of a young antifascist (an explosive was planted outside his apartment, and 5 police officers were injured as it was defused).

Of course, radical anti-fascists (:militant; as well as all others) also employ other methods of fighting neo-Nazi, such as rallies, stickers on the walls, painting over neo-Nazi graffiti, and fairly effective (even though illegal) hack attacks.

The Public Chamber

In describing public efforts to counteract nationalism, we should mention the activities of the Public Chamber formed in late 2005. The most significant of its undertakings was the adoption of anti-extremist recommendations by its first plenary on 14 April 2006; the recommendations had been prepared by Vladimir Tishkov, the Chamber's Chair of the Commission on Tolerance and Freedom of Conscience. These otherwise reasonable recommendations had one important, built-in defect: they were based on the excessively broad legal definition of extremism stipulated in relevant legislation. The final draft, which in the process of editing had lost some of what we believe to be important recommendations (in particular, the recommendation to eliminate an ethnocentric approach in teaching history and social sciences), was published in the summer of 2006, but we are not sure if there has been any follow-up.

As to the Public Chamber's other vocal statements against radical nationalism, they hardly merit a positive assessment. Some of them certainly demonstrated an active position of the Chamber members as citizens, but at the same time revealed an obvious lack of expertise concerning the issues in question. On the other hand, continuous public statements allegedly made on behalf of "the public" and which urged even tougher anti-extremist policies, such as V. Tishkov's suggestion that mass media should be punished for nationalist citations, effectively supported unlawful restrictions of civil liberties under the pretext of fighting extremism (see below).

We should also note that certain members of the Public Chamber do not practice what they preach. For example, Pavel Gussev, editor-in-chief of Moscovsky Komsomolets daily and chairman of the Public Chamber Commission for Communications, Information Policies and Media Freedom of Expression, repeatedly urged media to be tolerant in 2006 and even initiated an appeal to his colleagues in May to banish from print and broadcast publications :political adventurers and promoters of racial, ethnic, religious animosity, hatred and violence.; [31] His daily, however, is one of the most xenophobic periodicals in Russia, known for explicitly racist reporting.

Cases Brought before the European Court of Human Rights

In December 2006, the European Court of Human Rights considered two applications related to xenophobia in Russia. Both judgments appear very significant.

On 12 December, ECHR rejected an application brought by RONS leader I. Artyomov in 2005 after Russian courts at all levels denied RONS official registration as a political party, because their name contained the words "Russian national." I. Artyomov alleged in his application to the European Court that by denying his group registration, the Russian Ministry of Justice violated Article 11 of the European Convention of Human Rights (right to freedom of association). However, the European Court found that RONS intended to defend the rights of only one ethnicity - ethnic Russians, which was inconsistent with :the guarantee of equality... [and] the fair treatment of minorities in the political process.; The Court also found that this type of discrimination :requires from the authorities special vigilance and a vigorous reaction.;

Two days later, on 14 December, ECHR considered an application filed by the chief editor of Gorodskye Vesty (Volgograd) Anatoly Karman. In September 1994, A. Karman published an article describing a high-profile local right-wing radical, chief editor of the Volgograd Kolokol paper Stanislav Terentyev as :a local neo-fascist;; Terentyev filed a defamation suit which he finally won after years of litigation in 2001. Failing in all his appeals, A. Karman took the case to Strasbourg, and ECHR found the Russian authorities to be in violation of Article 10 of the Convention (freedom of expression). The court awarded the journalist 1,000 euros in compensation to be paid out by Russia. We believe this to be a landmark judgment, because the vagueness of terms such as :fascism; and :fascist,; among others, in contemporary Russian language usage has contributed to many defamation suits by right-wing radicals against Russian journalists and human rights defenders. There is no possibility of predicting the outcome of such litigation, but whenever the plaintiffs win, it serves to legitimize right-wing radical propaganda.

Criminal Prosecution of the Right-Wing Radicals

A review of criminal prosecution targeting right-wing radical nationalism and xenophobia reveals some positive progress in this area, even though serious negative attributes persist.

Violence

In many instances we observed positive progress in the criminal prosecution of racist violence.

Firstly, we saw the substantial numerical growth of guilty verdicts and convictions for violent crimes where the hate motive was recognized. We also observed that the number of such convictions doubled each year: in 2003, there were 4 convictions, in 2004 - 9; in 2005 - 17, and in 2006 - 31 convictions. Last year, more than 90 persons were convicted for violent racist attacks (as opposed to 55 convictions in 2005). Unfortunately, the number of convictions failed to catch up with the number of crimes, but some communities have reported local progress. According to regional civil society activists, skinhead activity in Voronezh substantially decreased following a series of anti-racist verdicts.

The geographic distribution of convictions for racist violence has expanded, covering 17 regions of the Russian Federation (see Table 4), while our review of these trends has revealed time and again that lack of judicial practice is the main reason why investigators and judges fail to address the hate motive. The successful completion of a few investigations and trials could set an important precedent for the further adjudication of hate crime and racist violence. Just a few successful trials serve to establish the new approach. At the same time, the sad fact is that the impressive growth of the number of convictions has occurred in the provinces, rather than in Moscow and St. Petersburg where most skinhead attacks take place.

The proportion between (a) criminal convictions where the hate motive is recognized as an aggravating circumstance and (b) convictions under art. 282 (essentially punishing for :hate propaganda;) has not changed since 2005 (in 11 of the 31 convictions, the hate motive was recognized as an aggravating circumstance, while at least 13 convictions for hate crimes where under art. 282; to compare, in 2005 six out of the 17 convictions addressed the hate motive as an aggravating circumstance, and eight convictions were under art. 282[32]).

Nevertheless, we observed a certain general improvement in the legal qualification of such offenses. For example, in 2006 we documented the first known case where the hate motive was mentioned as an aggravating circumstance (to note - it is applicable to any criminal offense) under art. 63 part 1 "e' by the Prosecutor's Office in Voronezh Oblast in the trial over the murder of a Peruvian student; one defendant faced murder charges, and the others faced charges under art. 63 for hooliganism and robbery, aggravated by racist hatred. Even though the court did not support these charges, the attempt was important in and of itself.

In addition, racist motives are increasingly recognized in cases involving :acquisitive; offenses - to reiterate, at least nine of the 31 convictions for hate-motivated crimes in 2006 included charges of robbery. Moreover, in the spring of 2006, following the arrests of the Borovikov-Voevodin group, the Prosecutor's Office in St. Petersburg did something unprecedented: they officially recognized that the group robbed post offices to support their neo-Nazi activity.

Authorities have gradually adopted the practice of prosecuting right-wing radicals for the organizing of extremist communities (art. 282-1 of the Criminal Code). In 2006, there were three or four sentences under this article (as opposed to two in 2005) in St. Petersburg (against the Mad Crowd leader Ruslan Melnik[33]), in Belgorod (the Roma family case) and in Verkhnaya Pyshma, Sverdlovsk Oblast. In the latter case, though, the judgment was contradictory. The court found the three defendants guilty of setting up and being involved in an extremist community (a prosecutorial press release said they had set up a community "for committing hate-motivated crimes against people from the Caucasus and Central Asia"). The three defendants were at the same time found guilty of murdering a Kyrgyz in January 2005, and two of them were already convicted in December 2005 for a demonstratively racist murder of three Armenians. However, the judges failed to recognize hate motives in each of the two murders. Does it mean that they set up an extremist community :for committing hate-motivated crimes" - but the actual crimes they committed were not motivated by ethnic hatred?

Similarly, we believe it to be a positive development that a number of neo-Nazi ideological violence cases found their way to court, including an attack against a young female anti-fascist in Yekaterinburg, and a riot at a punk concert in Kursk. The current criminal legislation does not allow for adding a hate motive to the charges faced by the perpetrators in these cases. But it is of special importance for us that the law enforcement authorities recognized the neo-Nazi ideology behind these crimes.

Admittedly, the tendency of denying nationalist motives persists. We note however, that reports of prosecutors finding explicitly neo-Nazi attacks to be :mere hooliganism; are less common than before. The real reason may be under-reporting, rather than absence of such cases. In 2006, we know of five convictions where prosecutors failed to find racist motives. In one such case - in Togliatti (Samara Oblast) - the racist motive was recognized in official statements made by local prosecutors, but was not included in the formal charges. Also of interest was another trial, ending in February 2006, over perpetrators of an attack against an imam in Sergyev Posad. Even though the perpetrators were yelling anti-Islamic slogans during the attack, even though anti-Islamic leaflets were disseminated in the city on the eve of the trial, even though racist offenses were thrown at witnesses and victims in the courtroom, the offense was qualified as mere hooliganism. The best-known scandal of this type was the above-mentioned investigation into the murder of young Armenian Vigen Abramyants in Pushkinskaya Metro Station in Moscow. Regardless of numerous eyewitness testimonies, the investigators initially denied the racist motive of the crime; they even arrested a young man who confessed having killed Abramyants following a conflict "over a girl." Some blogs reported massive police pressure against witnesses to force them to withdraw their original testimonies confirming a skinhead attack. It took vigorous public protests to force the investigators to abandon the "personal conflict" theory.

We should also note the persistent tendency towards conditional punishments for such offenses. At least 20 of the 96 perpetrators found guilty of racist offenses got away without punishment or were released on probation or amnestied. [34] Two others were sentenced to short prison terms covered entirely by their pre-trial detention. Some sentences are nothing short of shocking - for example, in Kostroma, four skinheads who physically assaulted five people within two days, got away with conditional sentences.

Speaking about the prosecution of ultra-right-wing violence, we should mention St. Petersburg and Moscow separately.

Firstly, each hardly shows any positive progress in terms of successful trials of such cases (see Table 4). Moreover, in 2006, St. Petersburg acquired the reputation of a city :where jury courts acquit fascists.; Indeed, three jury trials (over the murders of Khursheda Sultonova, Roland Epossak, and Wu An Tuan) ended in acquittals. Of course, these cases raised many concurrent issues - in particular, due to the high level of organization and information among local neo-Nazi, safety issues plagued jurors and their families. We would argue, however that the primary factor in all these cases was poor investigation which failed to collect sufficient evidence and convince the jurors that the specific suspects had committed the crimes. Unfortunately, these verdicts revived the debates over removing such cases from the jury courts' jurisdiction and over the feasibility of jury courts in Russia. Notably, these debates bordered closely on propaganda, where opponents of jury courts insisted on "general xenophobia" shared by all jurors and, as a consequence, argued that anti-racist trials will fail in jury courts. Neither of the above allegations is true. Firstly, we have only observed acquittals by jury courts in St. Petersburg, while in some other cases - including Moscow, Saratov, Volgograd, Vladivostok, and also St. Petersburg - jury trials ended in convictions of racist offenders. Secondly, even in the St. Petersburg trials ending in acquittals, jurors recognized the racist nature of some offenses, so we can hardly support allegations of jurors' xenophobia.

In 2006 in Moscow, the number of convictions slightly increased vs. previous years, but importantly, four out of the five were high-profile trials - the Koptsev case, the attacks against singer Lisa Umarova, media reporter Elkham Mirzoyev and Minister of Culture Zaur Tutov of Kabardino-Balkaria. An important disclaimer - we do not mean that any high-profile trial is wrong(??). But it is hard to imagine that the only people targeted by racist violence in Moscow are public figures who can afford a good lawyer. It means that the law-enforcement authorities in Moscow are not particularly active in investigating hate crimes.

We should mention still another trial of right-wing radicals - notable for being the first and only known conviction of threats against the court and jurors on behalf of a right-wing radical organization. RNE had threatened judges, prosecutors and jurors involved in a trial of two police officers, Vyacheslav Blokhin and Alexei Konovalenko of Dolgoprudny, who were charged with abuse of power. [35] In 2006, it was determined that the authors of threat letters were ex-member of RNE Yuri Kovalyov and his acquaintance Ale1xander Matasov. The latter is now on a federal list of wanted suspects, while Yu. Kovalyov was tried by the Moscow City Court in October 2006, found guilty of pressure against a court, and sentenced under several criminal counts to 6 years of settlement colony.

Propaganda and Campaigning

We have been observing continuous progress in counteracting racist violence, but it is for the first time that we have noted substantial developments in suppressing right-wing radical propaganda.

Just as is the case with the prosecution of racist violence, we have observed a somewhat higher rate of criminal convictions, 16[36] in 2006 vs. 11 in 2005. However important the rate of convictions may be, we believe that even more important is the improved practice of handing out punishments.

Firstly, the convicted campaigners get away without punishment less often than before. Formerly, either the statute of limitations would expire by the time of sentencing, or the campaigner would be amnestied, or else a probation sentence would be meted out without any additional penalties. But by the end of 2006 the situation began to gradually improve. (Six out of 19 convicted offenders got away without punishment - notably, four of the six trials ended in the first half of 2006. In contrast, in 2005 five out of 14 convicted offenders got away without any punishment).

Secondly, courts have increasingly applied punishments other than imprisonment (fines, correctional labor) (8 sentences out of 16). In one case the court prohibited the offenders from practicing their profession (sentences to National Bolsheviks, authors of Para-Bellum paper in Chelyabinsk) [37].

Thirdly, for the first time since the adoption of the anti-extremism law, judicial precedents have been used to prosecute hate promoters. We know of three such cases in 2006.

In November 2006 in Makhachkala a criminal investigation file against local NDPR activist Andrei Boikov was taken to court; the prosecution was based on a prior judgment finding one of Boikov's texts extremist in 2004.

We believe that the most appropriate and consistent of all such cases was the prosecution of RNE activists in Tatarstan - one of the few Russian regions where following the adoption of anti-extremist legislation, RNE was liquidated as an extremist organization, rather than closed on formalistic grounds. [38]

Firstly, based on the prior judicial ban, the Prosecutor's Office in Kazan charged RNE activists under art. 282-2 (participation in a community found by court to be extremist). It was the first instance that we know of in Russia in which this criminal article was used against someone other than Hizb ut-Tahrir Islamic activists. Secondly, reference to the same judgment (which the right-wing radicals had not appealed) was used to convince the Canadian hosting provider of the RNE website to deny services to the group.

At the same time, we note that we are not aware of any sentences in 2006 for xenophobic vandalism in cemeteries (art. 244 part 2 p. "b'). Admittedly, such sentences have been extremely rare in previous years as well.

As far as prosecution of hate campaigners is concerned, we need to note a significant political aspect in certain cases, even though the prosecution may not be entirely unfounded (see below). Here we would mention the verdict against Boris Stomakhin in Moscow.

We certainly believe that charges brought against B. Stomakhin were legitimate. But the cruelty of his punishment is shocking — Stomakhin was sentenced under part 1, art. 282 and part 2, art. 280 to five years of prison and a three year ban on journalism. As of today, it is the toughest sentence under art. 282 and 280 (without reference to other articles) in the entire post-Soviet period. For the sake of comparison, one of the most odious ideologists of contemporary Russian neo-Nazism Yuri Belyaev, who published a Street Terror How-To on his website with detailed guidelines on how to organize, carry out and camouflage neo-Nazi attacks, got away with a probation sentence and continues his campaigning.

What made Stomakhin different from most other radical propagandists was his unconditional support of the Chechen separatists, extreme antagonism towards the current political regime, and negative published comments against ethnic Russians. Apparently, these reasons were behind his sentence standing out from among similar cases. 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 sentence. 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 they published 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 about it.

Other Measures of Counteraction

Alongside criminal prosecution, other administrative practices of suppressing right-wing radicals have improved. We note with reservation that just as it is criminal prosecution, these improvements are not yet systemic or consistent and, apparently, are due to subjective factors (in particular, professionalism and attitudes of certain officials).

We should mention in particular the Federal Service for Supervision over Compliance in the Sphere of Mass Communications and for Protection of Cultural Heritage, (often referred to as Rosokhrankultura) active in suppressing extremist propaganda in mass media. They issued a total of 29 warnings in 2006, which were not challenged in court. We find five of these warnings unfounded, including two warnings triggered by the use of swastika symbol to illustrate apparently anti-fascist articles. However, outside these cases, we appreciate the fact that Rosokhrankultura is much more active in this area now than before. There is hope now that their activity may bring about some positive results: following repeated warnings issued to papers Duel (Yuri Muchin) and Korpus (National Socialist Society), Rosokhrankultura initiated liquidation proceedings against the papers, while the Russkoye Delo paper closed voluntarily after a series of warnings.

Similarly, prosecutors' offices increasingly issue warnings to media and other organizations, but prosecutorial practices are not as open to the public as those of Rosokhrankultura, and therefore more difficult to assess. In March 2007, an amazing figure was published - 311 warnings for extremist activity were issued by prosecutors to mass media in 2006. However, we cannot analyze this figure, because in most cases it is unclear who was warned by prosecutors, when and for what.

For the first time in two years (since the spring of 2004), three organizations were liquidated for their activity (rather than on merely formal grounds.

In March, a court in Kabardino-Balkaria satisfied a prosecutorial request and liquidated a group calling itself the State Council of Balkaria for "gross violations of effective laws.; However, the court refused to find the group extremist, even though the prosecutor's office urged the court to do so.

Two other cases of judicial liquidation occurred in Krasnodar Krai.

In May, following numerous prosecutorial warnings a court found extremist and ethno-nationalist, and then liquidated a group called The Kuban Rada of Spiritual Ancestral Russian Empire - a regional chapter of the right-wing radical neo-Heathen Spiritual Ancestral Russian Empire which had announced its independence of the Russian Federation.

In October, the use of swastikas, Roman salute and racist provisions of Slavic-Arian Vedas as elements of a religious doctrine triggered liquidation of neo-Heathen VEK RA group. Notably, the prosecutor's office, again, referred to the 2004 Omsk Oblast Court judgment banning a similar organization, which also used the Slavic-Arian Vedas as part of its religious teachings.

Administrative sanctions for public use of Nazi symbols, unfortunately, remain virtually non-existent, even though there have been some noteworthy cases. In particular, in June in Novorossiysk local right-wing radical Sergey Putintsev was fined for distributing a newspaper with a swastika-like symbol, while the entire print-run of the paper was confiscated following a court order.

Law enforcement practices aimed at preventing organized violence and right-wing radical propaganda have noticeably improved.

We can quote an example of an efficient police response in Zhukovka, Bryansk Oblast, where a small (around 20 people) anti-migrant rally was organized by DPNI with official permission on 6 July; most participants were local skinheads, who formed a column after the formal end of the rally and attempted to march down the street flashing a Nazi salute and chanting xenophobic slogans. Such manifestations are rarely suppressed in Russia, but in this case they triggered legitimate administrative arrests by police escorting the event. Moreover, later the press office of the Bryansk Oblast Department of Interior published a press release with a detailed explanation of the police conduct.

Unfortunately, police often use excessive violence in suppressing nationalist actions - which eventually hinders criminal and administrative prosecution of right-wing radicals. For example, in June in Syktyvkar, OMON prevented a riot in the city retail market, but used excessive force in detaining the radical nationalists who had come to the market led by Yuri Yekishev (then facing trial). Their use of excessive force was challenged by Yu. Yekishev and his supporters in court, and as a result they were released from administrative arrest and made an (unsuccessful) attempt to sue the OMON officers.

Unfortunately, the efforts to prevent right-wing radical manifestations are not consistent and as such are not making any real difference. We can quote as an example a situation which occurred in the right-wing radical segment of the Russian web in early 2006. Alexander Koptsev's high-profile attack against a synagogue, apparently triggered by his reading of anti-Semitic publications on the web, caused prosecutorial offices to declare their commitment to fighting such materials in the internet. They even arrested two authors of web-based hate publications - in Kaliningrad and Astrakhan Oblast (the latter, Igor Mogilyov, was later convicted). These prosecutorial declarations and arrests threw the ultra-right in a state of panic. Some of the ugliest materials were removed from websites, forums were either closed or carefully filtered out offensive posts, etc. By mid-March, however, the prosecutorial campaign dwindled, the panic subsided, and some of the resources were restored to their original form and content.

EXCESSIVE AND UNFOUNDED ACTIONS AGAINST EXTREMISM

Lawmaking

The attack against worshippers in a Moscow synagogue on 11 January 2006 reinvigorated the discussion about the need to strengthen anti-extremist legislation in Russia, mostly by making punishments even tougher. Experts, however, have repeatedly pointed to the fact that the problem is not that the punishments are too mild, but that some provisions are poorly worded and some others are hardly ever enforced.

The first material outcome produced by the debates was a draft law tabled by the State Duma Committee on Civil, Commercial and Procedural Law.The draft - published in late January 2006 - contained many poorly designed provisions and apparently had never been really intended for adoption by the Duma. It was followed by another draft, narrower in scope, and also tabled by the Government, but seeking to toughen and diversify criminal and administrative penalties for vandalism motivated by nationalist, religious and ideological hatred, and also for the manufacturing and dissemination of Nazi symbols. [39] Even though the draft law passed two readings in the Duma by early 2007, the amendments, it appears, are not seen as an urgent matter, and may still be revised. Another, more fundamental lawmaking initiative was launched in the Duma by a group of deputies from different parties - usually indicating Kremlin support - in June.

On 28 June 2006, a draft law amending articles 1 and 15 of the Federal Law against Extremism was launched in the Duma and adopted at a record speed - within one month. It made the already vague definition of extremism even vaguer and introduced liability for "justifying" extremism. The amended law enabled persecution of NGOs whose protests involve any clashes with authorities (violence against officials, threats of violence, and hindrances to the operation of government establishments are now labeled extremism - regardless of the official and the situation), and persecution of any mass media which publish supportive reports or comments with regard to such protests.

The above draft was followed immediately by amendments to the federal law on Main Guarantees of Electoral Rights and the Right to Participate in a Referendum, and to the Civil Code. Under the new amendments, a candidate or a list of candidates may be denied registration, or their current registration may be annulled, should they be found to have engaged in extremist activities. Moreover, candidates may be punished for their alleged extremism retroactively, because the amended law allows looking into their past activities over a period equal to their prospective period in office, if elected. The amendments will not be applied retroactively. However, starting in January 2007, any act potentially interpreted as extremist (and we will explain below that possibilities for such interpretation are extremely broad) may deny someone a possibility of being elected in the future.

Persecution of NGO and Civil Society Activists

The enforcement of the newly adopted :extremism; definition followed promptly. As early as in end-August 2006 it was applied in Bashkortostan to bring charges under art. 280, part 2, of the Criminal Code ("public appeals to the exercise of extremist activity, using mass media") against local oppositional journalist Victor Shmakov for his civic activism and organization of public protests against the current Bashkortostan government led by Murtazy Rakhimov. The case was sent to court in December.

Admittedly, the "anti-fascist; measures targeting civil society activists and NGOs continued throughout the year in the framework of the original legislation, whose repressive potential had been revealed at the time of drafting back in 2002.

The highest profile case was that of Stanislav Dmitrievsky and the Russian-Chechen Friendship Society (RCFS) where he was executive director.

To remind, S. Dmitrievsky was prosecuted in 2005 for publishing statements by Aslan Maskhadov and Akhmed Zakayev in his Pravo-zaschita Newspaper. Both statements were, understandably, very critical of Russia's political leadership, but did not contain any ethno-nationalist pronouncements. Initially, authorities attempted to bring charges against the human rights defender under art. 280 (:calls to extremist activity;), but later - apparently, seeing zero prospects of winning the case - they revised the charges, so the case reached court as :incitement to ethnic hatred; (art. 282). On 3 February 2006, S. Dmitrievsky was sentenced to two years of probation. The Supreme Court eventually upheld the verdict.

The NGO came under severe official pressure at the same time as criminal charges were brought against Dmitrievsky; most of these attacks against the group were unlawful and unfounded. However, as soon as Dmitrievsky was convicted, authorities had a formal reason to liquidate RCFS for "extremism." In October 2006, the prosecutor's office filed a liquidation request against RCFS; they referred to the former judgment finding S. Dmitrievsky guilty of an :extremist; offense and to the fact that the group failed to remove him from the list of founders (as required by the amended Law on NGOs) and also failed to condemn him in public (as required by the Law on Combating Extremist Activity). Just two sessions (12 and 13 October) sufficed to the court to order liquidation; in 2007, the Supreme Court upheld the judgment.

Similarly, a trial against high priest of ethnic Mari heathen faith and well-known opposition leader Vitali Tanakov resulted in a criminal conviction; the prosecutor's office found incitement to ethnic hatred - without sufficient reason, we believe - in his brochure The Priest Speaks. On 25 December he was sentenced under Art. 282 of the Criminal Code to 120 hours of correctional labor.

Other provisions against extremism have also been used as instruments of pressure against human rights defenders. On 26 February 2006, the Moscow Prosecutor's Office warned the Memorial Human Rights Center for publishing on its website a comment by mufti Nafigulla Ashirov on four Hizb ut-Tahrir books. Mufti Ashirov's text said that the four books (and not the organization's overall ideology) do not call to violence and do not incite hatred against people of other faiths. The comment did not contain a single direct citation from the books, nor did the author express solidarity with them. However, the prosecutors found that it indirectly promoted Hizb ut-Tahrir ideas and :can be considered propaganda from the point of view of social psychology.; Memorial challenged the warning in court, but was rejected.

Pressure against Mass Media

The main episodes in which anti-extremist legislation was arbitrarily used against mass media in 2006 were related to the :cartoon scandal; in Russia (a follow-up of Moslem protests against the publication of Danish cartoons depicting Prophet Mohammad). While in Europe, the "cartoon scandal; triggered broad public debates concerning on the freedom of expression and its boundaries, in Russia at least five media outlets were chastised, including one that had nothing whatsoever to do with the Danish cartoons.

It all started when the United Russia Party chapter in Volgograd Oblast disliked a drawing illustrating an article about the so-called Anti-Fascist Pact (part of United Russia campaigning launched in early 2006, see below) being signed in the Oblast. The cartoon depicted, in an explicitly tolerant manner, the founders of world religions watching TV - the TV screen showed two groups of people ready to attack each other - and saying: :This is not what we teach them." United Russia accused the paper of xenophobia and contacted the Oblast prosecutor's office which responded with unheard-of promptness by warning the paper within a few hours of the UR complaint. A few days later, the paper was closed by its founder, the municipal administration. The entire scandal was a parody, obvious to everyone, given that the explicitly anti-Semitist newspaper Kolokol has been published in Volgograd for more than a decade, and numerous attempts of the local Jewish community to have it closed had failed so far. A few days later, Volgogradskye Vesti was reopened under a different name. This incident remains one of the most outrageous and ridiculous examples of arbitrary :anti-extremism."

Certain media outlets have, indeed, reprinted the Danish cartoons as illustrations to relevant discussion. In March, Rosokhrankultura warned two media companies - web-based Gazeta.ru and Nash Bryansk. Subbota print paper (Gazeta.ru challenged the warning in court, but lost).

The most serious episode of the :cartoon war; ended in criminal prosecution against Anna Smirnova, editor-in-chief of Nash Region Plus paper in Vologda Oblast for reprinting the cartoons as an illustration of an article discussing the :cartoon scandal; (the most controversial parts of the drawings were covered, though). In April, the City Court in Vologda found Anna Smirnova guilty under art. 282 of the Criminal Code and sentenced her to a 100,000 ruble fine. Fortunately, in May, the Oblast Court acquitted Smirnova; the paper, however, which was independent of the local governor, had been closed by the owner (husband of the editor-in-chief) back in February, before the court verdict.

In Altai, the local Rosokhrankultura office sought liquidation of Bankfax web-based news agency for an offensive statement posted on their forum featuring a discussion of the cartoon scandal. The liquidation proceedings were launched without any prior warning, even though the news agency removed the controversial posting from the forum immediately following complaints. Fortunately, Rosokhrankultura lost the case as follows from the Supreme Court ruling of 12 September 2006. Similarly, attempts at criminal prosecution of the news agency staff and the author of the posting failed.

On another occasion, Zyryanskaya Zhizn paper in Syktyvkar came under attack for a series of neutral reports about the activity of local right-wing radicals led by Yuri Yekishev, who was later convicted and sentenced for incitement to ethnic hatred.The charges also implicated a highly professional interview with Yekishev which exposed the nationalist demagogy. The prosecutor's office warned the paper against extremist activity. The publishers lost their funding sources and were forced to close their paper-based version. Currently, authorities are continuing persecution of the web-based publication.

Antifascist Rhetoric as a Political Resource

Since late January 2006, anti-fascist and anti-xenophobic rhetoric was increasingly used to discredit political opponents of the ruling political party and to suppress democratic freedoms in Russia.

The so-called Anti-Fascist Pact - an agreement among political parties to counteract nationalism, xenophobia and religious strife and initiated by United Russia Party on 26 January 2006 - can be considered the starting point of an "official anti-fascist campaign."

The Pact urged political parties to deny membership to those who openly profess racist and xenophobic beliefs, to deny support to racist candidates at elections, to refrain from participation in public events involving xenophobic agitation, etc. In fact, the United Russia Party's initiatives could have been welcomed, if the Pact had not been discredited at the outset by its initiators, which included LDPR. United Russia Party failed to condemn the policy of ethnic discrimination pursued by Governor Alexander Tkachyov of Krasnodar Krai; they failed to oppose the anti-Georgian campaign, not to mention some other, lesser known, episodes. The Anti-Fascist Pact obviously targeted the strongest opponents of the 'ruling party' - namely Rodina and the CPRF, which were not allowed to sign the Pact, as opposed to the loyal LDPR (which hit the headlines shortly before the signing, in particular by its racist proposal to adopt a law against mixed marriages between Russian women and foreigners "to protect the gene pool").

The :anti-fascist; rhetoric enabled UR to unleash the mentioned :cartoon scandal; in Volgograd and to continue its attempts at discrediting political opponents (in particular, The Other Russia coalition which includes the National Bolsheviks traditionally accused of :fascism"[40]). We should note, however, that the anti-fascist campaign gradually dwindled between the spring and the summer, and after the Kondopoga events the rhetoric changed dramatically. In early 2007, UR proposed a so-called Russian Project.

We also recall a rather funny case of :mutual political anti-fascism; which took place during the election campaign in Primorye. In September, a complaint filed by the local Legislative Assembly MP Leonid Beltukov of United Russia Party caused the regional court to ban the election campaign and revoke the registration of independent candidate Nikolay Markovtsev who had used a :We Will Be in Berlin; WWII poster in his campaigning. In the poster, a Soviet soldier trampled a Nazi helmet carrying the image of a bear - rather than a swastika. This depiction offended plaintiff L. Beltukov who thought the bear was the United Russia Party symbol and interpreted the poster to associate UR with the Nazis. In response, Markovtsev explained that he had intentionally replaced a Nazi swastika by a bear - the symbol of Wehrmacht's 3d Armored Division, rather than the United Russia symbol, because public display of swastika on the poster would have contravened the Law on Combating Extremist Activity.

The best-known episode of the :anti-fascist; political pressure was a campaign launched in the spring of 2006 against Governor Oleg Chirkunov of Perm Krai, by that time maybe the only Russian governor left who was not a United Russia member. The pretext for the scandal was an incident at the Open Youth Forum held locally under the auspices of the Governor, where a young neo-Nazi introducing himself as NNP and DPNI member spoke in Chirkunov's presence. On the next day, the Governor apologized to the local public for the incident, while the materials of the forum were made available to prosecutors for a review - and we should say that this type of official response is extremely rare in such cases.

Nevertheless, the pro-presidential populist Young Russia and Nashi groups accused the Governor of sponsoring fascists and staged an anti-Governor rally manned by young :nashists; brought to Perm from other cities for the occasion. The scandal eventually settled, and in September 2006 Oleg Chirkunov headed the United Russia Party list in the regional elections.

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[1] For example, between February and December 2006 we received reports of 20 racist killings committed in 2005.

[2] The exact legal qualification of crimes is not always known.

[3] See an overview of skinhead violence in: Galina Kozhevnikova. Skinheads on TV // SOVA Center. Nationalism and Xenophobia in Russia. 2006. 15 May (http://xeno.sova-center.ru/213716E/21728E3/7502623).

[4] Same Author. Hate Speech Monitoring in the Russian Media: a Review of Findings (September - December 2006). Presentation at the conference :Hate Speech and Xenophobia: Russia, XXI Century;; Moscow, 8 February 2007. The presentation will be published in full in a book which SOVA Center will produce in May 2007.

[5] A total of 11 people were killed immediately, and two more died in the following month.

[6] In Tomsk, three persons were convicted in 2006 for planting a bomb under an anti-Semitic poster in 2002. They were charged under 11 criminal articles in total.

[7] Igor Orekhov. Migrant Workers Were Beaten with Baseball Bats // Komsomolskaya Pravda, Kaliningrad, 2006. 14 June (http://kaliningrad.kp.ru/2006/06/14/doc120833/).

[8] The numbers are different from those quoted in the paper by A. Verkhovsky and O. Sibireva Problems with Freedom of Conscience in Russia in 2006, because not all incidents of vandalism were related to religious intolerance.

[9] Without the North Caucasus.

[10] Which may be the reason behind the prompt announcement by investigators in Moscow that RONS was involved in the Cherkizovo bombing.

[11] See details in: G. Kozhevnikova. Spring-2006: Skinhead Promotional Campaign // SOVA Center. Nationalism and Xenophobia in Russia. 2006. 28 June (http://xeno.sova-center.ru/29481C8/78A0D48#r8).

[12] See Expansion of Nationalism in Public Life

[13] For a description of such attempt see, for example, G. Kozhevnikova. Radical nationalism in Russia: Manifestations and Responses. Review of 2004 events. // Price of Hatred. М.: SOVA Center, 2005. P. 11-12.

[14] Notably, virtually all ex-National Bolsheviks convicted under art. 282 of the Criminal Code over the past couple of years joined NBF.

[15] The attack targeted activists of several leftist groups, such as NBP, AKM, SKM, Union of Youth for Fatherland. However, only National-Bolsheviks were hospitalized, and it is unclear whether and how many members of other groups had been affected as well. See details in: Attack against National-Bolsheviks in Moscow. // SOVA Center. Democracy under Siege. 2005. 30 August.

[16] Interestingly, at least one person charged with an offense under art. 282 has been included in the Congress' governing body. Either KRO founders are confident of what the outcomes of the criminal proceedings will be, or they knowingly provide for an eventual ban (denial of registration) under the anti-extremist law, later to be presented as political repression.

[17] Five members of Rodina Party (D. Rogozin, A. Saveyev, V. Alksnis, I. Saveyeva, and B. Vinogradov) and two from LDPR (N. Kuryanovich and I. Musatov).

[18] Meaning not only that A. Aratov and I. Dyakov had negligible chances of winning the elections, but also the Election Committee's obvious and widely expected bias against Vladimir Kvachkov who closely missed being elected to the State Duma in the additional elections in December 2005. After Kvachkov was found to be the only candidate successfully competing with the United Russia candidate, virtually no one doubted that he would be given no other chance of running for elections. See: Election Committee denies Kvachkov registration for elections // SOVA Center. Nationalism and Xenophobia in Russia. 2006. 2 February (http://xeno.sova-center.ru/45A2A1E/6CB10D9).

[19] None of the three reached the final stage of elections, but they nevertheless benefited from their candidacy as a campaigning opportunity.

[20] See details on Lazarenko in this Panorama profile (http://xmir.eu.org/xeno/ kng1S2.asp?FN=127&WORD=лазаренко), and also in A. Verkhovsky. The factor of religion in the 1999 parliamentary election campaign // National Patriots, Church, and Putin. М.: Panorama Center, 2000 (http://www.panorama.ru/works/patr/bp/7rus.html).

[21] See G. Kozhevnikova. Autumn-2006: Under the Kondopoga Banner // SOVA Center. Nationalism and Xenophobia in Russia. 2007. 4 January (http://xeno.sova-center.ru/29481C8/883BB9D).

[22] Formally, RFU is an NGO, but in reality it is closely linked to the government.

[23] We are not sure whether the fans' racist behavior had ever been recorded in football game protocols before the 2006 season, but the Russian media covering sports reported them as being unprecedented in the history of Russian football.

[24] In August 2006 he was appointed Assistant Minister of Interior.

[25] G. Kozhevnikova. Presentation at the conference :Hate Speech and Xenophobia...;

[26] To remind, patrolling retail markets, pickets in front of traders' stalls urging customers not to buy from :non-Russians,; etc. had been used by right-wing radicals to promote Rodina on Moscow City Duma 2005 election.

[27] A coalition of the left-wing and leftist activists united under anti-fascist slogans (see the coalition's manifesto at http://laf.drugoi.com/manifesto/), established in the summer of 2006.

[28] To remind, the use of party and organizational symbols caused serious conflicts among the Anti-Fascist March participants on 18 December 2005.

[29] The quilt panel made of 20 by 20 cm squares was 2 meters wide and more than 120 meters long.

[30] Following the spring events, CPRF and DPNI have not organized any joint actions that we know of.

[31] Chief editors urge themselves to be tolerant // SOVA Center. Nationalism and Xenophobia in Russia. 2006. 5 May (http://xeno.sova-center.ru/213716E/21398CB/743062F).

[32] We are not aware of the legal qualification in three other cases.

[33] However, we find this sentence to add to the existing other judgment against the same group passed a year earlier, in December 2005. See: Extremist Mad Crowd group members sentenced // SOVA Center. Nationalism and Xenophobia in Russia. 2005. 14 December (http://xeno.sova-center.ru/45A2A1E/687D980); Mad Crowd leader sentenced in St. Petersburg // Ibid. 2006. 5 December (http://xeno.sova-center.ru/45A2A1E/85D177E).

[34] Incidentally, some of the skinheads convicted earlier must have been amnestied in May 2006 to mark 100 years of the State Duma, but we are not sure how many of them were released.

[35] See details of the Blokhin-Konovalenko case in: G. Kozhevnikova. Radical Nationalism and Efforts to Counteract It in 2005 // SOVA Center. Nationalism and Xenophobia in Russia. 2006. 6 February (Russian Nationalism: Ideology and Sentiments. М.: SOVA Center, 2006. P.13.

[36] We do not count the sentence for Stanislav Dmitrievsky, which we find unfair.

[37] Banning an offender from practicing his profession was also used in the Boris Stomakhin case; unfortunately, these were the only two cases where ban on profession was applied in 2006.

[38] The Tatarstan Supreme Court judgment of 21 May 2003.

[39] See an overview of threats to democratic liberties contained in this draft law in Lev Levinson's comments on anti-extremist amendments of the Criminal Code and the Code of Administrative Offenses // SOVA Center. Nationalism and Xenophobia in Russia. 2007. 23 January (http://www.xeno.sova-center.ru/45A2A39/89DD983).

[40] We do not insist that NBP has been accused of fascism for no reason at all. Back in the 90-ies, these allegations were well-founded, and we cannot say that the transformation experienced by NBP in recent years has totally done away with the neo-fascist heritage of the :old NBP; (which the critics usually refer to), but in general, NBP today can hardly be described as a neo-fascist organization.