| The metropolitan fashion for shaved heads is spreading across the country Today the Moscow City Court will have to impose punishment on those accused of organizing the Yasenevsky pogrom on April 21, 2001 - the first high-profile action of skinheads in the capital. In court, this case frankly fell apart, since the prosecutor's office failed to present convincing evidence. As a result, on February 19, the jury acquitted the main defendant in this case, deputy editor of the far-right magazine “Russian Host” Andrei Semiletnikov, considering his guilt unproven. The same verdict was reached against his employee Elena Lipilina. As for the other defendants - Andrei Pochukaev, Valery Rusakov (he has already been sentenced by the Moscow City Court to three years in prison for participating in the Tsaritsyn pogrom) and Evgeny Serzhantov, then, according to the jury, they are guilty only of participating in mass riots, and even then “ deserve leniency." Although the prosecutor demanded five years for Pochukaev and Serzhantov and six for Rusakov. However, it is very likely that today most of those accused of the pogrom will be free and will once again fall into the skinhead movement, which sociologist Alexander TARASOV tells the Vremya Novostey newspaper about.
-- Is it possible to estimate the number of skinheads in Russia? What is the geography and structure of their movement?
- Skinheads are not a party, but a subculture, which was the product of both economic and cultural-political changes in society, in particular the actual rehabilitation of xenophobia. For the most part, these are small groups (literally 5-10 people), whose lifespan is only a few years. Like any subculture, the centers of consolidation of skins are their magazines and musical groups. They listen to speakers in the style of “Oh!” groups “Sturm”, “Kolovrat”, “White Bulldogs”, “Radagast”, “Vandal”, “Division”, “Crack”, Totenkopf. As for the skin press, these are the magazines “Under Zero”, “White Resistance”, “Screwdriver”, “Stop”, “I am White”, Streetfighter.
It is around these groups and publications that the backbone of the movement is formed. The oldest groups are Skinlegion and the Russian branch of the international organization Blood & Honor, which included approximately 200 people each. Later they were joined by the famous “United Brigades 88” - an alliance of the “White Bulldogs” and the “Lefortovo Front”. True, after “OB 88” came under the close attention of the authorities due to the Tsaritsyn pogrom, this group announced self-liquidation. In St. Petersburg there is a “Russian Fist” of several hundred people, and in Nizhny Novgorod there is also a fairly large group “North”.
In total, according to my estimates, there are about 50 thousand skinheads in Russia today, of which, however, up to half are relatively harmless “mods”.
- But for our country this is not such a big figure.
-- Maybe. But in 1992 there were only a dozen skins in all of Russia, and two years later they had already become almost a mass movement.
- And what caused this sudden surge?
- It was not sudden. A number of factors are intertwined here. Among the external ones are the shooting of parliament in 1993, which showed that political problems can be solved by force, then the “special situation” in Moscow, and the persecution of Caucasians by the police. The Chechen war and, of course, the great power pro-imperial rhetoric of our politicians, playing on the feeling of humiliated national dignity, had and continue to have an even stronger impact on the growth of the skins. This is a successful tactic for increasing ratings, but dangerous for the development of the country.
The vast majority of skins do not have a detailed ideology. The structure of this movement is the structure of a subculture: several established, tightly welded and well-grounded ideological “nuclei” - and an increasingly amorphous mass as it spreads to the periphery.
- And can anyone claim the role of leader?
— There are no generally recognized leaders, but there are celebrities. Including, of course, the leader of the Russian Target group, Semyon Tokmakov, nicknamed Bus, who became famous for beating a black marine from the US Embassy guard William Jefferson. After this “feat” he became a role model for many. Another celebrity is the leader of the Skin Legion, Guskov. Or the author of “The ABC of Slavic Skinheads”, nicknamed Salazar, who claims to be a theorist of the movement.
In general, any of them could apply, but between groups of skins there are only horizontal, not vertical connections, they are not subordinate to each other. In addition, most skins are not very ideological. They are spontaneous racists and xenophobes, and their further “ideological education” often depends on which political force works with them.
- And who is trying to work?
— For example, RNE tried. Now the Russian National Socialist Party is working with them, which has taken Skinlegion under its wing. Another capital guardian is Ilya Lazarenko’s National Front. In St. Petersburg they are dealt with by the Freedom Party of Yuri Belyaev, in the south - fragments of the RNU.
A fairly strong symbiosis has formed between the “Russian Goal” and the People’s National Party (PNP) of Alexander Ivanov-Sukharevsky. This rapprochement began when, by some accident, or perhaps a pattern, Ivanov-Sukharevsky, arrested in February 1999 on charges of inciting national hatred, and Semyon Tokmakov ended up in the same cell. Both of them were soon released, and Bus joined the NNP. After this, the NNP began to instill among the skins its ideology of “Russianism” - a symbiosis of Orthodoxy, Aryan paganism, Russian monarchism and National Socialism. For example, Nicholas II and Adolf Hitler are their heroes, and Hitler turns into an avenger for Nicholas II, “sacrificed by the Bolsheviks and Jews as a ritual sacrifice.” However, the PNP, like all ultra-right parties, is a leader-type party. And when, after the explosion on October 3, 2003, Ivanov-Sukharevsky was seriously wounded at its headquarters, the party fell into a stupor.
- How do you assess the actions of our law enforcement agencies?
-- From time to time, one of the skins goes to prison on charges of hooliganism or rioting. But in general, the police are quite sympathetic to the skins, and beaten people are afraid to complain. It is not surprising that there were so few victims and witnesses in the pogroms in Tsaritsyn and Yasenevo. Not so long ago, the police and Moscow authorities generally stated that skins are a myth. And although the brutality of skinheads has forced law enforcement agencies to intensify the fight against skinheads, the roots of the movement remain intact. For example, the guilt of the deputy editor-in-chief of the ultra-right magazine “Russian Host” Semiletnikov, who was accused of organizing the pogrom in Yasenevo, also could not be proven and, apparently, they did not try very hard.
— So you predict good prospects for this movement in Russia?
— The danger is that now the skinhead subculture has begun to be perceived as a metropolitan fashion and is gradually spreading to the periphery, which leads to an increase in the number of its bearers. I predict that it may soon reach 75-80 thousand, and although after this the growth will stop, we can say that this will give a very stable voting electorate in the next elections. Moreover, unlike the majority of our voters, who fall asleep as liberals and wake up as centrists, these people are clearly oriented towards nationalism. Interviewed by Yuri KOLESOV |
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