Galina Kozhevnikova. Countering radical nationalism: the practice of the state and public organizations

We are publishing the abstracts of a review report by Galina Kozhevnikova , made at the seminar "Counteracting Radical Nationalism: Problems and Positive Practices", held in Moscow on April 26, 2005. The report examines positive law enforcement practice in relation to ethnically motivated violent crimes and ethno-nationalist (primarily anti-Semitic) propaganda .

The alarming trends in the spread of ethno-nationalist violence and propaganda, noted by us in 2004, continued in the year 2005. Let us recall that, according to the SOVA Center, in 2004 at least 45 people were killed by nationalists and at least 190 were injured. For the unfinished four months of 2005, these figures already amount to at least 4 killed and 76 injured (excluding mass fights) [1] . We emphasize that only those cases that have characteristic features fall into this conditional "statistics": people of "non-Slavic appearance" are attacked on the street by a group of teenagers, usually more than five people. Victims are kicked, beaten with baseball bats, and if there are fewer than five attackers, knives are usually used. At the same time, witnesses claim that the criminals shout out nationalist slogans.

However, it should be noted that if earlier such crimes were practically not considered by law enforcement agencies as ethnically motivated, then since 2004 the situation has gradually begun to change.

Prosecution for violent crimes

First of all, it should be noted the intensification of the prosecution of violent crimes precisely as hate crime - i.e. crimes motivated by racial hatred.

In 2004, we counted at least six trials in which the defendants were found guilty of committing crimes motivated by ethnic hatred (in 2003 there were three such verdicts). It should be noted that some of them were issued not under the well-known Article 282, but under other articles, where the "nationalist motive" acted as a qualifying sign.

First of all, this is the verdict in the case of the murder of an African student in Voronezh (see A. Kozlov's report ) and the murder of a Lyuli girl in St. Petersburg.

In both cases, the verdict was, in particular, issued under paragraphs "G" and "L" of Part 2 of Art. 105 (murder committed by a group of persons by prior agreement or by an organized group motivated by national hatred). In the first case, the defendants were sentenced from 9 to 17 years, and in the second - from 2.5 to 10 years in prison.

In March 2004, a trial in St. Petersburg for the murder of an ethnic Azerbaijani was completed with a guilty verdict (there, the guilty verdict included paragraph "l", part 2 of article 105, paragraph "e" part 2 of article 111 (deliberate infliction of grievous harm health motivated by national hatred) and 282 Art.). Two more verdicts with "nationalist motivation" were handed down by the Moscow Regional Court and one of the courts of the Vladimir Region (however, we could not find the exact wording of the charge). And, finally, in December 2004, according to paragraph "a" of part 2 282 of Art. (inciting national, racial or religious hatred under the threat of violence), a Novgorodian was convicted for threatening to blow up a synagogue.

A whole series of verdicts dates back to 2005. On February 10, a guilty verdict was passed in the case of the murder of D. Sheikhov in Saratov ( see Yu. Burlakov's message ). On April 19, the jury delivered a guilty verdict of seven of the eight skinheads accused under paragraph "l" part 2 of Art. 105 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (murder motivated by ethnic hatred) of three natives of Central Asia in 2002 (Note that this process has been going on since the summer of 2003). In January 2005 a group of skinheads was convicted in Moscow. Unfortunately, we do not know the exact wording of the accusation, but the newspapers reported that the motive of "national hatred" was reflected in the verdict. And, finally, in March 2005, a verdict came into force on a resident of Tambov for beating a Vietnamese, in which, in particular, there was a charge under Part 2 of Art. 282.

In addition, there are still a number of pending trials for violent nationalist crimes - at least six courts in St. Petersburg (including in the case of the Shultz-88 group, in which its leader Dmitry Bobrov is charged with "organizing an extremist community"), Moscow , Vladivostok, Novosibirsk and Surgut and a whole series of still unfinished cases, in which either a charge with a "nationalist component" has already been brought, or the prosecutor's office declares its readiness to bring it (at least three cases in St. Petersburg, cases in Lipetsk and Kostroma).

At the same time, several points should be noted.

1. There is still a tendency to bring charges without taking into account the nationalist motive. Even under circumstances that, according to observers, testify to this. For example, as it turned out, one of those accused of hooliganism for beating rabbis in Moscow in January 2005 has a suspended sentence for beating a Vietnamese "out of hooligan motives." Conditional punishment creates a sense of impunity and provokes more and more attacks. Perhaps, the example of Lipetsk illustrates this most clearly. On August 12, 2004, 18-year-old Yury Zavershinskiy was sentenced to 2 years probation under article 213 (“hooliganism”) for an armed attack on a Mozambican citizen. Despite the fact that Nazi literature was confiscated from the accused during the investigation, the investigation still did not consider the attack on the African racially motivated, and the investigator told the local press that they would not charge him under Article 282, because. a similar assessment of his actions "this is politics . " As a result, on March 14, 2005, i.e. 7 months after the verdict, Yu.Zavershinsky, in the company of two "comrades-in-arms", one of whom also has an unexpunged conviction for robbery, beat a citizen of Mali. This time the case was initiated under Article 282.

2. A whole series of nationalistically motivated crimes for various reasons is not only not investigated, but also not registered. Moreover, this happens both because of the unwillingness of the victims to bring the case to court, and because of the unwillingness of the police to "get involved" with such cases. For example, in the Nizhny Novgorod region, a whole series of criminal cases on the facts of attacks on immigrants from the Caucasus and foreign students was closed.

3. There is a whole group of crimes noted by observers as evidence of the spread of Nazi sentiments in society. But at the same time, such cases cannot be qualified as having a "nationalist motive", but the ideological motivation of which, nevertheless, is obvious. This refers to attacks on homeless people committed by teenagers as part of the "struggle for the purity of the race" (in 2004 there were only 12 murders of homeless people) and attacks on fans of "ideologically alien" music, primarily associated with "black" music (rap , hip-hop, reggae, etc.). True, it should be noted that law enforcement agencies themselves are beginning to recognize the ideological component of such episodes and even take preventive measures. For example, on March 26, 2005, a mass brawl was prevented in Kirov at a concert by the Mausoleum punk band. As a result of the actions of the militia, no big casualties were avoided (it is only known that one of the musicians was injured) - within a quarter of an hour 68 people were detained, some of whom are known to local policemen as skinheads. Moreover, what was confiscated from the detainees cannot be called anything other than "arsenal": the detainees were armed with metal chains, fittings, brass knuckles, baseball bats.

4. And finally, there is one more problem that I would like to point out without going into details. Some "criminal" trials take on a nationalist tinge for a number of reasons. Feeling the spread of xenophobic (primarily anti-Caucasian) attitudes in Russian society and feeling their own impunity, some radical national groups are trying to present criminal trials as an example of ethnic discrimination against Russians under the conditional slogans "Caucasians are corrupting our justice" and "Russian people cannot achieve the truth in court" , thus trying to put pressure on the court and on public opinion. Moreover, this pressure is not always psychological in nature. In addition to the trial of Colonel Budanov, an example is the trial of two policemen from Dolgoprudny. Recall that two policemen from Dolgoprudny are accused of exceeding their powers in detaining a local criminal authority, who turned out to be a native of the Caucasus. The "authority" himself was released on bail, disappeared and is currently on the federal wanted list. Meanwhile, the local branch of the RNU has declared itself a "support group" for police officers who, in their opinion, are victims of "discrimination against Russians." In 2004 in Dolgoprudny there were two assassination attempts on judges involved in the trial: on 25 May the car of Judge Zhanna Radchenko was blown up in Dolgoprudny, and on 9 August Judge Natalia Urlina was killed. One of the versions in the investigation of both cases is revenge on the part of RNU activists. It is not known how true these suspicions are, however, the national radicals themselves not only do not refute these suspicions, but in every possible way demonstrate their involvement in both assassination attempts. Moreover, after the trial was moved from Dolgoprudny to Moscow, according to unverified reports, threats were already made by the "support group" against both the new judge working on the trial and the prosecutor supporting the prosecution. In 2004-2005 Threats against the judge and witnesses at the trial of the Oryol RNE have been repeatedly reported.

Persecution of ethno-nationalist propaganda

In countering ethno-nationalist propaganda, the situation is much worse than with the persecution of skinheads. On the one hand, lawsuits are underway against publishers and distributors of such literature, cases are being initiated against them, brought to court, and convictions are being passed. On the other hand, these sentences often cause only bewilderment. Suffice it to say that out of 4 similar cases that ended in 2004, only in one verdict (the “Russian Veche” in Novgorod) the accused was prohibited from publishing, and then only after the first (acquittal!) verdict was overturned by a higher court. In the remaining three cases - Izhevsk Division by Mikhail Trapeznikov, Russian Siberia by Igor Kolodezenko and Rusich by Viktor Korchagin - nationalist publishers got off with suspended sentences, despite the fact that Kolodezenko and Korchagin had previously been convicted on similar charges. In the case of V. Korchagin, however, the verdict was overturned by a higher court, and the case will be reviewed. In none of these cases were convicts prohibited from engaging in publishing activities, although it was precisely this activity that was criminal. As a result, they continue to publish their nationalist leaflets without any visible consequences for them. Some cases last for years, are closed due to the statute of limitations and are reopened on the basis of new publications (as happens, for example, with Korchagin or Yuri Belyaev).

Of course, the fight against ethno-nationalist propaganda has intensified recently (perhaps this is due to the "letter of five hundred" and the international scandal that it provoked). In particular, in 2005, students in Kemerovo and Syktyvkar were convicted under Article 282 for distributing ethno-nationalist materials on the Internet (we note that in Syktyvkar the case was initially initiated for distributing pornography on the Internet, and then it turned out that also Nazi materials).

Currently, cases are being actively initiated against nationalist newspapers: as of April 2005, it is known about the persecution of publishers and distributors of primarily anti-Semitic literature in St. Kamchatka, Khabarovsk, Izhevsk and a number of other regions.Moreover, it can be noted that a very real panic has arisen in this environment: at least ethno-nationalist websites have received calls not to store newspaper materials at home, to erase information from servers, etc. However, the presence of a clear political will, and indeed no strategy in counteracting this phenomenon, has yet been observed - often criminal cases are initiated as a response to an urgent social or political "request" to combat xenophobia, and then quietly closed. apparently happened with the case against the former leader of the NDPR Boris Mironov, when in October 2004 he was put on the federal wanted list on charges of inciting ethnic hatred during the election campaign in the Novosibirsk region, and in January 2005 it was reported about reopening of this case. The situation with the Nashe Otechestvo newspaper developed similarly: on November 25, 2004, it was announced that a criminal case had been opened against it on the application of R. Linkov and Yu. Vdovin, and on January 17, 2005, it was announced that the case had been opened in January, but already at the request of the Moscow Bureau for Human Rights. However, it is possible that the cases were initiated according to different editions of the newspaper.

At the same time, it should be noted that the legislative mechanism allows taking preventive measures against such propaganda not only with the help of the court. We mean the warnings that the prosecutor's office and Rosokhrankultura (a division of the former Ministry of Press) can issue to the media. However, in 2004-2005 we know of only five such warnings.

The prosecutor's office issued warnings to the Gorno-Altai newspaper "Postskriptum", the portal "Kursiv Ivanovo" and the newspaper "For the Russian Case", which now intends to challenge this warning in court. On the part of Rosokhrankultura, warnings were issued to the newspapers Severnaya Osetiya and the TV program Two Against One. It is not entirely clear whether Rosokhrankultura issued a warning to the Voronezh newspaper Bereg, in which the territorial subdivision of the not yet reorganized Ministry of Press in the summer of 2004 "saw signs of inciting ethnic hatred", but nothing was reported about the warning.

It should be noted that the case with the warning to the "Two against One" program is also an example of the activity of public organizations - the warning was issued after the Azerbaijani community of St. guest of the program, the leader of the "Rodina" party Dmitry Rogozin, one could repeatedly hear incorrect, and sometimes simply insulting statements about Azerbaijanis living in Moscow. national discord in the country .

An example of "non-standard" counteraction (albeit the only one known to us) to anti-Semitic propaganda is the case with the already mentioned by us municipal Voronezh newspaper "Bereg". It should be reminded that in 2004 the newspaper was repeatedly, but unsuccessfully, tried to be held accountable for ethno-nationalist propaganda (first of all, anti-Semitic). However, somewhat earlier, an unsuccessful attempt was made to counter these publications in a slightly different way. In the spring of 2003, the newspaper published an article accusing the rector and one of the professors of the Voronezh Institute of Economics and Law of organizing "anti-Russian and Russophobic" conferences. As a result, one of the professors mentioned in the article - Bronislav Tabachnikov - went to court with a claim for the protection of honor, dignity and business reputation. Moreover, it was precisely these accusations of "anti-Russian" and "Russophobia" that became the subject of the lawsuit. And on December 1, 2003 B. Tabachnikov's claim was satisfied by the court of first instance. The newspaper was ordered to publish an apology and pay a total of 13,000 rubles. On 17 February 2004 the cassation board of the Voronezh Regional Court upheld the verdict. True, later the presidium of the regional court canceled these decisions.

There is another rather curious example. In March 2005, a suit for the protection of honor, dignity and business reputation against the already mentioned newspaper Our Fatherland and its publisher, one of the veterans of the national-patriotic movement in Russia, Yevgeny Shchekatikhin, was won by another radical ethno-nationalist, editor-in-chief of Russkaya Pravda, neo-pagan Alexander Aratov. We do not know exactly what exactly Aratov saw as a damage to his business reputation, however, it is known that in one of his statements to the prosecutor's office he demanded that Shchekatikhin refute that the newspaper "published the vile libel "Promotion by the Jews of Istarkhov", in which he poured mud the author of the cult pagan book "Blow of the Russian Gods" Vladimir Alekseevich Istarkhov, it is absolutely unsubstantiated that it is asserted that non-Christian publications are financed by Jews, the feelings of believing pagan Slavs are offended, "and also by the fact that "the author of the article and editor-in-chief E.A. Shchekatikhin throws dirt with might and main The all-Russian pagan newspaper Russkaya Pravda and its editor-in-chief Alexander Mikhailovich Aratov, whom K. Volnov insults in every way: "a real Jew: quirky, cunning, packaged, regularly working off the money received", "scoundrel", "quirky Jew", etc. .d" ). Aratov's civil claim, we repeat, was satisfied. Shchekatikhin had to pay him compensation of 150 thousand rubles, but died of a heart attack while reading the writ of execution.

The method of counteracting the spread of xenophobic attitudes through the press is the example of public censure of newspapers with the help of regional chambers for information disputes - with sufficient authority of these corporate bodies, it is possible to force newspapers to publish denials and apologies for incorrect materials without the intervention of the courts, as is done, for example, in the Nizhny Novgorod region ( see E.Borisova's message ). But this successful experience of counteracting xenophobia in this way also remains unique in many respects.

[1] All the figures given in this review are rather conditional, since they are mainly the result of monitoring the media, which do not always adequately convey information.