
The action of Tatar nationalists on the day of memory of the defenders of Kazan. Photo: RFE/RL
The social group “President of the Russian Federation”, Sergey Dovlatov about mandavoshki, bioparox as tear gas: the amazing business of the founder of the Tatar Patriotic Front “Altyn Urd”, the commandant of the evicted Kazan hostel and the father of six children Danis Safargali.
In Kazan, an investigation of a criminal case was completed against the creator of the nationalist Tatar Patriotic Front "Altyn Urda" Danis Safargali. For participation in household conflict and VKontakte reposts, he will be judged by articles about extremism, hooliganism, beatings and causing easy harm to health.
The father of six children, Safargali served in the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Ministry of Emergencies, worked as a captain of the ship and generally led a rather stormy life: even before the creation of the organization, Komsomolskaya Pravda wrote about him; The article came under the heading "In Kazan, a woman beat the pregnant wife of her ex -husband."
The Altyn Urda movement Safargali founded in 2012 - after he left the Union of Tatar Youth Azatlyk. Responding to VKontakte to the question, is it not “another group that involves the propaganda of the collapse of Russia?” He wrote : the organization "stands on the political platform of liberal nationalism or differently on the platform of National Democracy." In an explanation, the activist gave a link to an article in Kazanweek , the author of which insisted: “Altyn Urda” is not separatists, they advocate that the region’s economy is less dependent on the federal center, and nothing more.
“The Golden Horde do not call for separatism, believing that" to separate Tatarstan from Russia and from the rest of the mass of the Tatars would be stupid and unjustified politically. " At the same time, activists of the Tatar Patriotic Front call themselves confederalists and advocate the economic autonomy of Kazan from the Moscow Kremlin. Figuratively speaking, "Altyn Urda" can be called Tatar nationalism "Three points zero". The leader of the organization classifies himself to the number of liberals “Putin’s policy in the hard opposition,” the Kazan edition wrote.
The Altyn Urda program is stated on the VKontakte traffic page; Among the tasks are the studies of the educational work “to counteract the assimilation of the Tatar people”, the creation of the military-patriotic club of Tatar youth, the struggle for the use of the Tatar language in office work and promoting the return of the Tatars to Tatarstan.
One of the acquaintances of Safargali, whom the Mediazona asked to explain what exactly the organization’s activities were, said that he could not cite a concrete example, and then, for five minutes, he spoke about the yurts and tasting of Kumys at the ethnographic festival, which participated with the creator of the TPF. Muhammad Zhankulov, specified as the administrator of the Altyn Urda community, VKontakte, answered the question about his role in the movement: “You probably were mistaken.”
“He is a historian by education, conducted courses in parallel to work on the history of Tatarstan. It so happened that he began to help the Tatars, who wants to return. Realtor services, legal advice. I constantly went to Naberezhnye Chelny, to Ufa, ”says his wife Guzel about Safargali.
The Azatlyk movement, which previously consisted of Safargali, contrasted itself with the Russian right with their great power chauvinism; The only event "Altyn Urda" in VKontakte is called "There is no Russian march in Kazan."
However, the creator of the TPF opposed the Russian nationalists not only in social networks: in 2013, upon his statement, the coordinator of the “Russian Alliance” Mikhail Sharov was tried, who was charged with two episodes: the publication of the demotivator with the Qur'an, a piece of fat, feces and the inscription “with the holiday”, as well as a video called “Skin-Herls”.
The court appointed Sharov a month and 18 days of correctional labor, finding him guilty only by the second episode (part 1 of Article 282 of the Criminal Code). However, this was not the only case when Safargali complained to law enforcement agencies against other public figures of Tatarstan.

In 2012, he submitted an application to the head of the Volga Center of Regional and Ethno-religious Studies of the Russian Institute for Strategic Research (RISI) Raisa Suleimanov, who ranks Altyn-Urd as National Setapers. Separately for the spread of Suleimanov’s ideas, Safargali criticized the REGNUM news agency, which often wrote about the creator of the TPF; The positions of this publication can be judged by the news under the heading “National Setaprators in Tatarstan are distributing calls to“ kill the Bulgar ”.”
In 2014, the attention of the Center for the Ministry of Internal Affairs to counteract extremism attracted the activities of Safargali itself. In 2015, he was first fined a thousand rubles for a demonstration of Nazi swastika “VKontakte” (Article 20.3 of the Code of Administrative Offenses; the activist himself insisted that his publication criticized Nazism), then the prosecutor's office issued him a warning about the inadmissibility of extremist activity.
The criminal prosecution of the leader of the Altyn Urdy began with an almost everyday episode. Safargali and his pregnant wife (however, at that time, the marriage was not yet officially registered) was worked as commandants of the hostel of Kazan Innovation University, and the owner of the premises - the Pilgrim company - decided to make it a hostel.
On April 20, 2016, the case came to an open conflict: when the eldest son of Safargali from his first marriage Daniyar was on duty in the hostel, Pilgrim employees came there. They began to expel students, they called the Safargali couple to the aid.
"One hit me, hit the lower abdomen, said:" Let's go from here, no one touched them. " Here Danis came up, closed me with himself, dragged me from the crowd. People went to us, my husband took out his hand from his pocket, said: "I will not come now, I will spray." He had a medicine for the throat, three days before that I bought a bioparox for him, he had an Angina, ”Guzel describes the events of that day.
The spouses of Safargali, Daniyar, brother Danis Diaz Valeev and a minor student on the one hand and five Pilgrim workers participated in the later fight.
The SK materials later claimed that the issue of the legality of the residence of students of Safargali and his support group used as an “insignificant reason for the commission of illegal actions”, and all participants in the fight on their part had “pre -distributed roles”. A criminal case was opened under Articles 115 of the Criminal Code (intentional infliction of mild to health), 116 (beatings) and 213 (hooliganism).
According to investigators, in the spray can, which was sprayed by the leader of Altyn Urdy, was not a medicine for a cold, but a real tear gas. As a weapon in the case file, a plastic leg is also mentioned from the table, which Daniyar Safargali allegedly operated.
Both sides after the incident in the hostel turned to the police, but they gave the move only to the statement of the employees of Pilgrim.
Initially, in the case of a fight in the hostel there were two accused - Diaz Valeev and Daniyar Safargali; The latter at that time was already condemned conditionally and received one year of imprisonment. Valeeva court appointed a suspended sentence. Guzel Safargali at the same time claims that he does not know why the eldest son of her husband was convicted for the first time.
The leader of the Tatar Patriotic Front, according to the UK, disappeared from the investigation, and he was put on the wanted list. Guzel insists: all this time, Danis not only lived at the registration address and went to work, but also attended meetings of the court considering the case against his son, and the passport office. They did not bring a woman to criminal liability, according to her-due to partial decriminalization of beatings. In the case file, in addition to the famous participants in the brawl, the "unidentified person" appears.
Safargali was detained on October 21, 2016, when, according to Guzel, they and Danis came to sign to the registry office. The very next day he was charged with hooliganism, beatings and causing easy harm to health. The court put him into custody, and on October 27, investigators opened one more case against the activist - in Part 1 of Article 282 (arousal of hatred or enmity).
The first materials of the new case date back to April 18, 2016: two days before the fight in the hostel, the operative of the Center “E” took screenshots from the Safargali page on VKontakte. Already on June 30, an examination of publications was ready: experts rated a video called “Rashi pseudo-spirituality of the Russian Orthodox Church” and 29 screenshots from the social network.
In one of them, photographs of the “torch march of Bandera” in Kyiv and the “Russian march” in Moscow, where right -wing activists under the banners with the swastika raise their hands in a Nazi greeting, are accompanied by the signature “Find a fascist”. Also, among the materials investigated by experts, a text turned out to be a recognition of love for the Tatar people, a quote from the philosopher Alexander Zinoviev, who claimed that “the task of the media is to fill the brains with templates, cliches, dummies”, Aphorism of Sergei Dovlatov (“Tigers, for example, respect lions, elephants and hippotams. Mandavoshka - no one!”) And a comparison of Vladimir Putin from Adolf Hitler. In addition, investigators were interested in the photo of Turkish President Recep Erdogan, which illustrates allegedly his statement: “There are two categories of Russian soldiers on our land. Those who lie in the tombs, and those that will lie in the tombs. " A runaway search on the Internet shows that earlier these same words attributed to Shamil Basayev, Johar Dudaev and other leaders of Chechen separatists.
One way or another, having studied the screenshots from the Safargali page, the experts came to the conclusion that their “semantic content does not meet the principle of psychological safety”, and the fact of “humiliation of dignity” is proved, in particular, “an open insult of social groups - the President of the Russian Federation, the authorities of the Russian Federation, the media”.
In general, she concluded an examination, the materials posted insult Russians, Jews and Orthodox and promote the exclusivity of the Tatars. At the same time, the majority of witnesses in the second “extremist” case of Safargali are the victims of Pilgrim, who showed that after the conflict with the activist they entered his VKontakte page and were deeply offended by his publications. Now there are 15 episodes in the case: one video and 14 pictures.
Doctor of Sociological Sciences, senior researcher at the Center for Youth Studies of the Higher School of Economics, Iskander Yasaveev, finds an examination in the Safarals Unprofessional case.
“It seems that“ experts ”do not follow the strict rules of responsible statements accepted in science, a number of their conclusions are essentially assumptions, but are not designated as such:“ Destruction of self -awareness, self -esteem, replacement of beliefs formed for years, with new, opposite to existing norms ”,“ can form resentment, uncertainty, sense of their own incompleteness, a sense of their own inferior Stress, confusion, anxiety, panic and fear of the future, ”the scientist argues.
The mention of the president as a separate social group is especially clearly emphasized by the absurdity of the entire examination, says Yasaveev. “In general, this“ examination ”once again makes you ask questions about what basis someone is declared an“ expert ”and thus gets the opportunity to influence the fate of people,” the sociologist concludes.
Safargali since the end of October is in jail; His wife does not work - she should look after the children. As of the end of January, cases of a fight in a hostel and extremism are combined into one production; The investigation on them is completed, now the activist is getting acquainted with the materials. Although the screenshots from his page were taken two days before the incident with Pilgrim, and the case under Article 282 was excited a few days after the arrest of Safargali, his lawyer Irina Khrunova does not exclude that this may be a coincidence.