Warnings of retribution as Russia moves to outlaw far-right group

Published Date: 29 April 2010
By Mansur Mirovalev
RUSSIA has moved to outlaw the largest of the country’s far-right movements, in an effort to stem a rising tide of racist killings and other illegal acts by such groups, one of which is believed to have murdered a judge in the Russian capital this month.

• Slavic Union members attend a ‘Russia March’ in Moscow. Picture: Getty

The Slavic Union, whose Russian acronym SS intentionally mimics that used by the Nazis’ infamous military arm, was yesterday formally declared an “extremist” movement.

The group’s leader said it had tried to promote its far-right agenda legally, and warned that the ban would enrage and embolden Russia’s most radical ultra-nationalists.

“They will burn cars, blow up power stations, kill officials and commit other resonant crimes,” Dmitry Demushkin said. “All this will be the result of stupid government policies to eliminate legal nationalism.”

Recently, four former Slavic Union activists were sentenced to life in prison for a 2006 explosion targeting non-Slavic traders at a Moscow market that killed 14, including two children, and wounded dozens.

The ban is part of a Kremlin crackdown on far-right groups that intensified after the January 2009 murder of lawyer Stanislav Markelov and journalist Anastasiya Baburova. Two activists of another ultra-nationalist organisation, Russian Image, were charged with the murders.

Earlier this month, a judge was gunned down in Moscow several months after handing down long prison sentences to members of another white supremacy group, the White Wolves, for assaulting and killing non-Slavs.

Russia’s ultra-nationalist movement is so deeply embedded in the country’s culture that militant groups have sprouted up around Russia to fight against it. Anti-racist groups regularly spearhead attacks on ultra- nationalists, sparking revenge assaults in an intensifying clash of ideologies.

In November, the leader of one such group, Ivan Khutorskoy – also known by the nickname Bonebreaker – was shot dead on the outskirts of Moscow.

Neo-Nazi and other ultra- nationalist groups mushroomed in Russia after the 1991 Soviet collapse. The influx of migrant workers and two wars with Chechen separatists triggered xenophobia and a surge in hate crimes.

Racially motivated attacks, often targeting people from Caucasus and Central Asia, peaked in 2008, when 110 were killed and 487 wounded, an independent watchdog, Sova, said. The Moscow Bureau for Human Rights estimated that some 70,000 neo-Nazis were active in Russia – compared with a just few thousand in the early 1990s.

The Slavic Union, active since 1999, claims to have enlisted thousands of them.

The group’s founder, Mr Demushkin, was a former skinhead and martial arts expert who boasted a tattooed Nazi swastika on his shoulder. The group advocated for the expulsion of migrant workers from Russia’s North Caucasus and former Soviet Central Asia.

In the early 2000s, according to Mr Demushkin, the group organised dozens of cyber attacks on Muslim and Jewish websites – as well as those of anti-racist organisations and Chechen separatists.

Since 2005, it has helped organise ultra-nationalist rallies known as Russian Marches that have horrified ordinary Russians with Nazi salutes and antisemitic slogans.

Galina Kozhevnikova, Russia’s leading expert on ultra-nationalists from the Sova Centre, said, however, that the Slavic Union was losing the support of ultra-nationalists as they turned to smaller, autonomous cells that conduct independent attacks in a structure she compared to the terrorist group al-Qaeda.

She said that Russia’s far-right groups were abandoning hate killings and switching to attacks on officials and the public.

Members of a neo-Nazi group are on trial accused of planning to blow up a mosque, a McDonald’s fast food outlet and railway stations in Moscow.

Follow @IntelHub

Join to Receive Exclusive Intel Hub News Alerts and Podcasts