Alexander Verkhovsky
This chapter examines the evolution of the radical wing in Russian nationalism, from the early days of Dmitrii Medvedev’s presidency in 2008 to the war in the Donbas region that started in 2014.1 ‘Russian nationalism’ is an extremely broad concept (see Laruelle 2009a); there is no such thing as one unified movement of Russian nationalists. However, in the context of an authoritar-ian regime and the general weakness of political movements, we may note one important distinguishing criterion: relations with the authorities. This enables us, for the purposes of discussion, to separate those nationalists who oppose the authorities from those who support them. This chapter deals only with the opposi-tion sector, so organisaopposi-tions like Motherland (Rodina) and the People’s Assembly (Narodnyi Sobor) are not examined here.2
The opposition sector is also diverse. Here I will focus on those groups and organisations that are characteristic of it, which means excluding from the analysis those currents that, while undoubtedly interesting, are not typical. First, I will not be examining groups and organisations representing the ‘old nationalism’ of the 1990s, because these groups are becom-ing steadily less active and do not play any special role in the movement as a whole.3 Second, I will not be considering those groups that are primarily Stalinist, and nationalist only as a secondary consideration, like the followers of Colonel Vladimir Kvachkov. Eduard Limonov’s followers also clearly keep them-selves apart from the nationalist movement. Third, I exclude
from the analysis here all national democratic currents – not because they are not part of the nationalist movement (they are), but because they differ significantly from the main sector and are notably fewer in number (in terms of various numerical indicators). National democrats clearly have their own, emer-gent path, and it would be a mistake to examine their dynamics and potential together with the rest.
Who, then, makes up the mainstream, if we exclude those enu-merated above? We are left with those groups who, as of 2013, were somehow connected with the Russians (Russkie) movement or the Russian All- People’s Union (Rossiiskii obshchenarodnyi soiuz) (ROS), some individual organisations, as well as various autonomous groups – usually youth groups – that do not asso-ciate themselves with these well- known political organisations although the latter are forever wooing them. Many, but far from all, of these groups call themselves ‘autonomous nationalists’
(natsional- avtonomy), ‘national socialists’ or similar. They are typically oriented towards various neo- fascist ideas and racist vio-lence. This chapter thus focuses on those who participate in the 4 November ‘Russian March’, excluding the national democrats. I refer to them as ‘radical nationalists’, simply to demarcate them from the rest, who are either less clearly nationalist or more mod-erate in their methods or their aims.
I have chosen 2008 as the starting point – not primarily because of the change of president, but, as I will return to below, because this proved to be an extremely significant year on several parame-ters of greater importance for radical nationalists than the change of president in itself. Similarly, the war in Donbas is a major land-mark in the development of the radical nationalist movement, so it cannot be avoided in this chapter. However, since that war is not yet over, the consequences for radical nationalists are not yet entirely clear.
In 2007 I wrote about how the Russian nationalist mainstream had come to take the place of the ‘old nationalism’ (Verkhovsky 2007a). To sum up briefly: in the middle of the first decade of the 2000s a fairly powerful movement emerged, and one very differ-ent from the nationalism of the 1990s. Instead of being motivated by nostalgic visions or the like, it focused on the ultra- simplified
idea of building a new, ethnically pure (or, at the very least, eth-nically hierarchical) Russia in place of the lost empire. It built on violence from the streets, and on the aggressive racism of the neo- Nazi skinhead movement, although the skinhead sub- culture as such was already going out of fashion. The present chapter explores how the movement has evolved since then, whether it has a future and, if so, what sort of future that may be.4
2008: Setting the scene
According to SOVA Center for Information and Analysis data, hate crime peaked precisely in 2008; we reported 116 murder victims in that year alone. However, active police work against the gangs committing these crimes had also been expanding at the same time – or, more accurately, had begun to do so back in 2007. For several years, the number of people sentenced for these crimes grew steadily, with arrests numbering in the hundreds, in stark contrast to the situation in previous years.5 Racist violence escalated until 2008 – and then, just as swiftly, began to decline.
Organised battles between radical nationalists and youth from the Caucasus had already passed their peak by 2007; on the whole, the street war with ‘antifa’ (antifascist) fighters had sup-planted the street war with the ‘Caucasians’ (kavkaztsy). For some years, this war – conducted most actively from 2007 to 2009 – absorbed significant resources of the ultra- right sector’s militant groups.
In about 2008 the sector itself became fully ‘equipped’, devel-oping its own businesses, legal services, support systems for those arrested and so on. This made it possible for members to confine almost all their social contact to within the sector, and to view society at large – not just ‘ethnic enemies’ – with increasing scepticism.
It was in 2008, too, that antifascists faced the greatest number of genuine threats from neo- Nazis. The terrorist component of neo- Nazi violence directed against political opponents and the authorities also expanded, including the activities of the Combat Organisation of Russian Nationalists (Boevaia organizatsiia russkikh natsionalistov) (BORN) (see Kozlov and Tumanov 2014;
Novaia gazeta 2014). Explosives were increasingly used. Not only did neo- Nazis kill ‘antifa fighters’, their opponents in the street war, they even murdered a federal judge. Arson and bombing attempts against police stations became commonplace. There was no discernible abatement of these activities in 2009 and 2010, but thereafter they declined steeply.6
In late 2007 and early 2008, the National Socialist Society (Natsional- sotsialisticheskoe obshchestvo) (NSO) of Dmitrii Rumiantsev and Sergei Korotkikh, which until then had been expanding fast, fell apart under pressure from law enforcement agencies. The NSO, an organisation that had been a sort of model result of the neo- Nazis’ near- total impunity, had combined ener-getic political activism with no less enerener-getic murder. The collapse of the NSO showed young radical nationalists that it would be impossible to combine these activities in the years to come. Some became disillusioned, and some opted for politics instead of vio-lence, but it would appear that the majority chose violence and took secrecy more seriously.
That is not to say that political activities were divorced from violence. In 2008, for example, an activist of the ‘political’
Movement against Illegal Immigration (DPNI) blew himself up while preparing explosives in his flat. Among the organisations in focus here, it would appear that the separation of politics and violence has not been entirely accomplished to this day.
As for organised politics, almost no genuine patrons of the radical nationalists remained in the new State Duma elected in December 2007, so the hopes raised by collaboration with the Motherland bloc were dashed. At the same time, pro- Kremlin youth movements – primarily the Moscow region Locals (Mestnye) – began a campaign against ‘illegal migrants’, quite reminiscent of DPNI’s early activities. The top–down tactic of ‘intercepting slogans’ was coupled with backstage manoeuvres aimed at reduc-ing support for the then- leadreduc-ing ultra- right organisation, DPNI, to benefit Russian Image (Russkii obraz), an organisation no less radical but that presented itself as apolitical (Horvath 2014).
Russian Image attracted a sizeable portion of the radical youth core from the DPNI in 2008. The politics of manipulating the nationalist arena continued in this fashion until November 2009.
For its part the DPNI set up a broad coalition that included Aleksei Navalnyi’s group and the remnants of Andrei Saveliev’s party Great Russia (Velikaia Rossiia), created one year earlier, as well as Konstantin Krylov’s Russian Public Movement (Russkoe obshchestvennoe dvizhenie) (ROD), then the national democrats’
most notable initiative. Although the coalition soon withered away, this highlighted the division of radical nationalists into those who publically declared their opposition and those who did not (it is hard to see Russian Image activists as being truly loyal).
The DPNI itself continued to be dogged by internal crisis, due largely to the transformation of the movement into a more politi-cised and centralised structure. The movement, for several years the undisputed leader of the visible part of the nationalist sector, now went into decline.7
Methodological approach
The radical nationalist movement combines political activity and violence, but it is more convenient to explore these two types of activity separately, since – for the most part – different indi-viduals take part in them and, accordingly, different dynamics emerge. It is also important to take into consideration the rela-tions of the movement as a whole with the authorities, since in an authoritarian system this parameter is of great significance for any movement.
Here I identify three measurements – level of political activity, violence, and relations with the authorities. These are interde-pendent, so it would be most correct to examine precisely these interactions across every time period. That approach has already been tested in SOVA Center for Information and Analysis publi-cations, however, so here I will explore the dynamics of the three lines of enquiry in sequence instead, only occasionally referring to their interaction.
The Ukrainian crisis, escalating into violence since February 2014, has greatly impacted on radical nationalists (Al’perovich and Yudina 2014b). Therefore I begin by examining these three lines from 2009 up to early 2014, and then offer a provisional summary of more recent changes.
Relations with the authorities
In not allowing radical nationalists to compete in the parliamen-tary elections of 2007, the federal authorities set a course of sup-pression, although obviously not of total repression. First, there were fairly large- scale arrests of those involved in racist violence, many of whom were sentenced to significant periods of imprison-ment. In part this led to a reduction of violent activity, in part to such groups going underground and to their separation from political movements. Although the number of arrests dropped over time, the impact of this strategy was still being felt up until at least 2013. As the bulk of radical nationalists are members of groups inclined to violence, the movement as a whole saw this policy as a ‘declaration of war’. This raised the temperature of anti- government feelings within the sector.
Second, the political movements – especially the largest, the DPNI – were also subjected to significant pressure. No political activists were imprisoned, but the sense of their being unpunish-able evaporated: the authorities progressed from a suspended sentence given to the DPNI leader, Aleksandr Belov, in 2009, to a ban on the DPNI as an extremist organisation in 2011. The aim was to marginalise an entire stream of Russian nationalism. The evident pointlessness of participating in the DPNI and similar organisations led to a drop in numbers and to attempts at political manoeuvring by their leadership (see below).
Third, alternatives were created for radical nationalists who wanted to break away from the groups that had come under pressure. Structures connected with Russian Image provided the main alternative, and many of the more radical neo- Nazi youth groups (that had at that point embarked on marching together as the ‘black block’) went for this alternative. However, it was also possible to join the pro- Kremlin ‘youth movements’, and some radical nationalists apparently saw this as an opportunity to infiltrate the regime (Kozhevnikova 2010). The arrest of Nikita Tikhonov in November 2009 revealed the extent to which the radicalism of Russian Image was unacceptable to the authorities, and hence, this alternative was curtailed. At the same time, pro- Kremlin youth groups stopped being used as a soft alternative to
the DPNI. Thus, suppression became the only strategy – at least until 2013 (see below).
The riot on Moscow’s Manezhnaia Square on 11 December 2010 marked a turning point in the authorities’ relations with radical nationalists. The fact that riot police (OMON) could not disperse a crowd of about 3,000 (my estimate) radical nationalists and football hooligans, right under the very walls of the Kremlin, evoked serious concern. Although it remained unique in terms of size, this event prompted the federal authorities to undertake not only a series of police operations and populist gestures, but also to formulate a more intelligible and, importantly, stable position.
Recent years have seen a whole series of official announcements, concept papers and programmes, which – despite the unavoidable eclecticism – have at least established a basic position. Not only do the authorities reject any radical nationalism, they also pit their own variant of statist ‘civilisational’ nationalism against ethnic (including Russian) nationalism. Although not set out in detail, the basic shape of the confrontation is clear: the political nation must unite around figures and ideas proposed by the authorities, and not around ethnic or any other communities that may arise and/or be manifested independently of them (Verkhovsky 2014a).
There were also less significant political manoeuvres, especially in the pre- election period of 2011 (see, for example, Novorossiia 2011). Dmitrii Rogozin’s return to politics became the most important event. He simultaneously resurrected the Rodina party and re- established contacts with the nationalist movement. In the end, however, representatives of the movement were not allowed real access to the elections, whether through Rogozin or via DPNI channels, and the strategy of marginalising radical nation-alists continued. Since then there have been some episodic excep-tions to this trend, like inviting the known neo- Nazi Maksim (Tesak) Martsinkevich to participate in a television programme as a ‘warrior against paedophilia’, but these have not developed into a general tendency – not least since radical nationalists took part in the protest movement (see below).
The events of 2013 proved considerably more serious – specifically, the totally unexpected anti- migrant campaign con-ducted over several months on federal television channels (see
Hutchings and Tolz, this volume), and by several regional admin-istrations, including those of Moscow and St Petersburg. Although in Moscow this could be ascribed to mayoral elections, there were no elections in St Petersburg. What is significant is not just that the police began to bring criminal charges against non- citizens far more often,8 but how and to what extent this was conveyed to the public. The campaign led to an unprecedented rise in ethno- xenophobia in society (Levada Centre 2013c).
Radical nationalists responded with their own activities, both large- scale political events and direct action in the form of ‘raids’
(such raids were, and are to this day, conducted even by the Kremlin Motherland). The campaign was effective in pro-moting radical nationalists in the mass media, forcing the authori-ties to take additional steps to restrict over- zealous ‘helpers’ in the struggle against ‘illegal migration’ (Al’perovich and Yudina 2014a). Importantly, the anti- migration campaign appeared to call into question the declared goal of supra- ethnic political consolida-tion, and thereby the grounds for opposing radical nationalists. It is difficult to say whether this is the reason why the campaign was eventually wound down by the end of autumn 2013.
However, with the beginning of the mass political mobilisa-tion against the West and the ‘Kiev junta’ (the new authorities in Ukraine after the ouster of Viktor Yanukovych), the impact of the anti- migrant campaign was completely smoothed over.
The new propaganda campaign led to maximum political con-solidation around the Kremlin, to the detriment of nationalist ideas: in spring 2014 ethno- xenophobia declined sharply, as did support for ethnic nationalist slogans, including slogans about the need for introducing a visa regime for citizens of Central Asian countries (Romanov and Stepanov 2014). One may, of course, question the specific data collated in response to these or other surveys, but there can be no doubt that, for the major-ity of the population, the foreign policy conflict and patriotic enthusiasm connected with the annexation of Crimea eclipsed the previous year’s priorities for some time. As of the time of this writing (summer 2014–winter 2015), the theme of political unity has again come to dominate the discourse of the authori-ties and those groups loyal to them, only now in a more militant
form. And again there is some ambiguity as to what this national unity means – that is, whether the struggle is being waged for
‘the Russian world’ (russkii mir) (the establishment of trans-border cultural and political unity with Moscow’s allies), or for the ethnic Russians. Consequently, national unity must also be understood as relating to ‘Russian civilisation’ – but with clear ethnic undertones.
Is it possible to say how this has impacted upon policies in rela-tion to the radical narela-tionalists? As yet, no. Despite the abundance of new laws, various declarations and a deluge of propaganda, there has been very little clarity within Russian domestic politics in general since the beginning of the Ukrainian political crisis.
Very tentatively, it may be suggested that the authorities’ policy in relation to radical nationalists has returned to basically the situation of late 2012/early 2013 – that is, to the state of play that existed after the collapse of the protest movement but before the start of the anti- migrant campaign.
The dynamics of violence
All political organisations that may be deemed part of the radical nationalist movement are connected with racist violence, either historically or currently. The most obvious examples from the early 2000s are the National Socialist Society, which combined politics and violence almost openly; and Russian Image, which had a sort of military wing in the shape of the above- mentioned BORN. The radical nationalist leaders themselves have said more than once that they do not any longer resort to violence, what-ever the nature of their militant pasts – undeniable pasts, in the case of such leaders as Dmitrii Demushkin of the Slavic Union (Slavianskii soiuz) (SS) and Dmitrii (Shults) Bobrov of the National- socialist Initiative (Natsional- sotsialisticheskaia initsia-tiva) (NSI). More important is that the activists in their organisa-tions clearly do resort to violence (SOVA Center for Information and Analysis 2012, 2013a), and there are no visible boundaries between the ‘peaceable’ radical nationalists and the ‘warriors’.
However, it is also true that most such crimes are committed by members of ‘autonomous’ groups that are not part of any political
organisation. In any case, the use of violence is very important for radical nationalists – a fact they do not attempt to hide, judging from their enthusiasm for public lessons in knife fighting, para-military gatherings and the like.
Under serious police pressure, the level of racist and neo- Nazi violence began to fall from 2009 onwards, while violence against political opponents (as opposed to ‘aliens’ and the homeless), began to decline two or so years later. This shift may be explained
Under serious police pressure, the level of racist and neo- Nazi violence began to fall from 2009 onwards, while violence against political opponents (as opposed to ‘aliens’ and the homeless), began to decline two or so years later. This shift may be explained