TALLINN – In the course of 2005, organized political groups displaced skinheads as the most active force within Russian radical ethnonationalism, a development that the Russian media downplayed and one whose dangers the Russian government has failed to appreciate, according to an annual survey conducted by a Moscow human rights group.
The Moscow SOVA Center, founded in 2002 by members of the Panorama research organization and the Moscow Helsinki Group, conducts research on the problems of nationalism and xenophobia in Russian society and over the last several years has produced an annual report on radical nationalism in Russia and efforts to oppose it.
The latest of its reports, this one covering 2005, was published on Friday. It gives an exhaustive and disturbing picture of manifestations of this phenomenon in the Russian Federation, the way in which they were covered in the media, and also the manner in which Russian officials responded (
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The report notes some positive developments: The number of people killed by extremist groups fell last year, although the number of such attacks increased. The media gave extensive coverage to some of the attacks. And the Russian courts handed out more prison terms rather than suspended sentences to those charged with such abuses.
But despite those developments, the SOVA report highlighted three other, more disturbing trends. First, media coverage of all but the most dramatic events has declined. As a result, information about many attacks often surfaces only several months after they have taken place when those involved are brought to trial.
On the one hand, this pattern of reporting creates and may even be intended to create the impression that the authorities are ever more successfully cracking down on such activities, a conclusion that the SOVA center analysts argue is not justified by the data they have compiled.
And on the other hand, the failure of many media outlets to report on attacks suggests that these criminal acts are now so frequent in many places that they „are ceasing to be ‚news,’” having become instead part of the every day background noise of life in Russia today.
Second, unlike during the first half of this decade when largely unorganized skinheads attacked individuals and groups, in 2005, there was a marked growth in the activities of extreme right radical groups, who appear intent on co-operating and expanding their ideological influence throughout society.
Indeed, the SOVA assessment suggests, these groups are now displaying some indications of „strategic planning” in their propagandistic activities. They have increased their picketing and distribution of literature and broadened their attacks to include immigrants, attacks that have allowed them to generate support from a broader section of the population.
Many of these right radical groups have worked hard to unite with others of their ilk, forming alliances of various kinds with groups ranging from skinheads to Cossacks to members of some political parties represented in the Russian State Duma. And they have more tightly focused their efforts on recruiting young people to their cause.
And third, while the state appears to have stepped up its prosecution of those who engage in such actions and restricted the access of others to the political system, some officials have toyed with or even encouraged these groups, and few within the government appear to view Russian nationalist extremists as a real danger to the state and society.
As has been the case over the last several years, the SOVA report says, the country’s elite „starts from the proposition that ultra-nationalism is not a political threat, and ‚soft’ forms of nationalism can be successfully and without any danger incorporated into the ideology of the state.”
Such assessments are a mistake, the SOVA report continues, „not only because the threats are not only political – already now right radicals are killing tends and injuring hundreds of people and affecting by their propaganda the consciousness of a still larger number of others.”
It also consists, the report concludes, „in an under-assessment of the political threat: Ultra-nationalism is constantly growing, and there is no basis for considering that the ineffective Russian government will be able to cope with it if there is some kind of crisis and a [consequent] activation of the right radicals.”
