Neo-Nazism in Russia

The ideology of Nazi Germany regarded the Slavs in general as members of an "inferior race" and "subhuman", which resulted in an attempt to implement Generalplan Ost during World War II, which provided for the extermination, expulsion, or enslavement of most or all of the Slavs in Central and Eastern Europe (mainly ethnic Poles, Belarusians, Czechs, Ukrainians, Serbs, and Russians). Soviet period The first reports of neo-Nazi organizations in the Soviet Union appeared in the second half of the 1950s. In some cases, participants were primarily attracted by the aesthetics of Nazism (rituals, parades, uniforms, the cult of the body, and architecture). Other organizations were more interested in the Nazi ideology and program and Adolf Hitler. In 1957, influenced by the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, neo-Nazi activist and dissident Alexey Dobrovolsky founded the Russian National Socialist Party, one of the first Russian neo-Nazi organizations, for which he was imprisoned. and is associated with the anti-Semitic activities of Valery Yemelyanov and Alexey Dobrovolsky. However, not all currents of Russian neopaganism (Rodnovery) are associated with neo-Nazism. During the Soviet era, Viktor Bezverkhy, the founder of Peterburgian Vedism (a branch of Slavic neo-paganism), openly revered Adolf Hitler and Heinrich Himmler and, among his close circle of disciples, promoted racial and anti-Semitic theories, calling for ridding humanity of "defective progeny" that allegedly resulted from interracial marriages. He called such "inferior people" "bastards" and included among them "Jews, Indians, Gypsies, and mulattoes," and believed that they hindered society in achieving social justice. At the age of 51, he swore an oath to "devote his entire life to the struggle against Judaism, the mortal enemy of humanity." The text of this oath, written in blood, was discovered during a search of his home in 1988. Bezverkhy's Vedism stated, among other things, that, "In the event of a fascist victory, all peoples will be sifted through the sieve of racial identification, the Aryans will be united, the Asian, African and Indian elements will be put in their proper place, and the mulattoes will be eliminated as unnecessary." The first public neo-Nazi demonstrations in Russia took place in 1981 in Kurgan, in which over a 100 high school students with swastika armbands took part. Among the slogans of the demonstration was "Fascism will save Russia." Other demonstrations took place in Yuzhnouralsk, Nizhny Tagil, Sverdlovsk, and Leningrad. On 20 April 1982, Hitler's birthday, a group of Moscow students, numbering from somewhere between a dozen to nearly 100, held a neo-Nazi demonstration on Pushkin Square. Post-Soviet period In the 1990s, white power skinheads became a prominent phenomenon among neo-Nazis in Russia; Alexander Tarasov considers the key reasons for this to be the breakdown of the education system, as well as the economic recession and unemployment during the reforms of the 1990s. Tarasov wrote that the growth of the skinheads was also fueled by the First Chechen War, which heightened hostility toward people from the Caucasus, which was further compounded by the government's imperialist rhetoric and the insufficient efforts of law enforcement agencies to combat right-wing radical organizations. According to historian Viktor Shnirelman, the spread of racism and "Aryan identity" among skinheads in Russia was also influenced by anti-communist propaganda and criticism of internationalism during the "wild capitalism" of the 1990s, when social Darwinism and the "pursuit of heroism" contributed to the popularity of images of the "superman" and the "superior aristocratic race". Starting in 1997, Russian skinheads received regular support from the European and American far right. A number of neo-Nazis and other white supremacists (including members of the Ku Klux Klan) from the United States, as well as members of the German People's Union, as well as the Wiking-Jugend (which was banned in Germany), took trips to Russia to and supplied Russian skinheads with neo-Nazi literature, audio cassettes, and uniforms. On 5 December 1998, skinheads and neo-Nazis marched through the city's historic center, chanting slogans such as "Russia for Russians, Moscow for Muscovites." Ties to the Russian government Since the 2004 Orange Revolution in Ukraine, the Russian government has been routinely accused of collaborating with neo-Nazis in order to fight domestic opposition to Vladimir Putin. This policy, known as managed nationalism, led to the increased prominence of the Russian Image group until its collapse in 2009 after the arrest of its leaders for the murders of Stanislav Markelov and Anastasia Baburova. Since the annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation and the beginning of the Russo-Ukrainian War in 2014, connections between the Russian government and neo-Nazi groups have once again been noted in international news outlets. In particular, the Russian Imperial Movement have been noted for their large number of volunteers, including white supremacist militants from throughout Europe. Initially important in supporting Russian forces during the 2014–2022 War in Donbas, their relevance has decreased with the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. Neo-Nazis from Russia have participated in military operations on the side of the unrecognized Donetsk People's Republic and Luhansk People's Republic, as well as on the side of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and pro-Ukrainian volunteer units. Russian-Belarusian neo-Nazi activist Sergei Korotkikh took part in the fighting on the Ukrainian side. French sociologist and political scientist Marlène Laruelle reported on the participation of mercenaries "related, directly or indirectly, to the Russian National Unity movement" in the war on the side of the separatists. Sociologist notes that one unit, Rusich, is composed of neo-Nazis from Saint Petersburg and fights under a banner featuring a swastika stylized as a "kolovrat". ==Demographics==

According to data from a participant observation conducted in 1996–2008 by lawyer and researcher S. V. Belikov, the first skinheads appeared in Moscow in the early 1990s, and their number was no more than a few dozen. In 1993–1994, the number of skinheads in Moscow reached 150-200 people, and the first skinhead groups started appearing in major Russian cities (St. Petersburg, Rostov, Volgograd, and Nizhny Novgorod) in the same years. In 1995–1996, the total number of skinheads in Russia exceeded 1,000, and their subculture and ideology became prominent among right-wing political extremists. In 1996–1998, there was a jump in numbers and organization: in 1998, there were about 20 organized associations in Moscow, there were printed publications, firms that satisfied the demand for skin paraphernalia, and skin music groups. In 1998–2000, increased attention from the police and society led to a decline in the skin-movement, which got rid of random people. The years 2000-2004 saw a new upsurge, which ended in 2004 after the state intensified repressive and deterrent measures and a series of "show" trials Belikov estimates that in 2002 the approximate number of skinheads reached 5-7 thousand in Moscow and about 2 thousand in St. Petersburg. According to estimates by Alexander Tarasov and Semyon Charny in reports by the Moscow Bureau for Human Rights, as of 2004-2005 there were about 50,000 NS-skinheads in Russia (data sources and evaluation methodology are not cited). According to the SOVA Center, the number of victims of hate-motivated attacks at various times amounted to up to 700 people a year (the maximum values were recorded in 2008–2009), by 2015 this number had dropped to 80 people. == Groups ==

Werewolf Legion During the spring in 1994, a neo-Nazi group called the Werewolf Legion was formed in Moscow. Shortly after its formation, the group allegedly attempted to set fire to the Olympic sports hall in Moscow, which was serving as the site of a Messianic Jewish conference. They were also reported to have planned arson attacks on movie theaters that were showing the Holocaust film Schindler's List. Three members of the group were put on trial for charges of homicide, robbery, hooliganism and inciting racial hatred. Two of the members received prison sentences by the Russian court, and the group was broken up by Russian Federal security forces in July 1994. Schultz-88 In 2004, a trial was held against members of the neo-Nazi group , which operated in St. Petersburg and the Leningrad region from April 2001 to March 2003. Members of the group attacked people of "non-Slavic" appearance, Jews and representatives of youth subcultures hostile to skinheads. Members of the group included and Dmitry Borovikov, leaders of the skinhead group. The chief expert on the case was the St. Petersburg scholar and ethnographer Nikolai Girenko. He was murdered on 19 June 2004. During the trial, the jury of the St. Petersburg City Court found members of the Borovikov-Voyevodin gang ("Combat Terrorist Organization") guilty, including in the murder of Girenko. On 14 June 2011 the St. Petersburg City Court sentenced the ringleader Voyevodin and another member of the group, Artyom Prokhorenko, to life imprisonment. Other members of the gang were sentenced to various terms of imprisonment. Mad Crowd On 14 December 2005, six members of the skinhead group were sentenced to various terms of imprisonment for attacks on persons of "non-Slavic" appearance. The group operated in 2002–2003 in St. Petersburg and was led by Ruslan Melnik, and Dmitry Borovikov. At the time of the trial, members of the group had formed a clandestine terrorist organization called the Combat Terrorist Organization (BTO). Borovikov died in 2006 from a fatal wound during an arrest and was buried with a neopagan funeral. National Socialist Party of Russia On 15 August 2007, a student was arrested for posting a video known as "Execution of a Tajik and a Dagestani" on the Internet. Against the background of the flag of Nazi Germany, skinheads organize the massacre of two Muslim illegal migrants. The National Socialist Party of Russia took responsibility for the massacre. All of the suspects were members of The Saviour, a neo-Nazi paramilitary group. The defendants were sentenced to terms ranging from two years to life imprisonment. Nikolai Korolyov, Ilya Tikhomirov, and Sergey Klimuk were sentenced to life imprisonment. White Society-88 In 2008-2009 several members of the neo-Nazi group were detained, which had been operating in Nizhny Novgorod since 2008. Students Alexander Degtyarev and Artyom Surkov committed four murders and nine attempted murders of persons of "non-Slavic" appearance. Degtyarev was detained in December 2008 right after he shot and killed his teacher with a hunting smooth-bore gun. In June 2010, the Nizhny Novgorod Regional Court sentenced Alexander Degtyarev to life imprisonment, while Artyom Surkov and Maxim Alyoshin were sentenced to 10 and 9.5 years' imprisonment, respectively. Ryno-Skachevsky gang In 2008–2010, members of the Ryno-Skachevsky gang led by Artur Ryno and Pavel Skachevsky were convicted. Ryno claimed that since August 2006 he had killed 37 people of "non-Slavic" appearance, including about 20 with his buddy Skachevsky. In December 2008, students Artur Ryno and Pavel Skachevsky each received ten years in a minimum-security penal colony. Other members of the group were also sentenced to long terms of imprisonment. BORN Members of the neo-Nazi group Fighting Organization of Russian Nationalists (BORN) were accused of a series of murders and attempted murders. In 2011, Nikita Tikhonov, one of the organization's leaders and founders, was sentenced to life imprisonment for the murders of lawyer Stanislav Markelov and journalist Anastasia Baburova, and his roommate Yevgenia Khasis received 18 years in prison. In April 2015, Maxim Baklagin and Vyacheslav Isayev were sentenced to life imprisonment, and Mikhail Volkov was sentenced to 24 years in prison. In July 2015, Ilya Goryachev, the group's founder, was sentenced to life imprisonment for organizing a gang, five murders, and arms trafficking. The sentencing of Ryno and Skachevsky was announced on 8 April 2010. Judge of the Moscow City Court, who handed down a verdict in this case, was murdered on 12 April 2010, by members of the BORN. Volkssturm In 2011, nine members of the "Volkssturm" skinhead group were sentenced. In 2013, one of the two convicted skinheads was Alexander Solovyov, one of the leaders of the group. In January 2014, the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation reported that a 25-year-old member of the group, wanted since 2008, was detained in the Sverdlovsk region. The group operated in Yekaterinburg in 2006–2008. It was named after the units of the people's militia of Nazi Germany. It is proven, that the members of the group committed three murders and eight attempted murders of persons of 'non-Slavic' appearance and beat up 20 migrants. The skinheads documented their actions by filming them and posting them on the Internet. Lincoln-88 On 5 May 2011 Petersburg city court passed a guilty sentence on members of the skinhead group "" that operated in St. Petersburg from August–December 2007. Andrei Linok involved more than 22 people in the group. Members of the group committed 12 attacks on persons of "non-Slavic" appearance, including two murders and one attempted murder. Eight attacks were videotaped and posted on the Internet. The court found 19 members of the group guilty, 10 defendants were sentenced to 4 to 9 years in prison, while the rest received suspended sentences of varying lengths of imprisonment. NS/WP Nevograd In June 2014, the neo-Nazi group NS/WP Nevograd was sentenced on charges of murder, an act of terrorism, incitement of hatred on racial and national grounds, and trafficking in weapons and ammunition. The Cleaners On 23 October 2017, the Moscow City Court sentenced members of the neo-Nazi group the Cleaners who killed more than 15 people between July 2014 and February 2015. Pavel Voitov was sentenced to life imprisonment, Elena Lobachova to 13 years and Maxim Pavlov to 9 years and 6 months in a penal colony. Vladislav Karatayev was sentenced to 16 years and Artur Nartsissov to 9 years and 6 months in a strict regime penal colony. As victims, members of the group chose citizens who, in their opinion, violate generally accepted norms of behavior: persons without a fixed place of residence, begging, abusing alcohol and being intoxicated. Atomwaffen Division Russland Atomwaffen Division Russland is a neo-Nazi terrorist group in Russia found by Russian officials to have been tied to multiple mass murder plots. AWDR was founded by former members of defunct National Socialist Society responsible for 27 murders and AWDR is connected to local chapter of the Order of Nine Angles responsible for rapes, ritual murders and drug trafficking. The Russian authorities raided an Atomwaffen compound in Ulan-Ude and uncovered illegal weapons and explosives. Rusich Group The Rusich Group, a unit operating within Wagner Group's military organisation, in particular has notable Neo Nazi elements. The group is referred to as a "sabotage and assault reconnaissance group", which has been fighting as part of the Russian separatist forces in eastern Ukraine. Rusich are described as a far-right extremist or neo-Nazi unit, and their logo features a Slavic swastika. The group was founded by Russian Neo-Nazis Alexey Milchakov and Yan Petrovsky in the summer of 2014, after graduating from a paramilitary training program run by the Russian Imperial Legion, the fighting arm of the Russian Imperial Movement. As of 2017, the Ukrainian Prosecutor General and the International Criminal Court (ICC) were investigating fighters of this unit for alleged war crimes committed in Ukraine. In June 2023, Wagner Group mutinied, but quickly stepped down. Wagner Group The Wagner Group, a Russian mercenary group notable in the Russo-Ukrainian War has been accused of Neo-Nazism. The group is believed to have been named after Dmitry Utkin who was the military commander of the unit and had call sign “Wagner”, apparently chosen after Richard Wagner, the favorite composer of Adolf Hitler. Utkin was openly a Neo-Nazi. Members of the Wagner Group have been observed spray painting swastikas and SS lightning bolts, and Dmitry Utkin who was widely considered Wagner's operational commander, had tattoos featuring Nazi ″SS″ epaulets. However, Erica Gaston, a senior policy adviser at the UN University Centre for Policy Research, stated that while the alleged founder has "sympathies to far-right groups and there's probably some in the general recruitment that also have those sympathies, predominantly, it's not an ideological group but a mercenary network "linked to the Russian security state". == Ideology ==

" in 2012 in Moscow, poster against the background of flags with the nationalist and neo-pagan Kolovrat symbol Like the old Nazism, Russian neo-Nazism combines ethnic nationalism, the idea of the Aryan race, its biological and cultural superiority over other races, the idea of racial antisemitism (the Semitic race is seen as the antipode and main enemy of the "Aryans"), anti-communism and anti-democratism. The cult of Adolf Hitler is significant, and swastika, or its various modifications, remain the main symbols. One of the largest Russian nationalist extremist parties until the late 1990s was the neo-Nazi movement Russian National Unity (RNU), founded by Alexander Barkashov in 1990. In late 1999, RNU unsuccessfully attempted to run for the State Duma elections. Barkashov viewed "true Orthodoxy" as a fusion of Christianity and paganism, advocating for a "Russian God" and the "Aryan swastika" allegedly associated with him. He wrote about the Atlanteans, the Etruscans, and the "Aryan" civilization as the direct predecessors of the Russian nation, their centuries-long struggle with the "Semites", a "global Jewish conspiracy", and the "Jewish domination of Russia". The movement's symbol was a modified swastika. Barkashov was a parishioner of the Russian True Orthodox Church, and the first RNU cells were formed as brotherhoods and communities of the RTOU. The ideology of Russian neo-Nazism is closely linked to the ideology of Rodnoverie (Slavic neo-paganism). In a number of cases, there are also organizational ties between neo-Nazis and neo-pagans; for example, one of the founders of Russian neo-paganism, Alexey Dobrovolsky (pagan name - Dobroslav) adhered to neo-Nazi ideas and included them in his neo-pagan teachings. Dobrovolsky called his ideology "Russian national socialism". He was the spiritual leader of the radical wing of Russian neo-paganism. According to historian Roman Shizhensky, Dobrovolsky adopted the idea of the swastika from the work of Nazi ideologue Herman Wirth, the first leader of Ahnenerbe. Dobrovolsky declared the eight-pointed "kolovrat", consisting of two overlapping swastikas, considered in Slavic neo-paganism to be the ancient Slavic sign of the Sun, to be the symbol of the uncompromising "national liberation struggle" against the "Jewish yoke". According to Dobrovolsky, the meaning of the "kolovrat" is entirely consistent with that of the Nazi swastika. Historian Leo Klejn identified two opposing tendencies in Russian Slavic neopaganism: the first is a form of religious quest, a striving for spiritual unity with native nature and a healthy lifestyle, a religious modification of the green movement; the second is a form of nationalist propaganda, self-organization of chauvinists, and a religious framing of Russian neo-Nazism. Another founding figure of post-Soviet neo-Nazism was former Komsomol activist ; from 1992 to 1994, he led the neo-Nazi youth movement Front of National Revolutionary Action, which declared allegiance to Eastern Orthodoxy. In March 1996, a criminal case was opened against Lazarenko, which resulted in him becoming the first person in Russia to be convicted of inciting ethnic hatred. While under investigation, Lazarenko broke with Orthodoxy and, influenced by the ideas of Miguel Serrano, a founding figure of esoteric neo-Nazism, founded the neo-pagan neo-Nazi (also known as the Holy Church of the White Race) in Moscow on 20 April (Hitler's birthday) 1996. The Navi Society was based on the worship of two supposedly Slavic gods, Yav and Navi, and had uniforms and rituals similar to those of the Ku Klux Klan. The doctrine of the society was a combination of Slavic neo-pagan ideas with Indo-Aryan and Zoroastrian beliefs. Lazarenko considered only Russians to be white. The main symbol of the movement was a swastika; others included the Novgorod cross with an inscribed swastika, runic inscriptions, a ram's skull, and Siegfried's sword. One of the society's goals was the extermination of people with physical deformities. In 2005 Lazarenko returned to Orthodoxy. According to Lazarenko, the coming of the “Third Rus',” a “thousand-year National Socialist Empire” called to usher in the “era of the New Sacred Civilization,” was nigh. In contrast, right-wing politician and former neo-Nazi leader opposed the pro-imperial and Russo-centric variety of Russian neo-Nazism. He did not share anti-Westernism, instead having proposed seeking racial allies in the "white" West. Shiropayev doubted the unity of the Russian people and views it as a conglomerate of sub-ethnic groups, differing both psychologically and physiologically. For this reason, he advocated Russian separatism, believing that it would be easier to defend Russian interests in several small states composed of ethnic Russians than in a large multinational empire. Their center of power, in his view, should be a "Great Rus'," encompassing the central and northwestern regions of Russia, and it should become homogeneous in a "cultural and racial" sense and oriented toward German racial ideas. Shiropayev viewed this as an interim stage on the way to a period when the confederation of Russian republics will become a springboard for a "new white colonization" and the formation of a "modern neocolonial empire." Later, Shiropayev proposed dividing Russia into seven Russian republics and transforming it into a "federal commonwealth of nations," where nation is understood not in an ethnic but a political sense. Along with Ilya Lazarenko, Shiropayev argued that the project of a multi-ethnic Russian nation had failed, as ethnicity remained important for the population of Russia; the two presented these ideas in 2013 at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow. Shiropayev proposed transforming the Central Federal District into the Republic of Zalesskaya Rus' and fostering a "Zalessian identity" within it. Lazarenko leads the Zalesskaya Rus' movement. Rodnovery is a popular religion of Russian skinheads. These skinheads, however, do not usually practice their religion.. During the trial for the skinhead organization in the second half of 2005, the brochure "Paganism as the spiritual and moral basis of Russian national-socialism" by Dobrovolsky and the neo-pagan magazine The Wrath of Perun were mentioned. Members of the neo-Nazi group called the Combat Terrorist Organization of Nevograd (BTO), disbanded by the police in 2006, considered themselves Slavic Rodnovers. They published self-published magazines with a racist-neo-pagan orientation, where they developed the idea of creating a "new Nordic race". They called for a "pagan revolution", which they aimed to make closer by hunting on people of "non-Slavic appearance". == See also ==

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