Rinalds Gulbis: A year ago I wrote about neo-Nazism revival tendencies in Russia where so called “Russian March” rally causes a strong response of the public on a yearly basis. This year, too, neo-Nazis and xenophobes held their meeting on November 4 in the Moscow outskirt Lyublino with the aim to protect their ideas and remind of their existence also in the broad daylight, unlike the regular criminally punishable activities conducted by the organization members in late evening and night hours.
Seven thousand pro-active racists
According to the research centre SOVA assessment, approximately seven thousand radical activists were present in Lyublino this November 4. The organizers would have succeeded in assembling a larger number of their followers, but the Moscow City Council did not allow to hold the march as a culture mass undertaking, and to be allowed as a meeting, the number of participants could not exceed 5,5 thousand which had to be guaranteed by the organizers. To the opinion of Dmitri Demushkin, the head of “Movement against Illegal Immigration”, only the real Russians who do not fear fighting against opponents of Russians and police officers are willing to take part in the event which is banned on regular basis. The official Kremlin announces that neo-Nazism revives in Tallinn and Riga where, for example, at the most a couple of hundreds of the former legion members put their flowers at the Freedom Monument on March 16, and then they continue their everyday activities. Unlike that, “Russian March”, sometimes including racist attacks, beating journalists and press photographers, does not cause any negative comments on the part of the Kremlin. If previously these meetings popularized mainly the slogans “Russia – to Russians” or “Moscow – to Russians”, then the event of this year acquired a new quality, and the slogans began to remind rather those used during the “Chrystal Night” in Berlin of 1938. (The potentially new quality of “Russian March” of this year had been predicted also by D.Demushkin in his interview to the news agency “New Region 2” where he said he expected gathering of 25 000 participants.)
These are the slogans against the Caucasian peoples which are most popular in “Russian Marches”, also in their homepages and the other media, neo-Nazis most often express their criticism of the immigrants from the Caucasus region who arrived in Moscow and the other Russian cities after the collapse of the USSR. The largest anti-Caucasian wave rolled over Russia at the time when Vladimir Putin initiated the second war in Chechnya. Thanks to propaganda related to the warfare in Chechnya, xenophobia and racial intolerance flourished, and both average Russian citizens and liberal politicians were making racial statements. Pro-Nazi political forces’ discourse is based principally on expressions about the needy Caucasian region which has to be fed by the “real”, “pure-blooded” Russians.
Internal russification eliminates small nations
This March 5, a congress was held in Grozny (Chechnya) which illustrated the difficult situation of this moment in Russia and whose objective was to “strengthen the multi-national Russia, raise the general Russian identity as Russia statehood protection, ensuring formatting of information and humanitarian space in Russia”. Irkutsk State Technical University researcher Yelena Parfyonova stresses that it is the formatting of information and humanitarian space which is the cornerstone of the new russification process. To the scientist’s opinion, the Kremlin officials ignore the fact that Russians are just one of the overall two hundred ethnic groups in Russia. That can be supported by mentioning the case when the census of 2002 resulted in including of 40 ethnic groups in the other, largest groups which means that their unique traditions and culture values have been lost irreversibly. The fact is also significant that cultivation of these small ethnic groups’ traditions is not supported, instead only the Russian language is taught in schools, and only Russian is used for developing the whole culture environment.
Y.Parfyonova regards that it is the internal russification, intentionally initiated by the Kremlin, which has lead to strengthening of the national-radical groups thereby causing human casualties and spreading violence. The Kremlin can express just a mild reproach toward these groups for, in fact, it cannot create an ideological opposition to the citizens who defend the basic values of ethnic Russians.