SKINHEADS: FROM IMITATORS TO FANATICS

Russia Profile
Feb 9 2009
Russia

Unlike the Theorists of the Past, Today’s Skinheads Are Pure Pragmatics
of Violence

The Moscow branch of the Investigations Committee of the Prosecutor
General’s office recently reported a dramatic increase in what it
called extremist crime in Moscow. In 2008, there were 40 percent more
such crimes committed than in 2007. According to the statistics,
the amount of hate crimes based on racial or ethnic animosity
grew even more. Viktoria Tsyplenkova, an aide to the head of the
committee’s Moscow office, said that in 2007, there were 17 criminal
cases launched on the grounds of inciting hatred or animosity toward
members of religious, ethnic or social groups. In 2008, the number
of such crimes reached 51.

This is not some kind of an unexpected development. I have been active
in fighting xenophobia since 1989, since our Moscow Antifascist Center
was founded, and I can testify that the virulence of xenophobic
propaganda has been steadily growing, and the number of xenophobic
crimes grew accordingly. The most disturbing development is not even
the number of such crimes. What is indeed worrying is the change in
the mentality of the attackers. Contemporary Russian skinheads are
much more dangerous than the most outspoken bigots of the 1980s and
1990s. Unlike the pseudo-intellectual theorists of the past, today’s
skinheads are pure pragmatists of violence.

The two traditional questions of the Russian society since the
nineteenth century were: "who is to blame?" and "what is to be
done?" During the Soviet period, the answers were monopolized by
the state, which directed anger at the "exploiting classes" or the
"hostile capitalist encirclement." But when people were allowed to
think again in the late 1980s, the question of "who is to blame?" went
unanswered. Instead of blaming the communist system, many people
preferred to blame the ethnic minorities. Unlike the internal vices,
these "enemies" were visible and recognizable.

As the average intellectual level of the young xenophobes plummeted,
the less decipherable Jews were replaced by the more visible students
from Africa and Asia, and later by dark-haired guest workers from
the Southern Caucuses and Central Asia. For the xenophobic part
of society, the question "who is to blame?" is no longer relevant,
since the answer to it is already known. Of course, the "aliens" need
to be combated. Today, the only question which stirs discussions in
the far right scene is a technical one: "how is it to be done?" The
supporters of a conservative approach suggest limiting the measures
to high taxes and cumbersome registration procedures. The centrists
recommend mild discrimination at work and in government offices. The
radicals do not shun physical violence, with the most extremist of
skinhead groups bringing taking this violence to the extreme–murder,
or worse, beatings and torture.

This moral degradation took place before my very own eyes. Violence
was preceded by propaganda. In the Soviet times, there were just
kitchen talks, sometimes books or articles in academic magazines,
where in the midst of some quite rightful lamentations about
the decline of old peasant culture one might decipher one or two
anti-Semitic hints. Under Mikhail Gorbachev, there were newspaper
articles and television reports, where the "non-Slavic" origin of a
murderer or a rapist was given special attention. Under Boris Yeltsin,
people who built up their political careers on xenophobic slogans
were elected into the State Duma and local legislatures. Later on,
xenophobic overtones became commonplace even in the speeches of some
representatives of the executive branch of power. The result was
almost 20 years of virtually unabated racist propaganda.

Now the authorities frown only when they hear of the most
obnoxious results of skinhead activity -murders or especially cruel
beatings. Open racist propaganda no longer makes people angry or
provokes disgust as it did 20 years ago. The authorities and courts
actually fight the consequences by giving longer jail sentences to
racist criminals, instead of dealing with the roots of their crimes –
the racist indoctrination. Alexander Koptsev, a 21-year-old racist
who attacked the visitors of a Moscow synagogue in January 2006,
was sentenced to 16 years in jail. This is a long sentence bearing
in mind that no one was killed as a result of the attack, but why
didn’t anyone think about bringing the authors of racist books that
Koptsev read before the attack and which were found in his apartment
during the investigation to justice? Where did he derive the idea that
hatred toward Russians was "in the blood" of the synagogue visitors,
as Koptsev said during the trial?

Fighting the racism ideologists in Russia is further complicated by the
fact that some of them are from such milieus as fiction, history, art,
literary and artistic criticism. Some are off-spring of the dissident
community of the 1960s and 1970s. Nonetheless, these racist thinkers
have their share of guilt in today’s racist attacks. Even if Koptsev
read books by less refined authors than today’s media stars Alexander
Prokhanov and Alexander Dugin, it was Dugin and Prokhanov who created a
sort of intellectual climate in a society where aggressive nationalism
is no longer a shameful affair. For many years, these authors convinced
people that their motherland was not only discriminated against
globally, but also "strangled" and "murdered" domestically. This
thought is just one step away from the next one: if the motherland is
"murdered," we are allowed to kill the murderers. The crime suspects
were chosen at random, according to the color of their skin, hair,
eyes, or sometimes even their manner of dressing and behaving.

Some make attempts to find a rational explanation for the skinheads’
actions. I once heard such an explanation from one of the leaders of
the Azerbaijani community in Moscow: he called the skinheads "greedy
people who kill for money right on the street." But wouldn’t it be
nice if it had been true? But the skinheads kill out of principle, and
not for money. The recent trial of the gang of Arthur Ryno and Pavel
Skachevsky provided a good example of this kind of attitude. They were
both caught red handed having murdered an Armenian businessman. Both,
being underage criminals, could get away with a relatively mild
sentence. But Ryno confessed to committing 36 other murders, of which
he could prove only 20. In the remaining cases his testimony was so
confused that they were finally dropped from his case.

Ryno’s defiant conduct during the trial does not speak for his
being subjected to pressure from the investigators. Obviously, the
investigators planned to limit their search to the murderer of the
Armenian, and Skachevsky’s initial tactic of denying everything could
have easily saved both of them from punishment. But Ryno preferred
to be a "hero," taking other skinhead murders upon himself and thus
diverting the blow from his "comrades-in-arms."

Ryno’s case reveals an alarming trend: the skinhead movement is
developing a sense of group solidarity; it has its heroes and its
martyrs. The very psychic of the skinheads is changing – the "amateurs"
and "fellow travelers" are being replaced by diehard killers ready
to make sacrifices for the "cause."

An author of a book on the Russian skinheads, Sergei Belikov, singles
out the following psychic types of skinheads: the imitators (young
men who imitate the skinheads’ paraphernalia without really being
ready to get involved in racist attacks, and who quit the group
as soon as society and the state take a firm stand), the players
(the heroes of the "white struggle" who perceive it as a game, but
quit it when they get bored), the aggressors (people whose hatred
has both biological (age, psychic condition) and social (low social
status, family problems, unemployment and lack of perspectives)
roots, and whose anger can be directed against anyone who does not
fit the standard of an average white male), and the fanatics (those
who genuinely believe in "racial supremacy" and who are prepared to
make scarifies, including going to jail or even dying). Since these
latter they do not perceive their victims as human beings, but as
some kind of inferior creatures, they easily commit murders without
ever feeling repentance for what they did. Usually, fanatics form
the core of racist organizations.

During a relatively brief period, the Russian skinhead movement
evolved from mostly "imitators" and "players" to "aggressors"
and "fanatics." In some of the fanatics, one can discern
traits of the Russian extremist revolutionaries of the end of the
nineteenth-beginning of the twentieth centuries. This similarity should
have alarmed the authorities: fanatics of both epochs have a tendency
to despise any kind of state power which they don’t control. There is
no doubt that the "anti-patriotic" authorities will be the fanatics’
next target, after the ethnic minorities.

Besides explaining the skinheads’ actions by material interests,
the other widespread formula of wishful thinking is a belief that
skinheads are somehow "manipulated" by the Kremlin or some other evil
state institution. This view is very widespread among Russian liberal
intellectuals, and is strongly supported by some opposition movements,
including Garry Kasparov’s United Civic Front.

Numerous polls and researches testify: the skinheads have no "control
center" from which they could be "manipulated" by the adults. There
are indeed some adult skinheads, but they usually play the role of
"senior comrades-in-arms," not of leaders or even manipulators. This
absence of a unifying center is an advantage the skinheads. Their
networks are reminiscent of the Internet, which is impossible to
destroy or even manage because of the absence of one central server.

Thus the long prison terms currently parceled out by the state are do
not solve the problem of racial violence. Long-lasting joint efforts
of the whole society are needed. Criminal cases on crimes of racial
character should be singled out into one group, with its own statistics
and strict police responsibility. The statute of limitation currently
applied to cases prosecuted under the article 282 of the Criminal
Code (inciting hatred), which was cut by the State Duma in 2003 to
just two years, should be extended. Education programs fostering
tolerance should be introduced in schools and universities. Racist
statements should mean the end of the career of any politician who
makes them. Without these measures, the statistics of racial violence
will only get worse.