Das ZK empfiehlt

Shot to head by an assassin.
Assassin was not after her - he was after advocate Stanislav Markelov, another good friend and comrade. We do not know who was there to kill Stas - it could be associates of some war criminals he put to prison, it could be connected to some corporate crimes, it could be Nazis, many of whom Stas put to prison as well. List of achievements of Stas is so long, that it will take a couple of days to gather all of them to a necrology - and list of his enemies is even longer. But we know for sure, that Nastya had a bad luck of being in a wrong place in wrong time. Assassin shot her to head as well, either to eliminate a witness, or in order to escape - some witnesses have stated that Nastya attempted to arrest assassin. Stas died in place, Nastya died in hospital few hours afterwards.
Nastya was a graduate of journalist faculty of Moscow State University. She worked a while in "Izvestiya", but left and worked as a freelancer. During last few months she wrote to critical paper "Novaya Gazeta", mostly about far right."

In the early morning of the 10th October, Feodor Vasilevich (Fedjay) was attacked by four masked and armed men on his way to work. He was badly injured with knives and died on the way to hospital. We are sure, he was killed by Nazi-Boneheads, who published him as a target several times and in different ways. He was one of Russias main anti-racist Trojan Skin Movement activists. He was killed because of his anti-rascist opinion and activities. He was one of us, loved Skinhead music, Parties, having a beer and a laugh- and he fought fascism!

Those who are resisting the far-right in Russia desperately need your backing: they have to pay legal costs, they have to print leaflets, they have to rent meeting rooms and offices space, they have to buy stationary and they need technical equipment like cameras and computers etc. Their struggles are absolutely necessary – the alternative would be surrender – and it costs money!

That is why we are making this international call to you to show your active support for Russian anti-fascists and to show it now. By getting this CD, you have made a good start…

The far-right wants to force through its hate-filled ideas of a society that would exclude all its hate objects: Jews, national and ethnic minorities, people with dark skin, punks, gays and lesbians. In fact, anybody the extremists do not like… and that is why they resort to violence. Fortunately, more and more people in Russia are refusing to submit to this and there is a growing movement to resist it. So far, the resistance is led by small groups or individual activists. Sometimes, they come from the human rights movement, such as the SOVA Center, which systematically observes the activities of the extreme right-wing but, mostly, resistance comes from young people who have had enough of being attacked by nazis and racists and simply want to defend themselves and live free of fear. The connection between music and youth culture is now very strong and very important in Russia.

Besides the classic fascist segments that are mostly oriented towards youth cultures – the nazi music and skinhead scenes – there are also explicitly politically oriented groups. For a long time, Russian National Unity (RNE) was the most important grouping in this category, organising military-style training camps and with local grassroots groups active in many parts of Russia. At the end of the 1990s, however, the RNE shattered into several fragments. Its successors include Format 18, the National Socialist Society (NSO) and the National Socialist Movement – Slavic Union (SS).

Followers of Nazism are mainly organised within the skinhead scene which, together with the so-called hooligans, numbers about 70,000 in Russia. Music plays an important role in Russia. Bands like Kolovrat (Swastika) Posizija or T.N.F. (Terror National Front) whip up hatred with their songs and are role models for the scene whose styles hardly differ from those of nazi skinheads in the rest of Europe. Most of the racist attacks in Russia are carried out by nazi skinheads who are especially active in the big cities. It is significant that the make-up of the activist nazi skinhead scene has changed recently. From a subculture dominated by very young people in gang-type, undisciplined groupings with little continuity, they have begun to turn, one after another, into stable and organised units. To become older, to be in job training or to have found a regular job no longer automatically means that nazi skins leave the scene. Instead, many of them remain in their groupings and enrich them with their violent experiences. Worryingly, firearms and explosives are increasingly being used in attacks and no longer "just" knives, baseball bats or iron bars. Such weaponry not only requires money but also training, a fact that points to a growth in the level of organisation within the scene. As a result, the scale of violence has escalated. While there had been organised attacks on non-Russian market traders before, for instance, 13 people were killed and 53 were injured in a nazi bomb attack at a Moscow market in August 2006.

The response of Russian state institutions to racist violence and murder is generally weak and ineffective. The police and the justice authorities investigate very few cases and mostly put these under the heading of “hooliganism”. This leaves out the political motivation for much of the violence of the deeds. Existing laws against racially motivated violence such as articles 111.2e and 112.2e of the Russian Criminal Code are rarely invoked. Rachel Denber, assistant director of the Europe and Central Asia Desk of Human Rights Watch says that to treat violent, racist crimes as “hooliganism” not only covers their existence but also makes it more difficult to investigate them. Putin, under international pressure, has promised to push back the right-wing extremists. It has not happened. The number of prosecutions fell in 2007 despite an increase in violence during the same year.

Myths about defending “Russian identity” and “the interests of the Russian Nation” are widespread in both government policy and within the far-right. As a result, it would be wrong to think – in the light of the Soviet Union’s role in smashing Hitler fascism – that it would be difficult to create national myths. It is difficult to find any reason other than “defence of the fatherland” for the heroic stories about the “Great Patriotic War“ against the German Nazi invaders that are being shown on TV almost every night in today’s Russia.

Because of Russia’s history, several different tendencies exist within the extreme right which sometimes partly contradict themselves in their historic and ideological reference points. Only a small segment of the extreme right openly pays homage to National Socialism (Nazism). In fact, large parts of the Russian population reject Nazism because of Hitler’s 1941 attack on the Soviet Union (USSR) that cost the lives of over 20 million Soviet citizens. Nazism is being seen as “German”, “non-Russian” and hostile to Russians.