On the morning of 19 June 2004, the doorbell rang at Professor Nikolai Girenko’s St.Petersburg apartment. When he went to answer the door, an assailant fired shots through it, killing the 64-year academic instantly. Girenko, a committed anti-fascist and anti-racist had again and again pointed out the growth of the extreme right to the media. He was also a well-known expert on right-wing organisations and had been an expert witness at many trials. These activities put Girenko directly in the “line of fire” of the extremists. Shortly after he was shot dead, an extreme right-wing splinter group claimed responsibility for the murder but his killers were never found nor were the organisations linked to the killing outlawed. Girenko’s cold-blooded shooting put the situation in Russia in the international spotlight, exposing how dangerous the extreme right really is and how the state fails to deal with it. His murder was the first assassination of an active anti-fascist in Russia. Sadly, it was not the last.
On 13 November 2006, 19-year-old hard-core musician and anti-fascist Timur Kacharava was killed. Timur, who played in the bands Sandinista and Distress and was known as an activist in the leftist scene in St. Petersburg, was knifed to death by nazis after campaigning for the Food not Bombs project. While waiting with a friend for some other friends outside a bookshop, the two were attacked by a gang of nazi thugs. Timur was so severely wounded that he died within minutes of being stabbed. Likewise, on 16 March 2008, a mob of nazis attacked seven young people making their way to a punk music concert in Moscow city centre. Alexei Krylov aged just 16, a punk easily identifiable from his clothes and an active antifascist, was knifed. He died at the scene from horrific stab wounds. Evidence suggests that Nikolai Girenko and Timur Kacharava were the particular victims of planned murder. The attack on Alexei Krylov was aimed against antifascist/alternative youth in general. Days before the attack, information about the punk concert and how to behave during an attack was published on the internet fan forum of the soccer club Spartak Moscow whose fans are known for their racist/nationalist attitudes and notorious for their violence. Though the murders of Girenko and Timur were well publicised, the official investigation of these crimes proved to be incompetent.
