As Slavic Power leader Dmitry Demushkin told Kommersant, this unification of nationalist organizations became possible after the Movement Against Illegal Immigration (DPNI) was banned. “After that we decided to unite all of Russia’s nationalist forces into a new movement, The Russians. At its core are the largest nationalist organizations – the DPNI and the Slavic Union,” explained Demushkin. At the very least, the new organization’s goal is to further general ethno-political Russian solidarity, and at the most – to establish a nationalist government heading a nationalist Russian state.

The DPNI was ruled extremist and subsequently banned by a Moscow court in April 2011. The Slavic Union was banned a year earlier, after which it changed its name to Slavic Power.

The structure of The Russians can be found on the DPNI’s website. In particular, it lists the names of the agencies of its administration, including: the Council of Nations (an all-Russian meeting to define strategies for the existence and activities of the organization), the High National Council (to correct strategy and ongoing activities and to confirm annual plans) and the National Observatory Council (to represent the interests of the organization and develop strategy). The first council will be chaired in turn by Aleksandr Belov, Aleksandr Turik, and Stanislav Vorobyov. The second council will be led by Demushkin, and the third by Belov.

The movement also named a number of other structures: the National Committee for Action, the National Committee for Control, and the High Court of Honor. This last one, Demushkin told Interfax, “is the movement’s highest judicial authority, led by Georgy Borovikov.”

As Demushkin explained to Kommersant, he and Belov will play a substantial role as authoritative figures for The Russians. “There’s no guarantee that the new movement won’t repeat the fate of the nationalist organizations that are already banned right now. But for this we purposely gave ourselves this awkward name. So the courts and law enforcement agencies would be banning not nationalists, but ‘Russians,'” Demushkin explained.

Human rights activist and head of the SOVA Center for Information and Analysis Aleksandr Verkhovsky told Kommersant that the emergence of a more radical sentiment among neo-Nazi organizations presents a blatant, prospectiveless dead-end for its followers. “The same thing’s going to happen as did to the DPNI,” Verkhovsky said. Svetlana Gannushkina, head of the committee Civil Assistance, sees the emergence of The Russians as a call for a change in constitutional order. “Actually, this is a disgrace for Russia,” she told Interfax.

Compiled from reports by Natalya Bashlykova and Dmitry Kozlov at Kommersant, and Interfax.

As Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reports:

The prosecution had sought to portray the couple as radical nationalists bent on eliminating Markelov, a prominent defender of minority rights. But Tikhonov and Khasis protested their innocence throughout the trial, even as they acknowledged their nationalist beliefs.

Markelov was shot in broad daylight in January 2009, just minutes after leaving a press conference in central Moscow. Baburova, who had been interviewing Markelov for the opposition newspaper “Novaya gazeta,” was shot dead as she attempted to protect Markelov.

Markelov’s death was mourned as one in a series of deaths of Russian rights defenders, including journalist Anna Politkovskaya, who was killed in October 2006; and activist Natalya Estemirova, a member of the Russian rights group Memorial, who was kidnapped and shot dead in Chechnya in July 2009.

Rights watchers hailed the verdict as a rare instance of courtroom justice in a country where many high-profile murders go unresolved.

There was, however, still cause for concern that the judicial process was not entirely lawful:

A former juror who resigned from the case told the “Moskovsky komsomolets” newspaper the jury had been pressured to convict Tikhonov and Khasis.

A key witness for the prosecution also attempted to retract his testimony, saying he had been forced to deliver it under duress.

Maryana Torocheshnikova, who covered the trial for RFE/RL’s Russian Service, said the jury was forced to recess twice on April 28, “the first time to clarify some questions and the second time to revise the verdict, after the judge…said there had been violations in the formation of the verdict.”

Tikhonov and Khasis’s defense say they plan to appeal because the verdict was “unlawful.”

Oleg Orlov, head of the human rights foundation Memorial, has issued a statement in response to the verdict:

While the case went on, human rights activists stayed silent – we followed the process attentively.

It seems that our many years of experience would allow us to distinguish made-to-order cases fabricated by the intelligence and security services from cases that these same services and structures, with all their telltale marks, investigate in good faith.

In assessing the evidence presented by investigators, we attempted to put ourselves in the jury’s shoes, doubting everything that could bring about doubt. Now we can speak without fear that this would be perceived as pressure on the jury.

We will speak more about the details of the process at a later time. However, we can say today that we agree with the jury’s verdict – those were the real killers at the defendants’ bench, and not some people arbitrarily accused.

We will only make two remarks, as we and our colleagues were mentioned during the trial.

The defendants and their lawyers referred numerous times to the testimony of our colleague Natalya Estemirova, who was murdered in the summer of 2009. They mentioned the record of witness questioning that was done in the first days after Markelov and Baburova were murdered, in which Estemirova lays out possible “Chechen” versions of the case.

Many of us spoke about a “Chechen” version during our questioning – but only among a long series of other versions. The defendants and their lawyers purposely referred to the murdered Natasha and not to living witnesses who could have been summoned to court today and clarify which of the original majority of versions was the most relevant account.

At the same time, in testifying about Stanislav Markelov’s Chechen cases, witnesses spoke most of all not about Chechens but about Russian soldiers and members of Russia’s federal security structures who have been convicted of crimes against civilians in Chechnya. To this day, these convicts still enjoy the sympathy of circles connected to the defendants (it was the lawyer Vasiliev who said that the girl murdered by Budanov – Markelov represented the interests of her parents in court – was supposedly a sniper!). In regards to the contradictions with the lawyer and Kadyrov’s administration, which the defendants mentioned, the situation was not strained in January 2009 – Markelov worked in cooperation with Kadyrov’s human rights ombudsman on the Budanov case.

Finally, the defendants and their lawyers pointed to the supposedly entirely probable connection between the murders of Stanislav Markelov, Anna Politkovskaya and Natalya Estemirova, having worked together on the very same Chechen cases. As far as we know, the connection with their mutual case – the case of federal security services officer Sergei Lapin, the so-called Cadet – was not examined in a single one of these three murder cases. In our opinion, the participation of Chechen Republic security structures is entirely probable in Natasha Estemirova’s murder case, but is not at all connected either to Politkovskaya’s murder or with the “federals” in the Cadet case.

Finally, as we know for sure, investigators considered the Chechen version of Stanislav Markelov’s murder in detail, not at all as a formality; they did not limit themselves to sending inquiries and orders to Grozny: officials from the Main Investigative Committee were sent to Chechnya in the middle of 2009.

Yevgenia Khasis calls herself a “human rights advocate,” using a term that has not been very popular in recent years. But what meaning is given to this concept by nationalists, whose basic ideology is the denial of all people’s inherent equal rights and freedoms (most of all the right to freedom of movement and choice of place of residence)? Let alone by radical nationalists or Nazis (which the defendants are, without question), who confer themselves with the right to violence and murder?

Indeed, Yevgeniya Khasis lent charitable and informational, but not legal (she does not have the proper skills or education for that) support to the convict – but most of all convicted not at all for his beliefs, but for violent crimes committed on the basis of a division of people between “superior” and “inferior.”

It seems that the nationalists are trying to foist their own concepts of truth and rights onto society, not hesitating to defend themselves in court with everything up to falsifying testimony – there was the inept attempt to organize an alibi for Yevgeniya Khasis, which fell apart in the eyes of the public! The defendants’ lawyers tried ineptly throughout the entire case to hide their own positive attitude towards terrorism and their readiness to defend terrorists: indeed, an important goal of the murders of both migrants and public activists like Markelov is precisely the desire to sow fear within society – an openly terroristic intention.

One would like to believe that today’s verdict will serve as a lesson for all those who would like to represent the interests of the “white race.”

Orlov’s original statement in Russian can be found here. Translation by theotherrussia.org.

Just days after Russia was chosen to hold the 2018 World Cup, the riots were a graphic example of the blatant racism and propensity for violence that often characterizes Russian football fans and ultranationalist organizations. In a timely article published shortly before Sviridov’s death, the Financial Times provides a lengthy analysis of radical nationalism in Russia – and why the ruling regime finds it beneficial to keep that sentiment alive:

Publicly, of course, Russia’s government is aghast at the recent rise of nationalism and fascism. But it is just as clear that the Kremlin is not above using whatever works to buttress its support in a country where 55 per cent of the population agrees with the statement “Russia for the Russians”. Putin himself has picked up on the rising tide of nationalism in Russia, reflecting it in his rhetoric; playing in many public speeches on a cold-war-era distrust of foreigners.

He has referred on many occasions to “forces” that would like to see Russia remain weak. And in the capable hands of deputy chief of staff Vladislav Surkov, a master fixer and political operator who handles all domestic political affairs for Putin and now president Dmitry Medvedev, nationalism has been turned into a tool of political consolidation.

Read the full article at FT.com

Click here for photographs of the riots

The surge in Russian nationalism has been endorsed in no small part by a variety of government representatives. At the same time, Russian rights activists and oppositionists have been repeatedly targeted by ultranationalist groups, and accuse the government for turning a blind eye. The editorial team at Gazeta.ru points out that with Chuvashov’s murder, they’re going to have to either start make some changes or start watching their backs.

Brown Blackmail
April 12, 2010
Gazeta.ru

Attempts by the Russian authorities to use nationalist organizations to further their own goals, in particular the battle against the democratic opposition that exists outside of the political system, are dangerous to the authorities themselves.

Investigators immediately linked the shooting of Moscow City Court Judge Eduard Chuvashov with his professional activities, naming revenge by nationalists as one possible motive.

Chuvashov presided over the scandalous cases of Artur Ryno’s and the White Wolves nationalist group’s skinhead bands, whose followers had repeatedly and publicly – on the internet – threatened him with physical violence.

One very telling commentary on the murder was given by Dmitri Demushkin, leader of the Slavic Union nationalist organization (By the way, Union members participated in the “Youth Against Terror” rally organized by the pro-Kremlin organizations Young Russia and Young Guard on Moscow’s Triumfalnaya Square on March 31). Demushkin said that “A new generation is coming to replace the large organizations of nationalists, a generation of disparate groups of autonomous youths, aimed at committing grave and very serious crimes.” Lamenting the government’s ban of the Slavic Union, he pointed out a direct threat to the government: now, “the wave of attacks from illegal nationalist groups will intensify… Many young people who don’t see any alternatives will start taking more aggressive action.”

For a long time, the Russian government has not seen nationalists as a threat to itself or to order in the country. Crimes against migrants from Asian or African countries are almost always treated by the courts as common hooliganism, not as a manifestation of interracial strife.

There are still a significant number of people in the Russian political elite and law enforcement agencies today who sympathize with Russian nationalists, and some of the slogans of the Movement Against Illegal Immigration were completely in tune with various bureaucrats’ proclamations.

Moreover, soon after the colored revolutions in Georgia and Ukraine, the authorities even allowed the nationalists to hold a “Russian March” in Moscow on November 4 – National Unity Day.

In the past few years, the government has finally begun to gradually understand the danger that nationalist organizations pose. At the very least, the Russian Marches have invariably been banned over the past few years [although not in 2009 – Ed.]; judges began more commonly punishing skinheads for crimes committed on a nationalistic basis, without hiding behind the formulation of “common hooliganism.” And the cases for Ryno and Skachevsky’s band (Judge Chuvashov announced the sentence on the second case against this group on April 8, 2010) and the White Wolves had become the biggest antinationalistic judicial cases in the country’s modern history.

Nationalists in Russia have also previously been charged with murdering their opponents from among the “native” (in their assessment) population. In particular, Petersburg skinheads are accused of murdering the famous Petersburg ethnographer and human rights advocate Nikolai Girenko on June 19, 2004, in a trial that has already been going on for more than a year. Nationalists are charged with the 2009 murder of lawyer Stanislav Markelov. Judge Eduard Chuvashov, who was physically threatened numerous times by the White Wolves, was clearly their enemy as well. But unlike Girenko and Markelov, Chuvashov is a representative of the state.

Ultranationalists have always and everywhere been a subversive force that is prepared to commit crime – including against government representatives, even if the government has tried to play along with them.

And for sure, if radical nationalists came into power, it would lead to a great amount of blood – remembering the fascist regimes in Italy and Germany is enough.

The Russian authorities need to be aware of the fact that there are no “tame nationalists.” You can create the moderate nationalist block Rodina in the political-technical test tubes, so that you can then slam the door on the first threat of its return to real, serious political power. But you cannot, with impunity, use grassroots nationalist organizations as instruments of the state. And powerful nationalistic rhetoric from government representatives is extraordinarily dangerous as well, since it feeds the radical xenophobic mindset of some young people.

The government needs to understand that the “browns” [umbrella term for fascists/ultranationalists/neo-Nazis – Ed.] cannot just be fellow travelers in the battle against the liberal opposition; they will inevitably enter into conflict with state representatives, especially when they sense their own impunity. And that’s the main lesson that it’s time the government learned from the notorious murder cases involving representatives of nationalist organizations.