Far-right politics in Russia
In contemporary Russia, the far-right scene spans a wide spectrum of political groups, authors, activists, political movements and intellectual circles. The mainstream radical right that is allowed or supported by the government to participate in official mass media and public life includes parties such as the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia and Rodina as well as far-right political thinkers such as Aleksandr Dugin and Lev Gumilev. Other movements of Russia's far right include actors like the Movement Against Illegal Immigration and contemporary successors of the Pamyat organization.
Some of the main radical right-wing groups and figures in contemporary Russia had become active in politics before the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Alexander Dugin and Vladimir Zhirinovsky started their political career in the 1980s. Zhirinovsky's LDPR and Dugin's Eurasia Movement and Eurasian Youth Union and affiliated organizations remain fixtures in Russia's far-right scene and, since 1991, were joined by many other parties and networks.
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, radical right-wing ideas have shaped Russia's political system, public discourse, domestic and foreign policies, and intellectual life.
History
The ideology of the German Nazis regarded the Slavs in general as members of an "inferior race" and "subhuman", which during World War II resulted in an attempt to implement the "Generalplan Ost", which provided for the extermination, expulsion or enslavement of most or all of the Slavs in central and eastern Europe.Soviet period
The first reports of neo-Nazi organizations in the Soviet Union appeared in the second half of the 1950s. In some cases, participants were attracted primarily by the aesthetics of Nazism. Other organizations were more interested in the ideology of the Nazis, their program, and the figure of Adolf Hitler.In 1970, a text titled Word of the Nation, signed by "Russian patriots" and later determined to have been written by A. M. Ivanov, one of the founders of the Russian neo-pagan movement and a supporter of the struggle against the so-called "Jewish Christianity", was distributed in samizdat in the USSR. It expressed rejection of the liberal-democratic ideas prevalent among some Russian nationalists at the time, and proclaimed as a program the ideas of a strong state and the formation of a new elite. To maintain order and combat crime, the program said, the authoritarian government should rely on "people's squads", which were not to be subject to any law. The author made demands against "infringement of the rights of the Russian people" and "Jewish monopoly in science and culture". He also argued against the "biological degeneration of the white race", which he said was a result of the spread of "democratic cosmopolitan ideas" and "accidental hybridization" of races, and called to remedy these problems by a "national revolution", after which "real Russians by blood and spirit" and others should become the ruling nation in the country. A full Russian version of this document was published in the émigré magazine Veche in 1981, where the author wrote about the possibility of the United States becoming "a tool to achieve world black supremacy" and argued that Russia has a special mission to save world civilization.
At the end of 1971, a text titled "Letter to Solzhenitsyn" signed by an individual named Ivan Samolvin was also circulated in samizdat. The "letter" talked about the ties of Jews and Freemasons, as well as a conspiracy to seize power over the world. The October Revolution is presented as the implementation of these secret plans. It is argued that the "true history" of the ancestors of the Russian people is being carefully hidden from the people. The letter was written by Valery Emelyanov, also one of the founders of Russian neo-paganism. These documents had a significant impact on the development of racism in Russia and neo-Nazism.
During the Soviet era, Viktor Bezverkhy, the founder of the Russian Vedism movement, revered Hitler and Himmler and in the narrow circle of his students propagated racial and anti-Semitic theories, calling for ridding humanity of "defective progeny" that allegedly resulted from interracial marriages. He called such "inferior people" "bastards", included "kikes, Indians or gypsies and mulattoes," and believed that they prevented society from achieving social justice. At the age of 51, he took an oath "to devote his life to the struggle against Judaism, the mortal enemy of mankind. The text of this oath, written in blood, was found on his person during a search in 1988. Bezverhij developed a theory of "Vedism," according to which, among other things: "all peoples will be sifted through the sieve of racial definition, the Aryans will be united, the Asian, African and Indian elements will be put in their place, and the mulattoes will be eliminated as unnecessary.».
The first public demonstrations by neo-Nazis in Russia took place in 1981 in Kurgan, and then in Yuzhnouralsk, Nizhny Tagil, Sverdlovsk, and Leningrad.
In 1982, on Hitler's birthday, a group of Moscow high school students held a Nazi demonstration on Pushkin Square.
Gorbachev years (1980s)
With the relaxation of Communist party control over public life during Mikhail Gorbachev's rule from 1985 to 1991, extreme right-wing groups began to openly organize, hold meetings and publish newspapers and journals. Their views had largely been formed before Gorbachev's perestroika. Their political and ideological frame of reference was the Black Hundreds movement which consisted of antisemitic and ultranationalist organizations and was best known for organizing Jewish pogroms in the Russian Empire during the early 20th century.The best known far-right organization of the perestroika period was Pamyat. The group began its political activity in 1985, holding meetings and demonstrations at state premises and propagating its main idea that the global Jewish population had conspired against Russia. The group's leader Dmitri Vasilyev read aloud excerpts from The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, claiming that the course of history proved their authenticity. While many members of Pamyat adhered to Russian Orthodoxy and had sympathizers in the hierarchy of the Russian Orthodox Church, some members of the far-right rejected religion in favor of paganism. Pamyat's pagan branch centered around the figure of Valery Yemelyanov. He and other representatives of the Russian neo-pagan movement argued that Christianity has a negative influence because it was founded by Jesus – a Jew —, an idea echoing Nazi ideology. A 1987 book on paganism by Boris Rybakov which was published by the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union helped boost the development of politicized paganism with antisemitic overtones in Russia.
In 1987, several official magazines including Nash Sovremennik and Molodaya Gvardiya started publishing The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and other antisemitic literature by Russian writers the majority of whom did not belong to Pamyat but sympathized with the organization and expressed similar views. Russian authorities did not oppose the publishers and distributors of antisemitic and often purely fascist literature as the law enforcement and Communist party leadership reportedly had many sympathizers in their ranks. Representatives of the Leningrad City Communist Party Committee and police attended meetings of Pamyat from 1987 to 1988, where organizers called for a ban of marriages between Russians and non-Russians and for the deportation of all Jews. The adoption of the Soviet press law in 1990 which relaxed state censorship led to the proliferation of even more extreme publications that focused almost entirely on the Jewish question and published excerpts from works by Nazi ideologists. Several magazines including the monthly of the Defense ministry, Voenno-Istorichesky Zhurnal, published Mein Kampf.
Yeltsin years (1990s)
The far-right played an important role in Russian politics during Boris Yeltsin's presidency. The collapse of the Communist system in 1991 created new social and political circumstances that boosted the proliferation of far-right groups and ideas.The disintegration of the Soviet Union led to migration flows across the borders of the newly created post-Soviet states. Far-right groups effectively exploited the resentment of the population of the Russian Federation towards forced migrants and refugees. Russian National Unity and its leader Alexander Barkashov agitated against people from the Caucasus and Central Asia and alleged that Russians would need to "defend" themselves against the newcomers.
The sense of national humiliation and injured imperial pride were a breeding ground for far-right views. Whereas the other Soviet successor states believed that they had gained something as a consequence of the Communist collapse, that is, their independence, Russians viewed the dissolution of the Soviet Union as a loss of an empire and their central place therein. As an expression of hurt imperial pride, the Vice President of Russia Alexander Rutskoy and other nationalists argued that the territorial borders of Russia are not the same as those of the Russian Federation and that Russians could not give up their claim to territories conquered since the 16th century that now lay beyond the borders of the Russian Federation. The idea that Russians should enjoy a special role on the territory of the former Soviet Union became a key element of Yeltsin's foreign policy.
In the 1990s, White power skinheads became a notable phenomenon among right-wing radicals of a neo-Nazi persuasion in Russia. Alexander Tarasov considers the breakdown of the education and upbringing system, as well as the economic recession and unemployment during the reforms of the 1990s to be the key reasons for the sharp growth of the skinhead movement in Russia. Tarasov writes that the First Chechen War further intensified dislike for natives of the Caucasus and contributed to the growth in the number of skinheads, which was further compounded by the government's imperialist rhetoric and weak prosecution of the extremist organizations by the police. According to Victor Shnirelman, the spread of racism and "Aryan identity" among skinheads in Russia was also influenced by anti-communist propaganda and criticism of internationalism during the "wild capitalism" of the 1990s, when social Darwinism and the "pursuit of heroism" promoted the popularity of images of "superhumans" and "the superior aristocratic race».
According to data from a participant observation conducted in 1996–2008 by lawyer and researcher S. V. Belikov, the first skinheads appeared in Moscow in the early 1990s, and their number was no more than a few dozen. In 1993–1994, the number of skinheads in Moscow reached 150–200 people, and the first skinhead groups started appearing in major Russian cities in the same years. In 1995–1996, the total number of skinheads in Russia exceeded 1,000, and their subculture and ideology became prominent among right-wing political extremists. In 1996–1998, there was a jump in numbers and organization: in 1998, there were about 20 organized associations in Moscow, there were printed publications, firms that satisfied the demand for skin paraphernalia, and skin music groups. In 1998–2000, increased attention from the police and society led to a decline in the skin-movement, which got rid of random people.