The Russian far right
On Friday, the jury will be selected in Moscow City Court for the trial of a skinhead gang accused of 20 racially-motivated murders, and a further 12 attempting killings, in an atmosphere of rising concern at xenophobic violence in the country. The Russian prosecutor-general reported a six-fold year-on-year increase in racist violence in the first half of the year (against a trend of falling crimes rates in the country as a whole), with the 69 racially-motivated murders during that period already exceeding the total for the whole of 2007.
The international political environment suggests that the situation will worsen in the medium term. The conflict against Georgia raises the possibility of more attacks on minorities; diplomatic tensions with Georgia in 2006 led to a government crackdown on ethnic Georgians and proved the organizing point for far-right rallies. Then as now, the rhetorical tone set by the government effects the tone on the street. The UN’s Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) called on August 18 for an investigation into the events of 2006, and noted also that it was "gravely concerned” at racially motivated violence in Russia, especially among the young (the accused in the present trial are aged between 17 and 22).
Conscious of such criticism, the government has made some efforts to combat hate speech -- for instance, in state media campaigns. However, it has stopped short of developing a national plan against racist violence, as suggested by the Moscow Bureau for Human Rights. Moreover the CERD in the same report recorded an increase in racist and xenophobic statements among Russian politicians themselves. The explanation is not hard to divine -- such rhetoric is useful. It finds a ready audience in the Russian public and allows mainstream politicians to prevent erosion of their support in the face of a somewhat serious (and certainly noisy) threat to their authority, in nationalist parties. Even when created with the Kremlin’s blessing to split the opposition vote, such parties have tended to be too successful for their own good and have left more traditional politicians feeling vulnerable.
The negative effects of such rhetoric cut against several key goals for the Russian political leadership -- regional leadership, great power status in the ‘civilised world’, and meeting labour shortages. Given this, it may be that President Dimitri Medvedev (who had before recent events in Georgia adopted a less strident tone on nationalist issues than his predecessor Vladimir Putin) might make more cautious use of the Presidential bully pulpit. For embattled minority communities in Russia, this can only be a good thing.
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