Several dozen small groups make up Russia’s right-wing nationalist scene today. They call themselves the Nationalist Movement, Conservative Russia, or just the Conservatives. Some support President Vladimir Putin and fight alongside Russian troops in Ukraine, while others reject the Kremlin.
An example of how fragmented the far-right landscape in Russia is was the divergent positions these groups took in 2014 in response to the pro-European Maidan movement and the start of the conflict in eastern Ukraine’s Donbass region.
The Russian military offensive in Ukraine only fueled divisions among the nationalists. When Russia invaded neighboring Ukraine on February 24, some right-wing extremists immediately joined the war effort, but others rejected the invasion.
Kremlin against any opposition
Far-right groups are not common in Russia, according to a new report from the Center for Information and Analysis (Sova), a Moscow-based racism research institute. This is mainly because the Kremlin does not tolerate opposition.
Protests and street demonstrations in the country have reportedly been completely banned due to health concerns over Covid-19.
Despite this, authorities began refusing to authorize organizers of Russian nationalist marches in 2019 before the pandemic broke out. Earlier, in 2016, the well-known extremist Dmitry Demushkin was sentenced to two and a half years in prison. In 2017, authorities blocked the website of the popular nationalist group Sputnik and Pogrom.
Lev Gudkov, head of the Levada Center, an independent Moscow-based research institute, says that although the Kremlin has succeeded in disbanding nearly every nationalist organization in the country, the ideas it propagates continue to reflect popular sentiment among many Russians. As a “foreign agent” in 2016
Gudkov says many Russians reject other ethnicities, citing the right-wing online group Men’s State as an example. Propagating a patriarchal and nationalist worldview, the group came to the fore in the summer of 2021 with a harassment campaign against the Asian restaurant chain Tanuki.
The harassment focused on an ad campaign featuring rainbow flags and African models. Tanuki later faced a never-ending wave of fake food orders and negative restaurant reviews. Some stores even received bomb threats.
According to Gudkov, the main driving force of the activity of these groups is a kind of “non-aggressive everyday racism”. “They are not nationalists who insist on the supremacy of the white race,” he said. “They spread the idea of a national-democratic system.”
Divided by the war in Ukraine
However, there is little consensus on what such a system should look like. This lack of agreement deprives nationalists of the opportunity to form a united front, says Vera Alperovich, a Sova expert and co-author of the 2021 report on Xenophobia, Freedom of Conscience and Anti-Extremism in Russia.
One of the best-known pro-Kremlin nationalist groups in Russia is the self-proclaimed “sabotage and reconnaissance” collective Rusich Task Force. According to Alperovich, Rusich, aligned with the Wagner mercenary group, is a neo-Nazi organization that uses symbols such as the swastika and the numeric code 14/88, which glorifies the white race and Adolf Hitler.
Among the supporters of Rusich in Ukraine at the moment are several members of the Russian band Banner. In interviews, group leader Evgeny Dolganov announced that he wants to spread patriotic nationalist views among young fans of the group.
When DW confronted him with accusations about neo-Nazism and fascist tendencies in the group, he offered what he called the “standard response”: “We are not fascists. We are much worse. Worse for our enemies! We are normal men and women. We are normal men and women. We are living in our country and taking care of our children ( boys and girls) who want to raise them according to tradition.”
Dolganov believes that with the war, the Kremlin “protected the Russian people in Ukraine from being forced to adopt a false Ukrainian and anti-Russian identity imposed on them”. Dolganov says the purpose of the movement is “to combat injustice and population change and for prosperity.”
He says a great way to sum it all up is to say that they are fighting “for our future and our white children.”
Opposition to Putin’s “Russian World”
But many other groups, which sociologist Gudkov calls Democratic Nationalists, opposed Russia’s war against Ukraine. One of them is ex-convict Dmitry Demushkin. “The Russian Battalion and the Imperial Legion are led by one of my former warriors,” he said.
Today, Demushkin considers himself a “traditional nationalist”, but before that he organized “Russian marches” and led several right-wing associations that the government describes as extremist. Now he’s using social media to end Russia’s war in Ukraine, criticizing the war as “brotherly murderer”.
He lost all faith in Vladimir Putin after authorities in Moscow banned Demushkin’s organization and he was arrested for allegedly “Russia needs a Russian state authority”.
He also says he no longer believes in Putin’s vision of building a “Russian world”, a unique and non-Western civilization.
Demushkin says it’s unclear how the Kremlin is trying to impose a “Russian world” on Ukraine: “Corrupt courts, strong governments not elected by the people, censorship, restrictions, penal codes and bans? not with tanks and ideas,” he says. .
The slogan “Russia for the Russians” attracted fans
Although the Russian nationalists fighting in Ukraine attract the attention of the press, their groups are not as popular in their home country. Observers say right-wing organizations and parties in Russia are far from the size or influence they had in the 2000s.
Sova expert Vera Alperovich says the number of active members of nationalist groups in the country is low. She adds that there are no longer “big stars in the far-right constellation,” probably due to the country’s lack of political life.
But Gudkov offers a different view and recalls the slogan “Russia for the Russians”, which he says has become more popular than it has ever been in the past 30 years.
source: Noticias
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