# Neo-Nazism in Russia

Neo-Nazism in Russia is a far-right political and militant movement in Russia. Emerging during the late Soviet era and early 1990s from white power skinheads and football hooligans, neo-Nazism in Russia has become known for a series of violent attacks and murders targeting Central Asian and Caucasian migrants. Videos of these attacks have been uploaded onto the internet by members of neo-Nazi or skinhead gangs, leading to international outcry and an eventual crackdown in the late 2000s and early 2010s.
With the beginning of the Russo-Ukrainian War, Russian neo-Nazis have achieved international attention for their militant support of Russian-backed separatist forces in eastern Ukraine. Certain groups, such as the Russian Imperial Movement, have been accused of training white supremacists and neo-Nazis from other countries in Europe. The links between these groups and the Russian government, comprising a policy known as managed nationalism, have become particularly noteworthy since the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine after Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed to be pursuing the "denazification" of Ukraine.

## History

The ideology of Nazi Germany 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 (mainly ethnic Poles, Belarusians, Czechs, Ukrainians, Serbs, and Russians).

### 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 (rituals, parades, uniforms, the cult of the beautiful body, and architecture). Other organizations were more interested in the ideology of the Nazis, their program, and the figure of Adolf Hitler. The formation of neo-Nazism in the USSR dates back to the turn of the 1960s and 1970s, during which time Nazi organizations still preferred to operate in the underground.
In 1970, a text titled Word of the Nation, signed by "Russian patriots" and later determined to have been written by A. M. Ivanov (Skuratov), 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" (an analog of the Black Hundreds), 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 human 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 Russian racism and neo-Nazism.
During the Soviet era, Viktor Bezverkhy (Ostromysl), the founder of the Russian Vedism movement (a branch of Slavic neo-paganism), 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.

### Post-Soviet period

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 (St. Petersburg, Rostov, Volgograd, and Nizhny Novgorod) 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. The years 2000-2004 saw a new upsurge, which ended in 2004 after the state intensified repressive and deterrent measures and a series of "show" trials Belikov estimates that in 2002 the approximate number of skinheads reached 5-7 thousand in Moscow and about 2 thousand in St. Petersburg. According to estimates by Alexander Tarasov and Semyon Charny in reports by the Moscow Bureau for Human Rights, as of 2004-2005 there were about 50,000 NS-skinheads in Russia (data sources and evaluation methodology are not cited). According to the SOVA Center, the number of victims of hate-motivated attacks at various times amounted to up to 700 people a year (the maximum values were recorded in 2008–2009), by 2015 this number had dropped to 80 people.
Experts attribute the cessation of growth in numbers and the decline in neo-Nazi activity both to increased resistance from law enforcement agencies and to the events in Ukraine (Euromaidan and the War in Donbas), which split the neo-Nazi movement and drove away some right-wing radicals. According to media reports, neo-Nazis from Russia take part in hostilities both on the side of the unrecognized Donetsk People's Republic and Luhansk People's Republic, and on the side of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and pro-Ukrainian volunteer units. French sociologist and political scientist Marlène Laruelle reported on the participation of mercenaries "related, directly or indirectly, to the Russian National Unity movement" in the war, on the separatist side. Sociologist Nikolai Mitrokhin [ru] notes that one of the units called Rusich consists of neo-Nazis from Saint Petersburg and fights under a banner with a swastika stylized as a "black sun.
The following skinhead groups were among the radical wing neo-Nazi organizations that used terrorist methods of struggle: the Werewolf Legion [ru] (liquidated in 1996), Schultz-88 [ru] (liquidated in 2006), White Wolves (liquidated in 2008-2010), "New Order" (disbanded), Russian Target (defunct), and other groups.
The activities of neo-Nazi organizations and the use of Nazi symbols in Russia are prohibited by the Federal Law On Commemoration of Victory of the Soviet People in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945 and the Federal Law On Countering Extremist Activity.
At the United Nations, Russia introduced a Resolution on Combating the Heroization of Nazism in 2015 and 2016, which contained concerns about the glorification of the Nazi movement and the desecration or destruction of monuments to those who fought against Nazism during World War II. On 16 December 2020, a resolution was adopted by the UN General Assembly.

### Ties to the Russian government

Since the 2004 Orange Revolution in Ukraine, the Russian government has been routinely accused of collaborating with neo-Nazis in order to fight domestic opposition to Vladimir Putin. This policy, known as managed nationalism, led to the increased prominence of the Russian Image group until its collapse in 2009 after the arrest of its leaders for the murders of Stanislav Markelov and Anastasia Baburova. Court documents at the trials of Russian Image leaders revealed that the organisation had connections to the Presidential Administration of Russia, that wanted "an organisation, dependent on the authorities, which could control the Russian far right".
Since the annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation and the beginning of the Russo-Ukrainian War in 2014, connections between the Russian government and neo-Nazi groups have once again been noted in international news outlets. In particular, the Russian Imperial Movement have been noted for their large number of volunteers, including white supremacist militants from throughout Europe. Initially important in supporting Russian forces during the 2014–2022 War in Donbas, their relevance has decreased with the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.

## Groups
### Werewolf Legion

During the spring in 1994, a neo-Nazi group called the Werewolf Legion was formed in Moscow. Shortly after its formation, the group allegedly attempted to set fire to the Olympic sports hall in Moscow, which was serving as the site of a Messianic Jewish conference. They were also reported to have planned arson attacks on movie theaters that were showing the Holocaust film Schindler's List. Three members of the group were put on trial for charges of homicide, robbery, hooliganism and inciting racial hatred.
Two of the members received prison sentences by the Russian court, and the group was broken up by Russian Federal security forces in July 1994.

### Schultz-88

In 2004, a trial was held against members of the neo-Nazi group Schultz-88 [ru], which operated in St. Petersburg and the Leningrad region from April 2001 to March 2003. Members of the group attacked people of "non-Slavic" appearance, Jews and representatives of youth subcultures hostile to skinheads. Members of the group included Alexey Voyevodin [ru] and Dmitry Borovikov, leaders of the Mad Crowd [ru] skinhead group. The chief expert on the Schultz-88 [ru] case was the St. Petersburg scholar and ethnographer Nikolai Girenko. He was murdered on 19 June 2004. During the trial, the jury of the St. Petersburg City Court found members of the Borovikov-Voyevodin gang ("Combat Terrorist Organization") guilty, including in the murder of Girenko. On 14 June 2011 the St. Petersburg City Court sentenced the ringleader Voyevodin and another member of the group, Artyom Prokhorenko, to life imprisonment. Other members of the gang were sentenced to various terms of imprisonment.

### Mad Crowd

On 14 December 2005, six members of the skinhead group Mad Crowd [ru] were sentenced to various terms of imprisonment for attacks on persons of "non-Slavic" appearance. The group operated in 2002–2003 in St. Petersburg and was led by Ruslan Melnik, Alexey Voevodin [ru] and Dmitry Borovikov. At the time of the trial, members of the group had formed a clandestine terrorist organization called the Combat Terrorist Organization (BTO). Borovikov died in 2006 from a fatal wound during an arrest and was buried with a neopagan funeral.

### National Socialist Party of Russia

On 15 August 2007, a student was arrested for posting a video known as "Execution of a Tajik and a Dagestani" on the Internet. Against the background of the flag of Nazi Germany, skinheads organize the massacre of two Muslim illegal migrants. The National Socialist Party of Russia took responsibility for the massacre.

### Saviour

On 15 May 2008, the Moscow City Court issued a guilty verdict in the 2006 Moscow market bombing. The attack took place on 21 August 2006. As a result, 14 people were killed, including two children, and 61 people were wounded. Among the dead were six citizens of Tajikistan, three citizens of Uzbekistan, a citizen of Belarus, a citizen of China, and two Russian citizens. All of the suspects were members of The Saviour, a neo-Nazi paramilitary group. The defendants were sentenced to terms ranging from two years to life imprisonment. Nikolai Korolyov, Ilya Tikhomirov, Oleg Kostarev [ru] and Sergey Klimuk were sentenced to life imprisonment.

### White Society-88

In 2008-2009 several members of the neo-Nazi group White Society-88 [ru] were detained, which had been operating in Nizhny Novgorod since 2008. Students Alexander Degtyarev and Artyom Surkov committed four murders and nine attempted murders of persons of "non-Slavic" appearance. Degtyarev was detained in December 2008 right after he shot and killed his teacher with a hunting smooth-bore gun. In June 2010, the Nizhny Novgorod Regional Court sentenced Alexander Degtyarev to life imprisonment, while Artyom Surkov and Maxim Alyoshin were sentenced to 10 and 9.5 years' imprisonment, respectively.

### Ryno-Skachevsky gang

In 2008–2010, members of the Ryno-Skachevsky gang led by Artur Ryno and Pavel Skachevsky were convicted. Ryno claimed that since August 2006 he had killed 37 people of "non-Slavic" appearance, including about 20 with his buddy Skachevsky. In December 2008, students Artur Ryno and Pavel Skachevsky each received ten years in a minimum-security penal colony. Other members of the group were also sentenced to long terms of imprisonment.

### BORN

Members of the neo-Nazi group Fighting Organization of Russian Nationalists (BORN) were accused of a series of murders and attempted murders. In 2011, Nikita Tikhonov, one of the organization's leaders and founders, was sentenced to life imprisonment for the murders of lawyer Stanislav Markelov and journalist Anastasia Baburova, and his roommate Yevgenia Khasis received 18 years in prison. In April 2015, Maxim Baklagin and Vyacheslav Isayev were sentenced to life imprisonment, and Mikhail Volkov was sentenced to 24 years in prison. In July 2015, Ilya Goryachev, the group's founder, was sentenced to life imprisonment for organizing a gang, five murders, and arms trafficking. The sentencing of Ryno and Skachevsky was announced on 8 April 2010. Judge Eduard Chuvashov [ru] of the Moscow City Court, who handed down a verdict in this case, was murdered on 12 April 2010, by members of the BORN.

### Volkssturm

In 2011, nine members of the "Volkssturm" skinhead group were sentenced. In 2013, one of the two convicted skinheads was Alexander Solovyov, one of the leaders of the group. In January 2014, the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation reported that a 25-year-old member of the group, wanted since 2008, was detained in the Sverdlovsk region. The group operated in Yekaterinburg in 2006–2008. It was named after the units of the people's militia of Nazi Germany. It is proven, that the members of the group committed three murders and eight attempted murders of persons of 'non-Slavic' appearance and beat up 20 migrants. The skinheads documented their actions by filming them and posting them on the Internet.

### Lincoln-88

On 5 May 2011 Petersburg city court passed a guilty sentence on members of the skinhead group "Lincoln-88 [es]" that operated in St. Petersburg from August–December 2007. Andrei Linok involved more than 22 people in the group. Members of the group committed 12 attacks on persons of "non-Slavic" appearance, including two murders and one attempted murder. Eight attacks were videotaped and posted on the Internet. The court found 19 members of the group guilty, 10 defendants were sentenced to 4 to 9 years in prison, while the rest received suspended sentences of varying lengths of imprisonment.

### NS/WP Nevograd

In June 2014, the neo-Nazi group NS/WP Nevograd was sentenced on charges of murder, an act of terrorism, incitement of hatred on racial and national grounds, and trafficking in weapons and ammunition.

### The Cleaners

On 23 October 2017, the Moscow City Court sentenced members of the neo-Nazi group the Cleaners who killed more than 15 people between July 2014 and February 2015. Pavel Voitov was sentenced to life imprisonment, Elena Lobachova to 13 years and Maxim Pavlov to 9 years and 6 months in a penal colony. Vladislav Karatayev was sentenced to 16 years and Artur Nartsissov to 9 years and 6 months in a strict regime penal colony. As victims, members of the group chose citizens who, in their opinion, violate generally accepted norms of behavior: persons without a fixed place of residence, begging, abusing alcohol and being intoxicated.

### Atomwaffen Division Russland

Atomwaffen Division Russland is a neo-Nazi terrorist group in Russia found by Russian officials to have been tied to multiple mass murder plots. AWDR was founded by former members of defunct National Socialist Society responsible for 27 murders and AWDR is connected to local chapter of the Order of Nine Angles responsible for rapes, ritual murders and drug trafficking. The Russian authorities raided an Atomwaffen compound in Ulan-Ude and uncovered illegal weapons and explosives.

### Rusich Group

The Rusich Group, a unit operating within Wagner Group's military organisation, in particular has notable Neo Nazi elements.
The group is referred to as a "sabotage and assault reconnaissance group", which has been fighting as part of the Russian separatist forces in eastern Ukraine. Rusich are described as a far-right extremist or neo-Nazi unit, and their logo features a Slavic swastika. The group was founded by Russian Neo-Nazis Alexey Milchakov and Yan Petrovsky in the summer of 2014, after graduating from a paramilitary training program run by the Russian Imperial Legion, the fighting arm of the Russian Imperial Movement. As of 2017, the Ukrainian Prosecutor General and the International Criminal Court (ICC) were investigating fighters of this unit for alleged war crimes committed in Ukraine. In June 2023, Wagner Group mutinied, but quickly stepped down.

### Wagner Group

The Wagner Group, a Russian mercenary group notable in the Russo-Ukrainian War has been accused of Neo-Nazism.
The group is believed to have been named after Dmitry Utkin who was the military commander of the unit and had call sign “Wagner”, apparently chosen after Richard Wagner, the favorite composer of Adolf Hitler. Utkin was openly a Neo-Nazi. Members of the Wagner Group have been observed spray painting swastikas and SS lightning bolts, and Dmitry Utkin who was widely considered Wagner's operational commander, had tattoos featuring Nazi ″SS″ epaulets.
However, Erica Gaston, a senior policy adviser at the UN University Centre for Policy Research, stated that while the alleged founder has "sympathies to far-right groups and there's probably some in the general recruitment that also have those sympathies, predominantly, it's not an ideological group but a mercenary network "linked to the Russian security state".

## Ideology

Like the old Nazism, Russian neo-Nazism combines ethnic nationalism, the idea of the Aryan race, its biological and cultural superiority over other races, the idea of racial antisemitism (Semitic race is seen as the antipode and main enemy of the "Aryan"), anti-communism and anti-democratism. The cult of Adolf Hitler is significant, and swastika, or its various modifications, remain the main symbols.
One of the largest Russian nationalist-extremist parties until the late 1990s was the neo-Nazi social-political movement Russian National Unity (RNE) of Alexander Barkashov, founded in 1990. In late 1999, RNE made an unsuccessful attempt to run for the State Duma. Barkashov viewed "true Orthodoxy" as a fusion of Christianity and paganism, advocating a "Russian God" and an allegedly related "Aryan swastika". He wrote about the Atlanteans, the Etruscans, the "Aryan" civilization as the direct predecessors of the Russian nation, their centuries-long struggle with the "Semites", the worldwide Jewish conspiracy, and the Jewish domination of Russia. The symbol of the movement was a modified swastika.
The ideology of Russian neo-Nazism is closely related to the ideology of Rodnovery (Slavic neo-paganism). In some cases, there are also organizational ties between neo-Nazis and neo-pagans. Thus, one of the founders of Russian neo-paganism, former dissident Alexey Dobrovolsky (pagan name - Dobroslav) shared the ideas of National Socialism and transferred them to his neo-pagan doctrine. According to the historian, Dobrovolsky picked up the idea of the swastika from the work of Nazi ideologist Hermann Wirth (the first leader of Anenerbe). Dobrovolsky declared the eight-armed "kolovrat", consisting of two overlapping swastikas, considered in Slavic neo-paganism to be the ancient Slavic sign of the Sun, a symbol of an uncompromising "national liberation struggle" against the "Judean yoke". According to Dobrovolsky, the meaning of the "kolovrat" completely coincides with the meaning of the Nazi swastika.
A former Komsomol activist Ilya Lazarenko [ru] became one of the founders of the Union of Russian Youth. In 1992-1994 he was the head of the neo-Nazi youth movement called "Front of National Revolutionary Action" that evolved from the Union, and declared its allegiance to Orthodox Christianity. He published the newspapers Our March (1992–1993) and People's Construction (1993–1996). In March 1996, criminal proceedings were instituted against Lazarenko and he was the first person convicted of inciting ethnic hatred. While under investigation, Lazarenko broke with the Orthodox faith and, founded the neo-Nazi Navi Society [ru] (also known as the "Holy Church of the White Race") in Moscow on Hitler's birthday in 1996. He did so under the ideological influence of the founder of esoteric Hitlerism, Miguel Serrano In October 1994 Lazarenko became the leader of the youth neo-Nazi National Front party. The Navi Society was based on the worship of two supposedly Slavic gods, Yav and Navi, and practiced dress uniforms and rituals similar to Ku Klux Klan. The doctrine of the "church" was a combination of the ideas of Slavic neo-paganism with Indo-Aryan and Zoroastrian beliefs. Lazarenko identified "white people" exclusively with Russians. The main attribute of the movement's supporters were armbands with swastikas; others included Novgorod crosses (identical to Celtic crosses) with inscribed swastika, runic inscriptions, a ram's skull and Siegfried's sword. One of its goals was the extermination of people characterized by physical deformity. In 2005 Lazarenko repented and returned to the Orthodox Church.
Rodnovery is a popular religion of Russian skinheads. These skinheads, however, do not usually practice their religion.. During the trial for the skinhead organization Schultz-88 [ru] in the second half of 2005, the brochure "Paganism as the spiritual and moral basis of Russian national-socialism" by Dobrovolsky and the neo-pagan magazine The Wrath of Perun were mentioned. Members of the neo-Nazi group called the Combat Terrorist Organization of Nevograd (BTO), disbanded by the police in 2006, considered themselves Slavic Rodnovers. They published self-published magazines with a racist-neo-pagan orientation, where they developed the idea of creating a "new Nordic race". They called for a "pagan revolution", which they aimed to make closer by hunting on people of "non-Slavic appearance".