Reuters - 07.29.02

 

Reuters

Skinhead Fashion for Sons of Ex-Soviet Middle Class

By Gleb Brianksi

MOSCOW - Viktor has just graduated from a prestigious Moscow school and joined the Moscow Law Academy. He works as a computer systems administrator in the summer, likes President Vladimir Putin and despises communists.

Viktor also hates immigrants, especially those from former Soviet republics. He wears heavy Dr Martens boots, Nazi badges and his fists are covered with scars from street fights.

The 16-year-old is one of an estimated 7,000 Moscow skinheads, a fast growing group so named because of their shaven or close-cropped heads, who are blamed for a string of attacks on foreigners in the Russian capital.

"The media try to portray us as 'dumbheads' who cannot string two words together. Do I look like one?" he asks as he sips beer in the street cafe next to his old school.

Viktor spends his evenings with his skinhead pals in their neighbourhood on the outskirts of Moscow. They drink beer and listen to Western skinhead bands or their Russian copycats.

Then they go out hunting for victims -- dark-skinned traders from the former Soviet republics, African students, Afghan refugees, South Asian guest workers.

"Our neighbourhood has already been cleaned of this filth. We have beaten them all. God help any foreigner that hangs around on his own where we live," Viktor said.

Moscow is a popular destination for migrants from the war-torn and poverty-stricken fringes of the former Soviet Union, attracted by higher living standards than elsewhere in Russia.

The Russian capital has seen a surge of racially motivated violence in recent years. The first known skinhead attacks occurred in Russia as early as the mid-90s.

In the most serious incident, last October a mob of about 250 skinheads rampaged through an immigrant controlled street market killing three people and injuring 30.

In the last year alone, the number of skinheads in Moscow is said to have doubled. While there are several well-organised groups like United Brigades 88, most are loose bands of youths linked to specific neighbourhoods.

FASHIONABLY FASCIST?

"It has become fashionable to be a skinhead in Russia," said researcher Vyacheslav Likhachev, author of the book "Nazism in Russia," the first attempt at analysing the skinhead movement. "Everyone knows who they are and fears them."

Foreign students at the People's Friendship University in Moscow say they feel safe only on the university campus, where they are protected by a private security firm.

"This campus is like a prison for us. I cannot even take my girlfriend to the movies," said Christian Bock, a 30-year-old construction engineering student from Cameroon beaten by skinhead gangs three times during his seven years in Moscow.

The university, in Soviet years an important tool in exporting communist ideology, still hosts thousands of students from developing countries attracted by low tuition fees.

Lonely African or Asian students travelling on the underground are favourite targets for skinheads gangs that are often afraid to attack people from the Caucasus, who live in close-knit communities and are often able to defend themselves.

"Once on the underground I was confronted by six guys with clean shaven heads in Dr Martens boots. One of them came up to me and said: "You, black arse, what are you doing here, have you paid tax yet?" They started beating me while others on the train looked on as if it were a movie," Bock said.

As he spoke, two fellow students stood up to leave, saying that they lived off campus and wanted to travel home while it was still light. The university advises students not to travel through the city at night and says they should always be in groups of at least four.

NEO-NAZIS SEEK SKINHEADS

"Glory to Russia!" mutters a young bespectacled boy in shirt-sleeves, thrusting out his arm in a Nazi-style salute.

A middle-aged man in a black shirt with medieval symbols sits beneath a white banner with Swastika-like cross lazily raises his arm in a similar gesture.

Alexander Ivanov-Sukharevsky runs his neo-Nazi National People's Party from a tiny office in a one-room apartment in one of Moscow's shabby apartment blocks. The party claims to have 10,000 members in numerous regional branches marked by pins on the giant map of Russia on the wall.

About 1,000 of them are young skinheads, brought to the party by Semyon Tokmakov, one of the leaders of the Moscow skinhead community and now deputy leader of the party.

Tokmakov and Ivanov-Sukharevsky met in prison, the latter jailed for inciting racial hatred, Tokmakov for beating up a black U.S. marine with his friends.

"You can see marks from his teeth here," Tokmakov said proudly, showing off the scars on his hand.

The party ideology is witches' brew of racism, Russian nationalism and Nazism, calling for "the elimination of all foreigners from the country." But only "bad" foreigners are intended.

"If we had two million Englishmen or Swedes in Moscow, it would have been a prosperous city," said Ivanov-Sukharevsky, a former film maker.

The party's conventions resemble miniature versions of the Nazi gatherings of the 1930s, with torchlight processions and burning crosses. Young party members train in boot camps.

"Skinheads are the avant-guard of white youth," said Tokmakov, 27, who plays a key role in recruiting skinheads into his party's ranks.

Membership drives by right wing parties have only partly been successful. "Skinheads like drinking beer, listening to aggressive music and beating up foreigners. But they are less interested in party discipline, membership fees and distributing leaflets," expert Likhachev commented.

MIDDLE-CLASS SKINHEADS

"Skinheads" are often portrayed in the Russian media as children of working class families living in poor neighbourhoods on the outskirts of big industrial centres. Poverty and poor education are believed to force disillusioned youths into skinhead groups.

"This stereotype is often not true. Skinheads are most often children of the former Soviet middle class, which slid into poverty during the economic reforms (of the 1990s) and could not fit into the new realities," Likhachev said.

"Since this movement has become popular you can find many social groups among the skinheads, including children from very successful and wealthy families.

"Skinheads are only part of the problem. What is more important is a widespread xenophobia in society, that their actions find understanding rather than condemnation," said Likhachev.

The irony is that neo-Nazis can flourish in a country where tens of millions died fighting Hitler's armies during World War Two. Viktor's grandfather, like most of his generation, fought the Nazis, but the two men nevertheless agree on some things.

"He doesn't like my badges but he agrees with me about the foreigners," Viktor said.