Forward - 10.25.2002

Forward

Russians Register Extremist Party

 

By Lina Rozovskaya, Forward Correspondent 

MOSCOW — Jewish groups and civil rights organizations here are in an uproar over the government's decision to register an extremist party whose leaders have inveighed against "the common enemy, the Yid."

With its registration last month by the Russian Justice Ministry, the National Sovereign Party of Russia, or NDPR, became the first openly extremist party to be granted state registration, which allows for participation in regional and national elections, under a new law on political parties adopted last year.

The registration caused an uproar in the Russian media, especially after the broadcast of an excerpt from a video of NDPR's inaugural congress held in February this year, in which one leader called for the fight against "the common enemy — the Yid." The party's official Web site includes the epigraph, "It must become the law of life in Russia — not an ounce of power to Yids."

"The registration of NDPR showed that Russian state was not immune to fascist ideology," said Alexander Brod, director of the Moscow bureau of the Union of Councils for Jews in the Former Soviet Union. Brod said that the party deliberately omitted extremist content in the documents it submitted for registration. "This means a green light for any ultra-nationalist party," he added.

Brod and other leaders of Jewish organizations in Moscow have expressed fear that NDPR's registration was a sign of official acceptance of xenophobia in Russia. However, the president of the Russian Jewish Congress, Evgeny Satanovsky, was more reserved in his commentary.

"NDPR's registration is no reason for hysteria," he told the Forward. "This is just a sign of an age-old disease, antisemitism, which has always existed in Russia and cannot disappear in one day."

However dire its effects, the scandal raised from public oblivion NDPR's co-chairman, Boris Mironov, who was ousted from his government post of press minister in 1994 for antisemitic behavior. The party's senior executive Viktor Korchagin — who is also director of the Vytyaz publishing house, which has produced several editions of Hitler's "Mein Kampf" — has been repeatedly prosecuted for "kindling nationalist discord."

The Justice Ministry responded to queries by the media saying the registration documents were in accordance with the law. Brod said that he had been told by a Justice Ministry official that his department was not authorized to check the party leaders' background or its publications before its official recognition. Now that the party has been registered, the ministry promised to check its activities and close it down should it violate any laws or regulations.

Nevertheless, media and civil rights groups accused the ministry of having known NDPR's real face and of being biased. They cite as a proof the fact that the Liberal Russia opposition party, financed by the exiled tycoon Boris Berezovsky, who is Jewish, had been denied registration on technicalities.

"Nazis are not objectionable for the regime — unlike liberals," wrote the liberal Novye Izvestya newspaper, which broke the story of the registration.

Some experts argue the ministry had no choice but to register the party. "The law should be the same for everyone. Otherwise the state will start using it against its opponents," said Yuri Dzhibiladze, president of the Center for Development of Democracy and Human Rights, one of the initiators of the "Russian NGOs Against Racism" network.

According to ex-Duma deputy Valery Borshev, who heads the Civil Control Committee of the reformist Yabloko party, the state is using nationalists to manipulate public opinion. "Those who registered NDPR do not support antisemitism. This is all a political game," Borshev said. "They first allow extremist forces to destabilize the situation and then they use it as an excuse to tighten state control — and not just over ultra-nationalists."

The law on political parties requires a party to have at least 10,000 members with branches in at least half of Russia's regions. The Union of Council's Brod said he knew of at least 10 nationalist parties that had registered their organizational committees with the Justice Ministry — the first step toward being registered as a party.

Some fear that NDPR might run for parliamentary elections next year or try to merge with other parties. So far, the nationalist vote has been absorbed by Vladimir Zhirinovsky's Liberal Democratic Party and, to some extent, by the Communists. Both parties are represented in the Duma.

However, Alexander Verkhovsky, vice president of Panorama, a pro-democracy think tank that has monitored new political movements in Russia for more than a decade, said NDPR did not pose any serious threat. "I do not even think they will make it to the elections — they will be closed down for not having enough members or on some other pretext," he said, adding that ultra-nationalists were "in any case unlikely to get more than 1-2% of votes."

According to Satanovsky of the Russian Jewish Congress, up to 20% of Russians "view Jews negatively," while 5-6% are "active antisemites." He said Jews had become a secondary target for nationalists, compared to ethnic scapegoats ranging from Chechens to Tajiks to Gypsies. Compared to other minority groups, Jews had the modest advantage of "at least not being hurt," he said.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has on several occasions denounced publicly xenophobia and antisemitism in particular. Rabbi Berel Lazar, one of Russia's two feuding chief rabbis and the one known for his close ties to the Kremlin, has been quoted as saying that state-sponsored antisemitism no longer exists. Moreover, Lazar has said it is "fashionable" in today's Russia to be a Jew.

While most leaders of the Jewish community agree that state-sponsored antisemitism no longer exists, some insist that many officials at the local level sympathize with and often even aid nationalist parties. Brod said the Union of Councils for Jews in the Former Soviet Union had recorded many examples of such support. For example, antisemitic papers in the towns of Vladimir and Voronezh were founded by the city administration.

According to Panorama's Verkhovsky, antisemitism is never far from the top of the nationalist agenda. "Antisemitism has an important part in the program of any self-respecting Russian nationalist," he said. "It is the matter of tradition. The idea of the Zionist conspiracy has excited their minds for centuries."