18.10.2005 Nazi skinheads in modern Russia

Compiled by Alexander Tarasov.
Skinheads made their appearance in Russia in early 90s. In 1992 there was about a dozen skinheads in Moscow. They were keeping a low profile, were mostly busy with self-admiration and showing off in downtown Moscow. Original skinheads have come from apery practiced by teenagers as they were trying hard to imitate Western ways. They first became aware of Western skinheads at the time of perestroyka: during 1989-1991 the Soviet media had a vogue to write about British, German and later –Czech skinheads.1
Such was the case until the beginning of 1994. In early 1994, however, skinheads, all of a sudden - in a matter of several weeks- turned into, if not mass, but rather numerous and conspicuous phenomenon. Outwardly, that was connected with the September-October 1993 developments when B.Yeltsin had made it clear to everyone that violence was a most compelling argument in any discussion. Some teenagers seemed to have learnt a good lesson. Later on, humanitarian students of various Moscow universities repeatedly pointed out that those of their schoolmates and friends who shortly after that turned into skinheads, had been among the October 4, 1993 crowd of onlookers taking a pathological pleasure as they watch, from close quarters, tanks shooting at the parliament building.2 Notably, an increase in the number of skinheads in Moscow was prompted not so much by the shooting-down of the parliament building as by a period of ensuing “state of emergency” in Moscow when streets were dominated by police terror that had rapidly assumed an explicitly racist (formally – anti-Caucasian) character.
An ever-greater impact upon the number of skinheads was exerted by the Chechen war and the accompanying propaganda campaign of great-power, pro-imperial and nationalistic sentiments at the government level (which was especially noticeable in Moscow). Certainly, an upsurge of the skinheads' movement was driven not solely by political developments. There were two factors that had largely facilitated fast growth and establishment of skinheads among young people in Russia: an economic crisis and breakdown of the system of education.
As a result of a disastrous economic recession, starting in 1991, millions of Russian people lost their jobs and became unemployed. An ever greater number of people, not registered as unemployed, were so in reality: enterprises were either standing idle, operating for one or two days a week or two or three months a year, or hired workers had to go without pay for months on end or even a year. The vast majority of the population accustomed to live, if not in plenty, but, at least, satisfactorily, was plunged into poverty overnight.
All that resulted in psychological, rather than property disaster: over many decades of Soviet experience the population got used to enjoy guaranteed full-time employment, governmental paternalism in the sphere of education, health care and other social programs (for instance, to subsidized (often symbolic) prices for essential food products, children's goods, housing, public utilities, public transport, etc.) Having been deprived of their habitual life style, the population of Russia began to sink rapidly into a state of barbarity: crime, alcoholism and drug-addiction had swept the country. Parents battling for survival had no time to look after their children. Family scandals and violence in the family came to be regarded as something normal. Children escaping from home because of hunger, beatings and unbearable conditions of life became a mass phenomenon: today in Russia there are, at least, four million neglected children. This is an incredibly large number, considering that after the 1918-1921 Civil War there were six million homeless children in the entire Soviet Union.3
The breakdown of the economy was accompanied by a process of disintegration of the system of education and upbringing. To some extent, that was a consequence of the economic collapse: in the USSR the entire school system was state-supported but in the last ten years the state revenues declined by eight-ten fold which certainly affected the funding of the school. As a result, in recent years some 400-450 schools a year have been closing in the country for financial reasons with most pupils from those schools finding themselves unable to continue education. Just in 1997 in Siberia, for instance, according to official data of military commissariats, from 7 to 11 per cent of conscripts were illiterate, in the spring of 1999, every third school-age offender did not have even primary education!4 Of even greater concern was the fact that under a pretext of “campaign against totalitarism”, upbringing in Russia had been put under a ban! The Ministry of Education, under the banner of deideologization of the school, cancelled even the word “upbringing” from its documents. Thus, pedagogics was reduced to didactics.
That resulted into a second psychological disaster: over the decades of reforms there arrived in Russia a new generation, asocial and anomalistic. The new generation is remarkable for their rejection of traditions, public values and social guidelines. Alongside with their parents, children also sank into a state of barbarity. But whereas the parents, growing barbaric, were still struggling for collective survival (at least, at the family level), “the children of reforms”, lacking the social experience of grown-ups, have been rapidly degenerating into a herd of biological specimens, just nominally linked to each other- of specimens that are immoral, asocial, anomalistic, egocentric, incapable of communication, primitive in their needs, greedy, embittered and increasingly dull-witted.
It is only natural that the process was accompanied by a catastrophic rise in infant and teenager's crime, drug-addiction, toxicomania, alcoholism, prostitution, epidemics of sexually transmitted diseases.
The new generation turned out to be an ideal object to take in any primitive ideologems based on violence and individualism, ranging from just criminal to politically criminal ones (charged with xenophobia, racism and anti-Semitism).
Alongside with “the reform of education” that proved to be disastrous, Russia also witnessed liquidation of a diversified system of extra-school education and upbringing. The buildings of “Houses of culture”, etc. were bought out by the so-called new Russians to be converted into nightclubs, casinos and restaurants. Children's hobby groups were thrown into the street and dissolved. Schoolchildren outside school were left to their own devices – and for the most part, fell prey to the criminal world and drug Mafia. There sprang up a huge number of microscopic youth gangs often transformed into skinheads' gangs - since each such gang was targeted against “outsiders” (even if from a neighboring yard) with any black-skinned person being obviously “an outsider”.
Skinheads in Russia have been a product of social, rather than national transformations. That is especially evident considering that skinheads' gangs have emerged in major and most developed cities – the sites of accumulation of basic wealth where social differentiation, Russia's newly-emerged phenomenon, is especially noticeable.
In small workers' towns usually built around one or two major industrial enterprises and suffering most severe crises in connection with the bankruptcy of those enterprises, no skinheads were or are observed (just most recently, there have appeared “the first harbingers” - in imitation of the capitals – notably, exclusively in satellite-towns encircling megalopolises), although, youth gangs, certainly, exist.
In the same last decade, Russia has witnessed a process that can only be described as rehabilitation of fascism. Amid that background, school textbooks underwent disastrous changes. The themes of fighting fascism, dangers of the fascist ideology were dropped from most text-books, the history of the Second World War was reduced to a minimum, in some text-books –after the fashion of Rezun (Suvorov) – Hitler was portrayed as “a poor victim of Stalin's aggression”. In some, most widely used text-books (for instance, in A.Kreder's text-books) the crushing defeat of fascism by the Soviet Army was described as a harmful phenomenon since it had entailed “the establishment of Communist totalitarism in the countries of Eastern Europe”. Considering that text-books are a basic source of information to schoolchildren and the teenagers' mentality is “black-and-white” with no nuances, some teenagers may well come to a conclusion that “Hitler is better than Stalin” and that “Hitler was right”.5
In the 90s, the anti-fascist propaganda in Russia was wound up. The memoirs of fascist leaders and their biographies were published in mass editions, one could easily buy Hitler's “Meine kampf”, Rosenberg's “Myth of the XXth century” and Mussolini's “Doctrine of fascism” from street stalls while no anti-fascist literature was published or re-published. To a certain extent, that could be explained by the fact that the Left ideas usually advocated by anti-fascist authors had been anathematized. 6 Meanwhile, the liberal Izvestiya newspaper, in the person of Yu.Feofanov, came out against banning fascist symbols and rituals, even against banning fascist propaganda, specifically, dissemination of “Meine kampf” and other fascist classic literature.7
No one was standing up to skinheads. While OMON or Special Police Unit was busy “sorting it out” with “persons from the Caucasus”, skinheads, being weaker and more cowardly, had picked up, as their victims, natives of Central Asia and countries of “the third world”, primarily, “blacks” and “those with narrow-eyes”. A certain disparity was observed from city to city. Thus, Moscow, St.Petersburg and Nizhny Novgorod historically were powerhouses of the skinheads' movement. In Moscow skinheads attacked mostly Africans and Indians, in St.Petersburg – Africans, the Nepalese and Chinese, in Nizhny Novgorod – natives of the Central Asia (primarily refugees from Tadjikistan). Everywhere (especially in NizhnyNovgorod) the police treated skinheads with indulgence, usually refusing to open criminal cases (in Nizhny Novgorod Tadjiks were afraid of complaining to the police as that usually ended either in arrest for “illegally staying in the country” and bribe extortion or, when there was nothing to grab - in beatings and deportation.)8
In the atmosphere of connivance, the skinheads' movement has acquired its present-day, quite substantial proportions. Today, the number of skinheads in Russia has reached fifty thousand. Nowadays, the number of skinheads in Moscow and the Moscow suburbs, according to various estimates, ranges from 5 to 5,5 thousand, in St.Petersburg, together with the near suburbs, their number amounts up to 3 thousand, in Nizhny Novgorod – over 2,5 thousand, in Rostov-on-the-Don – over 1,5 thousand, in Pskov, Kaliningrad, Yekaterinburg, Krasnodar – over one thousand, in Voronezh, Samara, Saratov, Krasnoyarsk, Irkutsk, Omsk, Tomsk, Vladivostok, Ryazan, Petrozavodsk – several hundreds. Let me remind you that in 1992 in Moscow there were about ten skinheads plus about five persons in St.Petersburg. Today, taken all together, skinheads' communities exist approximately in 85 cities and towns.
As to clothes, skinheads imitate their Western counterparts. Everything is strict in style, functional and adjusted for street-fighting: thick black jeans, cheap and strong, that do not show dirt and blood on them; heavy laced-up army-type boots with a thick sole (ideally, of “Dr.Marten's” brand), those are good for running and may be used as a weapon in the fight (a professional blow with a sole in the stomach may be fatal); short “bomber”-type jackets without a collar - so that the opponent would have nothing to snatch at; shaven head or a very short “skin-type” hair-cut is also meant to prevent the opponent (or the police) from catching you by the hair. Nothing that may be excessive: no glasses, badges, bags, shoulder-straps, flaps, in short, nothing that may hinder you to dodge a blow or escape from the enemy's grasp. Russian skinheads are known for their love for the slave-owners' Confederation flag that is usually sewn on the sleeve or (when a stripe is too large) on the back of the “bomber” jacket. The use is also made (though not commonly) of stripes in the form of swastika, Hitler's portrait, the digit 88 (meaning ”Heil Hitler”!) or of WP letters (“White Power”). As a rule, skinheads carry no weapons (“not to be subjected to prosecution”), but during fights they use their waist belts with an over-heavy buckle wound up onto the hand. The belt is often decorated with what is supposed to be a decorative chain (in reality the chain makes that improvised knuckle-duster even more dangerous). In recent times, when nazi skinheads went over to deliberate mass violent actions (pogroms), they began to arm themselves specially for each such action – usually with pieces of reinforcing bars, batons, bottles.
Russian skinheads, same as their Western counterparts, are fans of the “oy”! music style. Moscow has the greatest number of skinheads' music groups: “Shturm” or Storm, “Russkoye ghetto” or Russian ghetto (since 1997 – “Kolovrat”; since January 30, 2004 the group leader had been held in pre-trial detention in Prague on a charge of “stirring up national hatred and hostility and propaganda of nazism”), “Belyye Buldogi” or White Bulldogs, “Radagast”, “Vandal”, “Division”, “Krack” and others. The punk-oy!-group “Terror” is also popular. Those are the groups that set the trend in the Russian music skinheads' culture. There are only two groups from St.Petersburg and Yaroslavl, originally called identically –“Tottenkopf” (in honor of SS division “Dead Head”) that present a challenge to the Moscow groups. In 1996, the Yaroslavl “Tottenkopf” started using an abreviation “TNF” and after a while they decoded the abbreviation as “Terror National Front”. 9 There exist skinheads' press: magazines: “Pod Nol”, “Beloye Soprotivleniye” or White Resistance, “Otvertka”or Screw-driver, “Stop”, “Ya-Bely”or I Am White, “Streetfighter”. The ultranationalist counter-cultural “Spolokhi” magazine is semi-skinheads'edition. One may find ultranationalist sites in the Internet meant for skinheads, including “Russian mirror” of the American skinheads' site “Stormfront”.
The majority of skinheads are teenagers aged from 13 to 19, school pupils, students of vocational and technical schools, of higher institutions and the unemployed. They are united into small groups (from 3 to 10 persons), in fact, mini-gangs. The mini-gangs as such, certainly, are not political organizations. The average term of their existence is several years.
However, there exist larger and more organized structures. “Skinheads' Legion” and “Blood&Honor” (B&H) - Russian branch” were the first to appear in Moscow. B&H is an international nazi skinheads' organization, in some countries it is officially outlawed as an extremist or fascist organization (in autumn, 2000 B&H was outlawed in Federal Germany). “B&H-Russian branch” and “Skinheads' Legion” involved 200-250 persons each, they observed certain discipline, hierarchy and division of labor. In 1998 they were joined by a third major organization – “Objedinennye Brigady-88 (OB88) or United Brigades that was a result of a merger of smaller skinheads' groups “Belye Buldogi” or White Bulldogs and “Lefortovo Front”. The name of the “Brigades” speaks for itself: 88 is an ordinal number of the two H in the German alphabet, i.e. “Heil Hitler!”. Later on, there appeared “Hammerskin Nation” that considers itself a branch of an international skinheads' organization of the same name. There are also small (of about 10-20 persons), though well-disciplined skinheads' groups. At present, though, the “Skinlegion” is on the decline and the OB-88, having found themselves a focus of attention of law enforcement agencies after the Tsaritsin progrom, announced self-disbandment (which, incidentally, is not true to reality as the nucleus of the organization just went underground).
In St.Petersburg about 400 skinheads are incorporated as members of “Russky kulak” or Russian Fist organization, not less than 100 persons - as members of “Kolovrat” organization (regarded to be quite moderate), in Nizhny Novgorod – over 300 persons are members of the “Sever” or the North faction, etc.
April, 1998 marked an important stage in the history of Russian skinheads. At that time, skinheads sent out faxes to editorial offices of Moscow newspapers, promising to kill one Negro every day on the occasion of yet another anniversary of Hitler's birthday”. Most newspapers paid no attention to the faxes and, where they did pay attention, for instance, in the “Nezavisimaya Gazetta” newspaper, they did not take it seriously.
But they should have known better. In April-May, 1998, for the first time ever, the Moscow skinheads managed to conduct a well-coordinated campaign of actions. In the course of one month alone, following April 20, according to the Association of foreign students, there were, on the average, four assaults a day, counting only those made on dark skinned students. One black was murdered and his corpse was thrown into a hatch in the vicinity of the Danilov market-place; the police, naturally, refused to recognize it as murder for racial grounds). In Arbat street, two women from Pakistani diplomats' families were severely beaten. In the same area, skinheads brutally beat a pregnant woman from India who, as a result of the beating, had a miscarriage. The embassies of South-African Republic, Benin, Sudan, India and Nigeria presented official notes of protest to the Russia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs in connection with the skinheads' terror. 10 Finally, in Fili, William Jefferson, a black marine of the USA embassy guards, was beaten up and had to be taken to hospital. The USA is not a country of “the third world”. Under pressure from Americans, the police arrested Semen Tokmakov, 22, a person who had beaten up Jefferson, a leader of the “Russkaya Tsel” or Russian Goal skinheads' group (the group numbered about 25 persons). Shortly after, another major international scandal broke out: skinheads beat Peter Taff, General Secretary of the U.K. Socialist party who came to Moscow to read lectures. That incident as well as that with Jefferson was widely reported by all leading Western newspapers .11
The “Russkaya Tsel” received so much publicity thanks to Tokmakov that soon its members started to give interviews to Western journalists for not less than 50 Dollars! The “Tokmakov's case” brought the entire Russian skinheads' community closer together. Skinheads from other cities came to attend the meetings of protest held by skinheads outside the US embassy. The demonstrators took pleasure in chanting: “Russia - for Russians, America - for the white, let Negroes go to the jungles! and “Jefferson is a creeping fag!”. Jefferson had to leave Russia. Tokmakov was released from custody directly in the court-room. The group “Russkaya Tsel” had grown up to 80-90 persons.
Since summer, 1998, skinheads started to behave still more aggressively and went over to attack their countrymen. Thus, in Moscow a school boy was beaten only because he was wearing a stylish T-shirt depicting the “Rage Against the Machine” rock-group. Meanwhile, in Krasnodar, local skinheads, patronized by RHE (the Russian National Unity party) started, beginning from autumn, 1995, regular attacks on Cuban anarchists. In October 1998, a group of skinheads organized a demonstrative beating of a son of the ambassador of the Republic of Guinea-Bissau. Paradoxically, the police, just as in many other cases, refused to recognize it as a conflict based on ethnicity!13
At the same time skinheads went over to the next stage: they started using weapons in assaults. In November, 1998 the city of Arkhangelsk was a site of a trial of a skinheads' group that had committed an armed attack on persons from the Caucasus. The fact that nobody was killed in Arkhangelsk was a pure coincidence (one of the skinheads' victims got seventeen stab and cut wounds). Facing the threat of inter-ethnic disturbances in the city, the authorities quickly identified all members of the group and got them arrested. Notably, all of them (except the leader) got away with suspended sentences.14
The practice of using weapons began to spread rapidly. In 1999-2000 in Moscow arrests were made among members of the skinheads' group “Berkut”. They were charged with murders of drunkards and bums in the streets (largely, in Kuzminki). That was the way “Berkut” had been “cleaning up” the native capital of those who were “defiling” it with their appearance.15
On October 15 and 22, 2000 skinheads organized two assaults on anarchists and ecologists outside the Club named after Jerry Rubin in Moscow. Following the second assault (when skinheads were armed with grooves, metal rods and bottles) two persons found themselves in hospital. 16 Finally, beginning from February, 1999, one could observe further development of the scenario: two skinheads from “the Nebesny Arii” or “Celestial Aryans” group were arrested on a charge of attempted arson of the Odintsovo synagogue. “Nebesny Arii” also claimed responsibility for explosion of the sinagogue in Maryina Roscha in May, 1998. In September, 1999 in Moscow another skinhead was arrested – Michael Naumenko nicknamed “Hippopotamus” who was plotting to carry out several explosions on the City Day inside Orthodox churches and sinagogues. 17
Many Right-wing radical and fascist parties and organizations see skinheads as their reserve and “social base”. In Moscow “the pioneers” of work with skinheads include the Russian national socialist party (RNSP); prior to 1998 – the Russian national union, RNS; leader – Konstantin Kasimovsky). The RNS “Stormovik” (Attack plane) newspaper (not published since October 1998) continually praised skinheads' “feats”. According to some data, the skinheads' edition “Pod Nol” is financed by RNS-RNSP. RNS set up a special “department” for work with skinheads and appointed persons responsible for “that particular aspect of work”. Guskov, leader of “Skinlegion” regularly speaks at RNS-RNSP meetings. RNSP also oversees the publication of “the Natsiya” or Nation magazine of “the new Right” that is popular with skinheads. “National Front” is one more Right radical organization that is actively working among Moscow skinheads (leader – Ilya Lazarenko), it calls itself alternatively “the Navi Church” or “The Sacred Church of the United White Race”. In St.Petersburg skinheads are patronized by the Party of Liberty (prior to 2000 – the National Republican party of Russia, NRPR; leader –Yury Belyaev), in the cities of the Volga region and in Krasnodar – by RNE and “Russkaya Gvardia” (another splinter from RNE).
Several years ago, NNP – the Peoples' national party (leader – Alexander Ivanov-Sukharevsky) was most active in the work among skinheads. NNP became especially active after Ivanov-Sukharevsky arrested in February 1999 on a charge of promoting national hatred, found himself in the same cell with Semen Tokmakov, leader of the skinheads' group “Russkaya Tsel”. After nine months of pre-trial detention Ivanov-Sukharevsky was released (at the request of some State Duma deputies) under his recognizance not to leave and in April, 2002 he was convicted conditionally- and almost immediately found himself under an amnesty. The specificity of NNP work among skinheads is that NNP is not so much trying to recruit them as members of their party but to disseminate among skinheads an ideology of “Russism” invented by Ivanov-Sukharevsky. Russism is rather exotic Right-wing radical ideology, incidentally, quite accessible for perception of a typical skinhead. Thus, despite continually emphasized commission to the Orthodox Christianity, Russism is quite lenient towards the Aryan paganism (in the spirit of national-socialism), inasmuch as ”race is above faith” and “descent unites while religions disunite.” Russism is building a bridge from pre-revolutionary orthodox monarchism over to national-socialism: according to Russism, in the 20th century there were “two great Aryan heroes”- Nikolas the Second and Adolf Hitler, notably, Hitler acted as an avenger for Nicolas the Second who “had been sacrificed by Bolsheviks as a ritual victim and the Jews and attempted to bring in “the Cross-Swastika to Russia enslaved by the Jews”. Surely, NNP used to find common ground with the skinheads' community in the past (for instance, the NNP “Era of Russia” newspaper took clearly an interest in the music meant for the Right-oriented youth) and the NNP “Naslediye Predkov” or Heritage of Ancestors magazine which Vadim Shtep, a prominent figure of the Right counter-cultural community, contributed to, enjoyed great authority among “most advanced” skinheads. Having published in April, 1999 A.Ivanov-Sukharevsky's and S.Tokmakov's joint letter from the Butyrka prison, the NNP “Ya-Russky” newspaper became very popular among nazi skinheads.
After being released from prison S.Tokmakov (nicknamed “Buss”) together with the entire “Russkaya Tsel” group joined NNP with the right of “the party's youth organization”. Since that time Buss has been editing the last (fourth) page of the “Ya-Russky” newspaper set aside for “Russkaya Tsel”. By now, (thanks to the NNP financial backing and its regional contacts) the “Ya-Russky” newspaper has become a most readable periodical among skinheads.
At the moment, though, the NNP activity and that of pro-NNP skinheads has noticeably subsided which may be explained by the fact that the party is going through a certain crisis (which is usually common in fascist one-man parties identified with their leader which NNP is) after an October 3, 2003 terrorist act carried out at the NNP headquarters – an explosion that left Ivanov-Sukharevsky seriously wounded (he lost one eye and is faced complete blindness). It is noteworthy that our ultra-nationalists started working with skinheads only after they have received relevant instructions to that effect from its Western “counterparts”. Beginning from 1997, representatives of neo-fascist factions from USA, Germany, Czechia and Austria have been repeatedly coming to “share their experience” of work among young skinheads. Specifically, visits were made by “experts for work with skinheads” from Ku Klux Klan and NSDAP/AO organizations from the USA, “experts from “The YoungVikings” organization (outlawed in Federal Germany), the German peoples' union, “the Steel Helmet” organization (also outlawed in Federal Germany), the National Peoples' Front, “the Union of the Rightist” and other groups from Germany. According to some sources, they have established a channel to supply literature, outfit (stripes), audio-cassettes and “uniform” to our ultra-nationalists and skinheads through ultra-nationalist and paramilitary organizations of Estomia and Latvia, such as Kiteseliit, “Omakatse”, aizsargs. 18
In most Russian cities skinheads feel quite secure and free from punishment. The police and authorities obviously sympathize with them. Choi Yun Shik, president of the South-Korean Students' Association studying in Moscow, and Gabriel Kotchofa, president of the Moscow Association of Foreign Students, are unanimous that hundreds of times the Moscow police have dismissed applications of foreign students - victims of skinheads- for opening criminal investigation. Colonel Michael Kirilin of the FSB (Federal Security Agency) Center for Public Relations and Vladimir Vershkov from the Chief Police Directorate (GUVD) press-service have stated with one voice to a “The Moscow Times” correspondent that their services do not see skinheads as something posing a threat. 19 Apparently, many find the existence of skinheads profitable as the non-organized skinheads may well be blamed for one's own crimes. Thus, skinheads were accused of having carried out the May, 1997 raid on a Tadjik refugee camp in the Moscow suburbs (when among other victims, a baby was killed), although, it was obvious that the pogrom in the camp was the doing of professionals.
Both the authorities and the media have long been trying to turn a blind eye to the skinheads' terror. By way an example, I would like to relate a story involving the teachers' Pervoye Sentyabrya” or First of September newspaper whose leadership has been refusing for four months to publish Ulyana Nikolayeva's article on skinheads, claiming the phenomenon to be “non-typical” and the theme – “a false sensation” unless the actions of skinheads have entailed in May, 1998 the above mentioned international scandal. 20 Likewise, in 1998-1999 the “Vek”, “Delovoy Vtornik”, “Tribuna” newspapers refused to write about skinheads, describing the topic as “grime and slime” (the editor-in-chief of the Vek” newspaper openly claimed that writing about skinheads' terror is tantamount to “spreading bad examples” as if potential skinheads were reading the Vek newspaper meant for business community!) 21 Given demonstrative inaction by authorities and silence of the press, in late 2000 skinheads went over to more serious mass organized actions – pogroms. The first pogrom took place on October 21, 2000 in Moscow at the Vietnamese hostel in the vicinity of “Sokol metro station. Since the authorities and the media exerted every effort to hush up the incident, impunity incited skinheads for the next pogrom – that of the Armenian school in Moscow on March 15, 2001. Although the pogrom was stopped by the police, not a single participant in the violence was detained while the police have done no more than driven skinheads away. Despite the protests of the Moscow Armenian community and official structures of the Republic of Armenia, the authorities did everything to hush up the incident and prevent the escalation of the scandal. 22
The next stage was pogrom organized at the Yasenevo market-place on April 21, 2001. As the pogrom featured an unprecedented scale (it involved about 300 skinheads, up to 50 stalls and kiosks were destroyed, ten injured persons were delivered to hospitals and skinheads eventually, came into clash with the police which resulted in the arrest of fifty persons) it was impossible to hush up the incident, materials on the pogrom were shown by all television channels, the developments received wide coverage in the press. In the long run, six pogrom-makers were brought to trial, including Andrei Semiletnikov (nicknamed “Dymson”), deputy editor-in-chief of the ultranationalist “Russky Khozyain” or Russian Master newspaper who was declared “an organizer” by the investigation. However, due to various legal procedures, no final sentence in the case has been anounced up till now – it is noteworthy that Semiletnikov was charged not with “stirring up national and racial hatred and discord” nor with “organizing mass disturbances” but merely with “hooliganism” and with “inciting minors to commit a crime”. It is likewise noteworthy that the number of the defendants dropped from six to three with the passage of time, of whom only Semiletnikov remained in pre-trial detention and that the court hearings invariably turned into nationalistic meetings – and on one occassion almost ended in the beating of Armenian interns who happened to be in the court building.23
Next pogrom took place on October 30, 2001. Having started in the market-place near “Tsaritsyno” metro station, the pogrom continued at several metro stations, inside metro train cars and ended outside the “Sevastopol” hotel which is the place of compact residence of Afghanistan refugees. The pogrom involved at least three hundred skinheads, over eighty persons were injured, twenty two were hospitalized, four persons (an Armenian – resident of Moscow, a citizen from India, a citizen from Tadjikistan and an Afghan refugee) were killed. The developments provoked wide public response and were covered by all mass media. The Moscow authorities were forced to set up within the Chief Police Directorate a special division against extremism among young people (headed by S.Zherebin, later – by A.Ambarov.) Notably, the division took on officials who had never before dealt with such kind of offences, therefore, the division may not be effective. The FSB declined to provide Zherebin with data on skinheads, explaining that FSB had no information available on the subject.
The court hearings in the case on the Tsaritsin pogrom completed on November 20, 2002. Although the pogrom involved three hundred persons, only five of them appeared before the court: three rank-and-file members: S.Polyakov, V.Trubin and V.Rusakov (notably, one of them, S.Polyakov, was at the time of detention, under his own recognizance not to leave in connection with the Yasenevo pogrom case), S.Klimanov who bought reinforcing bars to organize the pogrom and, finally, Michael Volkov, an intermediary between the pogrom instigators and perpetrators. The court failed to identify those who had paid for the pogrom and declared Volkov to be an organizer; Volkov was sentenced to nine years' imprisonment. Rusakov, Polyakov and Trubin got three years each and S.Klimanov got away with a suspended sentence. In January, 2004, however, Volkov had his sentence commuted from nine to five years' imprisonment as the Supreme Court agreed with the defence that Volkov's fault as a pogrom organizer had not been proved.
The Yasenevo and Tsaritsin pogroms offered examples for imitation. On February 16, 2002, skinheads, numbering from 150 to 200 persons, staged a pogrom in St.Petersburg, in the Prosvescheniye prospect. Shouting racist slogans, skinheads beat passers-by, crushed trade kiosks and advertising shields, smashed up shop windows and overturned cars. The police detained twenty seven pogrom-makers. On the night from May 12 to 13, 2002, forty skinheads staged a pogrom in Stary Arbat street: they smashed the window glass of shop windows and kiosks, overturned chairs and street stalls, beat passers-by. The police detained eighteen persons. Shortly afterwards the detainees were set free and the police denied the very fact of pogrom. On June 9, 2002 over twenty skinheads attempted to stage a pogrom of the Vietnamese hostel but after arrival of the police went away. The police that initially promised to catch all pogrom-makers, a day later, were already denying the very fact that the incident took place. 24
In April, 2002 the media, contrary to its previous tactics, launched a campaign of hysteria around nazi skinheads, having timed it for April 20, Hitler's birthday. Although no outbreak of nazi skinheads' activities was observed at the time, the media picked up earlier incidents to blow them out of proportion and fuel fear by inviting comments from law enforcement officials, experts and public figures. In fact, skinheads were given immense publicity. PR-agencies provided media with pre-paid texts expounding in detail the ideology of skinheads, explaining skinheads' logos, etc. 25 Ivanov-Sukharevsky and “Buss” were given an excellent opportunity to set forth at length their fascist, racist, anti-Semitic views both on TV and in major periodicals. 26
In all likelihood, the entire April campaign in the media had been secretly organized and orchestrated by special services and/or the Kremlin – in order to push through the State Duma a bill against extremism. In reality, the scope of the skinheads' terror, both prior to and after the spring of 2002, was in no way different from that observed in the spring, the mass media, however, displayed no particular interest in it at that time. 27
Despite the creation of Zherebin's division and close attention paid to skinheads by the Moscow police, the Tsaritsyno and Yasenevo pogroms turned out to be not the last ones in Moscow. On June 3, 2003 about a hundred skinheads staged a pogrom at the Fili” metro station and inside a metro train heading for the downtown from the “Bagrationovskaya” metro station. The train was mainly filled with rappers returning after a concert of the popular rap-group “Public Enemy” that was held at the House of Culture named after Gorbunov. To stop the pogrom the police had to fire into the air, one of the police officers, sergeant V.Konon, 30, was severely injured in the head and was taken to a reanimation unit. Fourteen teenagers were detained and criminal cases had been opened against them of them.28
In September, 2003 thirty skinheads armed with reinforcing rods staged a pogrom at the “Trudovaya Rossiya” or Working Russia headquarters: they beat “trudorossy” (members of the organization), smashed and damaged with bricks headquarters' premises. Four “trudorossy” were hospitalized in grave condition. 29
In autumn, 2003 Russia was facing a unique situation, apparently, connected, first, with a noticeable increase in the number of skinheads as a result of the spring, 2002 PR-campaign, second, with the specific features of coverage given to skinheads' activities in the media (with emphasis on grave and especially grave crimes), third, with the response of the skinheads' community to judicial processes for the Yasenevo and Tsaritsin pogroms, of momentous significance to them, and finally, with the forthcoming elections to the State Duma. The situation was remarkable as a sharp rise in murders committed by skinheads all across the country (previously, beatings were the norm and murders - an exception) was accompanied by a sharp rise in the number of judicial proceedings against skinheads. That suggests that certain changes took place within the skinheads' community (apparently, associated in part with a change of generations) – skinheads themselves became much more cruel than before – and at the same time, the mass scale of the phenomenon and the increased aggressiveness has made law enforcement agencies react to skinheads' actions in a more appropriate manner.
Thus, in Kirov, in September, 2003, a trial was held of two skinheads, followers of Ivanov-Sukharevsky, who in April 20, 2003 (i.e. on Hitler's birthday) beat to death with sticks native of Tadjikistan F.Niyezov. One of the convicts was sentenced to nine years' imprisonment, another – to seven years' in a penal educational colony. 30 In September of the same year in St.Petersburg there began a trial of skinheads charged with killing on September 13, 2002 in Aviakonstruktorov street, M.Mamedov, an Azeri trader of water melons and of inflicting injuries to another native of Azerbaidjan, O.Magomedov the next day. Although thirty skinheads were involved in the murder, only eight of them appeared in court (one defendant managed to escape from investigation). 31 At the same time, in Volgograd there opened a trial of eleven skinheads – students of local technical schools - who were charged with murder of two Tadjiks and one Uzbek in the course of 2001-2002. 32 In Moscow, in September, 2003 the Tushino court opened hearings in the case of a skinheads' gang of eleven persons (some of them are minors) that on October 11, 2001 carried out a raid of intimidation in the Moscow district of Mitino, in the course of which members of the gang killed one Azeri and brutally beat a teenage rapper and two local residents, Slavs by origin. 33
On September 21, 2003 in the suburbs of St.Petersburg on “the Datchnaya” platform a group of skinheads carried out an attack on Gypsy women and children as a result of which a six-year old girl was killed and two women and a girl of seven were taken to hospital with knife injuries (notably, the child -–to a reanimation unit). 34 On September 29, in the town of Verkhnyaya Pyshma of the Sverdlovsk region a group of skinheads pushed two citizens of Mongolia under a passing car (both were killed).35 On October 1, in Moscow skinheads inflicted grave knife injuries to two citizens of Uzbekistan. 36
On October 7, Nobosibirsk was a site of a high-profile trial of a skinheads' gang charged with multiple assaults for ethnicity grounds (mostly, on citizens from Uzbekistan and Tadjikistan) which in some cases entailed death of the injured. Eleven persons were put on trial (later on, their number dropped to 9). The members of that organization possessed their own uniform, logo-bearing stripes (white fist), were paying membership dues, read “MainKamp”, were armed with knuckle-dusters and electric shock batons. 37 In October of the same year the Moscow city court passed a verdict in the case for murder committed by skinheads of an Armenian native in March, 2002 on the Dmitrov highway “on motives of national hatred”. Two skinheads were sentenced to five and six years' imprisonment but the third one was declared insane. 38
On November 3, in Volgograd there started a trial of eleven skinheads from the local "Volzhky Front” organization who in 2002 killed two Tadjiks and one Uzbek. 39 And on November 12, in St.Petersburg they detained six skinheads from "Shults” nazi organization, and their group leader Dmiry Bobrov,(nickname “Shults”), an editor of the ”Made in Saint-Petersburg” magazine. The group made itself known by numerous beatings of persons from Africa, Central Asia and the Caucasus. For the first time in the domestic legal practice the detainees were charged with setting up a nazi organization. 40
Nevertheless, the " Prima” information agency released on November 24, 2003 information that on November 23, an agency official became an eye-witness of an assault made by a large group of skinheads against three Azeris inside a commuter train between Kuskovo-Karatcharovo stations in the course of which one of the victims was thrown out of a smashed window and, apparently, was killed. The police refused to recognize the fact. On November 29, up to 80 skinheads – chiefly from the “25th Hour” faction (numbering about 50 persons) – made an assault on the students of the University of the Peoples' Friendship directly on the campus – notably, at the time when it was visited by V.Filippov, minister of education. Skinheads beat five citizens of Jamaica ( including three girls) and two of Columbia. The police detained 9 persons (interestingly, 4 of them happened to be Latvians who specially came to Moscow in order to help their “brothers in race” in their struggle). Seven persons were soon set free, two were charged with hooliganism. 41 Also in November, Korean V.Kun was killed in a Moscow-suburban commuter train at the Kuskovo station by a group of skinheads aged from 17 to 23 from the Vorovskogo village of the Noginsk district. 42
In December, 2003 six local public organizations and several prominent public figures of Nizhny Novgorod applied to the city Mayor, the governor and the Chief Police Directorate leadership with a joint request to curb the skinheads, pointing out that, since October, 2003, violent attacks on persons of national minorities have become a regular and mass phenomenon. 43 Rrepresentatives of the Nizhny Novgorod human rights organizations emphasized that “nothing of the sort has been observed in the city ever since the time of pre-revolutionary pogroms against Jews”.44
In December, now in Moscow they detained two skinheads who confessed that a year ago they had killed Azeri E.Mamedov in the Podyemnaya street.45
In late December, in Samara completed were the hearings in the case for a brutal murder perpetrated by skinheads on September 27, 2002 of 19-years' old Armenian G. Minansyan. Three skinheads were convicted from 7 to 8 years in jail, although 37 persons were implicated in the murder. According to Armenian Diaspora representatives, the investigators “have saved other skinheads from prosecution through hefty bribes”, because the perpetrators included a son of an OMON captain, children of Samara's influential lawyers and even of a local deputy. 46 By now, a certain amount of data has been collected to the effect that nazi skinheads have been encouraged, organized and used by the Russia's ruling elite in their own interests. Surely, in the past, there was quite a number of evidence that nazi skinheads were patronized by regional authorities (in Krasnodar and Stavropol territories and Pskov region), especially by law enforcement agencies (in the cities of Saratov, Voronezh, Nizhny Novgorod, Volgograd, Samara). In 2002, however, it was established that nazi skinheads from openly fascist NNP , were getting training at the Moscow OMON training facility by OMON trainers. 47 Considering a specific status of the Moscow OMON, such training could not have been possible without an approval from the leadership of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. (Incidentally, the fact of close contacts between the Moscow police, RNE and skinheads surfaced back in November, 2001, in the course of the trial of police racists Yu.Adanyaev and A.Yevdokimov).48 It was also established that the Tsaritsyno pogrom had been actually paid for and organized by the pro-presidential “Iduschiye Vmeste or Go Together” organization. Initially, they were set on beating “anti-globalists” that, as was reported by Izvestia newspaper, were expected to protest against the Dawos group meeting scheduled to be held at Moscow's Mariott hotel. Since no anti-globalists were found in Moscow, the skinheads that had been assembled, “wound-up” and armed for the occasion, vented their rage by attacking natives of the Caucasus and Afghanistan. 49 Later on, mutual penetration of “Iduschiye Vmeste” and “OB-88” organizations was exposed. 50
The information about contacts of the Presidential Administration (the elements behind “Iduschiye Vmeste”) with the pro-fascist community found its way in the media back in early 2002, 51 and the nazi skinheads with leanings towards “The Hard Rock Corporation” of Sergei Troitsky, nicknamed Spider, known for his ultra-nationalist views, even took part in actions of support for Voloshin. 52
Noteworthy is the fact that, out of the three main varieties of the world skinheads' movement, i.e. nazi skinheads, “red skinheads” and “trads”, only the former got established itself in Russia, while in many countries the majority of skinheads are “trads”, i.e. traditional skinheads, apolitical young people that perceive skinheads' culture exclusively as vogue) and there are countries or regions (such as Mexico, Columbia, the Basks' country in Spain, the lands of Bremen and Hamburg in Federal Germany) where the overwhelming majority of skinheads are “red skinheads” (or anti-fascist skinheads who have inherited the traditions of “the first generation” of skinheads- an internationalist working youth movement of major British cities of the late 60s). Undoubtedly, that is connected with the fact that in Russia, in the last ten years, the Western nazi skinheads have been the subject of numerous articles (taking, (sometimes, the space of an entire page or even two pages) and of a great number of television stories (including a half-hour long interview with Tomas Mittsger, “father” of the American nazi skinheads and leader of “the White Aryan Resistance” fascist organization), while not a single article has been written or a television broadcast has been made about “red skinheads”. Obviously, that is explained by the Left political leanings of the red skinheads. Thus it follows that we are dealing with a deliberate policy of those who are in control of the media market in Russia: racists, fascists and anti-Semites, in their view, are posing a less serious threat than the Left anti-fascists.
The Russian skinheads themselves have no any common detailed ideology. Ideologically, they are spontaneous racists, xenophobes, machos, militarists and anti-intellectuals. 53 However, the continuous propaganda conducted among skinheads by ultra-nationalist parties has resulted in the fact that skinheads are increasingly becoming concious fascists, anti-Communists, orthodox fundamentalists and anti-Semites (specifically, such an ideological mix imposed upon the skinheads' community by “Salazar”, a ”theoretician” of the Russian nazi skinheads 54). By the way, initially, Russian skinheads were not remarkable for their anti-Semitism. Their racism was of a brutal type, aimed at most conspicuous representatives of non-Europeoid races: Negroes, biracials, Mongoloids. Attacks on the Jews were at all non-typical. But having been subjected to “ideologization” by extreme ultra-nationalists, skinheads have absorbed all the basic dye-hard reactionary mythologems, including those about “the Jewish-Masonic conspiracy”, “Bolsheviks as agents of international Zionism” and “the Russian people having been oppressed by the Jews”. 55 Hence - the above mentioned attacks on synagogues and desecration of Jewish graveyards in Nizhny Novgorod and Saratov 56 – which, until quite recently, was not, at all, characteristic of skinheads (the goal of “driving “blacks” away from Russia” does not imply fighting the dead). Whereas the nazi skinheads' attacks on synagogues (besides those mentioned above, there were also attacks on synagogues in the spring of 2002 in Saratov and in April, 2002 in Kostroma ) 57 might be explained by fighting against “alien religion” and “hotbeds of international Zionism”, the May 9 (!), 2002 incident in Voronezh when skinheads had beaten up street musicians only because they were playing Jewish melodies, was just impossible several years ago. 58 The fact, amazing to many Western journalists, that pro-anti-Semitism skinheads (specifically, from “the Russkaya Tsel” group) have repeatedly come out in support for Israel in the Middle East conflict 59, is easily explainable: the nazi skinheads' racism is not “zoological”, but applied in nature: they are not against the Jews living in Israel, same as the Chinese – in China, Koreans – in Korea, Azerbaidjanians – in Azerbaidjan, the Arabs – in Arabic countries and Negroes – in the countries of Black Africa. But since the Jews are leaving Russia primarily for Israel and the Arabs, on the contrary, more often than not, are coming from Arab countries to Russia, it is only logical to come out in support of Israel in public. Such position just overshadows the fact that skinheads deny both the Jews and the Arabs (same as other “aliens”) the right to freely choose their place of residence.
“The flexibility” of the skinheads' anti-Semitism also manifests itself in the story about a mass public rally staged by St.Petersburg's skinheads from the fascist “Partiya Svobody” or Party of Liberty organization, protesting against ”seizure of Russia's forest lands by Zionist capital”, i.e. by the “Ilim Palp” company of Zakhara Smushkin (a Jew by origin). The rally was organized with the money of outstanding St.Petersburg's banker Vladimir Kogan (Smushkin's business competitor) with skinheads being undeterred by the Jewish origin of Kogan. 60 There are but insufficient data available about social background and make-up of skinheads in Russia. The first generation of Russian nazi skinheads (in mid 90s) basically consisted of children from families of modest means, schoolchildren, students of vocational and technical schools. 61 With the passage of time, however, the situation has changed. The skinhead's outfit alone (“appropriate” boots, pants, bomber” jacket, stripes, “Celt's” tattoos, etc.) is quite expensive (it costs approximately 15 thousand Rubles at Moscow prices) – no such money is affordable to the poor. Today's skinhead, most often, is the owner of a pocket computer and cellular telephone. In the cities of Moscow, Nizhny Novgorod, Voronezh, Krasnodar, Volgograd skinheads, for the most part, are children from middle-class families, frequently - representatives of medium and small-sized business (largely from the sphere of services and trade). They are inclined to perceive “aliens”, primarily, as competitors in business and operate with “family business” categories in the hope to oust competitors from business not through fair competition but with the help of political mechanisms, i.e. through protectionist measures aimed at restricting business activity of “non-indigenous population”. 62
While on the subject of prospects for the skinheads' movement in Russia, it should be noted that any campaign whatever against skinheads is bound to be an emergency-job and is invariably associated with this or that high-profile crime committed by skinheads. Thus, at the moment, St.Petersburg is witnessing another such campaign prompted by an incident that occurred on February 9,2004 when a group of unidentified persons (most likely skinheads) armed with knives, sticks and baseball beats, shouting “Russia – for Russians!” and “Kill the blacks!” attacked Tadjik Yusuf Sultanov, 34, his daughter Khurshed Sultanova, 9 and his nephew Alabir Sultanov, 11. As a result of the attack, Yusuf and Alabir Sultanov were injured and Khurshed who got 11 knife wounds, was killed. Only after governor of St. Petersburg Valentina Matvienko had made a public statement condemning the incident and demanded that the GUVD leaders “get the murderers, no matter how difficult”, the incident made a news for the media and was highlighted by all media outlets. Meanwhile, neglected remained the fact that, almost simultaneously with the incident – on February 10, 2004 – in the city of Yekaterinburg a gang of skinheads killed a punk spectator at the concert of “the Grazhdanskaya Oborona” or Civil Defence rock group. 63
More than that, officers of No. 18 (anti-extremism) division of the Department Against Organized Crime (UBOP) handling the case of Sultanovs, initially refused to recognize the racist character of the crime and later acknowledged to Gazetta” newspaper correspondent that their bosses had requested them “not to confirm that those were skinheads”. 64 It should be mentioned that the UBOP No. 18 division “made itself famous” on May 18, 2003 for breaking up an authorized anti-globalists' meeting in the Marsovo Field in an unreasonably cruel way – the injured demonstrators asserted that the brutal beatings that they had been subjected to were just revenge by UBOP members (and personally by A.Chernopyatov, head of No.18 division) for earlier exposures made by anti-globalists of the close ties that the division officers had with the fascist Liberty Party headed by Yu.Belyaev (Chernopyatov was his personal friend). 65
The practice showed that where skinheads had been subjected to pressure brought to bear by law enforcement agencies (in Moscow, St.Petersburg) or by other youth subcultures (in Yaroslavl, Tolyatti), the skinheads' movement quickly ceased to grow and became less active, in some cases (as in Yaroslavl) it was reduced to a minimum. However, inasmuch as the law enforcement agencies conduct the anti-skinheads' campaign from time to time and as an emergency job, then, as is shown by the experience of Moscow and St.Petersburg, as soon as the campaign abates, skinheads tend to regain their lost positions and the movement starts growing again, gradually attaining the peak of its criminal activity. As to special programs that would counteract skinheads' hazard, those do not exist in the country.
All youth subcultures that have arrived to Russia from the West undergo two stages in their development: first, they establish themselves in capitals and major regional centers, then, after they have exhausted a potential membership base, their growth ceases. After a while, as soon as a subculture comes to be viewed in the province as a capital's youth vogue, there comes “a second wave” – that of imitation – when the subculture spreads to smaller towns which, ultimately, ends in the redoubling of the subculture's numerical base. Following the April, 2002 All-Russia PR-action of skinheads' publicity, we observed “a second wave” of dissemination of the skinheads' subculture in our country – nowadays, skinheads may be found in cities and towns that have not seen them prior to the spring of 2002 (Nizhny Tagil, Kamensk-Uralsky, Pervouralsk, Serov, Verjhnyaya Pyshma of the Sverdlovsk region; Magnitogorsk, Zlatoust, Kopeisk of the Chelaybinsk region; Berezniki, Krasnokamsk of the Prem region; Balakovo, Engelsk of the Saratov region; Mitchurinsk, Kirsanov of the Tambov region, etc.) Whereas, prior to April 2002 the total number of skinheads in Russia was approximately 35-40 thousand, upon the expiration of “the second wave” that number is expected to reach 75-80 thousand (after which the growth will cease). Bearing in mind that, in contrast to the West, not a single youth subculture in Russia has disappeared by itself (including subcultures that have already disappeared in the West, like hippie or punks), one may well predict that skinheads have gained a firm ground among the young people in Russia for a long time.
The pessimistic forecast is associated with the fact that the country has failed to remove the basic factors responsible for escalation of the skinheads' movement. Mass unemployment and a social and property gap between different strata of the population have not been overcome. The school reform is being implemented by the same people and along the same lines as before which has already brought about mass barbarization and xenophobiazation of the rising generation. The war in Chechnya has not been discontinued. The nationalistic propaganda still continues, same as publication and selling of periodicals and books of nationalistic, great-power-chauvinist, fascist and anti-Semite character. What is more, in the last years, there has occurred legalization and legitimatization of the imperial, great-power ideology as many politicians advocating great-power-imperial views have moved from a politically marginal sphere into “big politics”. Increasing clericalization of the country is observed with the school rapidly losing – contrary to the Constitution – its secular character and preferences are given solely to one confession – the RPTs or the Russian Orthodox Church, while conservative, xenophobia-based elements are gaining momentum within the RPTs itself (which is graphically illustrated by the row about the xenophobia-charged and openly anti-Semitic text-book “The Basics of the Orthodox Culture” by A.Borodina). The system of extra-school education of children and teenagers has not been re-stored. “The mass culture” (gutter press and literature and also vulgar talk-shows and home-made TV serials of hit films) have turned into a source of on-going dissemination of xenophobia-based (primarily, anti-Caucasian) sentiments. No systematic anti-xenophobia propaganda is conducted, to say nothing of education.
All that creates most favourable conditions for further escalation and dissemination of the skinheads' subculture in Russia – the more so that the subculture, not structurally registered or formally organized, has fallen outside of the Law Against Extremism, primarily, designed to exercise control over registered (or at least, rigidly structured) organizations.
In case of re-print reference to IBHR is a must
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2.Druzhba narodov. 2002. ?.2. p. 135; Obschaya gazetta. 2001. ? 13.
3. Svobodnaya mysl-XXI. 2000. ? 4. p. 48.
4. Izvestiya, March 24,1999.
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36.Russky kuryer October 4, 2003.
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65. See: Smena May 20, 2003; May 21, 2003; www.rpk.spb.ru; www.rpk.len.su