"Russia is going through rapid growth of aggressive Russian nationalism." So reports Alexander Verkhovsky and Galina Kozhevnikova of the Moscow-based SOVA Center for Information and Analyis in its October 12 report on Hate Crimes in Russia. SOVA is a member of Coalition Against Hate, administered by UCSJ.

And this spells "trouble for the multi-ethnic federation," said Nickolai Butkevich...

UCSJ's research and advocacy director at the first Sakharov Seminar for the 2006-2007 academic year at the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard.

The Sova report notes, inter alia:

Massive ethnic xenophobia increased dramatically.... [A]rchaic forms of political nationalism prevalent in the 90-ies have been replaced by new trends, such as "relatively respectable" populist nationalism targeting migrants, and explicitly neo-Nazi movements which form the actual political foundation of this populism.

Included is a chart, by city, citing statistics of racist and neo-Nazi murders and attacks for 2004, 2005 and January-September 2006.

Butkevich notes, inter alia:

Traditional racial and religious prejudices, forced underground during the Soviet era, are beginning to resurface. A recent poll showed 54 percent of Russians in support of restrictions on non-Russians. Another 41 percent agreed there was a need to limit Jewish influence in education, business, show business, and virtually every other facet of Russian life.

At the extreme end of feeling, neo-Nazi groups and sympathizers are still active both in crowded major cities and in more traditionally tolerant areas of Siberia and the Far East.

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