One of Russia's two competing chief rabbis, Beryl Lazar, used uncharacteristically alarming language in describing the threat posed to the Russian Jewish community by rising nationalism and efforts by the government to introduce compulsory Russian Orthodox Christian teachings in the public schools. It may be a coincidence, but Rabbi Lazar's interview was with a German news organization (Deutsche Weld), while just yesterday, he presented a more optimistic vision to a domestic audience.

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The DPNI first came on the scene with its alleged involvement in anti-Armenian pogroms in Krasnoarmeysk in 2003. Media reports indicated that the assailants knew the addresses of some Armenian families and attacked them inside their homes. Now the DPNI is drawing maps of minority-dominated neighborhoods in Volgograd, a project that they may expand to other cities. Will this lead to further pogroms?

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It's a sign of the times that the Kremlin first appointed Rogozin (former head of the far-right Rodina party) its NATO ambassador, and now has one of his allies at a de facto public diplomacy post in Paris. I wonder if the "British friend" that former Duma deputy Narochnitskaya mentioned is from the British Helsinki Group--an org that has no relation to the Helsinki Federation and has attracted controversy for its support of some post-Soviet and African dictators.

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"Komsomolskaya Pravda" often runs nationalistic articles, but in this case, the writer covers the issue from the perspective of the victims. Part 1: http://msk.kp.ru/daily/24088.5/320878/
Part 2: http://www.kp.ru/daily/24089/321077/
Part 3: http://www.kp.ru/daily/24090/321596/

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The problem keeps getting worse and worse.

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On the one hand, Moscow's mayor Yuri Luzhkov publicly condemns xenophobia and last week called for harsher laws against hate speech and hate crimes, saying on April 15 that: "The government must ensure the tranquility of all people regardless of the color of their skin... Xenophobia is a disease that may eventually endanger this country. The main reason for such crimes is the absence of a real punishment." At the same time, his subordinates running the city's law enforcement agencies impudently contradict him and President Putin by denying that racist violence is a problem.

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A few days after the city's chief prosecutor harshly criticized human rights activists for supposedly exaggerating the problem of hate crimes in Russia, Moscow's chief of police Vladimir Pronin denied that there is an organized neo-Nazi movement in Moscow, according to an April 10, 2008 report by the Russian Jewish web site Jewish.ru. Speaking on TVTs television on Tuesday, Mr. Pronin said that, "There is no organized skinhead movement in Moscow, there are just individual excesses." He added that in the first two months of the year, Moscow police registered around 60 crimes motivated by extremism, and that prosecutors opened three hate crimes investigations. As usual, he tempered these numbers by emphasizing that foreign citizens are more likely to commit crimes than Russian citizens, according to police statistics.

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Instead of properly investigating neo-Nazi attacks on anti-fascists, some Russian law enforcement agencies prefer to target anti-fascist activists. Perhaps it's because anti-fascists tend to have little respect for the political establishment and generally espouse left-wing ideas. In addition, at least some within the Kremlin apparently lean towards pseudo-fascist ideology, according to a recent article on one of the Kremlin's chief ideologues.

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The same month that a blood libel was distributed in Novosibirsk, Russia, the medieval accusation that Jews ritually murder Christian children popped up in Sumy, Ukraine. No word yet on any official reaction to these posters, which clearly violate Ukraine's law against public incitement of ethnic hatred.

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Union of Councils for Jews in the Former Soviet Union (UCSJ), a Jewish human rights organization that has worked in support of Jews in the FSU since 1970, is seriously concerned by media reports on flyers inciting violence against Jews in Novosibirsk, Russia last week. Hundreds of blood libel flyers were found posted on homes and apartments in that city warning parents to protect their children from "bloodthirsty Jews" ahead of April 2008 Jewish holiday of Passover. The flyers warned that "these disgusting people steal young children, draw their blood and use it to prepare their holy food. They throw the children's bodies in garbage dumps". This terrible and aggressive lie dates from the Middle Ages, when it regularly sparked pogroms, and was revived in the infamous "Protocols of the Elders of Zion", the Beilis trial, and by Nazi Germany. Russian antisemites have used this xenophobic myth against Jews during the Soviet and post-Soviet period.

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