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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While racist violence in Russia gets a lot of media attention, similar trends in Ukraine a growing neo-Nazi movement, a large degree of impunity for hate crimes, denial on the part of some officials that there is a problem) go largely unnoticed. UCSJ's local monitor has recorded dozens of attacks on ethnic minorities since the beginning of the year.

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Two stories from this week illustrate problems that Jewish students face in Russia. One the one hand, central and locals authorities are increasingly pushing Russian Orthodox theology in the public schools, though, as usual in Russia, the extent to which this is happening varies from region to region. In addition, a study published last week argued that many Russian textbooks are antisemitic, ignoring or minimizing the history of the Holocaust, during which millions of Soviet Jews died.

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Even the Russian government admits that the situation is worse than ever.

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Two recent stories are indicative of the growing power of the paramlitary Cossack movement. Paul Goble reports that there are more self-identified Cossacks in the Duma now than Communist deputies. On the one hand, this is obviously frightening, but on the other, it shows the obviously ersatz nature of the Cossack movement, since apparently anybody can join (i.e. "we're Cossack too!"). The main question is what makes a Cossack, in their own mind? If it only means being a violent racist who supports the Kremlin 100%, then this is a truly disturbing development.
In a related development, the country's largest Cossack group--the Invincible Don Host--all but promised violent actions against minority Christians.

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More evidence that the Russian government is playing political games with the far-right. This group is allowed to incite violence with impunity at the same time that peaceful opposition protestors are beaten, harassed, and possibly even killed by police.

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Two Nigerian students were attacked by a group of youths outside a store in Vladimir, Russia as police allegedly stood by and watched, according to a November 14, 2007 report by the local newspaper Khronometer. On November 3, the Vladimir State University students went to a store to buy some candy when they encountered a group of seven or eight youths who immediately started to yell at them. The students went into the store, and when they came out, they were attacked with bottles and fists and kicked multiple times. Police responding to their cries for help allegedly stood by and watched, not detaining anybody, and only offering a limp suggestion to "Disperse, there's no need to fight." A police official was quoted in the article saying that police are in the process of deciding whether to open a formal investigation into the attack.

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