In St. Petersburg in September Patriarch Kirill, leader of the Russian Orthodox Church, joined groups of activists marching down Nevsky Prospekt chanting “We are Russians, God is with us” and “Russia, forward!” At the same time, possibly by coincidence, members of the extreme-nationalist, Kremlin-tolerated Russian Community group carried out anti-migrant attacks.
The parade, one of many across the country, illustrated the physical and intellectual intertwining of the Russian Orthodox Church and nationalist organizations, a phenomenon pinpointed by researchers at SOVA, the most reliable clearing-house for data on hate crimes and nationalism in Russia. They may not be the same, but they are often very close.
Although SOVA was officially liquidated in Moscow’s war on human rights organizations last year, several staff have continued tracking trends in hatred and nationalism from inside the country, examining the movement from “above” (state-directed) and “below” (grassroots).
Researchers found the main actor from above was the Church, as the Russian state sought to use it to commandeer the nationalist right, mirroring the way it has used the church’s relationship with ultra-patriotic Cossack formations to secure their support.
Legislatively, the church has also been instrumentalized by the Russian state, a tactic best demonstrated by two direct government acts. The first is a law from November that bans the “distribution by mass media, internet, movies, and advertising materials of the childfree lifestyle.”
Russia is far from unique in facing demographic problems as young people choose not to have children, but the projected decline in its population is much steeper than in many other societies (and is of course made worse by rising numbers of war dead, and emigration to escape conscription and repression.) The Church backed the legislation, saying it “will make it possible to clear the information space from the propaganda of abortion and destructive reproductive behavior.”
Second, not content with persecuting the LGBT+ community, the state is cracking down on the seemingly innocent children’s game of “quadrobing,” which originated in Japan and involves children wearing animal masks and imitating animal behavior.
Andrei Svintsov, Deputy Chairman of the Duma committee on information policy, information technology and communications, said the government is considering a bill to ban the practice and compared it directly to the LGBT+ movement.
From below, Russian nationalists have also been extremely active — especially since the attack on Crocus City Hall by an Islamic State affiliate in March.
There have been large-scale incidents, such as the anti-Roma pogroms in Korkino, in the southern Urals, at the end of October. They were sparked by the murder of 40-year old taxi driver Yelena Manzhsova, who had been transporting two Roma boys and was killed in a scuffle, apparently over the fare.
The next day a meeting outside a Roma business was eerily reminiscent of the Kondopoga riots, which targeted Chechens in 2006. A week of pogrom-style violence, including arson, rocked Korkino until most of the Roma inhabitants had fled. There were demands for all Roma to be called up to military service amid accusations they were not willing to serve the country.
The pogrom was only one of the most notable in a steadily rising trend of hate crimes across Russia, which 18 years ago was found to be home to half the world’s skinheads.
Figure 1 shows SOVA’s recording of hate crimes, with an extrapolation for 2024 based on trends earlier in the year. The data (available here) shows hate crimes for the year are on course to be greater than at any point since 2011.
While it has involved beatings rather than murders, the trend is clear. The Kondopoga-like pogroms and the level of hate crimes suggest similarities with the 2000s.
The increase is driven by anger about immigration, and numerous neo-Nazi and nationalist groups have arisen which prioritize the targeting of migrants. Two of the main such organizations are the Northern Man and the Russian Community.
Russian Community, which appeared at the end of 2020, was founded by people with connections to Konstantin Malofeev, a media tycoon known as the “Orthodox oligarch.” According to the group’s Telegram channel, its aim is to promote the kind of ethnic solidarity among Russians that it says exists among the country’s minorities.
The Northern Man organization operates in 45 cities and some of its aims, as reported on its VKontakte page, are to “revive and popularize traditional Russian values . . . promote the patriotic, spiritual and moral education of Russian youth . . . [and] direct assistance to military personnel and volunteers.” With more than 130,000 followers on VKontakte, it is one of Russia’s most serious and widespread far-right organizations.
The Kremlin actively cooperates with such groups. “The Russian Community and Northern Man are an attempt primarily by the security services to put the nationalists under soft control,” Alexander Bosykh, a former member of the Congress of Russian Communities, said in an interview with the online news site Vyorstka.
“We, nationalists, have lost a lot of time fighting the system and the security forces. Although we often have similar tasks and views on problems,” Bosykh said. “I have a positive attitude to the movements. Now you don’t need to be underground, hide somewhere, disguise yourself,”
The increasing focus by such groups on migrants rather than the war, as underlined by SOVA research, provides evidence of a growing “anti-migrant” campaign in Russian society.
It doesn’t take much imagination to see this leading to a state committed to outright ethnic discrimination — which in a society with as many ethnic groups as Russia should concern everyone interested in the country’s future.
Richard Arnold is Associate Professor of Political Science, Muskingum University, member of the PONARS network, and a Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in summer 2024.
Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions expressed on Europe’s Edge are those of the author alone and may not represent those of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis. CEPA maintains a strict intellectual independence policy across all its projects and publications.
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