Racist attacks growing in Moscow

"That was the day our fathers and grandfathers saved our country from foreign invaders," said the man, who would identify himself only as Sergei. And yet he did not see any contradiction in handing out fliers glorifying the Nazi ideas that Russians fought against.

Few countries suffered more at the hands of Nazi Germany than Russia, whose people were regarded as subhuman by Nazi ideologues, suitable for nothing more than manual labour to serve the Third Reich. Millions died during the Nazi invasion in the second World War.

And yet, in the last few months, Moscow has been the scene of anincreasing number of racist attacks by Skinheads, drawing attention to a small but violent neo-fascist movement.

Although figures are inconclusive, both neo-fascists and human rights groups estimate that Moscow has about 4,000 Skinheads, mostly young males. And they are becoming more active.

"There have been a substantial number of episodes that have caused us some concern," said Foreign Ministry spokesman Valery Nesterushkin, who has received complaints of racially motivated attacks from the Kenyan, South African, Indian and South Korean embassies, among others, in Moscow.

On Wednesday, a bomb exploded at an orthodox synagogue in the capital, injuring two people and causing extensive damage. Jewish leaders blamed fascist groups.

Earlier this month, a Black American marine was badly beaten by four Skinheads at an outdoor market.

Sitting in his apartment decorated with a neo-Nazi flag and a poster stating that "race mixers should be deported," Konstantin Kosimovsky expounds on the Skinheads’ violentphilosophy, which appeals to the disaffected young.

Often poorly educated and with little hope of finding work, the Russian Skinheads blame racial and religious minorities for what they see as Russia’s decline as a great power. Bored and prone to loitering on the streets, they revel in violence and intimidation.

Kosimovsky is the 23-year-old leader of a typical Skinhead group, the Russian National Union. In his vision of the future, there are no foreigners or Jews in Russia and non-whites are the racial enemy.

Women are confined to the kitchens, bedrooms and churches, and blond Slavic men plan their invasion of the United States, "whose people are cockroaches," ripe for the conquering.

Kosimovsky says he understands — and supports — the Skinheads who beat the US marine.

"For me, it’s offensive to see a Black person walking with a Russian girl in Moscow. And it raises in me the human desire to express my protest," he says, either unaware of or intentionally overlooking the fact that the marinewas with a Black American woman at the time.

Some anti-fascists fear that the extremist views are gaining favour among some low-level officials, including the police, many of whom have nationalist or racist sympathies. Non-Whites living in Russia complain of frequent police harassment.

Indeed, part of the attraction of being a neo-Nazi in Moscow, Kosimovsky said, is the impunity they seem to have. "They can go around and beat someone up and no one will touch them," he said.

In explaining his ideology, Kosimovsky quotes Hitler, although his is clearly a Russified version of Nazi philosophy. Sergei, the young Skinhead at the veterans’ rally, was warmly embraced by neo-Stalinists and other extreme nationalists.