Russia acts to fight rise in Nazism

THE RUSSIAN authorities appear to be heeding warnings from historians and liberals that Fascism could, ironically, be on the rise in the very country that suffered most at the hands of the Nazis.

Last week, the government of the new young Prime Minister, Sergei Kiriyenko, proposed a bill that would ban Nazi symbols, literature and videos currently being sold freely on the streets of Moscow and other cities. Parties that used such symbols would then be breaking the law and would be disqualified from taking part in elections. Parliamentary elections are due in 1999, 12 months before Russia chooses a new president in 2000.

There are Russians who buy Fascist literature out of nothing more than curiosity. Mikhail Orshansky, a Jewish family-man in his mid-thirties, said he had purchased a copy of Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf from a street trader because he wanted to learn about Fascism as a historical phenomenon. "We Russians have heard so much about the Great Patriotic War [Second World War], but only from the Soviet point of view. I simply wanted to know what Hitler himself said."

But other customers are already converted to the ideology of hate, including skinheads, who have been responsible for a spate of racist attacks against African and Asian students in Moscow. Some of the skinheads are joining organised movements of the extreme right.

The Soviet Union lost 26 million of its citizens during the war, more than any other country, and one would have thought one could say with certainty: "It will never happen here." Yet the soil of Boris Yeltsin's Russia, where the masses have reaped few benefits from reform except the freedom to complain about their poverty, is proving fertile ground for a Slavic brand of neo-Fascism.

Extreme nationalist groups are particularly strong in southern Russia, were people feel vulnerable because of their proximity to Muslim and separatist Chechnya.

Of the various Russian blackshirts - from members of Pamyat (Memory), the first Fascist organisation here, to followers of Eduard Limonov, Soviet angry-young-man turned admirer of Mussolini - the best organised and most frightening are the supporters of Alexander Barkashov's Russian National Unity Party. Barkashov, an electrician and karate champion who fought in the uprising against President Yeltsin in 1993, used to belong to Pamyat but broke away because he said they did nothing but "engage in empty talk and dress up in uniforms".

The Barkashovtsi, as they are known, avoid conflict with the authorities by denying they are Fascist and calling themselves national socialists, which they think sounds better to Russian ears. But national socialist equals Nazi to anyone who knows the first thing about history, and RNU members wear black shirts with swastika armbands and salute like Hitler's storm-troopers.

It is hard to estimate their numbers but television reports of their congresses in variouscities this summer have shown packed halls. In interviews, young followers have been unable to articulate their reasons for joining beyond parroting a uniform desire for "order".

The Fascists often profess allegiance to the Russian Orthodox Church, and, while it would be untrue to say the church advocates extreme nationalism, it is certainly the case that many priests do less than they might to discourage it.

Russian Unity distributes pamphlets regularly in Moscow: "Russian people!" exhorted a recent example, "With their latest reforms, our enemies have embarked on the final stage of the destruction of Russia. Only nationalists who put the interests of the country before all else can restore Russian Order on Russian Earth."

The pamphlet argued for policies that at first glance seemed reasonable, for example, "full employment, protection for families and a dignified old age for the nation's pensioners".

But the authors also ranted on at length about how the "little brothers", a term used to describe people from other former Soviet republics, had become "impudent, abusing the goodwill inherent in the Russian national character". This was more or less an open invitation to supporters to attack guest workers from the Caucasus and Ukraine.

"It seems to me that Russia now is frighteningly like Germany in the 1920s," said Vyacheslav Kevorkov, a KGB officer turned writer who devoted his career to developing better relations between the Soviet Union and Germany. "Our people are humiliated, resentful, longing for strong leadership, looking for scapegoats."

The Fascists also hate the West, which they accuse of "colonising" Russia for its raw materials. Ironically, some Russians, whose forefathers were categorised as Untermenschen (less than human beings) by the Nazis, now follow their own creed of Slav racial superiority.

"The world is dominated by America, which bows down to money," declared the pamphlet. "But in its path stand the Russian people, carriers of the best human qualities, placing the spiritual over the material."