Violent attacks against migrants and minorities in the Russian Federation

This chapter deals with violence in Russia, directed mainly against "ethnic aliens" from Caucasus and Central Asia with its peak in 2006-2010, largely because of activities of murderous racist street gangs. Later on, the level of violence decreased, especially after 2014 with the Russian military intervention in Ukraine, when the radical nationalists became divided over this issue and a crackdown against anti-regime nationalists followed. The violence and street activities of opposition radical nationalists against immigrants are almost non-existent today, while anti-LGBT rhetoric has been taken over by pro-regime nationalists. This chapter analyses the period from Putin's coming to power in 2000 as the president of the Russian Federation. It examines a heavily under-studied dynamics of the violent tendencies of Russian radical nationalist organizations and informal groups. The "raid" movements against immigrants and homosexuals, organized by both grass-roots and well-known nationalist organizations, were the main form of vigilantism in Russia for quite a short period of time around 2012-2014. Several new and less-known groups, theoretically capable of vigilante activities against migrants and minorities, have emerged on the ruins of the Russkie movement but they were not very successful in attracting people to its circles. Vigilantism in Russia has three main forms: vigilante terrorism, "people's gathering" and "raid" movement. The most prominent case of the well-organized racist gang as the border case of vigilant terrorism is National-Socialist Society. Between 2012 and 2014/2015, aggressive raids on illegal migrants, homosexuals and drug dealers were particularly popular among the nationalists.