FROM RUSSIA WITH HATE

If you think confronting the BNP is unpleasant enough, be thankful you aren't fightin the fash in the mean streets of Moscow. Since the collapse of the USSR, and the resultant political and social free-for-all that followed, there has been a steady escalation of violence. And not only from the mafia-esque crime groups working with the remains of the 'old' government to carve up the economy and engage in oligarchical corporate plundering – and bump off anyone who complains, interferers or asks too many questions (see SchNEWS 686). The harsh new realities of everyday life for ordinary Russians discovering that the great new 'democratic', 'capitalist' future was an even bigger stinking lie than communism, have led to an increase in disaffected youth forming extremist groups - and others mobilising to confront them or defend themselves from their persecutory actions. Conflict between groups of bulletheaded swastika-styled skinheads (curiously often also attracted to obtaining jobs in the police) and bulletheaded militant anarchists/anti-fash skinheads has been becoming increasingly hardcore.

Since a 20-year-old anti-fascist punk musician named Timur Kacharava was stabbed to death by a dozen Nazi skinheads in Moscow city centre in 2005 (and the activist with him, Maxim Zgibai, sustained multiple knife wounds and severe brain damage but survived), many anti-fash have taken to carrying knives to defend themselves in event of attack. Well they can't look to the cops for assistance – look at the numerous reported incidents of the police arresting and beating antifascists and anarchists during rallies.

Consider the case of antifascist Alexei Bychin who, last year, was jumped by two men who were witnessed approaching him shouting “Sieg Heil” and making Nazi salutes, and attacked him with a broken bottle. He managed to deflect a head blow, receiving a cut to his arm (confirmed by expert testimony), and defended himself, inflicting stab wounds on the men in the attempt to get away.

Unfortunately for him, one of the assailants turned out to also be special-task police trainee and, in Russia, the filth always look after their own. In May he was sentenced to five years in a maximum-security penal colony for “conscious bodily injury, dangerous to a person’s life”.

In this week's appeal, the Judge dismissed all the contrary evidence and refused to consider changing the charges to an “excess of self defence” which carries a lighter, already-served, maximum sentence and instead upheld the original harsh punishment in just a few minutes. His incredulous defence solicitor later said she did not hold out much hope appealing further to such a biased legal system.

Since Bychin’s arrest, anti-Nazi activists have held protests in several Russian cities, both to demand his release and demonstrate against police saturated with nationalist ideas and 'former' Nazi skinheads and sympathisers. 

On Monday, one group displayed a banner saying “Freedom for Bychin” and a human-sized doll representing a Russian policeman hanged by a rope around his neck on the embankment of the Griboyedova Canal in the city centre, declaring “In this figurative way, the anarchists showed what kind of police reform they want.” It all makes you long for the quaint argy bargy of Birmingham...