 Born in 1962, Alexander Verkhovsky graduated from Moscow Oil and Gas Institute with a degree in applied mathematics in 1984. While continuing to work in related fields, he began taking part in the dissemination of Samizdat publications. In the late 80’s he became a member of the democratic organization, "Civil Dignity," and then Editor-in-Chief of samizdat independent newspaper, Panorama, in Moscow. By the early 90’s, he became Vice President of Panorama Information and Research Center and since 2002, Director of SOVA Center for Information and Analysis.
Since 1994, Verkhovsky’s main areas of research have been political extremism, nationalism and xenophobia in contemporary Russia, religion and politics in contemporary Russia, and the relationship of the state and religious organizations. He has been a prolific author of books and articles on these issues, including his most recent, Xenophobia, Freedom of Conscience and Anti-Extremism in Russia in 2007 (2008). The Center also publishes current news on these issues, quarterly and annual reports, and collections of articles that can be found on the site.
Tell us about the SOVA Center and the work it does.
The SOVA Center for Information and Analysis was established in October 2002 as an NGO. It focuses primarily on xenophobia and nationalism in various forms—from crimes committed by skinheads to intolerant publications in mainstream media—religion in society, and anti-liberal tendencies. A specific aspect of SOVA’s activity is its close cooperation with the human rights movement. We feel that the resulting combination of political research, information and human rights is the best approach to the issues we focus on.
Another area of SOVA’s work covers the issues of nationalism and xenophobia, hate crimes, and counteraction to such offenses. Since the end of 2004, SOVA has produced real-time news reports focused on the project issues. The main subjects of our monitoring are hate crime and response to it, political use of nationalism and xenophobia, and ethnic and religious intolerance in mass media. Our project on hate speech in mass media has continued for seven years. Our methodology enables us to detect trends in ethnic and religious xenophobia, which are not obvious to a superficial observer, but are supported by evidence.
We also attach high importance to legal qualification of certain actions. SOVA seeks to improve laws and policies affecting the ethno-religious sphere, discrimination, and hate crime.
The knowledge base we have built is easily accessible and has been frequently used for analysis by outside authors, as well as our staff. SOVA authors publish their articles and papers in mainstream media and in academic journals inside and outside of Russia.
Who are the targets of this wave of xenophobia? Why do you think there has been such an upsurge in violence against these people over the past nine years?
First we must differentiate between xenophobia as mass moods and ideas, xenophobic public discourse, political ethnic nationalism as activity of organized political groups, and the violent activity of extremist nationalists. These things are related to each other, but they are really different.
Mass xenophobia became the mood not the ideology of the majority in 1999-2000 (during Kosovo crisis and beginning of 2nd Chechen war) and stayed more or less stable since then - about 53-57 % of population, according to Levada Center surveys. But these people have no clear political ideas and do not support political nationalists.
Xenophobic language and ethnocentric approaches in mass media and education became more widespread at the same time. That’s a serious problem. And this process is more or less independent of the government: the latter usually does not provoke it and cannot really stop it. That means that our people are more ready to accept a nationalist political program; they do not want it from independent forces, but from government. The latter has no clear agenda here.
The xenophobic majority understands itself as a majority—thanks to mass media. So xenophobia becomes a kind of common sense in Russia. It is therefore natural that there are several dozens of thousands of citizens, mostly young, who participate in radical nationalist groups and organizations. Only some of them practice violence.
As most of these violent groups are Nazi skinheads, they copy their ideas from their Western counterparts. So the primary targets are people with dark skin [like African or Asian students.] But they are rare enough in Russia and cannot be perceived as a “real enemy.” Such “real enemies” are people from Caucasus (with or without Russian citizenship, but citizenship does not any matter for racists). Three to five years ago they were the main targets.
But there is a prejudice, that if you attack persons from the Caucasus, you may become a target of revenge. And really, in many cases, groups of young men from the Caucasus successfully fight Nazis. We cannot be glad about it, because these groups are often racists themselves and frequently, behave like Slavic racists, but against Slavic people. Anyway the main targets of Nazi skinheads in last three years have been people from Central Asia or the Caucasus.
Targets in first place are Africans and other dark skinned foreigners; in second place are people from the Caucasus; and in third place are young guys from the left and antifascist groups or just from other subcultures that are an alternative to Nazis (for example, punks or emo-kids.) But we must underline: anybody may be a target, if offenders decide that his (in some rare cases—her) appearance is non-Slavic.
Who are the members of these groups and how do they come to join these groups?
Members of hate-groups are very different. It would be a big mistake to say, that they are from low social strata. Their motivation and background has nothing to do with social-economic problems. Even the argument against immigrants, that they “steal our working places,” so popular in the West, is rather unpopular in Russia.
The main reasons, why average people become ethnic nationalists (if that happens), are:
1) They already have very ethnocentric views produced by education, mass media and partly by officials.
2) People are looking for someone to blame, an enemy, not because they are in a bad situation, but because their way of life has become too dynamic and different from previous decades. At one time, the usual Russian complaint was that government was guilty of everything. Now Putin is too popular to be blamed; after the fall of the USSR, class theory has been discredited, so upper classes are not blamed; nor the USA, as they are too far from us (though they are blamed for the financial crisis, Ossetian war and many other problems,) so “ethnic others” are the last option, and it works.
3) They do not believe liberals or communists, as they both are perceived as discredited by vast majority, while nationalists still may look fresh.
Then, if the person is radical, he or she may choose a radical group, including neo-Nazis, because the Soviet anti-fascist tradition as dead, especially for those schooled in the 90’s or later. Young people may also become involved through a subculture, or just by reading texts, books and the Internet.
How many people are estimated to be in these groups?
It’s very difficult to calculate. If to count skinhead subculture, it may be 50 thousands or more, but not all of these people take part in racists violence (not talking about not Nazi minority of skinheads). We may estimate, that about 10 thousand people participate in marches and other public actions of nationalists, and most of them are young radicals. But not all hate group participants take part in such events because of security reasons. We think that about 20 thousand people are involved in various activities of radical nationalist groups, including violence.
As one of the targets of these neo-Nazi skinhead groups, do you and other people fighting xenophobia find you must take more precautions as you go about your daily routines?
I would like to take more precautions, but I have no possibility. It’s very easy to find personal data on anybody in Russia. Some people try to avoid being photographed, but it is not possible for those who would act as a public activist or expert.
What is the government response to the racist assaults and to the groups committing them?
Of course, the government perceives hate crimes as a problem. It tried to make legislation more effective, but chose the wrong framework for that: instead of special legislation on hate crimes (which had been already embedded to our Penal Code) special anti-extremism legislation was adopted. It was too broad and unclear a framework for law enforcement bodies and for the whole society. It was counterproductive.
Now we see how it works. The number of convictions for violence, where hate motive is taken into account, is growing, but very slowly and not every year. The total number is still many times lower then the real number of such crimes (we think, 15-20 times lower). At the same time, the number of convictions for racist propaganda is growing more rapidly. It would be good, but more and more of these convictions are done for minor offences, like racist phrases on the wall or in a web-forum.
So the Kremlin urges law enforcers, year after year, to fight hate crimes and law enforcers give better statistics, but these statistics summarize all types of extremism – hate crime, hate speech, terrorism and so on. Counteraction to hate crime per se is not marked as a priority. At the same time, anti-extremism is more frequently used (or misused) as a tool to suppress basic civil liberties (and not only against political opposition).
Of course, a bad legal framework is not the only problem here. May be more important is the low professional skills of investigators. We may also mention that some law enforcers are sympathizers of nationalists, and that is why they are ineffective.
What do you think the government or the civil society should do to respond to these racist organizations?
The problem has two levels. First—counteraction to crimes. It is simple; we need much better investigation and much more convictions for violent hate crimes. It may be done only if this topic will be declared and institutionalized as a high priority for law enforcement.
Second—influencing those (especially the young) who may be involved in extremist groups. Special programs on tolerance may be effective only in some cases, mostly if they are organized by NGOs. The responsibility of the government is to change school and university curricula to one that is less ethnocentric.
And it would be bad idea just to prohibit nationalist activity. This kind of political spectrum is natural.
What is most disheartening in your work and what gives you the greatest sense of optimism?
I never was too optimistic. I understand that my country is becoming more nationalistic, and that is natural after the fall of Soviet Empire. This nationalism is ethnic and mostly racist, and that is a result of unsuccessful reforms in the 90’s, but even now I think that developments in the 90’s were, in general, better than we could expect. I am sure the situation will be worse in the years to come. Almost everything around us is disheartening, but the only way to do something is not to think about that.
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