Minorities Under Siege: The Case of St. Petersburg

Two years ago, on June 19, 2004, Nikolai Girenko, a prominent ethnologist and expert on extremism in Russia, was shot dead at the door of his St. Petersburg apartment. Girenko was the head of the Minority Rights Commission at the St. Petersburg Scientific Union and had been called on as an expert in numerous court cases involving violent extremist groups. St. Petersburg authorities originally maintained that Girenko's killing may have been an act of what they termed "ordinary hooliganism" — even though from the outset it was widely believed he was murdered in retaliation for his work on racist violence. St. Petersburg Governor Valentina Matvienko said at the time that she would take personal control of the investigation, and she did deploy a team of law enforcement officers to investigate the murder, yet for nearly two years nobody was arrested or charged.

The Girenko case was all too typical of a much wider problem in St. Petersburg. Human rights monitors there have reported little progress in investigations and little evidence of high-level action to combat ongoing, frequent incidents of racist violence. Assaults and murders are increasingly carried out with impunity, in daylight. and in public. A proliferating skinhead movement has gained adherents — as reports of openly neo-Nazi groups boldly marching through the city streets are no longer a rarity. Serious assaults and killings with racist motivations escalated in the course of 2005 and into 2006, targeting both foreign students and Russian citizens who stand out for their skin color and ethnic origin.  

The preparations for the July 15-17, 2006 Summit of the Group of Eight Leaders now have brought new attention to St. Petersburg's record of racist violence — with apparent pressure for action from Moscow. In late May 2006, just weeks before the summit, local officials declared that they had solved many of headline murders of recent years with a single set of arrests.

The report of this apparent breakthrough followed the arrests in late May of five young people in connection with the April 2006 murder of African student Lampsar Samba. Shortly afterwards, St. Petersburg chief prosecutor Sergei Zaitsev declared that the five, and six others already in custody, are being investigated in connection with 13 criminal cases, including several high-profile assaults and murders dating back to 2003, including the assassination of Nikolai Girenko.[1]

While the crackdown in the form of these latest arrests is a welcome one, the implication was that the years of racist violence could be tied to a relatively small group of people and to just two small extremist groups, and that these had now been dismantled. At the same time, local officials repeated past assertions that the level of extremism in St. Petersburg had in any case been exaggerated by the media, nongovernmental groups, and others.

In the aftermath of the May arrests, Governor Matvienko herself played down the problem of racist violence in the city, suggesting that the press had unfairly blown things out of proportion. "Over the past few years there has been an attempt to stamp St. Petersburg as the capital of xenophobia," she said, "and, unfortunately, many media outlets have fallen for this provocation…" Governor Matvienko added that she had "carefully followed the investigation" leading to the arrest of the five suspects earlier that week, and concluded that "it has now been established that behind these crimes stand 'puppet masters' who want to discredit Petersburg."[2]

The governor appeared to dismiss the continuing threat offered by the thousands — by some estimates — of St. Petersburg residents who identify themselves with skinhead culture and racist ideology.[3] Referring to those arrested she stated that "I believe that this is the last gang involved in such activities," adding that "of course, one can't rule out that they have their followers." "There are all kinds of youth groups in the city," she conceded, "but they are not dangerous. One just has to work with them" [4]