Minorities Under Siege: The Case of St. Petersburg

How Prevalent Are Hate Crimes in Russia?

The murder of Nikolai Girenko was hardly an isolated incident in Russia, and in St. Petersburg in particular, where any given week is marred by serious racist assaults, including murder. Russia's hate crimes victims come from the full spectrum of non-Slavic ethnic groups, as well as religious minorities and people distinguished by their sexual orientation. Racist violence is more generally aimed at those who do not fit an ethnic Russian, Orthodox Christian ideal. People from the Caucasus are targeted for both their national origin and their religion, as are other Russian minorities and immigrants. African students are among the "visible" minorities most under siege, but others distinguished by their skin color, their place of worship, their language, or their cultural practices are similarly under constant threat. Members of Russia's Central Asian minorities and nationals of Asian countries have also been increasing targets of violence.

Human rights and anti-racism campaigners, including young people who speak out against racism through music and groups that call themselves anti-Fascist, have engaged in growing protests against extremist violence and are increasingly themselves becoming the victims of that very violence.

Russian human rights organizations and public officials have identified a movement – referred to generally as "skinheads" – as a major force behind hate crimes in Russia. It is difficult to describe this movement due to its relatively underground nature and apparent lack of coordination, but experts estimate that there are up to 50,000 loosely-organized skinheads throughout the country.[5]

While the geography of skinhead activity has expanded throughout Russia, St. Petersburg stands out, according to several hate crimes monitors, as the place where such neo-Nazi groups are best organized, where assaults against foreigners have been boldly committed in broad daylight on downtown city streets, and where, at least until recently, prosecutions have been particularly rare and sentences lenient.

Even a casual reader of the news in Russia's major cities could not help but notice the recent surge in assaults on minorities – victimizing both foreigners and Russian nationals. Yet hate crimes do not appear in any of the official statistics regularly published on crimes. Russia's Interior and Justice Ministries do gather data and compile crime statistics, but official statistics on the incidence and prosecution of hate crimes are neither systematically collected nor regularly reported.

Nongovernmental organizations within Russia have somewhat compensated with their own collection of data on hate crimes. While they acknowledge that their coverage is limited in scope and no substitute for government collection and reporting, these groups all report a steady increase in recent years in the level of discriminatory violence.

For example, the SOVA Informational and Analytical Center, a Moscow-based nongovernmental organization that monitors hate crimes in Russia, documented 31 racist murders and hate-based attacks on 413 individuals in 2005. In the first four months of 2006 alone, the organization documented 15 racist murders and hate-based attacks on 114 individuals.[6]