By Renfrey Clarke
MOSCOW — Russians who have been worried sick about a clinically dead economy, arrogant criminals and a do-nothing government can now take a break from those concerns. The country's leaders have found a new cause for public alarm: extremism.
At the end of the first week of February, President Boris Yeltsin was preparing for a meeting of his Security Council, at which plans for a crackdown on political extremism were reported to be on the agenda.
Soon afterwards, the English-language Moscow Tribune reported, two laws on counteracting political extremism and banning nationalistic symbols and literature would be put to the parliament.
Meanwhile, Moscow mayor and all-but-admitted presidential contender Yury Luzhkov was having his aides demand tough action in the capital against "manifestations of extremism in any form".
As an explanation for this sudden concern, the authorities could point to a march along a boulevard in northern Moscow on January 31 by about 200 members of an ultranationalist organisation, the Russian National Unity (RNE). The march, which received abundant television coverage, was a protest against the banning by Luzhkov of a congress which the RNE had planned for Moscow in December.
The RNE took care on January 31 not to break any laws. Members walked in groups of no more than two along the pavement beside the boulevard. The nationalists eschewed their normal black uniforms, though they wore their stylised-swastika armbands.
After more than a dozen people were arrested for distributing the RNE's paper, Russian Order, leaders of the organisation showed police documents proving that the paper was registered and could be sold legally. The paper sellers had to be released. In an odd scene captured by TV cameras, a senior police officer later apologised to RNE members for causing them inconvenience.
The reaction by city authorities to the march was prompt and vehement. The mayor's press service declared that the Moscow administration was "fully determined" to halt the activity of extremist organisations, and criticised the police, prosecutors and courts.
Reports also indicated that the city authorities intended to press ahead with a prosecution of RNE leader Aleksandr Barkashov on charges of threatening the mayor. In a television interview, Barkashov had suggested he might defy the Moscow authorities by mobilising thousands of his followers.
On February 2, Yeltsin weighed in with a presidential decree outlining what was to be considered "extremism", "national or religious hatred", and an "extremist publication".
The Communist Party, meanwhile, was placed under heavy pressure to allow the passage of the government's proposed laws on extremism. In the past, the Communists have resisted passing such legislation.
The hue and cry over the RNE's demonstration contrasts strangely with the complacency with which the authorities, until recently, have regarded ultranationalist groups. Little effort has been made to enforce laws against racist propaganda, or to diligently prosecute ultra-rightists for their other crimes — which tend to be numerous.
This failure to enforce laws has helped the RNE to grow to the point where it is by no means a political cipher. The organisation is particular strong in southern Russia in regions such as Krasnodar district, where it reputedly has a considerable following within the law enforcement apparatus.
Even if official tolerance of the RNE has ended for the present, at least in Moscow, the indignation is still curiously blurred. Yeltsin and Luzhkov have vowed retribution against "extremists", not against "fascists" or "ultranationalists". Extremists, in the language of the press and television, include anyone calling for radical social change, including groups on the far left. It is not the left, however, that beats up and robs "southern-looking" traders in the Moscow markets.
Luzhkov's outrage at the presence in Moscow of uniformed nationalist thugs is not without a tinge of hypocrisy. The main force singling out ethnic non-Russians for systematic harassment is the city's police force, using flagrantly unconstitutional residence regulations framed under the "anti-extremist" mayor.
To learn what Russia's rulers really mean when they promise tough action against extremism, one could do worse than to look at the practice of the Federal Security Service (FSB).
Inheriting most of the apparatus of the Soviet-era KGB, the FSB is supposed to defend citizens against attack by violent fringe groups. One would expect its chiefs to know an extremist when they see one.
There is no sign that the FSB has made a priority of bringing prosecutions against ultranationalist thugs, or even that it has kept the RNE under close surveillance. On the other hand, the security police have doggedly pursued charges against "whistle-blowing" environmentalists.
The best known cases are those of Aleksandr Nikitin in St Petersburg, and of Grigory Pasko in Vladivostok. Both face 20-year sentences if convicted of "treason through espionage". Now, the FSB has thrown its forces against other environmental activists as well.
On February 2, security police searched the Moscow apartments of Vlad Tupikin and Larisa Shiptsova. Tupikin is an anti-nuclear campaigner with Russia's largest environmental organisation, the Social-Ecological Union, while Shiptsova is a well-known activist in radical green circles. Shiptsova was arrested and later taken to the FSB's Lefortovo Prison.
There is evidence that the FSB may be trying to link the broad environmental movement in European Russia to the so-called "Krasnodar affair".
Last November, two young people in Krasnodar, Maria Randina and Gennady Nepshikuyev, were arrested and charged with possession of weapons and explosives. It has been alleged that they were planning to assassinate Krasnodar governor Nikolai Kondratenko. One of Russia's more high-profile anti-Semites, Kondratenko is also known for his benevolent attitude to the ultranationalist groups that flourish in his district.
The seven-hour search of Tupikin's apartment ended with the confiscation of his computer, letters, diaries and numerous other documents. Different rooms were searched at the same time, so that Tupikin could not observe the actions of the searchers.
Later, Tupikin was taken to Lefortovo Prison and interrogated for a further three hours. His questioners concentrated on Shiptsova and her attitude to Kondratenko. Shiptsova has now been extradited to the Krasnodar district, where her lawyer expects the FSB to charge her with the same offences as Randina and Nepshikuyev.
As well as environmentalists, there are other people in Russia with inconvenient extreme views and demands — trade union and human rights activists, communists, unpaid teachers and miners.
As the focus of the campaign spreads, fascists could be just one heading on a growing list of non-mainstream currents against which the authorities are carrying out tough measures.