Skinheads to be finished off

Today, in Moscow a trial on the case of the last Octorber pogrom in Tsaritsino market, in the south of Moscow, will be launched.

It should be remembered that on October 30, 2001, in the market near to Tsaritsino metro station, the Kakhovskaya and Kashirskaya metro stations, and in the Sevastopol Hotel, some scuffles took place. As a result three people were killed (an Armenian, a Tajik, and an Indian); 23 persons were injured.

According to the Internal Ministry information, about 300 young men and teenagers participated in the scuffles, who were armed with metal rods.

The police, however, did not show their efficiency: thery started to establish order only when most of the pogrom participants had disappeared.

Now, five people are in the dock: Mikhail Volkov and Vladimir Klemenov are accused of organizing mass disorders and hooliganism (Volkov is also accused of implication in the murder); Valery Rusakov, Sergei Polyakov, and Vladimir Trubin are accused of mass disorders and hooliganism. The five are between the ages of 18 to 23 years.

What should I add to this? I could suppose that now, when the trial has stared, in the State Duma and mass media, one more wave of hysteria will arise under the slogan “Everybody to the Fight with Political Extremism!” The latest burst of this hysteria came during the time of theelimination matches of the 2002 Football World Cup, and to be more precise, during the Russian team's match: the Russian mass media's campaign reached its climax June 9-11, as raging fans made a pogrom in the very center of Moscow, on Manezhnaya Square, upset because of the Russian team's defeat. Lock the door, the door of your consciousness. Skinheads, first radicals, nationalist-Bolsheviks, and others will be presented as the main national threat, not only in the Moscow, but in all of Russia.

The capital’s liberal mass media, faithful to the law in Moscow, will loose for some time their yellow (with some blue tint) color and become a black tool of just anger, a mouthpiece of ideas of the “new Russian” reality. And they will have something to write about in addition to their capital high life, which renders to many performances and pleasures and leaves others without a piece of bread. While the latter could be easily numbered among skinheads or other garbage in society.

PRAVDA.Ru correspondent Andrei Cherkasov once wrote an article on the subject of skinheads and representatives of democratic mass media. (&to=http://english.pravda.ru/main/2002/05/06/28254.html' target=_blank>DEMOCRATS OFFENDED: THERE WERE NO MASSACRES!). The question was that, on Hitler's birthday, there were no pogroms forecasted by the democratic press.

In such disorders, like that in Moscow Tsaritisino market or in Yasenevo market, not only Caucasian people suffered, but also occasional passers-by, and the reason was not nationalist ideology, but just the instinct of the crowd. Even if they were not skinheads, but rap fans or bikers, the results would be the same. This is youth maximalism, and it could be expressed even in such a way, especially if it was grown in the soil of hopelessness, despair, and endless humiliation. Russian skinheads, National-Bolsheviks, and others are mostly hostages of today’s Russian reality.

If you go by the Fili metro line and near to Bagrationovskaya station, where the well-known Moscow radio marked Gorbushka stands, you can look through window at the long fence and see an inscription, something like “Buy Russian product, eat Russian food, wear Russian cloths, love Russia, etc.” I cannot remember it exactly, but this should be seen. Everybody protests in his own way.

Pyotr Bely PRAVDA.Ru

Translated by Vera Solovieva

Read the original in Russian: http://www.pravda.ru/main/2002/07/16/44205.html