Groups Gather to Promote Tolerance, Slavic Nationalism

Groups Gather to Promote Tolerance, Slavic Nationalism

By Sergey Chernov

Staff Writer

http://www.times.spb.ru/index.php?action_id=2&story_id=27520


An annual anti-Nazi rally drew hundreds of supporters in St. Petersburg on Sunday, followed by two less-well supported nationalist rallies held on Tuesday, one of which was banned by the authorities.

Sunday’s pro-tolerance March Against Hatred rally was held in memory of Nikolai Girenko, a local scholar and hate-crimes expert who was shot dead at his apartment in June 2004. No one has yet been convicted of the murder.

An estimated 300 to 400 protesters gathered for Sunday’s event, which has been held every year for the past five years. The rally was sanctioned by the city authorities, but the number of protesters was fewer than at last year’s rally, which drew an estimated 800 supporters.

Activists included members of rights organizations Russia Without Racism and Memorial, opposition parties United Civil Front, Yabloko and the Libertarian Party of Russia, youth movement Oborona (Defense), African Unity, a group of gay rights activists carrying rainbow flags and banners and a large group of anarchists and radical anti-Nazis, many with their faces partly covered to avoid being targeted by neo-Nazis afterwards.

The anarchists were perhaps the largest single group, with about 100 young men and women carrying banners reading “Go Out to the Street, Take Back the City,” “Trash Nationalism” and “Freedom to Peoples, Death to Empires.”

Neo-Nazis had also prepared for the rally by leaving graffiti on a building next to the march’s gathering point near Yubileiny Sports Palace celebrating the murders of Girenko and Timur Kacharava, a punk musician and anti-fascist activist stabbed to death in the city center in November 2005.

Surrounded by OMON special forces, the procession, led by Russia Without Racism coordinator and March Against Hatred organizer Alexander Vinnikov, moved down Ulitsa Lomonosova, across the Birzhevoi Bridge and on to Ploshchad Sakharova, where a stationary meeting was held.

When the marchers approached a University building, several left-wing activists of the Street University, a group that has held free outdoor classes since the temporary closure of the European University earlier this year, displayed banners reading “Universities to the Streets” and “Knowledge in Action” out of the window on the second floor. Several policemen entered the building in search of the activists but reportedly got lost in the unfamiliar corridors.

Next to the Kunstkamera museum where Girenko worked, Vinnikov halted the march and announced a one- minute silence in memory of the late scholar. When the procession reached the square, a stationary meeting was held, with speakers including Maria Gaidar, a Union of Right Forces member and the daughter of Yeltsin-era reformer Yegor Gaidar, United Civil Front leader Olga Kurnosova, singer/songwriter Alexander Gorodnitsky, rights activist and artist Yuli Rybakov, and Malkhaz Zhvaniya, a theater director and representative of the Georgian community in St. Petersburg.

Several speakers accused the Kremlin of provoking national hatred after the Young Guard, the youth wing of the Kremlin-backed United Russia party, held an anti-immigrant rally in Moscow on Saturday. During the event, entitled “Our Money to Our People,” the pro-Kremlin activists demanded that the authorities “send immigrant workers out of Russia.”

Governor Valentina Matviyenko was invited to speak at the rally but no city officials showed up. Although Matviyenko claimed in August that no extremist crimes had been committed in the city in the first six months of 2008, rights activists say the number of hate crimes against ethnic minorities and foreigners actually went up.

According to Sova Center, which monitors hate crimes, between January and August 2008 at least 42 people in St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Oblast were the victims of racist and neo-Nazi attacks. Thirteen of them died.

Despite a massive presence at the rally, the police did not intervene, although a police cameraman filmed the event. Several anarchists were also cornered on the square for passport checks. A policeman copied their personal data into his notebook, but no arrests were made. A police spokesman said Sunday’s March Against Hatred “passed off quietly,” speaking by phone on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, Tuesday’s Day of National Unity, which was introduced by the Kremlin to replace the traditional Soviet Nov. 7 October Revolution Day and celebrates a Russian victory over Polish invaders in 1612, was marked by two nationalist rallies, one sanctioned and one banned.

Although the authorities did not give permission for the Russian March that nationalists traditionally attempt to hold on this day, a Slavic Union-organized rally was sanctioned and drew an estimated 100 nationalists, who spoke against non-Russian ethnicities and freely made Nazi salutes at the Chernyshevsky Gardens on Tuesday.

Although the Russian March, organized by DPNI (the Movement Against Illegal Immigration), which was to progress from Sennaya Ploshchad to Kazan Cathedral, was banned, the activists began to gather in the early afternoon at the square, where the district authorities had installed an inflatable stage and held a patriotic-themed concert under Russian flags.