the new russian nationalismRelations with the authorities
In not allowing radical nationalists to compete in the parliamen-
tary elections of 2007, the federal authorities set a course of sup-
pression, although obviously not of total repression. First, there
were fairly large- scale arrests of those involved in racist violence,
many of whom were sentenced to significant periods of imprison-
ment. In part this led to a reduction of violent activity, in part
to such groups going underground and to their separation from
political movements. Although the number of arrests dropped
over time, the impact of this strategy was still being felt up until
at least 2013. As the bulk of radical nationalists are members of
groups inclined to violence, the movement as a whole saw this
policy as a ‘declaration of war’. This raised the temperature of
anti- government feelings within the sector.
Second, the political movements – especially the largest, the
DPNI – were also subjected to significant pressure. No political
activists were imprisoned, but the sense of their being unpunish-
able evaporated: the authorities progressed from a suspended
sentence given to the DPNI leader, Aleksandr Belov, in 2009, to a
ban on the DPNI as an extremist organisation in 2011. The aim
was to marginalise an entire stream of Russian nationalism. The
evident pointlessness of participating in the DPNI and similar
organisations led to a drop in numbers and to attempts at political
manoeuvring by their leadership (see below).
Third, alternatives were created for radical nationalists who
wanted to break away from the groups that had come under
pressure. Structures connected with Russian Image provided the
main alternative, and many of the more radical neo- Nazi youth
groups (that had at that point embarked on marching together
as the ‘black block’) went for this alternative. However, it was
also possible to join the pro- Kremlin ‘youth movements’, and
some radical nationalists apparently saw this as an opportunity
to infiltrate the regime (Kozhevnikova 2010). The arrest of Nikita
Tikhonov in November 2009 revealed the extent to which the
radicalism of Russian Image was unacceptable to the authorities,
and hence, this alternative was curtailed. At the same time, pro-
Kremlin youth groups stopped being used as a soft alternative to