radical nationalists: true till death?The authorities took the situation seriously, however, and
managed to extinguish this mobilisation. First, in every case the
authorities somehow engaged with the participants, even if only
symbolically: in other words, they attempted to reduce dissat-
isfaction. Second, in an effort not to embitter the participants,
they took hardly any repressive measures against those who
had engaged in rioting with racist overtones. Third, perhaps
even more importantly, the public mood is heavily influenced
by television propaganda,^11 and the curtailment of the anti-
migrant campaign on television significantly reduced the likeli-
hood of further pogroms. And, finally, since December 2013,
the events in Ukraine have increasingly occupied broadcasting
time and preoccupied the citizenry, including the nationalists –
diverting attention away from mobilisation, even on the local
level. Take the last riot of 2013 that followed the ‘Kondopoga
script’, the December pogrom in Arzamas (see SOVA Center
for Information and Analysis 2013b): it was practically ignored
by the mass media, even by radical nationalists themselves.
Moreover, with the exception of an incident with fans in the
Moscow region of Pushkino, there was not a single incident of
this type in 2014.
It would appear that the ‘white revolution’ has been post-
poned yet again. This does not mean that racist violence has
stopped, though. In fact, street attacks in the traditional form
even increased slightly in 2013/14, related to a distinct decline
in police competence in dealing with these matters.^12 However,
many radical nationalists now consider this type of violence inef-
fectual (Tikhonov 2011).
The various forms of what may be termed ‘semi- legal’ violence
are quite a different matter. What is meant here are activities that
involve force, but that may be openly presented as actions defend-
ing the public good, and even claimed to be carried out in part-
nership with law enforcement agencies. Such practices – in the
form of street patrols, for example – were well- known even in the
1990s. At an early stage, the DPNI carried out raids on the homes
of ‘illegal migrants’ together with the police. But this practice was
then simply one among many. Now, in the context of a severe
police crackdown on ‘traditional’ racist violence and the failure of