radical nationalists: true till death?form. And again there is some ambiguity as to what this national
unity means – that is, whether the struggle is being waged for
‘the Russian world’ (russkii mir) (the establishment of trans-
border cultural and political unity with Moscow’s allies), or for
the ethnic Russians. Consequently, national unity must also be
understood as relating to ‘Russian civilisation’ – but with clear
ethnic undertones.
Is it possible to say how this has impacted upon policies in rela-
tion to the radical nationalists? As yet, no. Despite the abundance
of new laws, various declarations and a deluge of propaganda,
there has been very little clarity within Russian domestic politics
in general since the beginning of the Ukrainian political crisis.
Very tentatively, it may be suggested that the authorities’ policy
in relation to radical nationalists has returned to basically the
situation of late 2012/early 2013 – that is, to the state of play that
existed after the collapse of the protest movement but before the
start of the anti- migrant campaign.
The dynamics of violence
All political organisations that may be deemed part of the radical
nationalist movement are connected with racist violence, either
historically or currently. The most obvious examples from the
early 2000s are the National Socialist Society, which combined
politics and violence almost openly; and Russian Image, which
had a sort of military wing in the shape of the above- mentioned
BORN. The radical nationalist leaders themselves have said more
than once that they do not any longer resort to violence, what-
ever the nature of their militant pasts – undeniable pasts, in
the case of such leaders as Dmitrii Demushkin of the Slavic
Union (Slavianskii soiuz) (SS) and Dmitrii (Shults) Bobrov of the
National- socialist Initiative (Natsional- sotsialisticheskaia initsia-
tiva) (NSI). More important is that the activists in their organisa-
tions clearly do resort to violence (SOVA Center for Information
and Analysis 2012, 2013a), and there are no visible boundaries
between the ‘peaceable’ radical nationalists and the ‘warriors’.
However, it is also true that most such crimes are committed by
members of ‘autonomous’ groups that are not part of any political