This summary was distributed on OSCE Conference on Anti-Semitism and on Other Forms of Intolerance, Cordoba, 8 and 9 June 2005.


A grave societal problem in Russia is actual impunity of hate propaganda, even the most radical and consistent propaganda motivated by ethnic origin, race, religion or any other characteristic. The fact heavily bears on two other problems of increasing gravity. One of them is xenophobic prejudices become widespread and quite habitual; another is hatred-motivated violence.

Both the society and the authorities are aware of the interconnection of those problems. In summer 2002 a law :On counteraction to extremism; passed, accompanied by a set of amendments to several other laws. The law was aimed at suppression of any manifestation of extremism. An extremely broad range of activities fell under the notion of :extremism; under the law, from terrorism to propaganda of ethnic, racial and religious intolerance. The scope of :extremism; as illicit activities was defined rather ambiguously, but penal sanctions for those activities were rather strong, e.g. imprisonment for appeal to any extremist activities, facility of an organization or periodical dissolution, provision for suspension of the organization without a court-trial and so on. Now, after almost three ears, one can try to review the experience of the enforcement of the law.


The scope of racially motivated organized violence is increasing every year. Such violence issues mostly from skinheads movement that is rather loosely organized but quite large (several tens of thousand participators). The movement is extending over more and more cities and becomes more and more cruel. As to our data that is undoubtedly incomplete, in 2004 skinheads attempts resulted in about twice as much murders as in 2003 (not less than 45 against circ. 20). As for wounded and severally beaten people, their number amounts to hundreds and hundreds. On the other hand, skinheads do no more perpetrate large-scale pogroms as they used to do in 2001-2002. In 2004 ultra-nationalists much uttered threats against their opponents more often than ever before, and June 19, 2004 a scholar and anti-fascist Nikolay Girenko was murdered.

Effectiveness of investigations of these offences is very law, the length of the investigation often amounts to a year and sometimes is even more than a year. At the same time, in the legal classification of some or other concrete crime of violence, hatred is explicitly referred to as a motive of the crime, and it happens more often than ever. There are several ways to do it, allowed by Russian Law. While in 2003 art. 282 of the Criminal Code (:instigation of hostility;) was applied only as a collateral one to the substantive article (murder, beating and so on; 3 cases), in 2004 there were 3 verdicts of this kind, while in 5 judgements a more correct approach was applied: motive of hatred was considered as qualificatory for the substantive offence, that involves a more grave penal sanction.

So the rate of qualitative and quantitative improvement of law enforcement bodies response, and the rate of hate crime growth are more or less the same. Of course, that's good, but that's not enough.


Hate propaganda still enjoys impunity. Many well-known agitators, both individuals and publications, are not hold to any liability. Criminal prosecution for hate propaganda (art. 282 of the Criminal Code) is rare and it's very seldom that they result in any actual punishment. In 2004 three of the four convicts were in fact freed from punishment (and one was sentenced to a fine); in 2003 the situation was alike (though one of the accused was still sentenced to 2 years of imprisonment)

An effective tool against hate propaganda could be sanctions against publications and publishers rather than against the authors. Fines seem to be the most effective of all possible tools of this kind. Unfortunately, fine is just the penalty not provided for periodicals. Periodical can be only suspended or warranted of possibility of suspension. It used to happen from time to time earlier, but only one periodical was closed under the new Law. Even the number of warrants fell, to our knowledge, from circ. 30 in 2003 to 3 or 4 in 2004.


The situation with punishing the organizations engaged in hate crime or hate speech is hardly better. As before, even if the registration of these organizations is revoked, it's done rather on the ground of some or other technical failure (failure to present information in time to Ministry of Justice and so on) than because of the unconstitutional nature of their activities. Such an approach does not produce any major difficulties for ultra-nationalist groups and rather compromises the idea of counteraction to ultra-nationalists. Revocation of registration because of the use of Nazy or Nazy-like symbolism (as was provided for by the Law of 2002) does not seem to be efficient either. In 2003-2004 a number of organizations were dissolved on this ground, but almost all of them actually did continue their activities, while art. 282-2 of Criminal Code introduced by the Law of 2002, providing for penal sanction for such a use, was applied only against members of a radical Islamist group "Hizb ut-Tahrir" (the organization was banned by Supreme Court as a terrorist organization though it is well known that "Hizb ut-Tahrir" does not practice terrorism).

Ministry of Justice and Office of Public Prosecutor seem to lack capability to produce to the Court convincing evidence of those organizations illegal activities, that are based on the organizations texts and public presentations, though respective information is often quite available.

The very first conviction under art. 282-1 (introduced in 2002) for organization of an extremist association (a group aimed at committing acts that fall under the definition of extremism) or for membership in such an association came out only on May 31, 2005. Meanwhile this clause is potentially very effective, especially against skinheads groups.


So, the Law :On counteraction to extremism; actually contributed to deterioration of counteraction to hate propaganda and made very little to improve the policy of restriction of ultra-nationalistic organizations.

On the other hand, law enforcement bodies learn little by little to apply against violent hate crimes those instruments of the Criminal Code that used to be available even before adoption of the new laws in 2002. Those instruments proved to be quite sufficient. One must just apply them in a more active way.