This year, Hitler's birthday - 20 April - was marked by the intimidation of minorities, neo-nazi demonstrations and a heightened police presence in the main cities. Foreign students were asked not to leave their hostels for several days lest they should be attacked, a fact which casts doubt on the ability of the police to afford them adequate protection.
No hate crimes were registered for 20 April itself perhaps, because this kind of information is usually delayed or because the neo-nazis did not want risk engaging in violence out of fear of the police. Usually an increase in neo-nazi violence is recorded during the fortnight around 20 April. This year was no exception with seven people murdered and more than twenty people injured in April in Moscow, St. Petersburg and other Russian cities. Six of the seven murders took place in Moscow.
On 16 April, Karen Abramyan, 46, a Moscow businessman and an ethnic Armenian, was stabbed to death by two youths in front of his apartment block. His son witnessed the assault.
The same day the body of a 26-year-old ethnic Tajik was found, with 35 stab wounds, in another Moscow district. Two students have been arrested in connection with both these crimes and they are believed to be responsible for some other recent hate attacks in Moscow.
On the weekend after 20 April, several demonstrations were held in Moscow. Remarkably, the city authorities permitted two far-right demonstrations, while a peaceful human rights "excursion" was dispersed when, on 22 April, about 20 people came to the city centre to visit the scenes of the most violent police behaviour during the internationally reported 14 April anti-Putin protests. The twenty had no slogans or leaflets on them but found themselves facing several hundred police. Five of the human rights activists were subsequently detained. Meanwhile, nazi slogans and salutes at the two permitted right-wing demonstrations on 21 did not provoke police intervention.
One of the right-wing demonstrations, attended by about 250 people, took place on Slavyanskaja Square, close to President Putin's administration building. The organisers, the so-called Party for the Defense of the Russian Constitution ("Rus"), invited members of the National Socialist Society (NSO) and of the violent neo-nazi Format 18 to take part in their meeting whose theme was, incredibly, freedom of choice. Maxim Martsinkevich, Format 18's leader, then made a cynical announcement on his website, inviting his comrades to come and celebrate the birthday of... "one of the creators of the Cyrillic alphabet, whose monument stands on the square".
Other national socialist organizations present included RONS (Russian Nationwide Unity), the Russian Will and others.
The rally culminated with a speech made by NSO boss Dmitry Rumyantsev and broadcast widely on the Internet, inciting violence and claiming racial superiority. Special police troops, present to maintain order, did not intervene.
Another nationalist event took place the same day at the city centre Pushkinskaya Square. The main demand expressed at this meeting was to change the name of one of Moscow's streets from Ahmet Kadyrov Street to the Street of the Pskov Commandos (in memory of soldiers from Pskov killed in Chechnya).
This rally was attended by as many as 300 people from the Slavic Union (SS), the National State Party of Russia (NDPR), Russian Nationwide Unity (RONS), the Movement against Illegal Immigration (DPNI) and the Russian Order as well as members of the so-called "Kurjanovich crew" (supporters of MP Nikolai Kurjanovich) and of the Union of Orthodox Gonfaloniers.
Speakers at the rally also expressed anti-Caucasian slogans and propaganda for violence. Alexander Belov (Potkin), the leader of DPNI, was detained by the police for making an anti-police speech full of obscenities but none of the people making nazi salutes at the rally were arrested.
