Anti-Semitism in Russia. January - September 2006

In general in 2006, all main trends observed in Russia before continued and evolved, but similar to other forms of radical nationalism, anti-Semitism became more intense and aggressive.

The biggest incident in 2006 continues to be the attack against a Hassid synagogue in Moscow by Alexander Koptsev, a 21-year-old Moscovite. On 11 January, he walked into the synagogue armed with a knife during the evening prayer and wounded 9 people before being apprehended. In September 2006, A. Koptsev was found guilty of attempted ethnic hate murder and of incitation of ethnic hatred, and convicted to 16 years of prison . The verdict, however, was challenged by Koptsev's defense attorneys.

Fortunately, a broad public disapproval of the attack and harsh response of law enforcement authorities prevented similar attacks by Koptsev's imitators: only once, on 13 January in Rostov, a drunk local resident - who later admitted that he had been inspired by Koptsev's example - walked into a local synagogue armed with a chunk of bottle glass, but no one was harmed.

Physical attacks targeting Jews (or perceived Jews) and driven by explicitly racist motives and ideas are fairly rare in the context of rapidly growing racist violence in Russia. We usually document less than a dozen such attacks each year. Over the nine months of 2006, in addition to the mentioned attacks against the synagogues, SOVA Center documented two other anti-Semitic incidents.

On 19 February in St. Petersburg, a 23-year old student of the Polytechnic Institute, an Israeli citizen, was beaten. When taken to hospital, he was diagnosed with closed cranio-cerebral injury and cerebral concussion. In early August, during the Baikal Shaman Festival in Irkutsk Oblast, skinheads attacked and battered a young woman whom they perceived to be a Jew. For the sake of comparison, in 2004 and 2005 respectively, four and five attacks with explicit anti-Semitic motives were documented. In addition, in July, during an exhibition with a religious theme, around twenty Orthodox fundamentalists yelling anti-Semitic slogans engaged in fighting with religious Jewish participants of the exhibition.

Also, four cases of highly offensive statements and threats targeting Jews in public places have been reported. In April in Rybinsk, Yaroslavl Oblast, on two occasions students of the local yeshiva were verbally attacked by local nationalists, and during a Passover celebration in Izhevsk a group of teenagers threw small stones at the Jews, while offending them verbally. On 25 May in Moscow, activists of the right-radical Russian All-National Union disrupted a Kabbalah seminar hosted by an academic institution. In early August, a regional television channel in Vologda Oblast received a letter from local anti-Semitists threatening to kill the leader of the Jewish community in Cherepovets.

Vandalism targeting Jewish religious and cultural facilities is very common, often combined with threats to life and health of the attending people. In 2006, yet another attempted arson targeting a synagogue was reported in Astrakhan, while in four other cities vandals broke glass windows in synagogues and Jewish cultural centers.

Anti-Semitic graffiti and leaflets appear frequently in virtually all Russian regions.

However, the main manifestation of anti-Semitism is propaganda in mass media. Anti-Semitic articles are published even by respectable mainstream press, let alone small-circulation, left radical outlets. The most outrageous publication of this type was an attempt to resuscitate the myth that ten missing children in Krasnoyarsk were victims of ritual killing by Jews - it appeared in Krasnoyarsky Komsomolets, one of the top circulation newspapers in Krasnoyarks Kray. Moscovsky Komsomolets in Ryazan published a classic anti-Semitic article about the former mayor - known, incidentally, for his anti-Semitism.

There has been positive progress in counteracting anti-Semitic manifestations since previous years. Following Koptsev's attack against the synagogue, the law enforcement authorities widely declared an intention to inspect the Web for radical right-wing content. This declaration alone, combined with arrests of two known right-wing radicals (for nationalist, rather than anti-Semitic propaganda) caused panic among Russian neo-Nazi, so that a number of right-wing radical websites were either closed or revised between February and March.

In addition, law enforcement agencies now recognize nationalism, rather than simple vandalism or hooliganism, behind attacks against synagogues. In Saratov, for example, a man who vandalized the local synagogue with anti-Semitic graffiti was convicted for incitation of ethnic hatred. A right-wing radical activist in Krasnodar was convicted for materials containing anti-Semitic propaganda, among other things, while another offender had the print-run of his newspaper confiscated. However, these are exceptions of the generally tolerant attitude towards anti-Semitic propaganda in Russia.

Whenever anti-Semitic propaganda cases are taken to court, they usually result either in acquittals (e.g. Yury Pozdeyev in Gorno-Altaisk) or in effective release from punishment (e.g. Oleg Kitter, chief editor of the anti-Semitic Alex-Info newspaper in Samara). Even more often, law enforcement agencies deny anti-Semitic motives of such offenses. Therefore in 2006 we witnessed yet another failed attempt to bring to justice the authors of the infamous Letter of Five Hundred containing demands that all Jewish organizations in Russia be closed (while the signature collection for the letter continues).

Hate Motivation in Cases of Koptsev and Others

On 15 September 2006, the Moscow City Court convicted Alexander Koptsev who, on 11 January 2006, attacked worshippers in a Hassid synagogue in Moscow, stabbing nine of them with a hunter's knife. Alexander Koptsev was found guilty under art. 30 (:preparation for crime and attempted crime;), pars. "a' and "l' of part 2, art. 105 of the Criminal Code (:attempted murder of two or more persons, motivated by ethnic, racial or religious hatred), and par. "a' part 2, art. 282 (incitation of ethnic and religious hatred involving the use of violence), and sentenced to 16 years to be served in a strict regime prison colony, and to compulsory psychiatric treatment while in prison.

This was a second conviction. The first one was passed by the same court on 27 March, and the difference was that back then the court did not find Koptsev guilty under par. "a' part 2, art. 282,

while the sentence was shorter by 3 years. The Supreme Court, however, overruled the first judgment on the insistence of the Prosecutor General's Office and the victims' attorneys, and sent the case back to be re-considered.

We are convinced that the first verdict was, in fact, essentially correct. The Moscow City Court then corrected a mistake made by the prosecutors, who often make mistakes in qualifying racist crimes. Please read the following comment published in early April for an explanation of our position.

On 27 March 2006, the Moscow City Court convicted Alexander Koptsev. And оn 28 March, in Novosibirsk, a nearly three-year-long trial of White Brotherhood skinhead group ended in convictions. The group had nine members, all charged with a series of attacks against immigrants from Central Asia in 2002. In early 2006, the group leader, Mikhail Rodoshkevich, was found mentally incompetent, so his case was to be tried separately from the rest. Therefore, the trial ended in eight convictions under pars. "a', "c' part 3 of art. 162 of the Criminal Code (:armed robbery by an organized group, involving the use of weapons, and resulting in serious bodily injuries"), with sentences between 6 and 10 years. Like in Koptsev's case, the trial found that there was not enough evidence to support charges under art. 282. Besides, in the course of the trial, defendants (apparently due to expiration of the statute of limitations) were relived of charges under :participation in an extremist community.;

Both judgments provoked a strong reaction in the Russian society, with criticism of the judicial reluctance to recognize this type of crimes as racist offences. However, we believe that such criticism is often laden with emotion and unfounded.

The problem is that the public tends to misunderstand the real meaning of art. 282 of the Criminal Code. After many years of complaints that this article is underused, many civil society activists in Russia started to see it as virtually the sole provision in Russia's criminal law applicable to crimes driven by racial and religious hatred. But it is not true. Art. 282 of the CC punishes for public actions explicitly intended to incite hatred against certain people as members of racial, ethnic or other groups. In other words, this provision criminalizes "racist propaganda." Par. "a', part. 2 of this article punishes for this type of public propaganda combined with violence or threats of violence. But hate-motivated violence, which is not accompanied by public agitation, does not fall under this criminal provision.

On the other hand, racist crime is still racist crime, even if skinheads do not shout racist slogans while attacking their victims. Even if they do yell racist slogans, but do so in a dark lane in the middle of the night - it can hardly qualify as "propaganda." The Russian Criminal Code provides for a few other instruments enabling courts to qualify crimes as racially motivated.

Firstly, some criminal articles mention the hate motive, which then can be invoked, alongside other specific circumstances explicitly mentioned in the text of the article, as a "qualifying [aggravating] circumstance; calling for a harsher punishment. In Koptsev's case, the hate motive mentioned in the criminal article on murder as aggravating circumstance was invoked by the court that found the defendant guilty of attempted murder motivated by racial hatred. The anti-Semitist slogans that he shouted in the process proved his motivation but did not qualify as propaganda (his "audience' consisted of believers and clergy in a synagogue; we can hardly assume that he attempted to promote anti-Semitism to them). Therefore, the court passed a totally adequate judgment.

The situation of Novosibirsk skinheads is more complicated. The article under which they were charged (:armed robbery;) does not mention hatred as an aggravating circumstance. Similarly, the court failed to find any public propaganda, so the defendants were not found guilty under art. 282. As a result, the court formally did not find the skinheads to be racists. However, the criticism should be addressed to the prosecutor, rather than the judge. The prosecutor failed to invoke another instrument available in the Criminal Code, i.e. art. 63, containing a list of aggravating circumstances, which includes, under par. 'e', the motive of ethnic hatred. This criminal article can be applied in conjunction with any other charges. Russian prosecutors, however, tend to forget about this provision of domestic criminal legislation - we know of only one case where it was invoked: the murder of a Peruvian student in Voronezh this year - and opt for art. 282, which is difficult to prove in this type of offences, and is sometimes inapplicable. Should the prosecutor in Novosibirsk invoke art. 63, rather than art. 282, they would have avoided the problem by enabling the court to use adequate legal qualification of the crime, and saving themselves the trouble of trying to prove publicity and propaganda in the skinheads' attacks.