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Russia: Are Radicals Becoming More Mainstream? Police in Russia are investigating a video, posted on the Internet, that purportedly shows the execution-style killing of two men from Tajikistan and Daghestan. The brutal footage of the apparent slaying -- carried out by a previously unknown ultranationalist group -- has raised the question of how many such organizations operate in Russia with relative freedom. The video was posted on the website of a group calling itself the National Socialist Party of Rus. Hints are made in the footage of a relationship with the neo-Nazi group National Socialist Society. According to the SOVA Center, which monitors extremist groups, there are about a dozen identifiable organizations with nationalist tendencies currently operating on a nationwide scale. These include the National Socialist Society, the Movement Against Illegal Immigration, the National Power Party of Russia, the Russian All-National Union, and the Slavic Union. Kozhevnikova, the deputy director at SOVA, says similar groups are making their presence known throughout Russia. "In actual fact, there are far more organizations like this operating on a local level, political organizations trying to play a political role, demonstrating their aspirations toward political life and activities and so on," Kozhevnikova says. "In practically every region there is an organization like this." … Some of the groups espouse anti-Semitism; many are overtly racist and xenophobic. There are also hundreds of so-called skinhead gangs. Police investigations have found skinheads to be behind the frequent attacks on people with dark skin on the streets of Russian cities. They may be at the extreme end of the spectrum, but the mainstream shares some of their views. A recent survey carried out by the Levada Center, which monitors public opinion, found that 55 percent of Russians agreed with the statement "Russia should be for Russians," while 20 percent of young people did not consider the activities of skinhead or neo-Nazi groups to be dangerous. Kozhevnikova cites a number of reasons for the growing nationalist mood among Russians. "The peak of this xenophobic mood on a domestic level was fixed by sociologists in 2005; [this] domestic xenophobia was first blamed on poor social conditions and then on conflicts," she says. "There's no doubt that the war in Chechnya played a role -- the second Chechen war. It was taken as being a war of Russians against Chechens, Orthodox against Muslims. Of course, that played a very big role," Kozhevnikova adds….”
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