It happened first in Moscow. On December 5th, through the center of the city from the McDonald's near the Ministry of Foreign Affairs along Old Arbat and Vozdvizhenka to the country's main library, a column of skinheads passed by. Around a hundred youths under the flag of Konstantin Kasimovsky's "Russian National Union" and Ilya Lazarenko's "National Front" shouted during the march, "Russia for Russians, Moscow for Muscovites!", "Well, come one, get the f**k out of here!", "Freedom of speech for Russians!", and "Chechnya is lame, victory will be ours!" In front of the procession was a short youth in a black mask. The kid was banging on a large drum decorated with a skull. Proceeding past musicians the center of the Arbat who were yelling "Idiots!" at the young Nazis, the column in unison made an obscene gesture. The participants in the procession did not answer questions from journalists and tried to avoid being photographed or filmed. Their chiefs explained this by saying that the youths, "Voluntarily placed their fates in the hands of their organizations." But, it must be supposed, the real reason for the ban on speaking with the media must be the often observed inability of these simple soldiers to put two words together.

The involuntary viewers of the procession expressed various opinions. The majority of passers by who witnessed the procession paused and said things like, "What is this!" and "Where are the authorities?!" But there were some like one lady who stood rapturously still with tears of tender emotion on her face and said, "Dear ones, how long we have awaited you!"

Participants in the Nazi procession demanded the abolition of Article 282 of the Russian Criminal Code ("inciting national, racial and religious animosity"). Its existence, they say, limits freedom of speech. As the "National Front" says in its appeal to the Federation Council of the Russian Federation, "from the point of view of democratic values, nobody can be prosecuted for their statements, as long as they do not call for the overthrow of the government." "Ideas can be fought against only with ideas," explain the ultra-nationalists. "The absence of free and honest discussion of nationality problems which the existence of Article 282 stipulates, leads to them being held ‘in the kitchen', the amassing of hatred, and the founding of an extreme periphery in politics."

Who would have thought it! However, Ilya Lazarenko noted that when people like him go to the authorities, freedom of speech, of course, will be limited "in the interests of the nation." It would be possible to laugh at the thought of skinheads worrying about freedom of speech if it weren't for sickening events like this one. "National rebirth," "Russians are finally awakening," "An oppressed people is getting up off of its knees," "There is not, and never could be any sort of Russian fascism..." All of this ideological rhetoric, all of this contemporary "rebirth" was embodied in the appearance of the large man who marched in the front of the procession with clear signs of mental retardation on his face. The joyful, broad and senseless smile, the arms tightly grasping the flag with the neo-Nazi symbol on it, saliva flowing from the corner of his mouth along with loud, happy curse words addressed to nowhere in particular, that is the image of the "awakening Russian." Awakened and immediately heading towards a neo-Nazi menagerie instead of in one direction with decent people.

Translated by: Nickolai Butkevich
January 9, 1999

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