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RickHolland · 2018-05-26T01:18:12Z

How the Kremlin destroyed the far right in Russia, while backing it in the West. On November 4, a few hundred people gathered for the annual ultranationalist "Russian march" in Moscow. With chants like "Glory to Russia" and "Freedom for political prisoners", the demonstrators tried to march through the Lyublino neighbourhood of Moscow, before the police dispersed the crowd, arresting dozens. But this year's march was a far cry from what it used to be in the late 2000s and early 2010s when thousands of people would join well-organised columns replete with banners, flags and drummers. Today, most of the leaders of the ultranationalist groups that used to organise the march are either in jail or in self-imposed exile. Their supporters consider them to be politically persecuted and complain about increasing state repression. Although the Kremlin has been accused of supporting conservative and far-right political groups in Europe, at home it seems to be becoming increasingly intolerant towards groups that propagate ideas similar to their Western counterparts. In the past few years, and especially since the conflict in Ukraine erupted in 2014, the Russian authorities have cracked down on nationalist groups under the guise of criminal investigations or accusations of extremism under the infamous "anti-extremism" Law 282. 'Controlled nationalism' In the early 2000s, Russian President Vladimir Putin was finishing his first presidential term when two colour revolutions struck nearby - the first in Georgia in 2003 and the second in Ukraine in 2004. Large crowds in Tbilisi and Kiev demanded democratic change and major political reforms. The possibility of a colour revolution erupting in Russia seemed too real. It was then that the Kremlin looked to the right. Russian observers would later identify this strategy of employing nationalist forces as "controlled nationalism". "Controlled nationalism is about using nationalists in some [political] games. In some cases, [the authorities] would support nationalists in order to keep the regime alive, to fight the threat of a colour revolution," says Anton Shekhovtsov, visiting fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences in Austria. "They thought that if they supported those ultranationalist movements, they would decrease the opportunity of nationalists becoming a force that would destabilise the regime," he explains. In early 2005, in response to the colour revolutions, the International Eurasian movement, headed by Alexander Dugin, a right-wing political scientist and ideologue (whom Western journalists eventually nicknamed "Putin's Rasputin") createda youth wing, the Eurasian Youth Union (ESM). Its aim was to whip up nationalist sentiment and mobilise young people against anti-government attitudes. Police officers detain a participant of a Russian nationalist march on National Unity Day in Moscow on November 4, 2017 [Reuters/Maxim Shemetov] That same year, the Russian authorities decided to finally do away with the November 7 official holiday celebrating the October Revolution. They moved the allocated day off to November 4 - the day Moscow was liberated from the Poles in 1612, an official holiday in tsarist Russia until 1917. The authorities named the new holiday "National Unity Day", but there wasn't much public enthusiasm for it and most Russians didn't even know its history. So when the ESM requested to hold a right-wing march on that day, the local authorities readily obliged. Other ultranationalist organisations and skinhead groups joined the ESM and the turnout that year surprised many: Some 3,000 people marched, chanting "Glory to Russia" and "Russians forward", as young men made Nazi salutes in front of TV cameras. In the years that followed, the ESM was pushed out of the organising committee of the march for being too pro-Kremlin and two other groups took the lead: the Movement Against Illegal Immigration (DPNI) and the Slavic Union (SS). The DPNI was led by Alexander Potkin, who changed his name to Belov ("bely" in Russian means white) and the SS was headed by Dmitry Dyomushkin. Both men are now in jail. "Belov was my assistant in the Duma. He became an opportunist and has ended up in jail," says Andrei Savelev, founder and leader of the "Great Russia" nationalist movement, who was elected to the Duma in 2003. At around the same time, Dyomushkin was an assistant to another member of the Duma during that period, Nikolay Kuryanovich from the pro-Kremlin ultranationalist Liberal Democratic Party of Russia. "Аll these years Dyomushkin was surprisingly untouchable. He was doing things for which others would go to jail. For four to five years, the justice system did not touch him," says Savelev. According to him, Dyomushkin and Belov were coopted by the Russian authorities. He says this was why he withdrew his organisation from the Russian march. Ivan Beletsky, a close associate of Dyomushkin who took over organising the march in 2016, rejects the idea of cooptation...