This book is a collection of the 2004, 2005 and 2006 annual reports as well as some additional statistics on 2007 compiled by Moscow’s SOVA Center for Information and Analysis. The reports are devoted to such issues as political nationalism; hate crimes; the use of police, administrative, political and social tools to counteract xenophobic violence; and the Russian authorities’ abuse of laws designed to counteract extremism, i.e. their cynical exploitation of this legislation for their own political purposes. Already in the middle of this decade, all of these problems were known to pose a certain threat to Russian society. In spite of the considerable public attention they received since then, only few effective measures have been taken and, thus, the situation is getting worse: The level of racist violence is increasing further and the spectrum of ultra-nationalist groups is consolidating. Moreover, representatives of the political elite have started to adopt cryptic and, sometimes, overtly xenophobic rhetoric. At the same time, the government’s current office holders actively utilize anti-extremist legislation to unlawfully restrict not only ultra-nationalist groups, but also the rights and liberties of other non-governmental and political organizations.
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The author:Galina Kozhevnikova, Cand. Sc. (i.e. Ph. D.), graduated in history from the Russian State Humanities University of Moscow in 1997. She joined the “Panorama” Center for Information and Research in 1995, and has been Deputy Director of the SOVA Center since 2002. She is the author of Yazyk vrazhdy v predvybornoi agitatsii i vne ee (SOVA 2002) and Radikal’nyi natsionalizm v Rossii i protivodeistvie emu (ibidem-Verlag 2007), co-author of Rossiiskaya vlast’ v biografiyakh, 3 vols. (ibidem-Verlag 2007) as well as co-editor of Etnicheskaya i religioznaya intolerantnost’ v rossiiskikh SMI (ibidem-Verlag 2005). She has also contributed numerous articles to various journals and other publications.The collaborators:Alexander Verkhovsky is Director of Moscow’s SOVA Center for Information and Analysis and the author, co-author and editor of numerous books and articles.Dr. Eugene Veklerov is a University of California mathematician and author of, among others, two computer science books.The author of the foreword:Dr. Stephen D. Shenfield is the author of, among numerous other publications, Russian Fascism (M.E. Sharpe 2001), and editor of the Research and Analytical Supplement to Johnson’s Russia List.