On the 18th of December, the historian and politologist Vyacheslav Likhachev, who is also a member of the Euro-Asian Jewish Congress General Council, commented on the Moscow riots caused by xenophobia. He spoke on a changing political environment and whether the rumors about pro-Kremlin
youth movement provocateurs being behind the riots are to be believed.

The Radio Svoboda website presented a fragment of the interview.

You began to study right-wing groups back during the 90's, when the Pamyat (“Memory”) society and the RNU (Russian National Unity) were active. Now this scene is dominated by completely different people. The pseudo soccer fans of today look nothing like those who participated in the events of October '93. How did these movements change?

The radical right stopped being the prerogative of parties which could be clearly identified as Fascist, and who emphasized this by their insignia, uniforms, and so on, and became a part of the youth subculture. During the 90's, Russia had strong Fascist parties, which involved thousands of people all over the country, supported paramilitary forces, and tried to be involved in politics one way or the other. These radical right groups have virtually left the political scene, were defeated like any organized opposition. In the 2000s, this ideology in its radical form moved into the youth subculture. On one hand, it is harder to control, on the other – it is more inclined towards aggressive activities that fall within the competence of the Criminal Code. In the 2000s, this ideology in its radical form has become a part of the youth subculture. On one hand, it is now harder to control, and on the other it is now much more likely to lean towards criminal activity. In its more moderate form, nationalistic rhetoric has become absolutely acceptable in the political mainstream, and being is used by the current government, as well.

Could it have been prognosticated that this would lead to street rioting?

It is impossible to live in Moscow and not know about the interracial war on the streets of the city, however much a denizen of the Internet you might be. These are extremely noticeable manifestations of deep and serious processes, which have been in motion for the last several years. After these last rallies, there has been an outbreak of hate crimes towards people with so-called “non-Slavic looks,” but these attacks happen every day anyhow. This is our reality, in which we have been living for a long time now, nothing unexpected. The unexpected part was that so many people went out to Manezh square, that the police, which has been effectively breaking up unsanctioned mass rallies for the last several years, even just peaceful meetings, was absolutely helpless this time around.

The topic of the day in blogs is conspiracy: people are trying to figure out who the Kremlin agents are in the various youth movements that participated in the riots. And they found at least one – a member of the “Nashy,” who had been on Manezhnaya Square on the 11th of December, and on the 15th of December he was showing off the Nazi sign of greeting to journalists on Europe Square. Geydar Dzhemal, Chairman of the Islam Committee of Russia, said on air of Radio Svoboda that all of the riots were organized by the authorities, because the entire right-wing soccer fan scene is controlled by the MIA one way or the other. And it is true that the right-wing underground has always had a connection with the uniformed services, even in the 90's.

n the nineties, the situation was crucially different – it is much easier to try and control a political party. This is not about whether anyone was an obvious provocateur, but any political figure that was in public, in any case, however you put it, was dependent on the flow of funds, on having access to the media, on certain people in their retinue. When the Kremlin started taking control of the entire political environment, including those groups who teetered on the edge of legality, they were an even more convenient material. If they were uncontrollable, they were broken down, some people were arrested. This is the way the field was completely cleared by the beginning of the 2000s.

The youth subculture is harder to control in this sense. This is a movement from below, a truly wide-scale movement, which includes tens of thousands people. A movement which, on the level of the soccer fan scene, has been legitimized and nurtured by the government for the last several years. The Kremlin's party line for the last 10 years was oriented towards this beer and soccer, greatly xenophobic patriotism. The Kremlin has raised this generation of youth. It's impossible to control thousands of teenagers from this subculture. Naturally, certain more or less public leaders who try to play politics are in some way connected to the authorities, because they don't want to go to jail. But the cause-and-effect connection here is not quite so direct. So I think that the role of provocateurs, even though there were certainly a few on Manezhnaya Square, was minimal. Of course, there were a couple. And through the pro-Kremlin youth movements, connected in many ways by personal and business ties with the pro-Nazi soccer scene groups, the Kremlin tried to gain certain benefits from what was happening.

If we follow this conspiracy version, what are the benefits the Kremlin could receive from this? The riots have already begun, they've already happened. There were neither provocateurs nor exposed “Nashy” activists there, but traffic has been blocked off already, and there were broken shop-fronts. It was a pure soccer-scene-youth protest outbreak. When it became obvious that this outbreak will be quite large scale, the Kremlin was interested in it being even more radical and aggressive than it should have been. Why? To show people that streets social activity is always dangerous, criminal, and that the police always needs to be able to suppress it, otherwise the entire intelligentsia will have to shave its scrawny beard and put a bullet-proof helmet on itself. And because it is always useful for the Kremlin to hold at hand some sort of threat for its own society and for the West, to show this threat as an alternative to itself. To show that Russia has a Kremlin-controlled political scene on one side, and that it has various kinds of radicals on the other side. These radicals can be Muslim terrorist, militarized Wahhabis, ethnic separatists, or Russian Nazis, a huge crowd of young people flinging their rights hands up in the air. This is a very good picture to show if you want to convince people that they need to close their eyes to restrictions, to violations of human rights, which the Kremlin must allow because it has no alternative. The Kremlin must try to calm a volatile situation, and if it won't be restraining the volatile situation as well as it can, then “these” could be the alternative. So the Kremlin might have been trying to obtain profits from riots that had already begun from below, without any influence by pro-Kremlin groups. There were almost certainly provocateurs that aggravated the situation. But in the large scale of things, their role was not critical, and probably not even important.