Football stadiums are becoming mass media. Being started as sports fan·s movement with banners and slogans, it continued as political thing, and the radical one. There have been several incidents with the Nazis from among football fans flags with the Hitler portrait, effigy of a hanged black man, and masquerade a la Ku Klux Klan.
Racism on the stands has always been a European tradition. But it manifests itself in moderate dose. The number of those infected, like a number of mad people, is stable there. Europe is inoculated against fascism.
It seemed to us that we were too. But either the inoculative stuff was not good, or expiration date is passed. Or maybe Nazi ideology has really rooted among our radical youth. Or maybe someone wants that the situation was felt like this before the coming elections.
Whatever it could be, the problem exists, and people with different views discussing it come to one point: when a public politics doesn·t have an official rostrum, it comes to stadiums.
At the end of last week the police detained 5 fans who made anti-Semitic action in April at the stadium at near-Moscow city of Vnukov. During the match between amateur league teams of Alliance and Makkabi they spread out the banner with the written wish of good holocaust to football players from Makkabi that is the football club of Jewish community. The prosecutor·s office has started the case on fact of fomentation of ethnic hostilities.
Football fans· movement is one of few organized forces in the country that is out of state control. It·s more and more often that fans stage political actions at the stadiums. Actually, the stands have become long ago the rostrum for giving utterance to radical political slogans. The groups inside fans· movement consolidate not only on the basis of clubs interests, but also political principles. And most of the fans· groups share nationalist ideology.
But if all that started with relatively peaceful slogans like ¯Kondopoga is hero city˜ (after series of conflicts between local Russians and Caucasians in that town), now real radicals have come to the stage, who manifest openly their neo-Nazi and racist views.
Meanwhile, football officials believe that the scale of the problem should not be exaggerated and they call to combat against single instigators. But the situation is much more serious than it can be supposed, as investigation by the Novaya has proved. Only last month fascist ultras ventured to make several rather provocative and impertinent actions.
9 August a match of second division was held in the City of Vologda between local Dynamo and Sheksna from the City of Cherepovets. At the match a group of local fans wore white caps like those of Ku Klux Klan members. One of the ultras waved a red flag with Adolph Hitler profile on it all the time. The fans spread out a large banner at their sector where drawn was a black guy brought to his knees before a Ku Klux Klan member, all that pictured against the Cross. The culmination of the action was public hanging of a black man·s effigy.
11 August, during the match of Russian premier league in the City of Samara between local Krylya Sovetov and Moscow Spartak, several fans hanged up a banner on the guest Spartak fans· stands. The text of the banner addressed the new forward of their team, black Brazilian Welliton. He was called ¯monkey˜ and told to go home.
22 August Russia played versus Poland in Moscow. About twenty fans in Russian sector wore demonstratively Ku Klux Klan caps.
It should be noted that only incident in Samara got a public response. Spartak·s management condemned the action by their fans and the Disciplinary Committee of Russian Football Union fined Spartak for 500,000 roubles.
Russia is entering election season and the fans don·t seem to be going to stand aside. All that promises the troubles for our football clubs and the national team. Attitude to neo-Nazi actions is much stricter in Europe and the clubs whose fans make racists actions will undergo severe sanctions. So if Russian fans make up something like that in official international matches we will have to give up our European football ambitions.
There is a hope that football ultras won·t go beyond hanging up their banners. Though no one can guarantee that political fuse lighted at the stadiums is not capable to explode the streets of Russian towns. We remember perfectly what a football fans· disturbances are. We remember Manege Square smashed up after our national team was defeated by Japanese in the World Cup 2002.
There are many preconditions for a new wave of neo-Nazi violence with football context. Should we really be surprised with stadiums becoming stages for political discussions when these discussions have been eliminated from the Parliament, when there are no uncensored political talk shows left on our television and when all street protest actions are broken up in a severe way?
After all, the Kremlin seems to be absolutely sure that any opposition can be handled with preventive methods and administrative pressure. If we are talking about nationalists, we should remember that the Great Russia Party was refused to take part in the Parliament elections. Ex-leader of the Motherland Dmitry Rogozin was planning to run head of Great Russia·s ticket. In case if fair elections the party would have all chances to get to the Parliament.
The dilemma who is worse Rogozin in Duma or skinheads in the streets seems to have been solved by the president·s administration in favour of the latter.
