Neo-Nazism in Russia is a far-right political and militant movement in Russia. Emerging during the late Soviet era and early 1990s from white power skinheads and football hooligans, neo-Nazism in Russia has become known for a series of violent attacks and murders targeting Central Asian and Caucasian migrants. Videos of these attacks have been uploaded onto the internet by members of neo-Nazi or skinhead gangs, leading to international outcry and an eventual crackdown in the late 2000s and early 2010s.
Neo-Nazi organizations and the use of Nazi symbols in Russia are prohibited by federal law; however, with the beginning of the Russo-Ukrainian War, Russian neo-Nazis have achieved international attention for their militant support of Russian-backed separatist forces in eastern Ukraine. Certain groups, such as the Russian Imperial Movement, have been accused of training white supremacists and neo-Nazis from other countries in Europe. The links between these groups and the Russian government, comprising a policy known as managed nationalism, have become particularly noteworthy since the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine after Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed to be pursuing the "denazification" of Ukraine.
Neo-Nazi organizations and the use of Nazi symbols in Russia are prohibited by the Federal Law on Commemoration of Victory of the Soviet People in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945 and the Federal Law on Countering Extremist Activity.
History The ideology of Nazi Germany regarded the Slavs in general as members of an "inferior race" and "subhuman", which resulted in an attempt to implement Generalplan Ost during World War II, which provided for the extermination, expulsion, or enslavement of most or all of the Slavs in Central and Eastern Europe (mainly ethnic Poles, Belarusians, Czechs, Ukrainians, Serbs, and Russians).
Soviet period The first reports of neo-Nazi organizations in the Soviet Union appeared in the second half of the 1950s. In some cases, participants were primarily attracted by the aesthetics of Nazism (rituals, parades, uniforms, the cult of the body, and architecture). Other organizations were more interested in the Nazi ideology and program and Adolf Hitler. In 1957, influenced by the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, neo-Nazi activist and dissident Alexey Dobrovolsky founded the Russian National Socialist Party, one of the first Russian neo-Nazi organizations, for which he was imprisoned. The emergence of neo-Nazism in the USSR continued in the 1960s and 1970s, during which such organizations still preferred to operate underground.
In 1970, a text entitled The Word of the Nation was circulated in samizdat in the Soviet Union. Signed by "Russian patriots" and later determined to have been written by A. M. Ivanov (Skuratov), one of the founders of the Russian Neo-pagan movement and a supporter of the struggle against the so-called "Jewish Christianity", it expressed rejection of the liberal democratic ideas then prevalent among some Russian nationalists, and proclaimed a new program based on the ideas of a strong state and the formation of a new elite. To maintain order and combat crime, the program said, the authoritarian government should rely on extrajudicial "people's militias" (analogous to the Black Hundreds). The author demanded a struggle against the "infringement of the rights of the Russian people" and the "Jewish monopoly in science and culture". He also argued against the "biological degeneration of the white race", which he said was due to the spread of "democratic cosmopolitan ideas" and "accidental hybridization" of races, and called for a "national revolution", after which "true Russians by blood and spirit" would become the ruling nation. The full Russian version of this document was published in the émigré magazine Veche in 1981, where the author wrote about the possibility of the United States turning into "an instrument for achieving global domination by the black race" and argued that Russia has a special mission to save global civilization.
In late 1971, a text entitled Letter to Solzhenitsyn, signed by a certain Ivan Samolvin, was also circulated in samizdat. The letter spoke of alleged Jewish ties to the Freemasons and a secret conspiracy to seize power over the world. The October Revolution was presented as the implementation of these secret plans. It was claimed that the "true history" of the ancestors of the Russian people was being carefully concealed from the public. The letter was written by Moscow-based Arabist Valery Yemelyanov. This document and The Word of the Nation had a significant impact on the development of Russian racism and neo-Nazism.
Modern Russian neopaganism emerged in the late 1970s and is associated with the anti-Semitic activities of Valery Yemelyanov and Alexey Dobrovolsky. However, not all currents of Russian neopaganism (Rodnovery) are associated with neo-Nazism.
During the Soviet era, Viktor Bezverkhy, the founder of Peterburgian Vedism (a branch of Slavic neo-paganism), openly revered Adolf Hitler and Heinrich Himmler and, among his close circle of disciples, promoted racial and anti-Semitic theories, calling for ridding humanity of "defective progeny" that allegedly resulted from interracial marriages. He called such "inferior people" "bastards" and included among them "Jews, Indians, Gypsies, and mulattoes," and believed that they hindered society in achieving social justice. At the age of 51, he swore an oath to "devote his entire life to the struggle against Judaism, the mortal enemy of humanity." The text of this oath, written in blood, was discovered during a search of his home in 1988. Bezverkhy's Vedism stated, among other things, that, "In the event of a fascist victory, all peoples will be sifted through the sieve of racial identification, the Aryans will be united, the Asian, African and Indian elements will be put in their proper place, and the mulattoes will be eliminated as unnecessary."
The first public neo-Nazi demonstrations in Russia took place in 1981 in Kurgan, in which over 100 high school students with swastika armbands took part. Among the slogans of the demonstration was "Fascism will save Russia." Other demonstrations took place in Yuzhnouralsk, Nizhny Tagil, Sverdlovsk, and Leningrad.
On 20 April 1982, Hitler's birthday, a group of Moscow students, numbering from somewhere between a dozen to nearly 100, held a neo-Nazi demonstration on Pushkin Square.
Post-Soviet period In the 1990s, white power skinheads became a prominent phenomenon among neo-Nazis in Russia; Alexander Tarasov considers the key reasons for this to be the breakdown of the education system, as well as the economic recession and unemployment during the reforms of the 1990s. Tarasov wrote that the growth of the skinheads was also fueled by the First Chechen War, which heightened hostility toward people from the Caucasus, which was further compounded by the government's imperialist rhetoric and the insufficient efforts of law enforcement agencies to combat right-wing radical organizations. According to historian Viktor Shnirelman, the spread of racism and "Aryan identity" among skinheads in Russia was also influenced by anti-communist propaganda and criticism of internationalism during the "wild capitalism" of the 1990s, when social Darwinism and the "pursuit of heroism" contributed to the popularity of images of the "superman" and the "superior aristocratic race".
Starting in 1997, Russian skinheads received regular support from the European and American far right. A number of neo-Nazis and other white supremacists (including members of the Ku Klux Klan) from the United States, as well as members of the German People's Union, as well as the Wiking-Jugend (which was banned in Germany), took trips to Russia to and supplied Russian skinheads with neo-Nazi literature, audio cassettes, and uniforms. On 5 December 1998, skinheads and neo-Nazis marched through the city's historic center, chanting slogans such as "Russia for Russians, Moscow for Muscovites."
Some Russian neo-Nazi organizations are members of the World Union of National Socialists. As of 2012, six Russian organizations were officially registered members, including Russian National Unity and the Slavic Union (banned by a court decision in June 2010).
Among the neo-Nazi organizations that used terrorist methods were: the (liquidated in 1996), (liquidated in 2006), White Wolves (liquidated in 2008-2010), New Order (disbanded), and Russian Goal (defunct).Неонацизм // Нанонаука — Николай Кавасила [Электронный ресурс]. — 2013. — С. 428. — (Большая российская энциклопедия : [в 35 т.] / гл. ред. Ю. С. Осипов ; 2004—2017, т. 22). — ISBN 978-5-85270-358-3.
On 15 August 2007, Russian authorities arrested a student for allegedly posting a video on the Internet which appears to show two migrant workers being beheaded in front of a red and black swastika flag. Alexander Verkhovsky, the head of a Moscow-based center that monitors hate crime in Russia, said, "It looks like this is the real thing. The killing is genuine ... There are similar videos from the Chechen war. But this is the first time the killing appears to have been done intentionally." The Ministry of Internal Affairs has a history of downplaying and denying neo-Nazi violence: A ministry representative called the beheading video a "fake". On November 4, 2025, a racially motivated murder took place in Moscow on the Russian Unity Day. The "National Socialist Organization for the Liberation of White Europe" took credit and posted a video of the murder. The Ministry again downplayed it and stated it was a conflict between teens.
Ties to the Russian government
Since the 2004 Orange Revolution in Ukraine, the Russian government has been routinely accused of collaborating with neo-Nazis in order to fight domestic opposition to Vladimir Putin. This policy, known as managed nationalism, led to the increased prominence of the Russian Image group until its collapse in 2009 after the arrest of its leaders for the murders of Stanislav Markelov and Anastasia Baburova. Court documents at the trials of Russian Image leaders revealed that the organisation had connections to the Presidential Administration of Russia, that wanted "an organisation, dependent on the authorities, which could control the Russian far right".
Since the annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation and the beginning of the Russo-Ukrainian War in 2014, connections between the Russian government and neo-Nazi groups have once again been noted in international news outlets. In particular, the Russian Imperial Movement have been noted for their large number of volunteers, including white supremacist militants from throughout Europe. Initially important in supporting Russian forces during the 2014–2022 War in Donbas, their relevance has decreased with the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Neo-Nazi militias Neo-Nazis from Russia have participated in military operations on the side of the unrecognized Donetsk People's Republic and Luhansk People's Republic, as well as on the side of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and pro-Ukrainian volunteer units. Russian-Belarusian neo-Nazi activist Sergei Korotkikh took part in the fighting on the Ukrainian side. French sociologist and political scientist Marlène Laruelle reported on the participation of mercenaries "related, directly or indirectly, to the Russian National Unity movement" in the war on the side of the separatists. Sociologist notes that one unit, Rusich, is composed of neo-Nazis from Saint Petersburg and fights under a banner featuring a swastika stylized as a "kolovrat".