Window on Eurasia

Some Russian PR Firms Funding Skinhead Attacks on Opponents

Paul Goble

Vienna, July 12, 2006 – Some Russian public relations firms are paying skinhead groups to attack the political or business opponents of their clients, a development that does not bode well for future but one that at least some Russian officials say is beyond their ability to do much about, according to a Moscow journalist.

In an article in the current issue of “Politicheskiy zhurnal,”
Grigoriy Nekhoroshev, that weekly’s deputy chief editor, outlines
what he says is evidence of this development beyond the charges and
countercharges that appear on Russian websites
[http://www.politjournal.ru/preview.php?action=Articles&dirid=115&tek=5945&issue=167].

From Nekhoroshev’s account, it appears this trend arose in Russia
when radical extremist groups offered their services to those in positions
of power in politics and business at the beginning of this decade. At that
time, the skinhead group “Unified Brigade 88” offered to break up
meetings of the opposition for 200 to 300 U.S. dollars.

A little later, he continues, the leader of the Russian Project –
Great Russia told an “Izvestiya” journalist that his group could
carry out “a serious progrom” for 300 U.S. dollars. And in 2003,
skinhead groups appear to have been recruited by a PR firm in St.
Petersburg to stage an action in support of an official others hoped to
discredit.

Sometimes this use of black PR resembles but with an ugly twist the
kind of dirty tricks that unfortunately occur in other countries as well.
During the recent elections to the St. Petersburg assembly, opponents
of one candidate posed as his supporters and offered to give gifts to
school children as long as there were no Jews among them.

Nekhoroshev then describes his own investigation of black PR activities
in the northern capital and the reaction of one senior official there.
PR operatives there told him that “to order a demonstration”
against one or another business or in front of a course, now “costs 1500
dollars” in St. Petersburg.

During the recent electoral campaign there, he continues, some PR firms
provided funds for the publication of a newspaper called “Narodniy
nablyudatel’” – which one of the people who worked on that paper
not long ago said was a direct Russian translation of the notorious
Nazi newspaper “Volkisher Beobachter” of the 1920s and 1930s.

That some firms and some officials or businesses might stoop to such
actions, however noxious, is perhaps not surprising, Nekhoroshev
suggests, but the remarkably relaxed reaction of at least one senior
official in St. Petersburg to such activities is extremely disturbing.

Nekahoroshev says that he interviewed Vadim Tyul’panov, the chairman
of the legislative assembly of St. Petersburg, about the use of such
groups to promote nationalism or anti-semitism or to discredit others
by suggesting they support such programs when in fact they do not.

“It is completely stupid if you complain about bad weather,”
Tyul’panov reportedly replied. “The same thing goes for complaining
about black PR that I think always was, is and will be. Just like bad
weather.” And he said that it was hardly surprising that it occurs so
often in such a “politicized” city as his own.

If Tyul’panov’s attitude is typical of officials in St. Petersburg,
it is unlikely that the government there will do much to try to prevent
the growth of such activities, and because of the dangers that
presents. Nekhoroshev ends his essay with an appeal to PR professionals to take a
clear stand against the use of extremist groups in this way.

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