Union of Councils for Soviet Jews: “Rural Skinheads” on Trial in Novosibirsk Region

A group of skinheads charged with multiple attacks in a small Siberian city are facing charges of assault motivated by ethnic hatred and joining an extremist group, according to an article entitled “Rural Skinheads” in the February 8, 2006 edition of the government daily Rossiyskaya Gazeta. The four suspects, all residents of Berdsk, Novosibirsk region, are charged with attacking two Uzbeks on September 30 of last year, fracturing one's skull and the other's jaw. Three weeks later, they allegedly stabbed a Tajik in the lungs and beat another Tajik in a separate location, giving him a concussion. Police at first did not believe that the attacks were the work of skinheads, who are mostly present in big cities in European Russia, but the neo-Nazi movement in Russia has expanded so much in the past few years that even small cities like Berdsk (population 81,000) are not immune. A police investigator told the paper that: “To admit that in Berdsk there really is a Nazi underground was hard. Nevertheless, it's the truth.”