It isn’t every day that tourists walking around the area around the Kremlin – the Aleksandrovsky Gardens, Red Square, the Manezh – are treated to a massive battle between football fans, nationalists and armored OMON officers. The riot – which grew from a protest by football fans over the death of 28 year-old Spartak fan Yegor Sviridov during a fight last Monday – featured nationalist chanting, fireworks, beatings of non ethnic Russians and a black eye for football in a country just recently awarded the 2018 World Cup.

People gathering at the Manezhnaya Square outside the Kremlin (photo courtesy of ng.ru)

Even yesterday, two days after the event, police shut down Manezhnaya Square, the Aleksandrovsky Gardens and the Square of the Revolution and evacuated the ornate underground Okhotny Ryad shopping mall (all in the immediate neighborhood of the Kremlin and Duma buildings) because of fears of renewed violence. The chaos, hitting so close to the brick-and-mortar center of the Russian state, raises a lot of questions and has grabbed the attention of the Russian media.

The Fight

The protest/riot, as written above, was the major explosion in a week of slow-boiling tension surrounding the death of Sviridov, who was shot and killed Monday night in Moscow after a fight between a group of Spartak fans and a group of Caucasian men. Police almost immediately arrested 26 year-old Alan Cherkesov, whom they accuse of firing the shots that killed Sviridov, and have since then arrested three more Caucasian men in connection with Sviridov’s death.

Details of the fight itself have been sketchy at best. Law enforcement structures say that a group of Spartak fans on Kronshtadtsky Bul’var in the Golovinsky district of northern Moscow got into a fight with a group of young Caucasian men and Cherkesov shot Sviridov with a Streamer 1014 gas pistol four times, including one shot to the head. Another man, Dmitry Filatov, was wounded at a scene from which investigators apparently collected 12 casings; the rubber-bullet firing Streamer holds 13-14 rounds, according to the manufacturer’s website. Police arrested Cherkesov – allegedly with blood on his clothes – ten minutes later. Those facts don’t seem to be in dispute, at least among Russian media sources.

Photo of Sviridov, whose death in a fight ignited the Dec. 11 riots in Moscow (photo courtesy of vesti-moscow.ru)

Every other fact is basically disputed. According to RIA Novosti Cherkesov said that he had acted in self-defense and told journalists at a court appearance that he had been beaten and hadn’t even seen the faces of the people who attacked him. Sviridov’s widow, however, told Vesti-Moskva that Sviridov and his friends were trying to catch a taxi outside a cafe when a group of 10 men attacked them. Cherkesov, she said, ran out of a nearby store when the fight broke out and began firing. One of the four men detained, Artur Arsibiyev, claimed he merely tried to break up the fight, but investigators allege he broke a bottle over the head of Filatov, the other man hospitalized.

Even Sviridov’s status as a Spartak fan is up for dispute. His widow, Jana Sviridova, said he wasn’t a ‘fanatic’ (fanat) simply a ‘supporter’ (bolel’shchik) ‘like millions’ of others*. Somewhat in contrast to this description, the website of Spartak fan movement Fratiya claimed Sviridov, who was born and raised in Moscow, as an ‘active fan’ and noted that he was planning on flying to Slovakia for Spartak’s UEFA Champions League game against Zhilina Dec. 8 had he not been killed.

It has always been my perception, based on observation, that those fans in the traveling support for football teams tend to be more involved than run-of-the-mill fans; that doesn’t  mean Sviridov was a member of a ‘radical Spartak Moscow fan group’ like RFE/RL reported (incidentally not mentioning which group that was), but it does show that he’s probably a much more devoted Spartak fan than, say, Biznesslanch.

Until more facts are available, I’ll stop short of engaging in rampant speculation and move onto more solid ground.

The lead-in

Several smaller events presaged the massive riot – the reasons for which I’ll address below – in the week between Sviridov’s death and the riot.

1. The Moscow militsiya arrested six men – including Cherkesov – thought to be connected with the fight. Five of them were then turned loose Dec. 7, provoking an outcry that poured fuel onto an already smoldering situation. The Investigative Committee then accused militsiya officers in the Golovinsky precinct of ‘inaction.’ The five released men – three of whom have since been arrested – were then put back on a wanted list.
2. Around 1000 Spartak fans shut down Leningradsky Prospekt – one of northern Moscow’s main roads leading out of the city – Tuesday night and called on militsiya and the procurator’s office to punish Sviridov’s killers – who they accused the militsiya of freeing – while, of course, chanting nationalist slogans like ‘Russia for the Russians’ and other favorites. According to Lenta.ru, 20-25 people were arrested for firing weapons similar to the Streamer and breaking store windows.
3. Spartak won its final Champions League game against Slovakian club Zhilina 2-1 in a game that had to be stopped for 20 minutes while visiting Spartak fans threw flares onto the field. Fans raised a couple of banners in the ‘R.I.P Yegor’ vein during the stoppage and one held a ‘Support Against Tolerance’ sign, presumably a play on FIFA’s ‘Say no to racism’ campaign (video here).
4. Fans turned the bus stop where Sviridov was killed into a shrine, leaving thousands of flowers and Spartak scarves. A video from RIA Novosti also showed graffiti reading (in English) ‘Good night, Kavkaz (Caucasus) guys’ and another ‘Who will answer???’ with yet another picture simply portraying a monkey.
5. Sviridov was buried Friday, Dec. 10 in the Lyublinskaya Cemetary in Moscow. Authorities were afraid the funeral would attract trouble, but the sparks weren’t destined to fly until the next day.

The Riot

There were two parts to the demonstrations/riot/memorials (whatever you want to call them) in Moscow. The first was a memorial at Kronshtadtsky Bul’var – the place where Sviridov was killed – which drew around 3000 people and apparently went down pretty peacefully, at least according to news reports. People laid down flowers and scarves at the bus stop for several hours before it became dark.

The second – the unsanctioned Manezh demonstration – was much uglier. There, several thousand people gathered in the early afternoon, including some who’d been at the Kronshtadtsky Bul’var commemoration. According to an Interfax story, the mood – outside the crowd – remained remarkably nonchalant and TV news reports show traffic flowing normally on the streets around the Manezh. As young men wearing masks to cover their faces exited the Metro, they brushed past shoppers at Okhotny Ryad and basically ignored the token police presence on the square.

Once there, the various groups – including groups of fans from all the Moscow football clubs – that had arrived began chanting slogans like the old stalwart “Russia for the Russians!” a more provincial “Moscow for the Muscovites!” and some more original like “F-ck the Caucasus! F-ck!”

According to that Interfax story, the situation on Manezh had ‘changed in a split second’ – another story put that timearound 3:30 – and participants began hurling flares, bottles, snowballs, fences and even Christmas ornaments at OMON and MVD Internal Troops officers moving into the crowd to break up the rally.

(photo courtesy of rbc.ru)

While all of this was happening, the crowd – or at least parts of it -  began to beat up passers-by of Caucasian and Central Asian appearance, according to news reports. A video from RIA Novosti (it’s pretty brutal, just a warning) shows crowds beating several men – the reporter says they’re from the Caucasus – including three or four being taken to an ambulance; outnumbered OMON officers at the ambulance are unable to prevent people from continuing to throw punches at the men.

Other Caucasians were beat up in the Okhotny Ryad metro station, which trains simply bypassed as the chaos from above spilled underground.

If going by a timeline provided by the various news reports, the trouble at the protest on Manezhnaya Square started around 3:30 and didn’t come under control until after 5:00 pm. That’s at least an hour and a half of almost absolute chaos with riot police – under a hail of projectiles – fighting their way past the thousands-strong crowd through swirling smoke from flares and fireworks. Moscow police chief Vladimir Kolokol’tsev eventually spoke to the crowd, telling them Sviridov’s killers would be brought to justice and this was credited with finally stamping out the bulk of the disturbances.

65 people were arrested and over 30 were injured, some of whom were put in the hospital, according to media reports.

A similar protest was held in St. Petersburg and 80 people were detained there.

Reactions

The Police

The riot at Manezh – both in the event itself and its lead-in – represent failures on the part of Russian law enforcement. That is probably an obvious statement, but it’s worth elaborating.

What were the police doing, allowing so many people to gather at such a central location for an officially unsanctioned rally? Anyone who has lived in Moscow can tell you that anytime there is the possibility of a rally, the nearby streets and Metro stations are flooded with police. Personally, I remember getting off the Metro at Chisty Prudy one time and seeing over 100 police officers standing in the Metro and above ground, all to watch over a group of 10 people protesting animal testing in laboratories. Likewise, anytime there is a planned opposition rally at Triumfal’naya Square, the metro station there is overrun with police and OMON.

Nice coat, but seriously man, WTF were you thinking?

It isn’t as if the rally at Manezh was a surprise; it had been announced days before. The commemoration on Kronshtadtsky was apparently well attended by police, but if the Interfax report referred to above is correct, there were only a handful of patrol cars and mounted police at Manezh as people arrived. Why wait to act until after allowing everyone to gather and start beating people up?

The cynical/conspiratorial answer would be that they let it happen in order to use it as an excuse to crack down on dissident rallies. Since the authorities have never really had much need for excuses to crack down on the opposition, this doesn’t seem likely. Moreover, having the front door to the Kremlin and Red Square torn up in a football riot is a massive PR headache the country couldn’t possibly want in the wake of being named the host of 2018 World Cup.

The much more likely answer is simply incompetence. It was incompetent to allow the rally to be staged in the first place. The MVD shut down Manezhnaya Square and Okhotny Ryad yesterday, how difficult could it have been to do the same on Saturday? Or, better yet, why not allow the rally, but cap the numbers and stage it in a fenced off area where you could at least theoretically control who and what was coming in? This compromise could have worked.

The mismanagement of the case began before the rally. It was incredibly incompetent to release the five people detained in the Sviridov killing, only to put them back on the wanted list a day later. Either they were reasonably suspected of the crime with which they were eventually charged – ‘battery’ (poboy) – and should have been held from the beginning or, if they weren’t guilty, they shouldn’t have been put back on the wanted list. Whether the blame for this lies with the militsiya or the procurator’s office – and there is a dispute over this – doesn’t matter. It pointlessly made the situation more difficult.

The Fans

As soon as it became known what was happening, people were tripping over each other to blame the riot on radical nationalists provocateurs and absolving football fans. Aleksandr Shprygin, the president of the All-Russian Football Fan association, told journalists that, “Maybe there were young people who attend football matches among those who came to Manezh Square, but there were no representatives of fan movements there.” Those comments were echoed by basically anyone in a football-related organization who could reach a microphone. Kolokol’tsev, for his part, said the riots weren’t the work of angry football fans, but of nationalists while Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliev somewhat oddly put the blame on ‘left-radical youth’ (people I don’t always associate with anti-Russian pogroms, but what do I know…).

There is no doubt that there was a nationalist presence at Manezh – the banned Slavyansky Soyuz movement (its leader Dmitry Demushkin blamed OMON for the chaos) and veteran groups the Union of Russian Paratroopers and Fighting Brotherhood (Boyevoe Bratsvo) had said earlier they would be in attendance – but anyone who denies there is a sizeable nationalist presence native to Russian football circles is either lying through their teeth or completely clueless.

Biznesslanch, having attended several Spartak games, can attest to this fact. How else can you explain things like the Russian imperial flags (the black, yellow, white) and nationalist chants. As a personal anecdote (for what it’s worth), Biznesslanch went to a Spartak Moscow-Spartak Nal’chik (from the capital of Kabardino-Balkaria in the Caucasus) game where the ‘Russkiye vperyod!” (Russians forward!) chant was raised several times; in other games I went to against Dinamo and Lokomotiv – both Moscow teams – those chants were noticeably absent. Maybe I’m reading too much into it, but even the security at the games was different (the handful of Nal’chik fans were allowed to leave while the Spartak fans were locked in the stadium for 30 minutes). The casual xenophobia is ironic because Spartak’s two best players – Alex and Wellington – are both Brazilian.

Most Spartak fans don’t go out and beat up Caucasians or Central Asians, just like the fan groups say. I remember my friends and I hiding our scarves on an elektrichka when a group of Spartak hooligans came walking through the train because none of us wanted to get caught up in a brawl on the way to the game. But Spartak – and Russian football clubs in general – do have hard-core elements, some of whom have nationalist leanings. Saying that the 6000 or so people at the Manezh riot – or at least the ones yelling “Russia for the Russians” and beating up Caucasians – aren’t fans and football fans don’t do things like that is a gross oversimplification.

Radical nationalists might have provoked the riot, but in many cases, those radical nationalists are also fans. There just isn’t as clear a dividing line as football officials and police would like people to believe.

For some context, however, the problem of violence and xenophobia in football isn’t limited to Russia. There is often a thin, blurry line between fans (or even coaches) and ultra-nationalists in many places in Eastern Europe; for example, a riot between fans of Croatian side Dinamo Zagreb and Serbian Red Star Belgrade in 1990 is considered in some circles as one of triggers of the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s. In Ukraine, former head coach and Soviet legend Oleg Blokhin said in 2006 domestic teams should have more Ukrainian players rather than “some Zumba-Bumba whom they took off a tree.” I could go on, but the point is that, as unseemly as the nationalists and xenophobic elements in Russian football are, it is not a phenomenon unique to Russia.

That isn’t to say that xenophobia and ultra-nationalism aren’t problems in Russia (they clearly are) and don’t need to be addressed – now, more than ever they need to be – but a little perspective is useful.

There will be more here on this topic as it unfolds – particularly any repercussions in ethnic relations in Russia – but that’ll have to wait for later.

* I didn’t want to play around with translations as my Russian, while being alright, isn’t really up to the task of translating more than a sentence or two with any confidence. Still, Sviridova makes a distinction between the two words fanat and bolel’shchik and I translated the two words to try capture what she seems to want to express.