Maksim Martsinkevich, nom de guerre “Machete”, insists he is not a skinhead, even though his pate is smooth as a cue ball. The 27-year-old does not like being called a Nazi, though he once belonged to something called the National Socialist Organisation and spent four years in jail, in part for shouting “Sieg Heil!” at a political debate in 2007.
He also insists that he is not a Russian opposition leader, even though he came second in an internet vote to determine who should speak at a December 24 anti-Kremlin rally that attracted up to 100,000, the largest public demonstration since the fall of the Soviet Union.
Mr Martsinkevich was ultimately denied the stage by the organisers because of his racist views and penchant for throwing the odd “roman salute” in public. Over a cup of coffee at a Moscow Starbucks, however, he complains bitterly about the hypocrisy of it all. “I didn’t even want to speak,” Mr Martsinkevich says. “I just wanted to show that these other so-called opposition leaders are no leaders. If they can’t even win their own vote, what kind of power do they think they are going to get?”
The avowed white supremacist is the most extreme example of a perplexing issue for Russia’s anti-Kremlin protests, which began as a reaction to a December parliamentary election that is widely believed to have been rigged and has mutated into a street movement which has yet to define clear goals, aside from its ubiquitous slogan “For free elections”.
In the current turmoil, hardline nationalism is the “ghost at the feast” in the words of Alexander Verkhovsky, an expert on nationalism at Moscow’s Sova Centre think-tank. He says Russia, like much of Europe, is seeing a resurgence of the far right. “It’s natural. We had an empire, and it collapsed. All post-imperial states see a rise in nationalism. The question is not whether or not there will be a rise in nationalism, the question is what form it will take.”
While Mr Martsinkevich’s internet vote success is ascribed by opposition leaders to either a Kremlin provocation or a prank, it raises a real issue: much of the groundswell of middle class protesters is made up of liberals, standing up for universal human rights and freedoms. But much of it is not. Russian nationalists see democracy as a means to an end, a path to power, but their commitment to a pluralistic political system once they have achieved it is, at best, an open question.
One of the nationalists given the podium at the December rally, Vladimir Tor, told the crowd: “We Russian nationalists are, more than anyone else, interested in freedom and democracy in Russia, because we truly know and truly believe that in fair elections power will go to the majority”.
That many nationalist have swung into opposition against Vladimir Putin, the prime minister seeking to regain the presidency in elections this year, is troubling for the Kremlin which considered such conservatives among their core constituency. When Mr Putin came to power in 2000, he was cheered by many nationalists as a strong ruler who wanted to restore Russian pride. However, nationalists, like all independent political movements, have also felt the bite of Mr Putin’s authoritarian rule.
“The Putin regime has sent 1,500 of my brothers to prison. That is more than all the dissidents sent to prison under Brezhnev,” Mr Tor said during his speech.
Mr Putin advocates a more imperial and militaristic brand of nationalism than most Russians. He rarely has a press conference these days without hinting that dark foreign forces are at work destabilising Russia. He has championed a 19tn rouble ($614bn) spending binge re-equipping Russia’s military and called for the creation of a “Eurasian Union” of former Soviet states.
However, most ordinary Russians seem more drawn to ethnic nationalism, rather than nostalgia for great power. They are more concerned about immigration, which has increased rapidly under Mr Putin due to Russia’s economic growth; about ethnic tensions between neighbourhood gangs; and the budget-draining federal subsidies for the war-torn north Caucasus.
According to a poll by the Moscow-based Levada centre, a sociological research agency, 59 per cent of Russians “strongly” or “moderately” support the ethnic nationalist slogan “Russia for the Russians”, higher than at any time since the poll was first taken in 1998.
Nationalist Russians have deserted the Kremlin camp and swung into opposition, joining a handful of liberal activists who have latched on to the middle-class groundswell of protests.
“We [nationalists and liberals] have very different views about the future development of Russia. But we are united in seeking an end to the regime, free registration of political parties, and free elections,” Mr Tor says in an interview.
A synergy between liberals and nationalists is obvious to many in the opposition: Russia’s liberals have too many leaders and not enough followers, while nationalists have the opposite problem. Liberal ideas were discredited by the economic misery of the Yeltsin years, and the plethora of liberal parties have trouble finding recruits. Meanwhile, polls such as the Levada centre’s show broad public support for nationalist ideas but there is a lack of credible parties and popular leaders.
The most successful opposition leaders have been those who can fuse liberalism and nationalism. Alexei Navalny, the only opposition leader to beat Mr Martsinkevich in the vote for speakers at last month’s rally, is an avowed nationalist, albeit a self-styled moderate one, as well as extolling democracy and fighting corruption.
He favours curbs on immigration and argues that the war-torn Caucasus should be treated as “Russia’s Gaza Strip” and politically isolated. He also attracts controversy for addressing gatherings of extremist groups.
Mr Navalny takes offence at the suggestion that he is a racist.
“I would never consider any people ‘second class’,” he tells Boris Akunin, a liberal author, in a published email exchange.
In the Russian context, with its violent skinhead gangs, Mr Navalny is indeed a moderate, though Mr Verkhovsky likens him to far-right European politicians such as Geert Wilders and his Dutch Freedom Party.
The alliances between liberal politicians are in some cases being formalised. Liberals agreed at a meeting this month to share leadership of an umbrella group called the Civic Movement of Russia with leftist hardliners and nationalists – with all three groups given equal power on a steering committee.
Ilya Yashin, a leader of the liberal opposition Solidarity movement, makes a distinction between radical nationalists and “constitutional” ones. “I see nothing wrong with a tactical alliance with constitutional nationalists,” he says.
“I am certainly against what they say but their views certainly have a place in the political system, and they are represented in most European parliamentary democracies.”
Many democrats want to avoid seeing nationalism used to divide the opposition.
Skinheads loyal to Mr Martsinkevich tried to rush the stage at the December rally but were convinced to stand down – by other nationalists.
Some also believe that Mr Martsinkevich may be supported by the Kremlin in an effort to divide and discredit the real opposition. It is a charge he heatedly denies, citing his time in prison.
“They say I’m a Kremlin project. Where do they think I spent the last four years – in Bali?”
