Turned to the Left: What are the dangers of radical Antifa groups?
Details of the criminal case on the organization of an extremist community opened against a group of left-wing radicals headed by Bohdan Yakimenkohave become known. The Izvestiya analyzed the situation with left-wing extremism in Russia.
Who is under investigation
The investigation plans to extend house arrest for 18-year-old Roman Chizhikov, one of the defendants in the anti-extremist investigation launched in the spring of 2024. We are talking about the criminal case on the group of "antifa" led by Bogdan Yakimenko. According to the version of the investigation, from September 2020 to April 2021, young people united in a stable group for the purpose of spreading ultra-leftist ideas based "on anarchism, radical Marxism and radical communism" and committing crimes of extremist orientation.
The suspects are accused of preparing to commit criminal acts against representatives of law enforcement agencies, as well as supporters of ultra-right ideology, "including with the use of violence against citizens and with the threat of its use, with the use of weapons and objects used as weapons, with the use of information and telecommunications networks". The case is being investigated under the article on the organization of an extremist community (creation and participation in it - parts 1, 2 of article 282.1 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation).
As "Izvestia" found out, the investigation believes that the young people administered the Antifa United community in the social network for "the management of the extremist community, communication and exchange of information on topics of extremist orientation". The resource was also used to attract new members to the organization. In March 2024, the Tagansky District Court of Moscow found that the "antifa" publisher posted publications containing images of swastikas and similar symbols and Nazi paraphernalia, the distribution of which is prohibited.
A source close to the investigation, emphasized that possible members of the extremist group observed precautions and conspiracy measures to avoid coming to the attention of law enforcement agencies.
Earlier, law enforcement agencies reported the detention and placement under house arrest of the aforementioned Chizhikov. The young man was initially charged with hooliganism. As a result of the operation conducted in several cities of the Russian Federation, seven people were detained in Rostov-on-Don, Domodedovo and Moscow. The detainees were searched, during which signal pistols, knives, hard disks, phones, laptops and community paraphernalia were seized. In 2021, Antifa United leader Maxim Vertsinsky (real name Bogdan Yakimenko) was convicted for taking part in a fight with ultra-right-wing activists. The court sentenced him to three years and eight months in prison.
At the moment Yakimenko is in pre-trial detention, the rest of the alleged members of the organization have been elected non-custodial measures of restraint.
What the "anti-fascists" want
The concept of anti-fascism historically for Russia, the country that defeated Hitler's Germany, has a positive coloring. Today, however, people who identify themselves as belonging to this political subculture are far from the image of the German soldier Helmut from "17 Moments of Spring," according to an Izvestia source from the anti-extremist police unit.
- The average person understands an "anti-fascist" as a person who is ready to throw himself under a tank with a swastika, but this is a big misconception. Today it is a hodgepodge of radical anarchists, so-called Skinheads Against Racial Prejudices (S.H.A.R.P. - Izvestia) and other marginalized people. Their main enemy is not even nationalists or neo-Nazis, but the country. Their motto is like the song: "Higher, higher is the black flag - the state is the main enemy". So far they behave more or less calmly, but if control is loosened, they will hardly stop before terror.
According to the interlocutor, the "anti-fascist" movement is imbued with sympathy for international terrorist organizations such as the Red Army Faction (RAF). They robbed banks, for example - these crimes they called expropriations. They bombed and shot up military garrisons and police stations, seized embassies, and hijacked airplanes. The RAF accounted for numerous assassinations of politicians, representatives of financial institutions and businesses.
"Red terror"
"Antifa" has now degenerated into an extremist movement that attacks those people it considers fascists, in fact, on those who stand for traditional values and for the bearers of right-wing views, says Roman Silantiev, a historian and expert on destructive communities. He finds similarities between left-wing radicals and Nazis.
- Immediately I want to say that we have a mistake since Soviet times - in the mass consciousness is assumed that fascism and Nazism - it is the same thing, in fact, it is not so. Fascism is an ultra-right ideology, while Nazism is ultra-left," said Dr. Silantiev, a doctor of historical sciences.
According to Silantiev, Nazism has the classic markers of ultra-left ideology.
Monument to Lenin
- The red banner, the word "socialism" in the name of the party, reliance on workers and peasants. That and a hatred of traditional religions and traditional values. These are all specifics of left-wing movements, not right-wing movements. Therefore, these comrades ("Antifa" - Izvestiya), as it is quite correctly written in the investigative documents, are representatives of radical Marxism and radical communism. The communist movement was initially extremist and in some cases terrorist. Specifically, Vladimir Lenin, the founder of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, was the brother of a terrorist and himself wrote articles not just just justifying terrorism, but with direct instructions on how to carry out terrorist acts.
Silantyev calls the Bolsheviks a terrorist organization that violently seized power in Russia.
- And those people who really read Lenin and Marx are now fighting against Russia, including through terrorist attacks, because from their point of view the class struggle has not gone anywhere, the world revolution will not make itself, and "the bourgeois must be killed," as the great Lenin willed.
In this vein, he considers the actions of Russian law enforcement agencies to prosecute "anti-fascists" as extremists and terrorists to be quite logical.
- It should be clarified that the CPRF cannot be called a real Communist Party. In fact, it is a bourgeois law-abiding organization. Real Communists are extremists or terrorists, those who are actually loyal to Lenin's ideas. Or even truer to say, loyal to Trotsky's ideas. A real communist is a Trotskyist, not a supporter of Stalin's views, for example.
