Emerging during the late Soviet era and early 1990s from white power skinheads and football hooligans, neo-Nazism in Russia has become known for a series of violent attacks and murders targeting Central Asian and Caucasian migrants.

Videos of these attacks have been uploaded onto the internet by members of neo-Nazi or skinhead gangs, leading to international outcry and an eventual crackdown in the late 2000s and early 2010s.

With the beginning of the Russo-Ukrainian War, Russian neo-Nazis have achieved international attention for their militant support of Russian-backed separatist forces in eastern Ukraine.

To maintain order and combat crime, the program said, the authoritarian government should rely on "people's squads" (an analog of the Black Hundreds), which were not to be subject to any law.

[10] During the Soviet era, Viktor Bezverkhy (Ostromysl), the founder of the Russian Vedism movement (a branch of Slavic neo-paganism), revered Hitler and Himmler and in the narrow circle of his students propagated racial and anti-Semitic theories, calling for ridding humanity of "defective progeny" that allegedly resulted from interracial marriages.

He called such "inferior people" "bastards", included "kikes, Indians or gypsies and mulattoes," and believed that they prevented society from achieving social justice.

Bezverhij developed a theory of "Vedism," according to which, among other things: "all peoples will be sifted through the sieve of racial definition, the Aryans will be united, the Asian, African and Indian elements will be put in their place, and the mulattoes will be eliminated as unnecessary".

Alexander Tarasov considers the breakdown of the education and upbringing system, as well as the economic recession and unemployment during the reforms of the 1990s to be the key reasons for the sharp growth of the skinhead movement in Russia.

Tarasov writes that the First Chechen War further intensified dislike for natives of the Caucasus and contributed to the growth in the number of skinheads, which was further compounded by the government's imperialist rhetoric and weak prosecution of the extremist organizations by the police.

[15] According to Victor Shnirelman, the spread of racism and "Aryan identity" among skinheads in Russia was also influenced by anti-communist propaganda and criticism of internationalism during the "wild capitalism" of the 1990s, when social Darwinism and the "pursuit of heroism" promoted the popularity of images of "superhumans" and "the superior aristocratic race".

[18][verification needed] According to estimates by Alexander Tarasov and Semyon Charny in reports by the Moscow Bureau for Human Rights, as of 2004-2005 there were about 50,000 NS-skinheads in Russia (data sources and evaluation methodology are not cited).

[24][25] French sociologist and political scientist Marlène Laruelle reported on the participation of mercenaries "related, directly or indirectly, to the Russian National Unity movement" in the war, on the separatist side.

[26] Sociologist Nikolai Mitrokhin [ru] notes that one of the units called Rusich consists of neo-Nazis from Saint Petersburg and fights under a banner with a swastika stylized as a "black sun.

[30] Since the 2004 Orange Revolution in Ukraine, the Russian government has been routinely accused of collaborating with neo-Nazis in order to fight domestic opposition to Vladimir Putin.

This policy, known as managed nationalism, led to the increased prominence of the Russian Image group until its collapse in 2009 after the arrest of its leaders for the murders of Stanislav Markelov and Anastasia Baburova.

Shortly after its formation, the group allegedly attempted to set fire to the Olympic sports hall in Moscow, which was serving as the site of a Messianic Jewish conference.

During the trial, the jury of the St. Petersburg City Court found members of the Borovikov-Voyevodin gang ("Combat Terrorist Organization") guilty, including in the murder of Girenko.

[53] In 2011, Nikita Tikhonov, one of the organization's leaders and founders, was sentenced to life imprisonment for the murders of lawyer Stanislav Markelov and journalist Anastasia Baburova, and his roommate Yevgenia Khasis received 18 years in prison.

[54][verification needed] Judge Eduard Chuvashov [ru] of the Moscow City Court, who handed down a verdict in this case, was murdered on 12 April 2010, by members of the BORN.

[59][verification needed] On 23 October 2017, the Moscow City Court sentenced members of the neo-Nazi group the Cleaners who killed more than 15 people between July 2014 and February 2015.

[61][62] As victims, members of the group chose citizens who, in their opinion, violate generally accepted norms of behavior: persons without a fixed place of residence, begging, abusing alcohol and being intoxicated.

[63] Atomwaffen Division Russland is a neo-Nazi terrorist group in Russia found by Russian officials to have been tied to multiple mass murder plots.

[80] As of 2017, the Ukrainian Prosecutor General and the International Criminal Court (ICC) were investigating fighters of this unit for alleged war crimes committed in Ukraine.

Barkashov viewed "true Orthodoxy" as a fusion of Christianity and paganism, advocating a "Russian God" and an allegedly related "Aryan swastika".

[10][11][verification needed] According to the historian, Dobrovolsky picked up the idea of the swastika from the work of Nazi ideologist Hermann Wirth (the first leader of Anenerbe).

In 1992-1994 he was the head of the neo-Nazi youth movement called "Front of National Revolutionary Action" that evolved from the Union, and declared its allegiance to Orthodox Christianity.

While under investigation, Lazarenko broke with the Orthodox faith and, founded the neo-Nazi Navi Society [ru] (also known as the "Holy Church of the White Race") in Moscow on Hitler's birthday in 1996.

He did so under the ideological influence of the founder of esoteric Hitlerism, Miguel Serrano In October 1994 Lazarenko became the leader of the youth neo-Nazi National Front party.

During the trial for the skinhead organization Schultz-88 [ru] in the second half of 2005, the brochure "Paganism as the spiritual and moral basis of Russian national-socialism" by Dobrovolsky and the neo-pagan magazine The Wrath of Perun were mentioned.

Members of the neo-Nazi group called the Combat Terrorist Organization of Nevograd (BTO), disbanded by the police in 2006, considered themselves Slavic Rodnovers.