Paul Goble
Staunton,
January 19 – As a result of the prominence Vladimir Putin has given to his
biker buddy “Sawbones,” it should come as no surprise that his rise is
triggering conflicts between those like him who are totally loyal to the
Kremlin leader and other bikers who are members of what some describe as “unpatriotic
bike clubs in the regions.”
What
makes this important is that the Kremlin in this way has acquired yet another
group of plausibly deniable allies to do its dirty work, including in this case
people who are far more inclined to the use of force than even the Orthodox
activists who have attacked various opponents of the Kremlin.
Not only
does that further undermine what is left of the rule of law in Russia but opens
the way to the kind of politicized street violence that recalls the kind which
helped bring Hitler and the Nazis to power in Germany in the 1930s and which,
even after the Rohm purge, informed much of how Hitler’s regime continued to
behave.
Anna
Revonenko of the Open Russia portal describes this Russian development. Last week, she reports, members of Sawbones’
Night Wolves biker group attacked the president of the Tver Normandos MC biker
organization (openrussia.org/notes/705519/;
cf. tvernews.ru/news/218040/).
On the evening of January 14, a
group of men Andrey Filchenko, president of the Tver organization, recognized
as being members of the Night Wolves group showed up at the Normandos MC club
house and said that “they didn’t like [that] club and that they intend to close
it down.”
When he challenged them by asking on
whose authority they were acting, five of them simply seized him and beat him
up, Filchenko says. He has asked the local militia to investigate and there are
indications, he adds, that they are doing so. At least they have called him in
to give testimony.
Conflicts between the pro-Kremlin
Night Wolves and other motorcycle clubs have been taking place for some time.
Several months ago, the Night Wolves demanded that all cyclists operate under its
banner. The Normandos MC and several other clubs were against doing so, and the
Night Wolves got angry.
We’ve always been a politically “neutral”
family club, Filchenko says, “one that doesn’t support anyone either other
clubs or the Night Wolves.” Until recently, the Night Wolves didn’t like this;
but they rarely engaged in violence against those who disagreed. Now that
appears to be changing.
“This must not remain unpunished,”
Filchenko says. And Revonenko adds that
that is especially true given that such ideologically motivated attacks by the
Night Wolves have occurred elsewhere with participants declaring that their
opponents are American “hirelings” or worse. (See gazeta.ru/social/2015/05/12/6683141.shtml.)
Russian journalist Aleksandr Litoy
says that Sawbones and the Night Wolves want to “completely control all the
biker subculture” and to that end, they are prepared to put all kinds of
pressure, including the use of violence, against “independent motor clubs.”
Such conflicts among biker groups
are not unknown in other countries, of course. But what makes this one in
Russia worrisome is that Sawbones and his group appear to have the backing of
Putin and the upper reaches of the Russian powers that be.
Not only has Putin routinely met
with and praised Sawbones and have the Night Wolves sought to ban all groups
with international ties as potential instigators of a Maidan in Russia, but at
the end of last year, the Kremlin gave the Night Wolves a presidential grant of
3.1 million rubles (50,000 US dollars) to push “the unity of fraternal Slavic peoples
via public diplomacy.”
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