There were Only 70 Skinheads in All of Moscow in the 1990s, Demushkin Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, March 14 – Just as most Americans who lived through the 1920s never saw a flapper, drank bathtub gin or listened to jazz but who subsequently remembered that decade as defined by all three, so too many of the things that Russians believe defined the 1990s do not happen to be true.

            In an extensive interview with Tatyana Uskova of MBK News about his life, Dmitry Demushkin, who began life as a skinhead in Bratyevo, a suburb of Moscow, only to become a Russian nationalist who got in trouble with the authorities and landed in prison as a result, provides a useful corrective on one point (mbk-news.appspot.com/suzhet/skinxed-iz-brateevo/).

            Skinheads were not the ubiquitous phenomenon that the media treated them at the time and that more recently memory have transformed them into. In fact, there were “only 70” in all of Moscow at the time, he says, adding that he should know because he was one of them and knew all the others.