The Dark Side Of The White Nights

The ultra right is taking over in Russia. White supremacists, determined to preserve the purity of the Slavic race, are turning St Petersburg into the Neo Nazi capital of the world. We follow this worrying trend.

The Dark Side Of The White Nights White supremacists, determined to preserve the purity of the Slavic race, are turning St Petersburg into the Neo Nazis capital of the world. In the past two years, there have been over a thousand racially motivated attacks. Not even young children are safe. Our documentary this week focuses on the murder of one African student, whose death came to symbolise all racial killings in St Petersburg. It reveals how a post-Perestroika Russia, still searching for identity, is falling under the sway of the ultra-right.
It started out just like any other night for foreign students Michel and Samba. But as they left their university party, someone was waiting for them. "I saw a man with a gun. We all started running, then realised someone was missing", recalls Michel. "We looked back and saw a body lying flat. Samba".

Samba's death was just the latest in a long series of attacks targeting foreigners in Russia. In one of the most notorious cases, a nine year old Tajik girl was beaten to death by skinheads. Her killers only received a short sentence. "We knew there was a growing problem of racism in Russia but we didn't know how serious it was", laments Samna's father. "We only became fully aware when we got the news our son was murdered".

Reluctant to acknowledge the scale of the problem, police normally attribute racist murders to hooliganism. But in Samba's case, that was impossible. The killers left behind a gun with a swastika and 'WP', the initials of 'White Power', carved on the handle. "The swastika on the gun means the people who killed him were members of the neo-Nazi organisations", explains Prof Dubrovsky. "It was specially made by those people simply to inform the world of the exact motives of this crime."

It's estimated there are around 15,000 skinheads in St Petersburg. "Usually the groups are quite small", states Prof Dubrovsky. "Socially, they are from low-middle class families and their parents have lost work and social status during the Perestroika". As Yelizabeta Ivanova explains; "They believe Russians are better than anybody else and that Russians are oppressed by everyone else".

Encouraged by political parties like the DPNI, which claim Slavic Russians "are on the verge of extinction", Neo-Nazi members believe they're fighting for the very survival of their race. "We regularly train in shooting so that our fighters can protect our country from invasion at any time". "They consider us as invaders and say that, if we settle here and give birth to many children their race will disappear," states one foreign student.

It's not only foreigners who are targeted by Neo-Nazis. University professor Nikolai Girenko regularly testified in trials of Neo-Nazis. "He testified knowing perfectly well that those people against whom he was speaking were dangerous", states Anna Sharogradskaya. He was murdered by a shadowy organisation which; "sentenced him to death as an enemy of the Russian Nation".

The situation has now got so bad that foreign students claim they only feel safe in their dormitories. "Samba once told me that we carry our coffins when we go out", recalls Michel. "You are never certain to come back alive".
FULL SYNOPSIS

The Producers

Director/Producer
Amir Baldwin has worked as news and current affairs producer for four years with the BBC world service. His first attempt at documentary making came in 2003 when he researched for a biographical film on the 1997 laureate of the Alternative Nobel Price. The Dark Side of the White Nights is his debut feature documentary. Amir is a member of Raindance and the London documentary makers group.

Assistant Producer
Victoria Piankova is a freelancer based in her home city of Saint Petersburg. She has a background in interpretation, but her position as programme manager at the Saint Petersburg Press institute led her into collaboration with many independent productions, mainly French and American. For the Dark Side of the White Nights, she also worked as an interpreter and production manager.

Making The Film

Though I wish it were a call to action,
the Dark Side of the White Nights isn't
any. I just wanted to deliver the message
that, in the 21st Century Russia, people
are still being murdered because of
their skin colour and nothing serious is
done about it. And as the film shows it,
murder is just the worst. Racist namecalling
and beat-ups are daily
occurrences. And During my short stay
in Saint Petersburg, the handicap of my
ebony appearance meant I only went
around always wearing a bump cap and
a stab jacket, which I felt wasn’t even
cautious enough. And it's not only
about the skinheads. Racism is just
ambient in this beautiful city. To take an
example, I was refused an interview by
the editor of a local paper on the
ground that Blacks carry germs not
harmful for themselves but lethal for
white men. And one of the
contributors shocked me by handing
out a left hand as I warmly made a
thank-you fist after an interview session.
But at the end of the day, I was satisfied
that making the film was a solace for
those who are driven underground,
their only sin being what they are.

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