Disrupting Escalation Of Terror In Russia To Prevent - Belfer Center ...

cooperation with authorities. 67 The emergence of the aggressive pro-Kremlin youth group Nashi
in 2005, whose mission is to counter opposition groups, both leftist and liberal, may furher
radicalize the opposition youth groups. 68
None of the above-mentioned political opposition groups have apocalyptic scenarios in
their doctrines. However, the set of skills and expectations acquired by some of their followers
may gradually transform them into violent political entrepreneurs whose experience and
knowledge may be used by those who mastermind massive terrorist attacks. This probability will
increase if the government continues to crack down on these largely benign radicals, and their
frustration with the futility of their own relatively nonviolent tactics grows.
Such scenarios have already played out in several societies, where ultra-leftist
organizations could not earn any public attention to their causes without deciding to resort to
terrorism. The examples include the Red Brigades in Italy, the Red Army Faction in Germany,
Shining Path in Peru, and the Japanese Red Army.
67 Another member of this organization, Alexander Biryukov, was convicted in 2001 for another FSB bombing in
1998. A member of Russian Communist Youth Union of Bolsheviks, Andrei Sokolov, was convicted in 2001 for
bombing the monument to the family of the Russian tsars in Moscow in 1997. The bombings and other acts of
protest led the FSB to announce the existence in 1999 of the so-called New Revolutionary Alternative, an
underground leftist umbrella organization that stood behind the attacks.
68 After a group of up to thirty Nashi activists attacked a meeting of the NBP and another leftist group, AKM, in
Moscow on August 30, 2005, Limonov said that NPB will have to resort to an equally violent response. Carl
Schreck, “Masked Men Attack NBP Activists,” Moscow Times, August 31, 2005.
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