Right-Wing Terrorism and Violence in Putin’s Russia

This article introduces the case of right-wing terrorism and violence in Putin’s Russia into the purview of terrorism studies. It explores the modus operandi of Russian right-wing militants by analyzing a new dataset, RTV-RUSSIA, which includes nearly 500 violent events covering the period 2000-2017. Compared to their Western European counterparts, Russian right-wing militants have operated more violently (with attacks being more frequent) as well as more purposefully (with a larger share of premeditated attacks). The article offers a historical and a comparative explanation. The first answers the question of why a wave of right-wing violence occurred in the 2000s, stressing the socio-economic turbulence of the 1990s, increasing immigration, ideological radicalization amid restrictive political opportunities and a permissive discursive environment, and the rise of the internet as an arena for spreading violent propaganda. The comparative explanation tackles the question of why Russia has seen so much more right-wing violence than Western countries, highlighting the combination of anocratic regime type, high violence levels, high immigration, and low social stigmatization of extreme-right views.