RUSSIAN FASCISTS EMERGE IN LATVIA.

Russian National Unity (RNE)–the avowedly fascist movement led by Aleksandr Barkashov in Russia–seems to have begun seeping across the border into Latvia. The group has just distributed in Latvia, illegally, the first issue of a bulletin titled “Russkaya ataka” [“Russian Offensive”] in a purported print run of 3,000 copies. As reported by the Russian-language Riga newspaper “Chas” yesterday, the inaugural issue summarizes RNE’s history and program, promising to report in the next issue on RNE’s alleged activities in Latvia. The bulletin urges Russians in Baltic and post-Soviet countries in general to support the restoration of a Greater Russia, to give a fitting rebuff to “impudent small brothers in the ethnic peripheries,” and to join RNE in preparing for unspecified “decisive actions” (BNS, February 8).

Another Russian radical-fringe group, the National-Bolsheviks, surfaced in Latvia last year as an extension of the eponymous organization of Eduard Limonov in Russia. Its few activists in Latvia, clad in distinctive leather jackets, have appeared at several unauthorized rallies in Riga. Russian red-brown groups in Latvia publish illegally the bulletins “General Line” and “Red Orchestra.” RNE, currently the object of long-overdue though still half-hearted police measures in Russia, apparently seeks to increase its profile in selected “peripheries.” In the last two weeks RNE has aggressively descended on Belarus (see the Monitor, February 8).

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