MOSCOW, April 30 — Holding on to the ankles of two of his opponents, Alex, a 33-year-old member of a Moscow football hooligan group, felt the blows on his head but wouldn’t let go. The third man on top of him was battering his skull with both fists, but still Alex held on, hoping to buy his teammates, battling around him, breathing space. At last, the man rammed his elbow down into Alex’s face, shattering his eye socket. He let go.
This was not his first fight; years of organised brawls have left Alex with a face reshaped by blows. (Surgery and a plastic implant stabilised his eye after this most recent one.) And that last fight, nearly a year ago, had been a good one, Alex said in a recent interview. His side had won.
What had unnerved him was a new feeling: He realised it was getting harder to keep up.
When it first appeared in the 1990s, hooliganism in Russian football modelled itself heavily on the English version, adopting its clothes and terminology, including the term for its groups: firms. The Russians also embraced the English’s passion for blackout drinking and drunken brawling.
“The English were our school,” said Yevgeny Malinkin, a fan in his 40s known as Kril. “Now we’ve lost our fathers. We’ve overtaken them.”
In fact, Russia’s hooligan scene has undergone a transformation. The new generation bears little resemblance to the beery bravado and off-balance punch-ups associated with traditional European hooliganism, or even the sometimes militia-like violence of South American ultras.
Instead, the fans who have emerged in Russia over the past decade are obsessed with physical fitness, elite martial arts training and — at least while fighting — militant sobriety. Christened Okolofutbola, or “around football,” Russia’s hooligan scene has developed into perhaps Europe’s toughest, and just over a year before their country hosts football’s World Cup, the most hard-core Russian fans may be in the best fighting shape of their lives.
But while their prowess is not in doubt, fan monitors, football officials and even the hooligans themselves say there is virtually no chance the disorder that the Russian fans brought to last year’s European Championship in France will be repeated on home soil.
Instead, Russia’s hooligan groups are enduring an unprecedented crackdown by the authorities, who are determined that the World Cup will go smoothly. Interviews with more than a dozen fans and hooligan group members over the past five months have shed light on a wave of arrests and searches that have targeted the most violent fans and their leaders, as the police have turned measures more associated with anti-terrorism operations and political repression against the hooligans.
“Believe me,” said Andrei Malosolov, a football journalist who helped found Russia’s national supporters club, “the years before the 2018 World Cup will be the quietest in the history of Russian football.”
Last spring, a brawl between Moscow’s two top firms resulted in house arrest for five fans, including a firm leader. The men face jail time — an unusually harsh punishment for such a fight.
The arrests spooked the fighters, as more detentions followed, as well as frequent searches of fans’ homes. Fans interviewed by The New York Times talked of receiving visits from armed police officers, and of telephone calls warning them that they are being watched.
In September, Russia’s national supporters’ club, which represents fans, was shut down, while its chief, Alexander Shprygin, was arrested and briefly held in connection with the same brawl. The next day, Shprygin’s car was set afire by arsonists. The closing of the fan club, which presaged Shprygin’s arrest and arson attack, was viewed as a punishment for his championing the Russian fan violence at the European Championship in France.
Since Shprygin is a former hooligan himself, his banishment has been seen as a sign that Russian authorities didn’t want to appear to be backing violent fans ahead of the World Cup.
In reality, though, the pressure on hooligan groups has been growing for years. Fans said it had intensified perceptibly after the 2014 revolution in Ukraine, in which Ukrainian football fans were seen as a critical force in battling the police. A previous crackdown followed a 2010 riot by fans in front of the Kremlin.
The Interior Ministry’s Department E, responsible for monitoring terrorist and organised crime groups, now also monitors hooligans, with many fans believing their communications are under surveillance. Even the woodland fights have become infrequent, given the increased risk of arrest recently.
“The movement is paralysed,” Sergeev said.
This month, a new law imposed harsher punishments for fan misbehaviour, introducing lengthy stadium bans.
Piara Powar, director of a fan monitoring group, FARE network, said he was “confident” there would be no major trouble at the World Cup. Given the current pressure on fans, and the massive police deployment expected next year, fans here agreed there was little hope of fighting.
Not that the hooligans wouldn’t like to.
“There is a huge desire,” said Alex, the Moscow firm member. “Because when we have such an event happening — that is, when people from the whole world are coming here — I really want to.”
Describing how it would happen, he said scouts would find foreign hooligans and relay their location. The Russians then would stalk the visitors before launching a surprise attack.
“No one will kill anyone,” Alex said. “Just rough them up a little. You know, a light massage.”
It would be such a shame not to, he said.
“If they don’t arrest me,” he said, “then in 2018, God willing, I will beat someone.” — The New York Times
