Aleksandr Ivanov-Sukharevsky
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Aleksandr Kuzmich Ivanov-Sukharevsky (Russian: Александр Кузьмич Иванов-Сухаревский; born 1950) is a far right politician in Russia who is the leader of the Peoples National Party.
Ivanov-Sukharevsky first came to notice in the Soviet Union as director of the film Korabl (1988), a drama starring Vladimir Zamansky.
Politically he emerged as the leader of the PNP after the fall of Communism, and has made the party into a leading voice of white nationalism in Russia. He has built up a reputation as a leader of the racist skinhead movement in the country. A supporter of like-minded groups across Europe, Ivanov-Sukharevsky has called for a closer European unity with Russia at the head of an eventual European super-state.
Ivanov-Sukharevsky has developed his own ideology which he calls Russism, which emphasises the centrality of race above all divisions. Russism is attractive to racists who adhere to Paganism rather than the Russian Orthodox Church, which is generally afforded a central role on the Russian extreme right. Russism seeks to build a link from pre-revolutionary orthodox monarchism to Nazism, and identifies the two great heroes of the Twentieth century as Nicholas II of Russia and Adolf Hitler, arguing that Hitler was revenge on the Bolsheviks for the revolution.
Ivanov-Sukharevsky has been jailed on more than one occasion, notably in February 1999 when he was remanded for inciting hatred. During this period he shared a cell with Semyon Tokmakov, the leader of a large Russian skinhead gang, and he began to recruit the skinheads to his cause. The two published a joint letter from Butyrka prison in the PNP paper Ya-Russky, and as a result the paper became a popular seller among racist skinheads. He was found guilty in April 2002, although he was almost immediately released under an amnesty.
Ivanov-Sukharevsky was largely supportive of Vladimir Putin when he was first elected as President of Russia, describing him as an 'indispensable and extremely important politician', although adding that 'his ideology reflects the past stage of history' [1]. Although he had not specifically supported Putin's candidature in the election, he had not declared support for any candidate for the Presidency.
