Gosha Makarov is a teenager in Russia's second city of Saint Petersburg who shaves his head, wears heavy boots and abides by a simple motto -- "Russia for Russians."
The 16-year-old belongs to a skinhead gang in the city where racist attacks have increased during the past several years, prompting soul-searching in the former imperial capital that considers itself the country's liberal intellectual center.
In the latest attack, a 9-year-old girl from Tajikistan was stabbed to death in the center of the city last week as she walked home with her father and an 11-year-old cousin. The police have blamed the incident on skinheads.
"The blacks," as people from the former Soviet republics in the Caucasus and Central Asia are derisively called in Russia, are most often the target of skinheads like Makarov.
"It is ridiculous to believe that all people are brothers. Look, they act like Russia is their home," he spat out, pointing to a group of people from the Caucasus chatting outside a metro station.
In a chilling statistic, in a poll following the murder of the Tajik girl, 20 percent of respondents said they "understood" the attack.
"Naturally people said they were `shocked' and `outraged' by this crime, but they also were tolerant toward skinhead ideas," said Roman Mogilevsky, director of the Social Research Agency that conducted the poll.
"The situation is very serious, Saint Petersburgers like most Russians are not immune to racism and nationalism," Mogilevsky said.
"The society does not really put up a front against nationalist and racist ideas in Saint Petersburg, where such crimes are commonplace," he said.
Indeed last week's attack was only the latest such incident in the city.
In May, a group of German children of Turkish origin were attacked and molested by young Russians.
In March last year, a Sri Lankan student and an Indian national were beaten up in similar circumstances.
In September 2002, an Azerbaijani vendor was clubbed to death by skinheads who filmed the attack.
According to interior ministry figures, there are up to 20,000 skinheads in Russia today, who are particularly active in large cities, with some 5,000 in Moscow and 3,000 in Saint Petersburg.
Police say they face difficulties preventing crimes by the groups because of their decentralized nature.
"Saint Petersburg's skinheads don't have a centralized organization. Small groups spring up and dissolve very quickly," said Alexander, an official in the Saint Petersburg police department for fighting extremist groups.
"Most skinheads come from families with modest incomes. They are looking for scapegoats and think to carve themselves out a place under the sun in this way," said Alexander, who asked that his surname not be used.
"Police have a hard time preventing their actions because often enough they themselves do not know what they will do in five minutes," he said.
An exception, he said, was the Schultz-88 skinhead group that launched raids against ethnic Caucasians for three years and was well organized but fell apart with the arrest of its leader Dmitry Bobrov in 2002.
"Open your eyes, if the blacks kill you tomorrow, there will be no one to avenge you except the skins. They must know this," Makarov said.
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