BACKGROUND: Most of the Left’s agenda in the modern West – racial and ethnic equality, ecology, women’s rights, etc. – has fallen on deaf ears in post-Soviet Russia. Even those who describe themselves as Leftist radicals pay little if any attention to the rights of workers, the hallmark of the traditional Left. The Russian extreme Left can be described only by a few general characteristics: being outside and hostile to the government; not being racist; being willing to engage in actions such as demonstrations and attacks on officials; and advocating/engaging in violence. The radical Left emerged soon after the collapse of the USSR, with some groups resembling the traditional Left in Europe, for example, “Toilers Russia” (Trudovaia Rossiia), led by Viktor Anpilov (b.1945). These groups usually accused mainstream Communists of betraying the Marxist-Leninist creed, even actually supporting Yeltsin’s counter-revolutionary dictatorship. At the beginning of Yeltsin’s rule, these groups staged several noisy demonstrations, but they soon disappeared, leaving no political legacy. The major reason for the lack of an intellectual legacy was that traditional Leftists who appealed to the interests of the workers had no social base. Rather than rising to defend their rights and repeat the 1917 revolution, the workers have been basically passive. There was sporadic worker unrest at the beginning of Yeltsin’s rule, but it never reached the level of the 1905-1917 revolutionary violence, which threatened the very existence of the regime. Widespread disappointment in the ability of the workers to be a revolutionary force was felt not only by the radical Left (e.g., Anpilov’s supporters) but also by Ziuganov’s Communists. When these groups started to lose the belief that the workers, the Russian masses in general, could be a lead toward the end of the regime, they began to look for someone who could play that role. The ethnic minorities emerged as a possible alternative. From this perspective, these Russian radicals were similar to the European Left in the 1960s and 1970s, who, also disillusioned about the revolutionary potential of the workers, looked to radical minorities as well as those who were engaged in any sort of deviant behavior as the force that could overthrow the existing order. They were also prone to justify any type of violence, including terror. In Russia’s case the appeal was made either to ethnic Russians, transformed into minorities in the republics of the former USSR (Limonov), or to Chechens (Stomakhin). IMPLICATIONS: While skeptical about the Russian populace, Eduard Limonov (b. 1943), like many other post-Soviet oppositionists believed that the Russians would finally rise. But he differed from the Communists and other “Red to Browns” in thinking that Russians in Russia needed encouragement from abroad. Limonov looked to the Russian enclaves in the former Soviet republics, where ethnic Russians had been converted into powerless and often discriminated minorities, quite similar to what happened to ethnic Germans in fragments of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire after World War I. In Limonov’s view, these “Sudeten” Russians were much more nationalist than their brethren in the Russian Federation, and their position made them nationalistic firebrands, so they should be a revolutionary vanguard of the “national-socialistic” revolution. Following this paradigm, Limonov planned to stage an uprising in northern Kazakhstan with its big Russian population, and even tried to get weapons for uprisings. Nothing came of the enterprise; Limonov was arrested and spent some time in prison. Limonov’s belief in the ability to raise at least some of the Russian populace was dashed, but a new trend started to emerge some time before his ill-fated attempt. The best representative of this trend is Boris Stomakhin (b. 1974), recently imprisoned for five years. Stomakhin’s intellectual and political evolution is quite different from that of Limonov, who is still grounded in the “Red to Brown” legacy and Soviet era socioeconomic arrangements. Stomakhin is a strong supporter of the West and a libertarian of a sort. Limonov and Stomakhin were on opposite sides of the barricades (in fact, Stomakhin had a very negative feeling toward Limonov), but they were structurally similar: both had been disappointed with the Russians. Stomakhin has become even more disappointed than Limonov. He sees no hope for Russia, a nation that could produce no one but slaves to render complete support to the brutal regimes that shaped the course of Russian history from the very beginning. In his view, Russians were also an imperial people that had subjugated and murdered all other ethnic groups of the empire. Russia and Russians have always been a major threat for humanity. So the destruction of Russia, the dismantling of the Russian state, is a major goal of mankind. In Stomakhin’s view, the West is too complacent for a resolute struggle against this ultimate evil, and true Russian revolutionaries like himself are still a tiny minority and cannot do much. Only one force could batter the Russian Empire—the Muslim minority, mostly Chechens. Stomakhin became a contributor to Kavkaz.org, the Chechen extremist Internet site, and supported all acts of terror—including taking hostages in Moscow in 2002 and killing hundreds of children in Beslan in 2004. His publications also provide advice to Chechen radicals and other enemies of the state and Russia as to where to strike. He stated that Putin should be assassinated in the manner of Alexander II, killed by revolutionaries in 1881. The Russian militia should be killed, and nationalists from the Baltic states should blow up the underwater pipelines designed to supply gas to the West but not to the Baltic states and Eastern Europe. He even advocated nuclear terrorism, for all means should be used to destroy the absolute evil – the Russians and their state. CONCLUSIONS: What are the implications of the views of Stomakhin and similar people who, whatever their original positions, have moved to the extreme Left in at least some aspects of their ideology? The number of people who hold these views is still extremely small. But their very existence should be of great concern to both Russia and the global community. To start with, they offer possible recruitment sources for Chechen terrorists and Islamic terrorists in general. Usually, Islamic converts are regarded as the important pool for potential terrorists. But people such as Stomakhin indicate that radicals with no religious affiliation can also join. These potential terrorists would bring important assets to Islamic terrorists. Indeed, ethnic Russians and others who do not look like people from the Middle East and the Caucasus could more easily move around and engage in acts of terror or help the terrorists. Finally, people like Stomakhin provide important clues about the terror culture in a broad segment of Russian society, not just among Islamic militants. It might even be an indirect indication that the terrorist tradition is part of the tradition of those who fight terrorists – the Russian government. And this might shed light on mysterious events from the 1999 Moscow apartment explosions to the 2006 poisoning of defector Alexander Litvinenko in the United Kingdom. AUTHOR’S BIO: Dr. Dmitry Shlapentokh, History Department, Indiana University at South Bend.