Nikolai Girenko

Nikolai Mikhailovich Girenko (Russian: Николай Михайлович Гиренко; 31 October 1940 – 19 June 2004) was a Russian ethnologist and human rights activist.

Biography

Nikolai Girenko was born in 1940 in

Girenko managed scientific and education programs meant to foster tolerance and counter-act chauvinism. He and others organized the European Conference for the Rights of Ethnic Minorities, the first of its kind in Russia, in 1991.

Girenko organized workshops on legal counter-acting the

He provided more than twenty expert examinations at the request of Moscow and St. Petersburg law enforcement bodies and served as an expert witness at trials. Several far-right journalists^{[citation needed]} were convicted^{[citation needed]} by courts with the help of Girenko's testimony as an expert witness. Members of nationalist groups voiced irritation in their press with Girenko's work.

Girenko took part in the trial of the ultra-nationalist newspaper Russian Veche (Russian: Русское вече) in 2004 as an expert witness. He provided expert examinations of publications of the Shultz-88 group in another trial. He consulted with the investigators of the 2002 murder of the 53-year-old salesman Mamed Mamedov.^[1]

Two or more anonymous attackers, suspected to be

Lev Borkin, Girenko's colleague, said that Girenko mentioned receiving threats. One night in November 2003, unknown individuals broke through the entrance to the office of Union of Scientists and left a note, "We will be whacking you, science freaks!".[2]

Vladimir Popov, leader of the neo-Nazi group Russian Republic, claimed responsibility for the killing in an interview to the Agency of Journalistic Investigations on 24 June 2004. Popov said that a "death sentence" was given to Girenko by the group.^{[citation needed]}

As of June 2005, the official investigation had found no suspects, according to the newspaper Tainy Sovetnik.^[3] Yelena Ordynskaya, senior assistant to the city Prosecutor, said the investigation found that Russian Republic published its "death sentence" to Girenko a few days after the murder.^[4]

The city court of Saint Petersburg sentenced 12 members of a Combat Terrorist Organization led by Voevodin and Borovikov.

Homage to Girenko

The portal "Human Rights in Russia" organized a social campaign called "I don't want to hate". The authors of the campaign hope to overcome

• Racism in Russia

References

Scientific works

• Sociology of Tribe. Published by the
  Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography
  , St. Petersburg, 2005.
• Ethnos, Culture, Law. Published by the
  Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography and Civil Control
  , St. Petersburg, 2005.

• Girenko's biography at Kunstkamera, in Russian. Machine translation.
• In memory of Nikolai Mikhailovich Girenko, Jewish Petersburg, in Russian. Machine translation.
• Obituary by
  Yuli Rybakov, in Russian. Machine translation
  .
• The "I don't want to hate" campaign, in Russian. Machine translation.
• The death of a giant, Russian National Unity, in Russian Archived 2006-07-11 at the Wayback Machine.
• "Sentence N1" of the "official site of the Government of the Russian Republic", in Russian. Machine translation.
• The blow was made very accurately, by Artyom Kostukovsky, AiF-Petersburg, for Novaya Gazeta. Machine translation^{[citation needed]}.
• Russian Federation. Report 2005, Amnesty International.
• Death of an anti-fascist from Kunstkamera, by Uliana Skoibeda, Komsomolskaya Pravda, 11 August 2004. Machine translation.