Russia is unable to prevent the existence and activity of fascist organizations, because Russian law fails to clearly define the notion of what constitutes fascist speech and behavior and what does not, Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev and leading human rights activists said Thursday.


For example: Last month, reformist politician Yegor Gaidar lost a libel suit filed against him by ultranationalist leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky. Gaidar called Zhirinovsky a "fascist" in the newspaper Izvestia, but Zhirinovsky was able to defend himself by saying that he was not. Had there been a more specific law describing fascism, Zhirinovsky might have had more difficulty escaping the epithet, Kozyrev said.


"Our legislation does not have a foundation against fascism," Kozyrev said at a joint meeting with human rights activists at the Foreign Ministry.


People in law enforcement agree as well. "As for me, I would ban all fascist organizations, but it is very difficult to prove legally that they are really fascists because there is not an appropriate law," Vitaly Ryabov, a spokesman for the city prosecutor's office, said in a separate interview Thursday.


Yevgeny Proshechkin, a deputy of the City Duma and a participant in the gathering, was more emphatic in his criticism, saying the prosecutor's office "indulges fascists of all kinds" in this country. "We can't make a serious argument that we live in a civilized, democratic country because of this orgy," he said, pointing to several anti-Semitic leaflets belonging to the fascist organization Russian National Unity. Proshechkin said the leaflets had been handed out in front of the Russian White House.


Proshechkin distributed a statement containing examples of how the prosecutor's office had to stop investigations of certain fascist and anti-Semitic publications due to an alleged lack of evidence. For example, prosecutors halted a 1993 investigation of an anti-Semitic publication in the magazine Molodaya Gvardia due to the lack of evidence, even though the text in question said that Jews "annually murder thousands of children a year in ritual killings."


Alexei Batogov, a spokesman for the extremist Liberal Democratic Party, said their leader Zhirinovsky had lost not a single suit against those who insulted him or called "fascist."


"We are always right and courts legally prove all the time this fact," Batogov said. "We know we will never lose."