They say New York City has the toughest fans, but they are tame compared with some Russian soccer superfans. In Moscow, bands – groups of fans as small as five to as many as 20 – use fists, elbows, and kicks to prove their loyalty to a team against other bands looking to prove the same thing – sometimes for the exact same team.
In fact, in a sport known for hooliganism internationally, these rabid Russian fans have emerged as some of the most violent and racist in recent years. During the 2012 UEFA European Championship, a match in Kiev became a battleground with riot police in helmets, vests and batons patrolling the stadium and its perimeter. Indeed fans were so violent that following a match in Poland that descended into a brawl, the Russian governing association was fined $150,000.
So yes, Rangers fans have nothing on them.
Ten years ago Pavel Volkov, 27, met a band of hooligans or, perhaps, was part of them – he can’t say. The facts are he had a camera and followed them as they roamed stadiums and cities across Russia in support of Ural, their football team, and bludgeoned fans of opposing teams along the way. After returning from the trip – and maturing, if not repenting – Mr. Volkov realized the value of the pictures taken in his youth and decided to document other bands across Russia in 2012 and 2013. This time, it was a serious journalistic endeavor.
“I wanted to show these groups of people as they are,” Mr. Volkov said through an interpreter. “They meet and they fight and people may confuse them for savages, but they are not.”
Reading the newspapers or perhaps visiting a soccer match yourself, one can see how easy it is to come away with that impression. However, Mr. Volkov explains that each band, whose members are all male and range in age from 17 to 30, have a leader and strict hierarchy. In addition, each, usually one per team but as many as ten in larger cities like Moscow, vary in how aggressive they are: not all of them fight, only those who choose to.
“They do it to prove who are the best fans,” Mr. Volkov said. “Who are the strongest, who are the coolest.”
The fights themselves are well-organized, because it’s illegal to fight. Bands know in advance the time and location of a brawl and meet in a secluded forest or park, away from the city lights. After that, things get blurry, much like Mr. Volkov’s photos. Bare knuckles fly in the name of football. Noses are broken and rib cages fractured. Some are put into headlocks and others suplexed. The fallen collapse under a barrage of blows from tennis shoes, spit, and sinister smiles.
As for the winner? “If one band is lying on the ground and the other is standing,” Mr. Volkov said. “The winner is standing.”
Mr. Volkov traveled across Russia for his project, shooting at both night and day at a variety of locations and used black and white to unify things. When asked to recall a specific moment of when situations got out of hand he paused, but could not produce a specific instance. “There are a lot of them,” he said. He insisted that aside from a few broken bones and bruises there was never a need for ambulances or hospitals to treat anything serious, though the validity in that statement is highly questionable.
The fanatics are not always so aggressive, he said. Mr. Volkov attempts to depict their humanity with scenes of them together at games, on sleepy road trips and of course, at the pub where he members from both bands bonded after brawling.
“They are people too; students, employees, office workers,” said Mr. Volkov. “This is just how they spend their free time.”
If it seems like Mr. Volkov is protective of these young men, whom he describes as good natured although authorities and civilians think differently from experience, it’s because in some ways he is. Often he asks himself, “Was I just a photographer? Or was I taking part?” when reflecting on his time spent with the bands, where in the thick of things, he sometimes felt an impulse to jump into fray.
“When you are there with them, it’s very difficult not to get attached,” he said.
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