Will banning Columbine movement in Russia help address violence in schools?

The Supreme Court of the Russian Federation has declared as terrorists a community known as the ‘Columbine’ that draws fetishised inspiration from a 1999 school shooting in the United States. In its order on February 2, the court said anyone involved with the movement in Russia could face a life sentence. 

The hearing was held behind closed doors because “the case contained information classified as state secrets”. 

However, psychologists and educators are unsure about the efficacy of the court order as they felt that the movement was nothing but an assembly of teenagers struggling due to various systemic and emotional reasons, and needed more sensitive handling than an omnibus government crackdown.

What is Columbine?

On April 20, 1999, two 12 grade students of Columbine High School in Colorado killed 12 students and a teacher in a shooting spree in the educational institution. They killed themselves later.  

At least 23 others were injured in what is known as one of the worst school violence in the US. 

Following the incident, several countries, including Russia, saw the appearance of a fan community that praised the perpetrators and called for re-enactments of the campus violence. The “warped ideology” of these communities, most of them online, has come to be known as the ‘Columbine movement’.

Over the years, Russia has witnessed several such incidents, starting with the  February 3, 2014 shooting of a teacher by a ninth-grader at a school in northern Moscow. The student also engaged in a shootout with police officers. Since then, NEWS.ru estimates that at least 47 people have been killed in separate school shootings, and nearly 200 injured. 

Almost all of the teenagers who carried out the attacks were members of the so-called ‘Columbine community’ on social networks. 

The Russian Federation Prosecutor General’s Office says Columbine is a fully functional organisation, members of which “deny generally accepted moral principles and moral values, promote deviant behaviour, suicide, and violence, as a norm of life and a way to achieve their goals”. According to the agency, “the activities of Columbine's extensive structure are coordinated with the help of the internet”.

However, experts broadly believe that the Columbine movement does not really exist. It has no leaders, no representatives, and no organisational structures, stresses lawyer Vladimir Vasin, who had defended several teenagers prosecuted for their interest in the topic. Alexander Verkhovsky, director of the Sova Centre and a member of the Human Rights Council, agrees. 

“Clearly, Columbine is not an organisation,” Verkhovsky says. “On the other hand, we already have the ‘AUE movement’ recognised as an extremist organisation,” he adds. . 

In August 2000, the Russian Supreme Court had declared the AUE—“Arestantsky Uklad Edin” as a terrorist movement, which is essentially based on prison culture and consisting mostly of children and teenagers controlled indirectly by adult criminals.

Columbine members 

In October 2020, Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev said: “The number of adolescents participating in youth subcultures, such as ‘school shooting’ and ‘Columbine’ is growing. Their number in social networks has already reached more than 70,000 people." 

However, experts believe that this figure is based on the number of subscribers to these communities, not the number of young terrorists. It is even likely that this is the number of teenagers who are bullied at school and ignored at home, they argue.

Four years ago, Russian Information Agency (RIA) Novosti correspondent Anastasia Gnedinskaya infiltrated several of these groups to find their leaders, and then, together with a psychiatrist and internet safety experts, looked into how much they influence the worldview of teenagers.

“If you don't know that this community is about murderers, you'd think it’s a gathering of fans of a music band or an actor," Gnedinskaya said at the time, explaining that there was a minute-by-minute description of the shooters' every move on their way to school, every little detail of their lives.

However, she also also got a rare insight into the members’ psyches. "In almost every community, separate posts are devoted to how classmates humiliated the teenagers who organised the massacre in Colorado,” Gnedinskaya wrote.

 “And that's probably the main explanation for why teenagers all over the world make Eric and Dylan their idols. They don't think of them as killers. In the minds of ‘Columbineers’, Harris and Klebold are outsiders who have avenged their abusers." 

Gnedinskaya spoke with several Columbine community founders. One of them was a girl named Ira. The girl was home-schooled because of her illness, and when she showed up at school, her classmates mocked her because of her excessive weight. 

In addition, Ira complained about her dysfunctional relationship with her mother, saying "she devoted her whole life to her husbands”. 

"I didn't create the Columbine community to promote violence," the teenager insisted. “I wanted to find guys with the same problems as me." She also admitted that she has no friends in real life, but that she has "a lot of like-minded people" on the internet.

Who profits off the problem?

Experts also believe that the communities created by schoolchildren that romanticise mass murder are only the tip of a whole destructive movement. There are far more dangerous groups and they are often run by adults.

Grigory Paschenko, head of the federal Cyberguard project, divides social media communities dedicated to school mass shootings into several groups. 

“The first are those that have monetisation, which means they are created to make money. Such groups live off advertising. Behind such communities, there are companies that promote goods or services. They are ready to develop any topic popular among teenagers if there is interest in it at the moment. At the same time, they advertise clothing, drinks, and gadgets that are popular among teenagers," he explains. 

Revenue from advertising in groups of 100,000 users amounts to 300,000 rubles (approximately 3,900 USD) per month, in groups with 20,000 subscribers - 50-60,000 rubles. "This is not bad money, for the sake of which the administrators are happy to sacrifice moral principles," says Paschenko.

But experts consider other communities, where, according to Paschenko, they conduct sociological research, to be the most malicious. The result of such work is the identification of teenagers who can be used for their own benefit in the future.

What can really help?

Psychiatrists have no doubts that Columbine communities are harmful to adolescent mental health. However, they insist that there is more of an inverse relationship between the increase in attacks on schools and the content of such communities.

“In my opinion, teenagers are not attacking schools because they are members of such communities. On the contrary, they seek out such communities because they are ready for destructive actions,” suggests  Lev Perezhogin, a psychotherapist and a leading researcher at the V.P. Serbsky National Research Medical Centre, in a conversation with RIA.

He explains that if a child with a healthy mind wanders into such a group, after a while, they will become disgusted or bored. 

"A healthy person should have about the same reaction to blood and murder as to the subject of natural urges: he should get nauseous,” he says. 

“But if a teenager's emotional-volitional sphere is distorted, he is looking for doping in the form of shock content. The psychotherapist has no doubts about the fact that such a child is already ready to commit an illegal act; he only finds justification and motivation in Columbine's communities."

Perezhogin has long urged parents of teenagers to pay attention to the slightest changes in behaviour of their children. And if they notice something alarming, they should not be afraid of turning to doctors and law enforcement agencies. But it's not so simple either.

What are the consequences of such a decision?

Lawyer Vladimir Vasin believes that law enforcement officials do not have a clear understanding of what to do with teenagers detained on suspicion of preparing an attack. For example, in autumn 2020, 14-year-old Alyona Prokudina from Krasnoyarsk made a video dedicated to the fact that people must be killed, and the Federal Security Service (FSB) burst in on her and sent her to a psychiatric clinic. 

According to their information, Alena had subscribed to a group on social media dedicated to the shooting at Columbine High School. According to Vasin, who defended Prokudina, even those accusations were not supported by evidence.

Nevertheless, FSB officers raided the home of the schoolgirl's family at five in the morning, with about 10 officers participating in the operation. After the search, they persuaded the schoolgirl's mother to agree to Alyona's examination at a psychiatric hospital, and when she decided to release her daughter from the facility, the hospital staff forcibly hospitalised her for an indefinite period. 

Alena had to stay in bed for 13 hours a day. She was released only after her parents wrote a letter to the Ministry of Health and told journalists about the situation. Later, the Investigative Committee refused to open a criminal case against her. Elena Leonenko, deputy head of the Investigative Committee, said that every year authorities prevent up to 20 attacks on educational institutions. Journalists suggest that such “prevented attacks” are likely to be even more frequent now. The teenagers who stand for the country's main opposition figure, the now-convicted Alexei Navalny, are at the growing risk of getting targetted. 

Among the possible consequences of recognising Columbine as a terrorist movement, Verkhovsky worries, is the fact that investigators will not be required to determine the motives of potential attackers. 

"The actions of the attackers must be qualified as a terrorist act, that is, acts committed with the purpose of influencing the authorities or some group in society. Now that's not very easy to prove—in some cases it's not very clear what the Columbine member wanted. 

“But if Columbine is generally recognised as a terrorist movement, then in some ways, you don't need to prove anything; the attacker is automatically a terrorist, by the fact of committing his crime," he explains. 

It may even reach the point of absurdity: any discussion of Columbine could be qualified as a justification or call for terrorist activity.

Furthermore, recognising Columbine as a terrorist organisation would undo “normal pedagogical work” with children interested in the subject. Children who are rejected by their peers for subjective reasons are also pressured by their parents and their teachers. 

"Teachers and psychologists should work with such teenagers. But if they are declared terrorists, what kind of pedagogy is needed?"  Verkhovsky asks.