Russian Nationalist Imprisoned for Anti-Semitism Kills Himself

MOSCOW —  A leader of the Russian ultranationalist group Pamyat, sentenced to two years in a labor camp for leading an anti-Semitic assault on a writers’ meeting last year, has committed suicide in prison, Soviet authorities reported Monday.

Konstantin V. Smirnov-Ostashvili, 55, left no suicide note before hanging himself, and officials at the Tver penal colony, about 60 miles northwest of Moscow, told the Tass news agency that his death is “a mystery.”

Smirnov-Ostashvili, whose fiery speeches had made him a leader in the surge of anti-Semitism here in recent years, was convicted in October of stirring up ethnic hatred and promoting racism after he led a Pamyat attack on a meeting of liberals at the Central House of Writers here in January, 1990.

Although no one was injured in the melee, the incident became an important test of the government’s willingness to confront the rise in open, even violent anti-Semitism.

Smirnov-Ostashvili, a factory worker, was charged under Soviet legislation that makes it a crime to incite ethnic violence, racial hostility or religious animosity. His conviction was the first under the law for anti-Semitism, Soviet officials said.

Short and stocky, Smirnov-Ostashvili had the ability to whip his supporters into frenzies of anti-Semitism with a few highly charged, emotional sentences, and his “mysterious” death, although officially described as a suicide, could turn him into an ultranationalist martyr.