Politics in Russia can take on the most unexpected forms, and the latest media heroes are a motorcycle gang who call themselves the Night Wolves.
The gang’s origins are shrouded in mystery. Their website describes the club as coming out of a Moscow motorcycling movement, but gives no precise dates or names. This isn’t merely a historical oversight: this ordinary bike club has morphed into a profitable political and ideological project led by Aleksandr Zaldostanov, a failed medical student, who goes by the name of ‘The Surgeon’.
A brief history of Russian bikers
Russian bikers first appeared as an identifiable group in Moscow (though not in other parts of Russia) between the late 1950s and early 1960s, initially as part of a motorcycle sport movement.
