Over the past year, Russia’s security forces have increasingly targeted the country’s punk and metal music scenes. Thirty-five years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia is again persecuting members of subcultures — people once known in Russian as neformaly, or “nonconformists.” Concerts are being banned and broken up, songs are censored, people are fined for wearing the “wrong” clothing, while police and judges are relying on anti-extremism laws that are becoming increasingly harsh. The targets are not necessarily rebellious young people — sometimes they are even older citizens who are largely loyal to the state. In some ways, the current bans are even stricter than those imposed in the USSR.Contents1.Unwanted concerts2.Forbidden words3.Satan’s jacketOn March 14, the annual black metal festival “Funeral of Winter” was underway at the Territoriya club in Yaroslavl. When the second band took the stage, about 30 police officers and representatives of other law enforcement agencies burst into the hall. One security officer climbed onto the stage with an assault rifle and ordered the musicians to stop playing and lie on the floor.Citing witnesses, the publication RusNews reported that the phones and passports of performers and audience members were seized. Women were later released, while men were stripped and forced to lie on the floor for several hours. Security forces checked their tattoos and marked some of them with the words “f***ot” or “fascist.” “People were kept in the club until the middle of the night. Those with tattoos of Baphomet” — a goat-headed occult symbol — “had ‘f***ot’ written on them. Those with runes got ‘fascist,’” Yekaterina (name changed), a metal band manager and acquaintance of some of the victims, told The Insider.One of the officers involved in the raid introduced himself as a military enlistment official. The detainees were brought to him one by one and offered the chance to go fight in Russia’s war against Ukraine. One concertgoer was a U.S. citizen; he was forced to say on video that he loves Russia.According to RusNews, some men had their long hair — a common attribute of black metal fans — cut off. Yekaterina told The Insider that some had their beards shaved as well. “In the spirit of Peter the Great,” she said, referring to the Russian tsar who famously forced the empire’s nobles to shave their beards as part of his Westernizing reforms.Some men had their long hair cut off — a common attribute of black metal fans. There were also reports that beards were shaved off