Driven by crushing poverty, a lingering sense of humiliation after the collapse of the Soviet Union and outrage over Chechen separatist terror attacks, Russia's skinheads are becoming increasingly organised, violent and numerous.

A report claims Russia's youth is embracing the ideology their grandparents fought against so implacably, and that Russian skinheads, or britogolovy, now account for almost half the world's "skins".

Adhering to a blend of neo-Nazi ideology and rabid Russian nationalism, Russian skinheads are among the most violent, and have staged a wave of savage attacks on non-Russians and children as young as 5 in the past year, leaving many of their bleeding victims to die slowly.

Forty-four people were killed in racially motivated murders last year, more than double the previous year, human rights activists say. Many perpetrators were young, white skinheads shouting neo-Nazi or nationalist slogans. They rarely shoot their victims, preferring to stab them repeatedly or beat them to death with chains or knuckle-dusters.

The odds are always stacked in their favour because they hunt in packs of at least three and pick vulnerable targets. Their ranks seem only to swell, from about a dozen in the early 1990s to up to 60,000 today.

The report, How to quell the neo-Nazi setbacks in a country that defeated fascism, was produced by the Moscow Bureau for Human Rights and is among several that throw the spotlight on a dark underbelly of Russian society the authorities would have you believe barely exists. It comes at a time when Russia is celebrating its part in liberating the victims of the Nazi concentration camps.

"Today in Russia there are 50,000 skinheads at the very minimum while in the rest of the world, including America, Europe and other countries, there are about 70,000," says Semyen Charny, the report's author. The real number could be much higher, he adds, because neo-Nazi groups actively try to keep their organisations secret.

If nothing is done to combat the skinhead menace, experts warn that their numbers could swell to 100,000 within a few years.

With names such as "Blood and Honour", "Moscow Hammer Skin", "United Brigades 88" (H is the eighth letter in the alphabet. HH stands for Heil Hitler!), and "Skin Legion", there are estimated to be up to 10,000 in Moscow and perhaps 5000 in St Petersburg.

Their code is simple: they don't drink vodka (beer is the Aryan drink), they do not do drugs, they do not do petty crime (only murder and assault), they are supposed to have a good knowledge of Russian culture and to be able to hold their own in a 15-minute fight. Girls are welcome and are often used to spot targets without attracting attention.

But what unites them above all is a hatred of foreigners, in particular of anyone with dark features hailing from the Caucusus region of southern Russia or from Asia or Africa.

The views of Semyon Tokmakov, a convicted skinhead who brutally attacked a black US Marine in Moscow seven years ago and still espouses skinhead rhetoric, is typical. "Why have they [foreigners] all come here?" he asked. "They bring nothing but drugs and Aids. Every day they harass and steal our women."