Electronic Articles

“There is a rise in racist aspirations in Russia” states member of European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) Michael Had. ECRI is a commission founded by Council of Europe in 1993 for monitoring racist and xenophobic issues in the member states. Had also stated that the public opinion towards ethnic minorities has significantly worsened recently and racist statements are often made by politicians as well.

It very hard not to agree with Michael Had’s position. Historically Russian society at some point created a concept of so-called “member of smaller nation”. This is a person, who is a Russian citizen, is integrated in Russian society, shares Russian culture, but at the same time hates the society he/she is part of and by all means tries to harm it. In this way Russian society created a group of individuals towards which the entire “xenophobic energy” of the nation was diverted. Anyone could be regarded under this concept: Jew, Georgian, Azeri, Armenian, Chechen, Latvian, Lithuanian, Kazakh, Kirghiz and so on.

At different points in the history of Russian state different ethnic groups were regarded under this concept. During Tsarist Russia and Soviet Union period this stereotype was applied to Jewish minority. People that lived in Soviet Union remember that Jews were considered to be “mean and ungenerous, selling smuggled goods illegally and hiding proceeds in the form of gold and jewelry in the ground or in the wall of their house”. At that given period Jews were the ones, who were blamed for the problems of the system and the state and the overall hatred was directed to them. There were numerous jokes about Jews emphasizing how mean they were even towards their family members.

With the abolishment of the Soviet system “Jewish smaller nation” lost its importance and was “successfully” substituted by a “new threat”: an uncivilized person with black hear and mustache, having Caucasian or Middle-Asian origin, speaking “fractured Russian” and having excess sexual energy. He came to Russian soil to “make money” and does so by selling flowers or fruits and vegetables on the bazaar. Russian society often refers to such individuals as “Лицо Кавказской Националности” meaning a person of ethnic Caucasian origin. Since for ordinary Russians it is difficult to distinguish among different Caucasian and Middle-Asian ethnicities they use one single concept to refer to the people described above. It is widely believed that “people of ethnic Caucasian origin” often sexually harass women in the bazaar, while they are making purchases for their families. Besides these group of people are also regarded to be extremely unloyal to the law and they are solely blamed for high crime rates in the Russian state. This is how an image of the new enemy was created.

It is worth noting that TV channels also facilitate such thinking. They often sacrifice valuable TV time for making reportage how Caucasian or Middle-Asian guy seduced Russian woman, lived with her for some time lying on the sofa with a can of beer, watching TV and wasting her savings that she gathered through tough work. Then, when the savings were over he left her stealing her jewelry and selling it out on the bazaar for half-price. This is a typical story that is shown every day with minor variations.

What concerns to Russian politicians as Michael Had stated they often make extremely xenophobic statements. Politicians often blame ethnic minorities for hard social problems in the country. It is worth illustrating here a political ad that political party “Rodina” (Motherland-National Patriotic Union) used for the elections elections in the Moscow City Duma in 2005. In the ad a group of immigrants (dark haired, unshaved and wearing caps) are gathered up in the typical Moscow yard of large living blocks eating a watermelon and throwing garbage on the ground. The ad is accompanied with the Caucasian folk music as a soundtrack. Further in the clip a “typical Russian” woman with blue eyes and blond hair passes near them with a baby carriage. One of the immigrants expresses his dissatisfaction about this by shouting at her. Then we see head of the party Mr. Dimitry Rogozin and his partner Mr. Iuri Popov that advise uncivilized immigrants to keep clean. Iuri Popov asks them whether they understand Russian language to emphasize that these are those “bad guys” that Russian TV keeps talking about and the ones that “don’t let Russian people live in peace and prosperity”. The ad ends with the following slogan: “Let’s clean our city from garbage”.

After displaying this clip political party Rodina was banned from the elections of Moscow City Duma. It is not hard to imagine what would happen to the politician displaying similar ads to the public in any European country. Most probably that person would have to leave the political arena and never come to the surface again. However it turns out that xenophobic aspirations are not deemed that unacceptable for Russian authorities. In January 2008 Dmitry Rogozin was appointed as Russian representative to North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). In other words, a person sharing extremely xenophobic views will represent Russian state in front of 26 countries. It is really very hard to comment here.