The Horrors of Ethnic Cleansing in Russia

Fred Weir, Moscow correspondent for In These Times and regular contributor to the Christian Science Monitor, the London Independent, Canadian Press and the South China Morning Post, exposes the horrors of ethnic cleansing in Russia. He is also the co-author of Revolution from Above: The Demise of the Soviet System.

It started out as geopolitical bullying, with the Kremlin applying an economic headlock to pressure an obstreperous little neighbor, Georgia, to return to Moscow’s fold. But a related campaign against “Georgian interests” in Russia, involving mass arrests of alleged illegal immigrants and a crackdown on Georgian-owned businesses, has dangerously fuelled xenophobia in Russia’s streets and buoyed the country’s rising neo-fascist movement.

President Vladimir Putin personally triggered the anti-Georgian frenzy by complaining, in a televised meeting, that non-Slavs from the Caucasus region dominate farmer’s markets in most cities, incurring the wrath of native Russians.

“The indignation of citizens is right,” Putin said. “(We must) protect the interests of Russian manufacturers and Russia’s native population.” Putin may have been trying to gather support for his tough policy against Georgia, which includes a complete cutoff of trade, transport and even postal links. But in targeting Georgian businesses, he handed a gift to the outright racist Movement Against Illegal Immigration (DPNI), which calls for expelling all non-Slavs from Russian cities, whether they are Russian citizens or not.

Though Slavs make up about 80 percent of the population, there are millions of darker-skinned citizens from Russia’s north Caucasus, Volga regions and Siberia. Added to that are an estimated 10 million “guest workers” from former Soviet central Asia and Caucasus countries. There are about 1 million Georgians working in Russia, sending home some $2 billion annually, a major component of Georgia’s GDP.

Hatred of non-Slavs is a combustible political issue in Russia. “Russians are the most discriminated-against group in Russia, and we help them to find their voice,” says Alexander Belov, chief ideologue of DPNI, Russia’s fastest-growing grassroots organization. Lately many Russians have been mobilizing, with Belov’s encouragement.

Six days of rioting in the northern town of Kondopoga in late August left at least three people dead and forced hundreds of Caucasians to flee. “The local people want them to go back where they came from,” says Belov. “That’s democracy. The rights of the majority should be respected.” Similar upheavals have been reported over the past six months, hitting far-flung Russian towns in Saratov, Chita, Rostov, Astrakhan and Irkutsk regions. A September poll conducted by the independent Levada Center found that 57 percent of Russians thought Kondopoga-style violence could break out in their town, while 52 percent said they agreed with DPNI’s main slogan: “Russia for the Russians.”

Within days of Putin’s remarks, police descended on markets around the country, rounding up thousands of Caucasians—not only Georgians—whose documents showed any discrepancies. (Endemic corruption virtually ensures discrepancies in peoples’ official documents.) Moscow schools were ordered to report children with Georgian-sounding names to police, so their parents could be investigated. By late October, about 100 Georgian “illegal immigrants” were being deported to Tbilisi on special daily military flights.

Dozens of Georgian-owned companies have been closed down, on pretexts ranging from sanitary violations to tax evasion. The campaign even reached prominent Russians of Georgian heritage. Sculptor Zurab Tsereteli, creator of several well-known Moscow monuments, found himself accused of “misappropriating” 2.1 million rubles (about $80,000) from the Russian Arts Academy that he heads. Georgian-born Grigory Chkhartishvili, who writes some of Russia’s most beloved detective fiction under the pen name Boris Akunin, was targeted by the tax police.

“It is no longer safe to be a dark-haired person in Russia,” says Chkhartishvili. “What’s happening to Georgians today is ethnic cleansing. The Russian state is sick with the virus of xenophobia.”

Georgia has been the scene of intense rivalry between Russia and the West since it broke from the USSR in 1991. Seeking levers of influence, Moscow backed successful early ’90s rebellions in two ethnically different Georgian territories, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, whose de facto independence is protected by Russian peacekeeping troops to this day. Washington scored points by persuading Georgia to host the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, which opened this year, to carry newly-flowing Caspian crude to Western markets, bypassing Russia’s pipeline network. Russo-Georgian relations went into total freefall after the 2003 “Rose Revolution” ousted the cautious ex-Soviet foreign minister Eduard Shevardnadze and brought a young U.S.-trained lawyer and fiery Georgian nationalist, Mikhael Saakashvili, to power in Tbilisi. Saakashvili has vowed to re-unite his fractured country and lead it into NATO before his term of office expires in 2009. In early October, NATO agreed to enter into an “intensified dialogue” with Georgia about membership.

In late September, Georgian police arrested four Russian officers and charged them with spying. After a furious reaction from the Kremlin, the men were released to European mediators, but the die was already cast in Moscow. Putin launched a full economic embargo, ordered the Russian Black Sea Fleet to hold war games off Georgia’s coast and authorized the domestic crackdown against resident Georgians.

Georgia’s two breakaway statelets, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, have used the crisis to appeal to Moscow to unilaterally recognize their independence, a move that Georgians fear could lead to the irreversible division of their country.

“This is the biggest fear in Tbilisi today, that Russia will formalize those (statelets) by making them Russian protectorates with permanent Russian military bases,” says Archil Gegeshidze, an expert with the Georgian Foundation for Strategic and International Studies in Tbilisi. Russia insists it has no such intentions, but Putin has repeatedly warned that this could change if the West recognizes the independence of Kosovo, the Albanian-populated Serbian province seized by NATO in a 1999 war.

Meanwhile, the escalating campaign against Georgians is driving internal Russian politics down dark and uncharted avenues. “The Kremlin is appealing to Russian society’s nationalistic moods, and that’s very dangerous,” says Fyodor Lukyanov, editor of the foreign policy journal Russia in Global Affairs. “This kind of device is easy to use, but very hard to control.”

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The Russians Invade Lativa

The New York Times reports on Russians invading Latvia to escape economic hardship in so-called energy superpower Russia, and perhaps also as a means of extending Russian imperialism. In Latvia, Russians get a taste of how they make others feel in Russia; but they’ll never know how it really feels, because their white skin lets them blend right in and avoid many forms of abuse they heap on foreigners in Russia.

RIGA, Latvia — Russia’s domination of Latvia officially ended when Russia pulled out its last tank more than a decade ago. But Inesa Kuznetsova, a 75-year-old who has lived here for more than 50 years, is still far from ready to shift her national identity.

“My address isn’t a city, my address isn’t a town, my address isn’t a street,” says Ms. Kuznetsova, a dressmaker, who arrived from Leningrad during World War II. “My address is the Soviet Union.”

Her address is, in fact, Bolderaja, a largely Russian-speaking neighborhood on the outskirts of Riga, where a former Russian naval barracks sits empty and signs in the supermarket are in both Russian and Latvian.

Here, she inhabits a parallel universe that has little to do with Latvia. She watches a Kremlin-financed television station and eats Russian food. And she has no intention of learning Latvian (“Why the hell would I want to do that?”), though she says her grandchildren are being forced to do so.

Ms. Kuznetsova calls it an “insult” that residents who arrived after 1940, when the Soviet Union occupied Latvia, must now take a naturalization exam to become citizens.

She has not done so, instead pinning her hopes on a new “Russian occupation” of Latvia. This, she says, is gaining force with the arrival of illegal workers from Russia, Belarus and Ukraine. They have streamed in by the hundreds, if not thousands, to help fill the gap left by the nearly 100,000 Latvians who have left in search of a better life since their country joined the European Union in May 2004.

The influx is stoking fears in this tiny Baltic country of 2.3 million, which is still grappling with how to integrate more than 800,000 Russian speakers. One recent newspaper headline captured the national anxiety when, using variants on the name John, it said Latvian employers were “Looking for Janis, but finding Ivan.”

The anxiety is fanned by strong memories of the Soviet occupation, when tens of thousands of Latvians fled the country or were deported, and an equal number of Russians were sent here by Moscow. By the time of Latvian independence in 1991, the Russian population had swollen to nearly 50 percent, from 10 percent before World War II, with Russian the dominant language in large cities like Riga.

During the occupation, Latvia dreamed of breaking open its Soviet-guarded border and rejoining Europe. That dream has been fulfilled, with membership in the European Union and NATO.

But there was a price: while economic growth shot up to 10 percent this year, the large westward migration of Latvians has left a gaping hole in the job market. Now the country must choose either to accept the economic necessity of immigration or to hold on to deep and abiding historical resentments.

“We already have had Russians invading us for 50 years and we don’t need another invasion — it is too painful,” says Liene Strike, 21, a guide at the windowless Museum of the Occupation of Latvia, where a life-size model of a barracks in the gulag shows the cramped conditions under which Latvians deported by Stalin froze and starved to death.

As part of its cultural self-assertion, Latvia has introduced exams and an oath of loyalty for Soviet-era settlers who want to become citizens. To gain a Latvian passport, they must prove they know Latvia’s history and can speak Latvian.

Many of the nearly 400,000 Russian-speaking noncitizens are wary of taking a test, which includes questions like, “What happened in Latvia on June 17, 1940?” (Answer: “The beginning of Soviet occupation.”) But failure to pass the exam means being unable to vote or hold most public posts, and needing a visa to visit most other European Union countries.

Many Latvian employers argue that economic interests must supersede historical grudges if the Latvian economy, one of the poorest in the 25-member European Union, is to become competitive. So many Latvians have emigrated that construction sites across Riga sit empty for lack of workers. Companies have installed billboards across the capital pleading with Latvians, “Don’t go to Ireland; we need you.”

In an effort to stem the emigration, Latvia’s government will raise the minimum monthly wage next year to 120 lats (about $220), from 90 lats. But such increases have so far been ineffective, given the huge gap with wages elsewhere in the European Union. In Ireland, for example, the minimum monthly wage is more than $1,650.

Arturs, the 33-year-old owner of a cargo company, says he has been illegally smuggling Russian-speaking drivers from Belarus because he cannot find qualified Latvians. Declining to give his last name because he is breaking the law, he said he smuggled them in on three-month tourist visas and paid them about $640 a month, half the pay that Latvian drivers now expect.

“I just need workers,” he said. “I don’t care if they’re from Africa or China or Russia. I just need to earn my living.”

But the government considers the importation of foreign workers dangerous.

Aigars Stokenbergs, Latvia’s minister for regional affairs and until recently its economics minister, says relaxing immigration rules would drive down wages and saddle the country with a new generation of Russian speakers resistant to assimilation.

“It has taken 10 years to teach Russians here how to speak Latvian,” he said in an interview. “We can’t afford to assimilate another 100,000 people.”

The challenge of assimilation is apparent everywhere on Moscow Street, in a large Russian-speaking neighborhood called Moskachka, which is literally on the other side of the tracks.

On the one side is Old Riga: picturesque, medieval, bustling with tourists. On the other is Moskachka: poor, dusty, thronging with women in kerchiefs selling pickles and secondhand clothes in a giant covered market. Russian music plays from the stalls, where the women drink vodka to keep warm.

Tatiana Kaspere, 43, a Russian-speaking vendor, says she is fed up with feeling as if she will never belong.

Such are the contradictions of citizenship laws, she says, that her son, who was born before Latvian independence in 1991, is a noncitizen, while her 3-year-old daughter is Latvian. She says her husband, a construction foreman, cannot get a promotion because of his Russian identity.

“This is my home, but I don’t feel at home here,” she says. “Why do I need to take a test to prove my loyalty? I was born here. I would go back, but there is nowhere to go back to.”

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Fool me Once, Shame on Me, Fool me Twice, I must be Russian

The New York Times reports on how Russia, despite the Bolshevik revolution, is descending once again into a shockingly polarized society consisting of a tiny stratum of ultra-rich and a gigantic underclass of the destitute, even while, despite the fall of the Bolsheviks, it returns to neo-Soviet authoritarianism –having learned nothing from the past century of its history. Russia now has the all the bad features of both monarchy and totalitarianism and none of the benefits of either. Indeed, the only thing its has going for it is the finite resource of oil and gas, subject to the whims of the market.

MOSCOW, Nov. 15 — A rental car agency in this capital of fast deals but snail-paced traffic advertised an unusual service for those with plenty of money but little time: rent-a-motorcade. Business Car Service promised to provide as an escort an actual police car and two traffic policemen for eight hours at a cost of only $900. The car is equipped with a siren and, most important, a flashing blue light to get you places fast.

The service — which has been suspended after a public outcry about the proliferation of blue lights — is a sign not just of how horrendous traffic has become in Moscow but also of the blurry line between wealth and state authority that is characteristic of Russia these days.

The many sirens, flashing blue lights and police escorts in Moscow have provided government employees — and more than a few rich people — with relief from intractable traffic problems, though they tend to make the traffic worse for everyone else.

The blue lights, or migalki, are affixed to the roofs of official cars like those in the motorcade of President Vladimir V. Putin.

The problem is, there are now thousands of these cars, sometimes seen wheeling into grocery store parking lots or, insidiously, parked outside casinos. Members of Parliament, ministers and deputy ministers, judges, Kremlin advisers and many others in the federal, regional and city governments are allowed to place a blue light on their official cars.

Corporate chief executives of the big state companies Gazprom and Rosneft also get the blue lights, which offer impunity from traffic rules. Though the police technically are permitted to stop these cars, they rarely do.

Special license plates that provide immunity from traffic rules are also coveted. These come in three series, beginning with AAA (called Annushkas, or little Annas), OOO (Olgas) and SSS (Svetlanas). Where to buy these is a hot topic on Russian blogs.

The whole package — a blue light, siren, license plate and supporting documents — sold on the black market for about $20,000 three years ago, according to an article published then by Novaya Gazeta, a muckraking Moscow newspaper. Now, about 7,500 cars in Russia have special plates or blue lights.

With the lights and special plates multiplying — and with companies like Business Car Service advertising on the Web — few believe every siren is whisking a public servant to important state business.

In fact, the special driving privileges have become such a sore spot for less-privileged drivers that they have spawned a rare grass-roots political movement in Russia that is gaining traction as more people own cars here.

“The right to free and privileged travel should only be given to the police, fire and ambulance,” said Vyachislav Lysakov, the founder of Free Choice, an advocacy group for drivers. “Here we have bureaucrats and people who have bought their lights.”

“It’s a problem of the traffic rules, but it’s also a moral problem spreading nihilism in our society,” he said. “A driver sees how the authorities demand he follow the law, but they don’t follow the law themselves.”

Parliament is considering measures to limit motorcade privileges. One would restrict them to the president and seven other high officials, while another, backed by United Russia, a pro-Kremlin political party, and Mr. Putin, would allow 1,000 blue lights. The chamber is expected to pass some version of the United Russia law as part of a new traffic code early next year.

Boris V. Gryzlov, the speaker of Parliament, made a show of removing the blue light from his car in September — though he still drives with a police escort. “Respected citizens, if you see flashing lights on cars belonging to members of Parliament, then these are representatives of the opposition,” he said at the time.

The blue lights evoke themes of petty privilege for minor bureaucrats and injustice for the common man that have resonated in this society from the time of the 19-century novelist Nikolai Gogol, who said there were two problems in Russia: fools and roads.

Three million cars now clog Moscow, up 12-fold since the collapse of Communism. And though a third ring road, or beltway, opened and authorities are considering computer controls for lights or converting all 10 lanes of the second ring road to one-way traffic, it is clear road repairs and construction are lagging.

Abuse of the blue light privilege is blamed, at least in part, for the alarmingly high toll of traffic deaths on Russian society.

Some 33,957 Russians died on the roads last year, or about 24 deaths per 100,000 compared with 14 per 100,000 in the United States. The chance of dying in a car in Russia is 10 times greater than in Britain, according to the World Health Organization. It cited speeding, drunken driving and disregard for seat belts as the main reasons. After a grim pileup on a foggy highway in southern Russia this fall, President Putin said traffic injuries and deaths cost 2 percent of Russia’s gross domestic product, or $11.2 billion a year. Among other drawbacks, the abundance of flashing lights on roads has inured drivers to genuine emergency sirens, ambulance drivers say, diminishing already minimal chances of getting prompt medical care.

Outside the trauma ward at Sklifosovsky Hospital on a recent evening, an ambulance driver awaited another call.

“You run into traffic jams, what can you do,” the driver, Vitaly A. Medvedov, said with a shrug. “It’s rare that they die in the car.”

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Russia Makes Xenophobia Official Policy

The Guardian reports:

Hundreds of thousands of people in Russia will lose their jobs after President Vladimir Putin approved plans to ban foreigners from trading at street stalls and markets. Immigrants from former Soviet republics such as Georgia, Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan dominate markets in Russia, mainly selling fruit and vegetables.

The new measures, which were condemned as discriminatory and ill-conceived by human rights and migrants’ activists, will come into effect next year said the prime minister, Mikhail Fradkov, in a televised meeting with Mr Putin.

The president last month demanded that the government act to ensure that the interests of “native Russians” engaged in small trade were better protected.

The move came on the heels of a political crisis with Georgia that flared when Tbilisi arrested and deported four alleged Russian spies. After that a number of Georgian businesses in Russia were closed in a nationalist backlash that one western diplomat described as “openly racist”.

Mr Fradkov insisted the measures were not draconian. “We are taking into account the demand for labour, but doing it within laws that will be comprehensible both to us and to foreigners,” he said. Mr Putin nodded approval, saying: “You have made the right decision.”

The ban will begin with a transitional phase from January 1 when foreign small traders will not be allowed to sell alcohol and medicines.

Commentators said the measures were a Kremlin move to adopt the rhetoric of popular nationalists and groups like the Movement Against Illegal Immigration ahead of elections next year.

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