Milov Blasts Putin on Riots

Writing on Gazeta.ru Vladimir Milov delivers a one-two punch to the solar plexus of Vladimir Putin on the issue of nationality, along with his partner in opposition Boris Nemtsov.  The latter handles the Caucaus region, while Milov addresses Putin’s weakness much closer to home.  Paul Goble reports:

Russia’s liberals have ceded issues like migration and the violence in the North Caucasus to the nationalists by failing to address them openly and honestly and to offer programs for their resolution, a shortcoming that has helped to marginalize the liberals in Russia and give the nationalists an undeserved victory, a liberal commentator says

In a commentary on Gazeta.ru, Vladimir Milov, the head of the Democratic Choice Movement and of the Institute of Energy Policy, argues that the Manezh Square violence must become “a serious occasion” for re-assessing “the influence and role of nationalism and the factor of inter-ethnic relations in Russian politics.

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EDITORIAL: The Rise of the Russian Gestapo

EDITORIAL

The Rise of the Russian Gestapo

Those Nazis sure do love them some Russia!  Little wonder, of course.

Back in January, we republished a piece from Global Voices reporting on the persecution of a young Russian woman who dared to the commit the “crime” (in racist Russian eyes, at least) of marrying a Chinese man and admiring Chinese culture on her blog.

A few days ago, the American neo-Nazi website Stormfront picked up the link in its forum section, sending any number of neo-Nazi thugs scurrying through our virtual pages and leading them to make comments like “boy do I love the Russians” and “they are taking the most direct approach (more than other whites) in the streets, they are a tough folk that’s for sure.”

We’ve previously reported on how right-wing lunatics like Pat Buchanan, Ron Paul and David Duke wet themselves when thinking about the racist dictatorship that is Vladimir Putin’s Russia.

Look the other way in Russia, however, toward the “police,” and the situation is little better.

Moscow: For “Russians” Only

Paul Goble reports (also see Michele Berdy’s mocking, acidic piece in the Moscow Times):

A senior Moscow Duma official says that his city plans to “work up a collection of rules” which will help those coming to Moscow to fit in with the style of life of the Russian city and know from a pamphlet to be published outlining “what is acceptable and what isn’t” for all residents in what he described as an “ethnic Russian” city.

In an interview published in today’s Rossiiskaya Gazeta, Mikhail Solomentsev, the chairman the city Duma’s committee on inter-regional ties and nationality policy, said that such a set of rules will help unite newcomers with longtime residents by stressing what the two have in common rather than what separates them. But his comments about this plan make it clear that he believes it is migrant workers and non-Russians who must adapt rather than the Russians into whose city the former have moved, an attitude that almost certainly will exacerbate the already tense ethnic relations in Moscow whatever Solomentsev in fact hopes for.

Lies and the Lying Russian Racists who Tell Them

Paul Goble reports:

Immigrant workers in Russia commit only three percent of all crimes in that country even though they form ten percent of the population, a prominent Moscow rights activist says — and a third of those crimes involve the falsification of documents, the result of their inability to secure legal registration.

In an interview published in Velikaya Epokha Svetlana Gannushkina, a leader of Memorial and the Civil Assistance Committee, singles out for particular criticism Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov who is “eternally claiming that migrants occupy our work places, violation our cultural traditions, speak Russian poorly and commit a large fraction of crimes in Russia.” All this is “completely absurd,” Gannushkina says. The Interior Ministry’s website features figures showing that “foreign citizens and those without citizenship commit about three percent of the total number of crimes,” a figure that has held more or less constant “already for many years.”

EDITORIAL: The Toxin of Russian Racism

EDITORIAL

The Toxin of Russian Racism

We’ve said many times before that the Russia teems with the most virulent and shameless racism imaginable, and the litany of dead, dark-skinned bodies is sure and certain proof of this undeniable fact (click the “racism” link in the “categories” section of our sidebar to read four years’ worth of our reporting on the subject, which may take you days to get through) .

But we’ve also always been careful to point out that, as utterly horrific as these killings are, there is a darker, more outrageous element to the racism found in Russia, namely that it is openly supported not just by the general population but by the government itself.  Russia is, quite simply, a nation of racists and they are proud of it.

Reporting from Moscow in a blog post we republish in today’s issue, journalist Julia Ioffe provides an example of what is happening in Russia on a daily basis from her own personal experience.  Ioffe, whose parents fled Russia when she was a child, stood on a subway platform and watched a screaming hoard of Russian skinheads chanting about purging all non-Slavic blood from Russia. She stood and watched as hundreds of ordinary Russians clapped and cheered their message: “Russia for Slavs!” (using the word for “Russian” in Russian that means “Slavs and nobody else”).

Everyone — everyone — who has spent time living on the real streets of Russia knows that the anecdote Ioffe is relating is anything but anecdotal.  It’s fact, it’s conventional wisdom, it’s the real Russia.

Russia’s Rampaging Racism

Julia Ioffe reports from Moscow:

Crossing the underground transfer to the Paveletskaya stop on the circle line in the Moscow metro this morning, I found myself swallowed up by a bunch of singing, rowdy youths.

Decked out in red-and-white scarves, they were on their way to Luzhniki stadium for a soccer match where they would cheer for their team, Spartak — thus the red and white. (These, coincidentally, are also the colors of Nashi, the Hitlerjugend-ish Kremlin youth group.)

The kids were warming up in the metro, having warmed up, it seems, with a couple beers beforehand.

Holding their arms out in a V or clapping, the kids sang. And here’s what they sang:

EDITORIAL: Russia’s Barbaric, Shameless Racism

EDITORIAL

Russia’s Barbaric, Shameless Racism

The Russian language is bizarre and crude, a perfect reflection of the people who speak it, people who turn their backs on a torrent of annual race murders or, even worse, participate in them.

Take the image at left, for instance. It’s a snapshot of a billboard that hangs in many Moscow subway stations, the kind you’re forced to look at as you take interminable rides up and down endless escalators, which are so long because of the subway’s dual purpose as transit and bomb shelter.

The text reads:  “Your country needs your records.  Every minute in Russia three new people are born.”

It’s totally shameless, barbaric racism.  The billboard is saying:  “Lots of babies are being born in Russia, and way too many with dark skin. What are you going to do about it, white woman?”

Russia is not only losing population fast, but the Slavic population within Russia is doing the worst job of all, leading to projections that Russia will soon become an Islamic country.  The Kremlin, to put it mildly, is panicking.

The same people who publish and read such blasphemy, of course, who deny the citizenship rights of dark-skinned “Russians,” who believe that only white-skinned Slavic people can properly even be called “Russian,” these same people refuse to let places like Chechnya be independent.  Instead, using blood violence, they insist that such dark-skinned people remain under Russia’s thumb, enslaved.

But is the word “record” really the best that the Russian language can come up with to convey this idea?  It’s not even a “Russian” word, of course, even someone who doesn’t know a word of Russian could recognize it, if they could get past the Russian script.  Seemingly, Russians lack the initiative to invent their own words for things like “hamburger,” even when the word has a sound like “h” that doesn’t exist in Russian.  So Russians just call it a “gahmboorgehr.”  Even many Russians would have to do a double-take to figure out just what “record” is supposed to mean in this context.  Unfortunately, upon figuring it out precious few would disagree with the idea.