(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Alexander Panin – October 17, 2013) Following a recent eruption of ethnically motivated street violence, Moscow’s migrant-populated food markets and warehouses continue to serve as the front line in an ongoing fight against illegal immigrants declared by mayor Sergei Sobyanin. The now notorious vegetable warehouse in Biryulyovo that became the site of violent riots Sunday […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Allison Quinn – October 17, 2013) The Azeri suspect in a deadly stabbing that triggered an anti-migrant riot in Moscow’s Biryulyovo district has confessed to the killing and requested an interpreter for his case, saying he “forgot Russian,” investigators said Wednesday. The news of the apparent language barrier further emphasizes the ethnic dimension of the […]
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(Window on Eurasia – Paul Goble – Staunton, October 16, 2013) The Kremlin’s moves against the principles of the Russian Constitution and basic human rights are currently coming at such a rapid pace that it is difficult to keep up with its assault on what remains of democracy in that country. This week alone featured three initiatives that are particularly […]
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(Business New Europe – bne.eu – Julia Reed in Moscow) Moscow police rounded up and arrested more than 1,000 migrant workers at a vegetable warehouse on October 14, the day after rioters staged the most violent nationalist unrest in the Russian capital in three years, with more than 3,000 going on the rampage, smashing up a market, overturning and burning […]
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(Howard Amos, RIA Novosti – MOSCOW, October 16, 2013) Public prayers to mark the beginning of the Islamic feast of Eid al-Adha were not as crowded as usual this year in Moscow. A violent nationalist rampage over the weekend has left the city’s migrant laborers, many of them from mainly Muslim former Soviet nations, feeling uneasy. Speaking outside the Cathedral […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Ivan Nechepurenko – October 16, 2013) Police on Tuesday detained the suspect in a killing that provoked a wave of ethnically charged riots in Moscow’s Western Biryulyovo district on Sunday. The alleged murderer, Orkhan Zeinalov, 30, who came to Moscow more than 10 years ago from the former Soviet republic of Azerbaijan, was detained 100 […]
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(RIA Novosti – October 14, 2013) Russia’s immigration laws do not need to be tightened, the country’s top migration official said on 14 October, in the wake of protests and rioting sparked off by the killing in Moscow of an ethnic Russian, allegedly by an immigrant from the Caucasus. Despite the unrest, Konstantin Romodanovskiy, head of Russia’s Federal Migration Service […]
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(Window on Eurasia – Paul Goble – Staunton, October 15, 2013) Nationalism is now at the center of Russian political discourse, that country’s leading specialist on ethnic conflicts says, and as a result, the core of Moscow’s political debate has shifted from one between liberals and derzhavniki to a very different one between left nationalists and right-of-center ones. Emil Pain, […]
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(Interfax – MOSCOW, October 14, 2013) Lyudmila Alekseyeva, the chairman of the Moscow Helsinki Group, said the police officers ‘ actions during riots in the Moscow district Western Biryulyovo were right. “In this case, what has occurred should be classified as hooliganism. It truly was hooliganism, and the law enforcement agencies should punish the perpetrators,” Alekseyeva told Interfax on Monday. […]
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(RIA Novosti – Natalia Antonova, Acting Editor-in-Chief of The Moscow News – October 15, 2013) There is a kind of sad poetry to Moscow’s working class neighborhoods. The box-like Khrushchev-era buildings that seem like gigantic children’s toys rather than real housing, the hilariously poor grammar on thousands of tacked up advertisements, the cracked pavement, the whispering trees, and the stars […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Ivan Nechepurenko – October 15, 2013) Surrounded by railroads, industrial estates and giant cooling towers from a local thermal plant, the Western Biryulyovo district where riots broke out Sunday oozes its own sense of disunion from the rest of Moscow and residents say it has become a hostage to its own growing marginalization. “If […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Oleg Sukhov – October 15, 2013) In response to a violent race riot in southern Moscow over the weekend, federal and city authorities announced new measures to fight illegal immigration and detained about 1,200 migrants at a vegetable storage facility that had been attacked by rioters Sunday. With these actions, the government took a first […]
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(Window on Eurasia – Paul Goble – Staunton, October 14, 2013) The ethnic violence in Moscow’s Biryulevo district over the weekend is only the latest pogrom to have occurred in the Russian capital since Vladimir Putin became president, something that all those who are following this rapidly developing story need to keep in mind to comprehend what this latest clash. […]
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[Video here http://en.ria.ru/russia/20131014/184131781/380-Held-Overnight-After-Anti-Migrant-Riot-in-Moscow-Suburb.html] (RIA Novosti – MOSCOW, October 14, 2013) Russian police said Monday that 1,200 people had been detained at a vegetable warehouse in a Moscow suburb that was one of the main targets of anti-migrant rioters during a night of violent clashes in the area. Helicopters and over a thousand police officers were dispatched to Biryulyovo in […]
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(Window on Europe – Paul Goble – Staunton, October 2, 2013) In the face of underlying economic and demographic trends, the central Russian government has almost no chance to redirect migration within the Russian Federation away from the major cities and toward the northern and eastern portions of the country, according to a new study by a leading Moscow demographer. […]
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(Interfax – MOSCOW, September 24, 2013) Over 18,000 applications of those wishing to move back to Russia within the framework of the state program to assist the voluntarily return of Russian natives from abroad were submitted in 2013. “Over 18,000 applications were taken this year. An analysis of the applications shows that the majority of (Russians) are of employable age. […]
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(Window on Eurasia – Paul Goble – Staunton, September 19, 2013) Ethnic Russians often hold positions on ethnic issues that are at odds with one another, a reflection of the difficulties of tapping in to such sensitive questions and of real uncertainties among them about themselves, their nation and country, and about other groups. At the request of the Norwegian […]
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(Moscow News – themoscownews.com – Anna Arutunyan – September 18, 2013) As the Russian government continues to search for a national identity unifying Russians, a recent study shows a society atomized along ethnic and economic lines. With so little holding a people together, the findings, sociologists say, challenge a long-held assumption that Russia is an inherently collectivist society. “We are […]
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(Interfax – September 11, 2013) Less than 10 percent of Russian citizens are ready to accept people from Central Asia who have lived in Russia for a long time as equals, VTsIOM General Director Valery Fyodorov said. “Tajiks, Uzbeks, and Kyrgyz – those who are in most cases called guest workers – only 8 percent of Russians agree to consider […]
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(RIA Novosti – MOSCOW, September 12, 2013) Russia hosts the world’s largest population of immigrants after the United States, according to a new UN study showing that the number of people living abroad across the globe has reached a record high. New figures released Wednesday by the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN-DESA) in New York indicated that […]
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(Window on Eurasia – Paul Goble – Staunton, September 11, 2013) Their identity increasingly defined not by what they are or want to be but by what they fear and view as alien, Russians as a nation are fraying at the edges with some like the Siberians identifying in terms of a region, others like the Cossacks in terms of […]
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(RIA Novosti – Howard Amos – MOSCOW, September 11, 2013) Besides drunks, who do Russians not want most as neighbors or work colleagues? The answer: homosexuals, according to new research examining national identity released by a state-run pollster, the Russia Public Opinion Research Center, on Tuesday. According to the survey, 51 percent of Russians would not like “under any […]
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(Window on Eurasia – Paul Goble – Staunton, September 3, 2013) Driven by their hatred of Vladimir Putin as a personality and their lack of a place in today’s Russia, the liberal intelligentsia has been willing to overlook xenophobic, nationalist and even anti-Semitic remarks by Aleksey Navalny, even though such ugly comments would have ended the careers of Western politicians […]
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(opendemocracy.net – Emil Pain – August 27, 2013) Emil Pain is a professor at the National Research UniversityHigher School of Economics, Moscow, and the General Director of the Center for Ethno-Political Studies. As the level of inter-ethnic violence reaches disturbing proportions, Emil Pain asks if Russia’s protest moment has turned nasty. In the middle of 2012, Russia’s influential Centre […]
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(Interfax – August 23, 2013) Half of crimes in Moscow are committed by migrants; in general, the situation with ethnic crime in the Russian capital remains tense; the head of the Moscow city’s central directorate of the Interior Ministry, Anatoliy Yakunin, told Russian privately-owned news agency Interfax on 23 August. “I’d like to say that 50 per cent of all […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Alexander Panin – August 22, 2013) All illegal street markets will be closed in the Moscow region by the end of this year, acting Moscow region governor Andrei Vorobyov said Wednesday as the campaign against illegal immigrants amid two key elections was gaining momentum. During debates on regional television on Tuesday, Vorobyov boasted a 15 […]
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(Window on Eurasia – Paul Goble – Staunton, August 22, 2013) Like Americans, most Russians view nationalism in a negative way, according to a Russian Jewish émigré living in New York, but they will not be able to integrate their society and escape from the Soviet past unless they take nationalism away from those who call themselves Russian nationalists and […]
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(Russia Beyond the Headlines – rbth.ru – Patrick Sewell, special to RBTH – August 19, 2013) Flare-ups of nationalist conflict in July exposed the government as being either unable, or unwilling, to oppose a dangerous nationalist interpretation of Russian statehood with one based on civic identity. On July 8, 600 citizens in the southern town of Pugachev, angered by the […]
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(Window on Eurasia – Paul Goble – Staunton, August 14, 2013) Muscovites are more xenophobic than are Russians living elsewhere in the Russian Federation, a pattern that means that Sergey Sobyanin’s appeal to such attitudes may help him in his race for mayor of the Russian capital, according to the director of the SOVA Analytic Center. In an article in […]
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(Bloomberg – bloomberg.com – Ilya Arkhipov & Stepan Kravchenko – August 14, 2013) Russian President Vladimir Putin has opened Moscow’s first detention camp for illegal immigrants as migrants become the main concern among voters preparing for the city’s first mayoral election since 2003. The tarpaulin tents for 600 people, surrounded by an eight-meter (26 feet) fence, signal the campaign for […]
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(Institute of Modern Russia – imrussia.org – Tatiana Stanovaya – August 13, 2013) The issues of internal migration and relations between Russians and “newcomers” from the Russian southern regions have become major problems in the country. Political analyst Tatiana Stanovaya talks about whether the government has a strategy with regard to such issues. In July, an acute crisis broke out […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Yekaterina Kravtsova – August 6, 2013) The Federal Migration Service has drafted a bill to set up 83 new detention centers for illegal immigrants across the country as Moscow’s three holding facilities run out of space following a week of raids on city markets. Some 1,400 alleged illegal immigrants from Vietnam, Azerbaijan, Syria, Morocco, Kyrgyzstan, […]
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(Moscow News – themoscownews.com – Anna Arutunyan – August 5, 2013) Every few years, the specter of Russian nationalism rears its head, sending people who think they understand a thing or two about this country screaming in horror in all directions. The reason, I think, is that in Western democracies, “nationalism” is understood as a chauvinistic sense of supremacy that […]
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(Russia Beyond the Headlines – rbth.ru – Arina Obrazkova, RBTH – July 25, 2013) The document emphasizes various preventive measures, as well as cultural and educational events. The government of Russia has developed a special, 82-point plan to deal with inter-ethnic conflicts. Among the proposals put forth by ministers are: the funding of nonprofit organizations involved in the integration of […]
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(RIA Novosti – MOSCOW, July 22, 2013) More than one in three Russians think the influx of people of “other ethnicities” is a very likely threat to national security, more so than terrorism or environmental disasters, according to a poll published Monday. Such an influx was cited as a “very real” threat by 35 percent of those surveyed by […]
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(opendemocracy.net – Grigory Tumanov – July 11, 2013) Grigory Tumanov is a Moscow based journalist and blogger. He is a staff correspondent for Kommersant daily, one of Russia’s most respected publications. Favourite lawyer of the Russian far right, Dmitry Bakharyev is developing a network of ‘sports’ clubs for like-minded nationalists teaching knife, rather than ball, skills. He hopes the […]
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(RIA Novosti – MOSCOW, July 10, 2013) Russian officials and community leaders tried Wednesday to cool interethnic tensions by calling for a liquor ban, evacuating “radical” youngsters and promising justice, after a stabbing death in a small town triggered days of angry protests demanding that residents from Russia’s war-scarred republic of Chechnya be kicked out. President Vladimir Putin’s regional […]
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(Window on Eurasia – Paul Goble – Staunton, July 10, 2013) Russian officials have long sought to dismiss ethnic conflicts as being product of the everyday disputes people have rather than clashes between two nationalities, but today the editors of “Vedomosti” offer another and more disturbing diagnosis by suggesting that such conflicts “above all” are a reflection of “the continuing […]
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(Window on Eurasia – Paul Goble – Staunton, July 6, 2013) Three new pieces of Russian legislation appear likely to inflict serious collateral damage on that country, eliminating a defender of Lake Baikal against industrial pollution, inflicting new suffering on the already hard-pressed numerically small peoples of the north, and destroying some of the last vestiges of federalism in the […]
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(Window on Eurasia – Paul Goble – Staunton, July 4, 2013) Russians increasingly identify themselves not in ethnic terms but in others, a development that the director of the Moscow Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology says should not lead anyone to conclude in “alarmist” terms that ethnic Russians are “losing their self-identification.” Instead, Valery Tishkov told a Moscow roundtable yesterday, […]
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(Window on Eurasia – Paul Goble – Staunton, June 24, 2013) Russia’s liberals played a key role in pushing through the economic reforms which made a return to communism impossible, but they failed to help the country to make the transition from an empire to a nation and thus must bear part of the blame for continuing strength of Moscow’s […]
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(Interfax – June 11, 2013) The director of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB), Aleksandr Bortnikov, has said that social networksand shortcomings in migration laws contribute to the proliferation of extremism in Russia. His comments at a session of the National Antiterrorist Committee were reported by the Interfax news agency on 11 June. “Part of the internet has become a […]
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(Interfax / Religion – Moscow, May 15, 2013) The head of a Russian policy think tank has argued that immigrants and guest workers who have come to Russia from Muslim republics of the former Soviet Union are potentially a fertile environment for radical Islamist ideas and called for tighter restrictions on immigration and guest labor. “The migrants are hostile toward […]
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(Window on Eurasia – Paul Goble – Staunton, April 9, 2013) Dmitry Demushkin,, the leader of the “Russians” political movement, says that “even Russian nationalists do not support the slogan ‘Russia for the Russians’ because it has to be qualified in so many ways that it is useless as a mobilizing tool and dangerous it if is applied in a […]
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(Russia Beyond the Headlines – rbth.ru – Sergei Markedonov, special to RBTH – April 5, 2013) Sergei Markedonov is a visiting fellow with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington, D.C. The country’s authorities should undertake drastic reform of the nationalities policy. “The nationalities issue” remains a priority for Russia’s social and political development. In the 1990s-early 2000s, the […]
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(Window on Eurasia – Paul Goble – Staunton, March 17, 2013 – http://windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2013/03/window-on-eurasia-few-russians-want-to.html) More than 90 percent of ethnic Russians taking part in an online survey do not want to identify as “Rossiyane,” the non-ethnic civic identity President Vladimir Putin has been promoting as the primary self-designator for citizens of the Russian Federation, preferring instead to identify as ethnic Russians […]
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(Window on Eurasia – Paul Goble – Staunton, February 20, 2013 – http://windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2013/02/window-on-eurasia-putins-nationality.html) Both the five specific planks of his nationality policy that Vladimir Putin outlined yesterday and problems underlying his entire approach to this issue guarantee that the Russian president will offend both Russians and non-Russians and produce the very outcome he says he is trying to avoid […]
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(Window on Eurasia – Paul Goble – Staunton, February 19, 2013 – http://windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2013/02/window-on-eurasia-having-released.html) President Vladimir Putin’s decision to give official support to some of the most reactionary and vicious groups in Russian society in order to counter the increase in the number of the middle class who are appalled by his policies in this regard carries with it great risks […]
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(Jamestown Foundation – jamestown.org – Eurasia Daily Monitor: Volume 9, Issue 223 – Paul Goble – Dec. 6, 2012) According to recent census results, the rate of the overall decline in the population of the Russian Federation nearly doubled during the past decade compared to the rate over the course of the 1990s, but that trend obscures rather than […]
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(RFE/RL – Nail Khisamiev, Robert Coalson – Dec. 1, 2012) A potentially explosive political kettle has been simmering in Russia for months, and it may well boil over in the weeks to come. Shortly after his return to the Kremlin in May, President Vladimir Putin ordered the drafting of a new State Nationalities Policy. The document, which was to be […]
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