UFA, October 22 (RIA Novosti) President Vladimir Putin signed a law Tuesday giving local authorities more responsibility for handling relations between ethnic communities in a sign the government is growing nervous at evidence of a surge in nationalist-tinged discontent. Speaking at the Interethnic Relations Council in the Urals town of Ufa, Putin lashed out at local governments for what […]
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(Russia Beyond the Headlines – rbth.ru – Sergei Markedonov, special to RBTH – October 22, 2013) The author is a visiting fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C. Migration policies and xenophobia in Russia are at the forefront of political discussion in the wake of the riots in Biryulyovo. Riots in Moscow’s West Biryulyovo have […]
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(Interfax – MOSCOW, October 19, 2013) The Russian Communist Party intends to more actively involve migrants in protest rallies “to strengthen the international component of the protest movement,” a draft decree the Central Committee of the Communist Party is expected to adopt at a plenum held in the village of Moskovsky on Saturday says. The Central Committee’s departments on nationalities […]
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(Moscow News – themoscownews.com – Natalia Antonova, Acting Editor-in-Chief, October 18, 2013) The weekly sweeps targeting illegal migrants in Moscow are certainly an ambitious project. It’s just too bad that they won’t do much good. The police plan on going door-to-door, to find out exactly where and from whom that migrants are renting living space, according to Moscow Police Chief […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Natalya Krainova – October 21, 2013) In the latest step by authorities to fight unlawful immigration following an anti-migrant riot earlier this month, the city’s police chief said that Moscow police will raid apartments reportedly occupied by illegal migrants every Friday until the end of the year. The initiative, announced by top cop Anatoly Yakunin […]
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(opendemocracy.net – Daniil Kislov – October 17, 2013) Daniil Kislov is a poet, journalist and essayist from Uzbekistan. He currently lives in Moscow. He is the main editor of the online news portal Fergana News. An ethnic Russian is killed at a Moscow street market, supposedly by a migrant from the Caucasus; the ensuing riot by nationalist extremists leaves one […]
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(Interfax – BAKU, October 17, 2013) Azerbaijan’s Embassy in Moscow has lodged a protest with the Russian Foreign Ministry over what it called violations of the rights of Azeri native Orkhan Zeynalov, who is suspected of killing ethnic Russian man Yegor Shcherbakov in the Biryulyovo district in southern Moscow. “The brutal detention and brutal treatment of Orkhan Zeynalov, whom they […]
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(RFE/RL – rferl.org – Claire Bigg and Arifa Kazimova – October 16, 2013) Footage detailing the heavy-handed arrest of an Azerbaijani native suspected of killing a Russian man in Moscow has escalated mounting ethnic tensions between the two nations. Russian police detained Orkhan Zeynalov on October 15 on suspicion of fatally stabbing a 25-year-old ethnic Russian man, Yegor Shcherbakov, in […]
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(Russia Beyond the Headlines – rbth.ru – Marina Obrazkova, RBTH – October 16, 2013) The conflict that started in the capital has spread to other major cities. In the Russian regions, people have started taking to the streets in support of residents of the Moscow district of Biryulovo, who staged riots in response to the murder of a young man […]
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(Window on Eurasia – Paul Goble – Staunton, October 17, 2013) The Russian Federation finds itself in a Zugswang, a German term for a situation in which any move leads to a loss, according to the editor of “Kulturolog.” And in its case, the situation is especially dire because the country increasingly finds itself forced to choose between disintegration and […]
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(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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(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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(RFE/RL – rferl.org – Tom Balmforth – MOSCOW, October 14, 2013) Moscow’s migrant workers have seen this story before and they believe they have reason to be afraid. When an unidentified man — believed to be from the Caucasus — stabbed and killed a young ethnic Russian on October 10, triggering the capital’s worst ethnic riots in three years, police […]
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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 21, 2013) Russian liberals who back candidates that make nationalist appeals either out of calculation or conviction in the hopes that this will boost their poll numbers are sacrificing their own values and helping the authoritarian regime in the Kremlin, according to a St. Petersburg University student. In a letter to […]
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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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(RIA Novosti – MOSCOW, August 28, 2013) About one million foreigners are officially registered with the migration authorities in Moscow and 1.5 million in surrounding areas as of Tuesday, a senior migration official said. “We have a centralized database of foreign nationals. Today we have obtained the most recent figures: there is about a million of foreign nationals in Moscow […]
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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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(RIA Novosti – Natalia Antonova, Acting Editor-in-Chief of The Moscow News. She also works as a playwright, her work featured at the Lyubimovka Festival in Moscow and Gogolfest in Kiev, Ukraine – August 13, 2013) The war on migrants in Moscow is being stepped up ahead of the September 8 mayoral election with a tent camp set up […]
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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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(RFE/RL – rferl.org – Dan Wisniewski – August 6, 2013) Moscow’s efforts to develop its eastern regions over the last couple of centuries could be encapsulated in the rallying cry “Go east, young Russians!” But perhaps nowadays that might be rephrased as “Go east, young Uzbeks,” according to EurasiaNet’s Evgeny Kuzmin. Kuzmin notes that more and more Central Asian migrants […]
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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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(RIA Novosti – MOSCOW, Aug. 1, 2013) Most Russians have negative views regarding the influx of labor migrants, millions of whom come from former Soviet republics in Central Asia to seek a better living in Russia, according to the results of a state survey published Thursday. About two-thirds (65 percent) of respondents to the poll, conducted last month, said […]
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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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