Deutsche Welle: Some progress, but xenophobia still widespread in Russia

[pampango]

http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,5627801,00.html

http://www.dw-world.de/image/0,,5610890_4,00.jpg
Graffitti in Vladivostok: "You are Russian. Be proud."

According to the Sova Center in Moscow, an organization that researches racism and xenophobia, last year in Russia around 70 people were killed in racially motivated attacks, while more than 300 were injured. The center says that Moscow and St. Petersburg are especially dangerous places for central Asians and people from the Caucasus. However, the situation has improved and those numbers have fallen by a third since 2008. Police and judges are now taking the matter more seriously, according to the center's director, Alexander Verkhovsky. He says special police forces have been established to tackle right-wing extremism and that they have made several arrests.

Right-wing extremists in Vladivostok have become more active in recent years, stoked by local mistrust of Russia's up-and-coming neighbor China as well as by worries about a weak economy and more foreigners coming into the country. However, it took Russian authorities some time to recognize the danger of right-wing radicals. For years, critics of the Kremlin felt that the government was more accommodating to extremist nationalists than it was to the country's democratic opposition.

Verkhovsky told Deutsche Welle that the Kremlin's fight against racism has deeper roots than a push to secure power. According to him, the nation's authoritarian political climate has made open discussion of the topic taboo. Based on the silence of politicians, he said, many extremists have felt that Russian society was on their side. "Those who are out killing people feel they are pioneering a people's movement," he said.

In fact, extremist ideas are deeply anchored in the mindset of Russian society. According to some surveys, 55 percent of Russians want to see foreign residents – especially those from central Asia or the Caucasus – stripped of their rights or even deported, and this, despite the fact that the Russian economy depends on the labor of people from these countries.

[no_hypocrisy]

1. This hysteria of "Russia" regarding "the Other" is centuries rooted.

Part of it was the vicious antisemitism of the 18th and 19th Centuries. It's one reason why "Russians" clung to The Church, in order to affirm their conformity and nationalism (and racism).