| | | If that is the case Ukraine should be equally armed to fight the invading country.
As you've pointed out Russian soldiers are good gentlemen who don't loot and rape and will understand.
Russians are very sensitive to other cultures and of course never racist...
Peoples of the Caucasus
In December 2010, there was a massive outbreak of hostility towards Caucasians, culminating in nationalist protests at Manezhnaya Square in Moscow and in other cities. The trigger was the murder of Egor Sviridov, a Russian association football fan, in a street fight on 6 December. On 11 December, thousands of nationalist rioters, outside the Moscow Kremlin building, screamed racist phrases, cried for a "Russia for Russians" and a "Moscow for Muscovites," attacked Caucasians and other minority groups who passed by, and some – including children as young as fourteen – made the Nazi salute. The next day, a similar riot was held in Rostov-on-Don, and afterwards, the city's government banned Caucasians from performing Lezginka, their traditional dance, in the city. Later, the police chief in Moscow said that civil liberties were a hindrance in security and that migration should be restricted. Vladimir Kvachkov, a major Russian nationalist leader of the organization People's Liberation Front of Russia (which says its major goal is to "free" Russia from Caucasian and Hebrew "occupiers"), made the following statement: "We Russian nationalists, the initiators of the people's front, we are telling you that the events of 11 December are the beginning of the revolutionary changes in Russia, the first outbursts of the approaching Russian revolution... You are the ones who can participate in it."
Racism in Russia: Stories of prejudice
In his video, published on social media, the driver can be heard saying "If I don't like a person, I won't give them a ride. It's my car". When Roy asks him bluntly "Are you a racist?" the driver replies, "Yes, of course."
White Power Violence in Russia
Far-right extremism emerged as a powerful social phenomenon. The number of right-wing attacks in Russia was five times more than in the United States and four times more than in Germany and twice more than in Sweden (the two countries with the highest right-wing militancy in Western Europe). Activists committed violence in the name of an all-white ethnic Russian nation. “A skinhead,” one 90extremist member testified in a court of law, “is a person who loves their nation. To affirm our love for the nation, I, together with other skinheads, went to football matches, went to fight with the fans of other football teams, and beat people of non-Slavic appearance.”
History professor's book examines racism in Russia
White militarism has flourished in Russia under President Vladimir Putin’s rule, making it one of the most dangerous places in the world for racial violence, said history professor Eugene Avrutin, whose research includes modern Jewish history, the Russian empire, and race and racism. Avrutin examines the history of racism in Russia over the past 150 years in his new book, “Racism in Modern Russia: From the Romanovs to Putin.”
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Russia, under President Vladimir Putin’s administration, is perhaps the most dangerous country for racial violence in the world, according to University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign history professor Eugene Avrutin.
That wasn’t always the case. In his new book, “ Racism in Modern Russia: From the Romanovs to Putin,” Avrutin explores the history of racism in Russia over the past 150 years, from the end of the tsarist regime to Putin’s rule.
The book opens with a large anti-migrant riot in Moscow in 2013, following the arrest of a migrant worker for murdering an ethnic Russian man. The rioting crowd chanted “Russia for the Russians.” That slogan also was used in the late 19th century at the end of the tsarist regime, Avrutin said, “appealing primarily to individuals drawn to the radical right.” Activists chanting the slogan perceived the old order as under attack.
“Racism in Modern Russia: From the Romanovs to Putin” is published by Bloomsbury and is available as an open access resource.
Until recently, scholars of Russia history and culture have dismissed the wider impact of race-based thought and practices, Avrutin wrote. Unlike other empires, Russia’s colonial expansion involved contiguous territories, so there was no sharp distinction between colonizers and those whose lands had fallen under Russian control. Populations were classified primarily based on religion and later on class or nationality. Official documents had no category to indicate race.
Soviet Russia promoted a social utopia based on equality. State policy sought to promote a single national identity, highlighting an antiracist image. African American writers such as Langston Hughes, Claude McKay and W. E. B. Du Bois looked to the Soviet Union as a model for Black equality, Avrutin said.
“But by rejecting the premise that an individual could belong to multiple identities, the state’s classification system primed people to see the world in unambiguous racial terms,” he wrote.
By the end of the 19th century, Russia included many ethno-racial groups. While race didn’t play a role in determining a person’s rights, group prejudices created divisions against East Asians, Poles and especially Jews, Avrutin said.
“The commonalities between anti-Jewish thinking and anti-Asian prejudice were many. Fears of occupation, economic dominance and entrapment, legal controls, and demographic decline all provoked everyday violence and discrimination in both the far-western borderlands (towards Jews and Poles) and the far-eastern periphery (towards Chinese, Koreans, and Japanese),” he wrote.
Under Putin, “an important shift took place in how ethnic Russians viewed themselves and the world around them: not only in terms of national-historical symbols, myths, and legends, but also through the prism of race and whiteness,” Avrutin wrote. “A society that was largely color-blind had become increasingly conscious of the role that whiteness played in determining social status.”
In recent years, ideas operating on the fringe of society have moved to acceptable discourse. “The elevation of whiteness took place against the backdrop of a conservative turn in Russian politics and society: the normalization of sexism and homophobia in popular consciousness, the strengthening of ‘traditional family values,’ and the regulation of family and reproductive behavior,” Avrutin wrote.
“There is little doubt that Putin’s authoritarian politics made it possible for white militarism to flourish. Putin’s administration not only supported the European far right – by most famously underwriting the activities of the Front National in France – but provided a model for white nationalist rule all around the world,” Avrutin said.
Contemporary Russia has seen an upsurge in racial violence and xenophobic attitudes. Several factors, including the uneven economic recovery and anxieties over an influx of migrants from Russia’s southern border, have contributed to racial strife, Avrutin said.
Between 1992 and 2006, more than 11 million people migrated to the Russian Federation from post-Soviet states, with the share of ethnic Russians steadily declining. By 2000, an estimated 4.5 million undocumented migrants, mostly from Central Asia and the Caucasus, resided in Russia.
Discriminatory attitudes on the ground of race became a fact of life for anyone who did not look typically ethnic Russian. “By the time Putin began the third term as president, most ethnic Russians had no problems drawing distinct lines between themselves and populations commonly referred to as ‘blacks,’” Avrutin said. |
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