Alexander Novikov, editor-in-chief of the magazine “Our government: deeds and persons”
We’ve decided to hold this first, so-to-say pilot, round table discussion on the topic ‘Inter-ethnic relations: current situation in Russia’. Why did we choose this topic? As the moderator of the discussion I’ll allow myself a few words on that. I believe that the problem of inter-ethnic relations is one of the most serious, acute and conflict-full (despite what they say) problems, it touches upon each and everyone. It concerns the government as it has to define our national policy; it touches upon all the peoples of our multi-national state. We see all the negative things happening around us… And I’m not talking about the mass consciousness, I mean the governmental decisions. Recently there was the meeting of the State Council for inter-ethnic relations in Ufa. So what happened next? What actions have been taken after it? In my opinion, insufficient. That is why we decided to have this discussion, as this problem is important to everyone.
The number of people who believe that the Russians, as the state-forming ethnic group, should have more rights than the others, grows. If in 2009 26% supported this opinion, in 2011 the figure grew up to 39%. And the number of those who believe that Russia is our common home and all ethnic groups should have equal rights, on the contrary, decreases: 61% in 2009 and 46% in 2011. So we see that the problem is becoming more and more acute.
Mamma Mammayev, the head of the Dagestani government
I believe the issue of inter-ethnic relations touches upon everyone, and those who believe it’s not of their business are sadly mistaken. I have to watch TV everyday with bad feelings, I have to worry about the safety of my kids… The problem is being wrapped in diplomatic paper, but it doesn’t help to resolve it. Each month 30-35 (or even 40) people from North Caucasus, Central Asia and other regions are being killed in hate crimes. We have recently witnessed a common tragedy – a young man killed in a fight – and I sympathize with his relatives more than anyone else as I’ve lost my 20-year-old son in a similar tragedy – being turned into an inter-ethnic incident that split the society into two aggressive camps.
We have conducted an analysis and asked intellectuals, professionals, those who seem to know the problem well, what they thought of the problem of inter-ethnic conflicts n Russia. And almost all of them answered that it was the problems ‘Russians vs non-Russian’. So you see how mistaken even some professionals are. Are the rights of the Russian people infringed upon? Yes. But is it the other ethnic groups fault? I don’t think so, their rights are even more infringed upon.
During the whole history of Russia, pre- and post-Soviet including, the Russian people were the linchpin of our statehood. And I am grateful to the Russian people for that, I expect them to carry on their active mission, and we, all other peoples, are ready to help. We have also conducted the poll in the Caucasus, and there also were some negative answers, there always are. So do the Caucasians behave inappropriately in Moscow? Yes. some of us do, but you shouldn’t hold the whole people responsible for the doings of some of its members.
As for the ‘flight’ of ethnic Russians from the Caucasus, I am ready to argue that not only Russian people leave the region, members of its indigenous peoples also leave it. Why? The Chechen war is one answer, but there’s yet another reason, equally important. When the plants and enterprises were privatized, their new owners reserved all good places for their people. Let’s be sincere, most specialists, engineers, etc. on the Caucasus were Russians, and when they lost their jobs, they had to leave. And Moscow doesn’t want to look deeper than declaring it an ‘ethnic problem’. But the Dagestani people have no problem with Russian people, there are a lot of conflicts between minor ethnic groups of Dagestani inhabitants, between Dagestani and Circassian people, but no conflict with Russians is present.
The problem became more acute now not by accident. The basis of a state’s national security is its inner policy, and the basis for the inner policy is the civic society. And without the formed civic society (and we don’t have that in Russia) a state can’t exist. And now everyone who addresses the problem tries to label it. For example, when I live in Moscow, aliens judge me only by my Caucasian looks, while when I come home to Dagestan they think I’m a traitor…
Today there’s no draft on the Caucasus. And at the same time it is the only region of Russia with positive population growth. Dagestan used to provide more recruits than the multi-million city of Moscow. With today’s population growth in Dagestan each year 20000 young people don’t have any social mobility mechanisms, there are no jobs on site... We try to make the government see the problem, but they ignore it. They go to Moscow in search for jobs, but here they don’t what to employ people from the Caucasus.
Each day they tell us they fight the corruption. But it is yet unclear who actually fights it. They accept dozens of laws, but if a law isn’t obeyed, it’s of no use… So it seems that our people and our government are live separately, they have no intersecting points. As my friend said, ‘the government wants the people to obey its orders and ignore its actions’. They show governors on TV who spent state money for their personal jet trips… Why can’t they make the governors be at least more discreet?
I was recently interviewed by a Dagestani TV-channel, and I asked its director, whetehre’s there’s such a thing as ‘Russian mafia’ in Makhachkala. And he tried to avoid this question saying that mafia is far too strong a word. Ok, than what about ‘Russian gangs’? He said there’s no such thing. So why do they always talk about ‘Caucasian mafia’ in Moscow?
When we discuss these problems, we usually separate ourselves into two hostile camps. So we decided that we ourselves, the Dagestani permanent office in Moscow should inform the people of our shortcomings, of our problems, this is the only way to open up a dialog instead of an argument and fight.
It is obvious that such provocations take place when the country enters into the period of elections. It is a neat scheme: the elites make the common people fight and hate each other for phantom reasons while they decide really important questions on their own. And there’s yeat another aspect to the problem: recently some Russian MPS visited the US Embassy.. Why were they allowed to?! it’s not important, which party they belonged to, but it’s completely inappropriate in the context of the mass protests, but no measures have been taken.
We had to learn a bitter lesson in Georgia: who could have thought that the Georgians would open fire on Russian peacemakers? They have invited the peacemakers themselves: I know that as I took part in the negotiations. We haven’t promulgated this data before in order to avoid further aggravation, but 102 Russian soldiers were killed while trying to keep Georgians, Abkhazians and Ossetians from fighting each other. Russia kept silent about that…
Now they allocate great resources to Caucasian projects from GB, US and Israel – we all know the true reason for that. Until we can’t restore the inter-ethnic peace on our own, without any intervention of external forces, until we all understand that the Russian Federation is one body, and its central nervous system is the Russian people, our problems, economic and social, will only become harder and harder.
Denga Khalidov, the Russian Congress of the Caucasian Peoples co-chairman
Our experience points to the following: first of all, there are some common stereotypes that actually do not correspond to reality. Nevertheless, even some experts believe in these myths. The first one of these myths is that there should be no national or autonomous republics. But there’s quite a successful experience of federal constitution in a number of states, states whose experience we are tying to adopt. Federal constitution allows t resolve many of the existing inter-ethnic problems. For example, Canada with its French-speaking province of Quebec, Great Britain, where Scotland got its own independent Parliament recently, where North Ireland has its autonomous rights, Spain with its Bask and Catalonian autonomous regions, and so on. But the example of India is even closer to our situation. This country is just as multi-ethnic, multi-confessional and multi-language as our own, and all these factors are taken into account by Indian government. Russia also has to do so. And when they criticize the Bolsheviks, I always answer that there were some positive aspects of their policy, and we should develop them, not deny. That’s what I wanted to say about the first myth.
The second myth is that the North Caucasian republics are the very tale of the socio-economic rating of Russian republics, that they are extremely poor and despondent. But that is not true. The official statistics doesn’t count the unofficial incomes, the incomes from personal farming, etc. And if we take these incomes into account, we’ll see the Caucasian republics rising to the very middle of the rating. Some experts, including the head of the Social Anthropology Institute, V. Tishkov, were very surprised when they came to, say, Dagestan or Kabardina-Balkaria, expecting to find quite a different state of affairs, as they judged the republics by official statistics. But they found them to be much more prosperous in reality.
Another myth tells us that you can resolve any problem with sufficient amount of money, including all inter-ethnic problems. But we need a comprehensive approach to such issues. According to our research, all factors are important if a national issue is concerned. When you analyze all factors (level of education, of corruption, of social and economic well being, etc.), you see a very interesting result: inter-ethnic conflicts burst out in regions where the level of corruption, especially in police, is very high, and where the ultra-nationalist organizations enjoy unofficial support of the corrupt administration.
We think that in 2000, when Putin first became President, his advisers told him to pass the inter-ethnic problem with silence, to ignore it, as it would be automatically resolved when we build a western-type civic democracy. But in fact the national policy merely degenerated into in what we call ‘national’-corporativism. What is it? It is when ultra-nationalist tendencies are being fed among the uneducated groups of Russian young people by federal media, especially the internet media, teaches these people to hate and despise members of other ethnic and confessional groups, such as Muslims, Caucasians, and migrants from Central Asia. What’s the point of this information policy? This policy is very beneficial to the major corporations. It channels social discontent into the nationalistic direction, while in fact we all, Russians and Caucasians, are Russian citizens and have common interests and problems. We have the same cultural, economic and social needs, but the state policy of the last decade was aimed at preventing us to consolidate our positive efforts.
I’ve conducted meetings with football fans, with nationalists and their leaders, and we had to enlighten them about the true cause of our problems. These problems are common for the Caucasus, for Tatarstan, for all other regions of Russia.
Our organization, the Russian Congress of the Caucasian Peoples, tries to help migrants, including those who came from Central Asia. In 2011 we worked on some 6,000 addresses, and 70% of them were from people from Central Asia, and only 15% - from the migrants from the North Caucasus. We also take up educational work among young people – Russian and Caucasian – we try to help them open up a dialog. We monitor certain media agencies in order to determine which trends, positive or negative, predominate their information policy as far as the problem in question is concerned. And we see that some agencies, even state ones, are predominated by negative trends.
The state education policy also doesn’t help the consolidation of our multi-ethnic society. I have quite a collection of quotes from Russian history textbooks that are aimed at teaching the pupils the hate Caucasians and Tatars. The poor Tatars still can’t understand why the Russians don’t like them so much even though the Tatars made a great contribution into the creation of Russian statehood.
Russian Defense Ministry has deprived the Caucasian youth of such an important channel of socialization as the army drafts, they say that the Ingush, Dagestani or Kabardin youth are far too aggressive and uncontrollable – but what sort of officers does our army have, if they can’t make young people disciplined?!
