Author: VK
Last week, Vladimir Putin has supported a legislative initiative to ban mentioning the nationality of criminals in the media. "Offender has no nationality. What is the difference, which ethnic group the man who broke the rule of law belongs to? “, the president said, promising to support the initiative of the closure of the media which, in violation of the law, will mention nationality or religion of detained, arrested, convicted people and victims.
According to Cantemir Hurtaev, chairman of the "Union of Student Compatriot Groups", “the situation in the sphere of international relations is worsening, and a mutual animosity is appearing. We are deeply convinced that this is an unnatural process. In many ways it is a thing caused by artificial forces, which are deliberately solving their problems. Russia is a multi-ethnic and multi-religious country, and issues of international peace and harmony are essential for its sovereignty, and awareness of this factor led in recent years to the emergence of the Council on International Relations under the President of the Russian Federation and to developing strategies for ethnic policy. In our opinion, there are many factors that affect inter-ethnic relations”.
Artificial factors
1) A number of media activities and the activities of ultra-governmental organizations, which purposefully undermine the situation. As for the media, it is the main catalyst exacerbating inter-ethnic relations, creating ethnic hatred, etc. I will give you a simple example, and it will become clear how this happens. In August, in the blog of a young man from the Krasnodar region, material appeared in which he described an incident in his native village when builders came from a neighbouring village, there were people of Chechen and Dagestani nationality, they were drunk - and it was the month of Ramadan, holy for Muslims, and they beat everybody - women, children, pregnant women and the elderly. Of course, even people from the Caucasus were full of emotions reading this. Immediately it was republished by "Russian News Service", then by "Echo of Moscow", and ethnic hatred appeared on the internet. An investigation started, and it turned out that the young man who posted it had really quarrelled with someone. The builders who existed in reality, in the neighborhood, really were Chechens and Dagestanis. He got into a fight with someone and wanted revenge, wrote this stuff and posted it on the internet. This was all a fabrication. Of course he will be punished, but who will bear the responsibility for the activity of the media, which again pushed our society to the brink of ethnic hatred? There are actually many such examples.
We need to work on a united system to fight this. Unfortunately, the community cannot do this. There have been numerous attempts to regulate the actions of the media, to create a Public Council for Television; these attempts were moved by powerful institutions such as the Russian Orthodox Church and the Federation Council, but even such institutions were powerless against the media, which obviously had more powerful patrons.
2) The provocative activities of nationalist organizations, which include organizations such as the Movement Against Illegal Immigration, aiming their resources at all the events associated with migrants, with Caucasians, illuminating all their worst features, distorting and exaggerating the reality. Their activists appeared where a conflict arose and began to stir up the public, setting it against migrants and Caucasians.
Objective factors
1) The strong social stratification in our society, low social mobility, weak prospects for self-realization of youth, lack of equal opportunities. Economists know that the Gini index in the country was 0.420 in 2010. This is a huge amount. The difference between the richest 10% and the poorest 10% in Russia is 35 to 40 times. In Soviet times, this figure was only 4 times. This was probably the smallest figure in the world. Only the Scandinavian countries are close to such equitable distribution of resources. Now such a bundle leads to skillful channeling of a social protest into
national one.
2) The fragmentation of the cultural and information space. I do not know how to articulate this - perhaps we need a single ideology, a common educational policy in schools and universities. This leads to the fact that, for example, the values, interests and beliefs of young people living in the central part of Russia, and the values, interests and beliefs of young people living in the North Caucasus are completely different. So when they find themselves in a single environment, they do not communicate with each other, because they do not have common interests. The influence of the ethnic community will prevail here: people are attracted to their fellow countrymen. If they had any common interests, common values, they would prevail over the ethnic community, and we might not have the ethnic segregation and isolation of young people.
3) The lack of the systematic and mass work in universities and schools that used to be done by the Pioneer and Komsomol organizations. In Soviet times up to 80% of young people went through the Pioneers and the Komsomol; a particular world view and citizenship were formed there. This was a specific concept of citizenship - of course, in the Soviet era – but the work was quite systematic. After the collapse of the Soviet Union and the destruction of the Pioneer and Komsomol organizations the
public organizations found themselves responsible for this role, but they did not manage to bear this responsibility. Today, the activity of NGOs covers only 10-15% of young people. It does not enjoy such a high demand. This role is left to our universities and schools. Everyone is involved in this according to their abilities. Somewhere it turns out that everything is well, these issues are addressed, including international education, patriotic education. Somewhere it is generally impossible. Here we need some common work, common methodology, a common approach across the country.
“When young people, for example, come to study in the city of Moscow, then, as a rule, they are attracted to their countrymen, because with them they feel quite comfortable. They form informal communities; usually this occurs in high schools. They face some instances of xenophobia and discrimination that take place, they read the internet, and they start to cultivate some extremist attitudes. They become radicalised and do not feel their citizenship, if we are not working with them, if they are not involved in any projects and activities, if they are not engaged in something - then, of course, the situation is a little different. And, when these representatives of such communities face the other extreme - needy local youth of Moscow and the Moscow region, who also have their own specific drawbacks, there are massive ethnic conflicts. This occurred in Manezh Square in 2007, 2008, periodically this occurs. The representatives of such communities, particularly from the Caucasus, often struggle against each other for something. Often these conflicts are due to the relationship between the nations or to some armed conflicts taking place in their homeland. Today they are translated here when the representatives of young people struggle against each other. Therefore, if we do not conduct systematic work in universities and schools and in general, the problem will not be solved. For three years already we have been implementing an approach that we have applied in the creation and organization of the "Union of Student Compatriot Groups". Its essence lies in the fact that we have started to create at Moscow universities international structures of student governments. They are somewhere called international friendship clubs, somewhere – compatriot councils, somewhere – chambers of nationalities. Creating structures in partnership with universities, because the union is originated by the decision of the Council of Rectors of Moscow and the Moscow region, we are involving there leaders of different nationalities, and then we combine these structures all over the city and on the basis of these structures undertake a complex of measures aimed at rapprochement between young people of different nationalities through projects and activities”.
