Daria Melikhova exclusively to Vestnik Kavkaza
“Citizens of 193 ethnic groups, speaking 277 languages and dialects, live in Russia. The main factor which unites our multi-ethnic society is belonging to the Russian civil nation. Providing the right to self-identity, preserving language, culture, traditions, religion and inter-ethnic peace and cooperation,” the minister of regional development said during a discussion of the Federal Program on Improvement of the Unity of the Russian Nation and Ethnic-Cultural Development of the Russian Peoples.
The head of the Fund “Strategy 2020”, Mikhail Remizov, and the head of the general political science subdivision of the Higher School of Economy, Leonid Polyakov, commented on the program and the ethnic policy for Vestnik Kavkaza.
“Any program is estimated by certain indices. In this case, the main indices characterize the level of positive attitude, an appraisal of inter-ethnic relations in the country by the citizens, and the level of tolerance. However, firstly, such indices are easy to add. For a professional sociologist it is no problem to get the result which he wants in his poll. Secondly, tension in inter-ethnic relations in our country is connected with the fact that people are not tolerant of ethnic differences. It is naïve to think that somebody who is dissatisfied with the position of the Russians in Russia and supports the motto “Russia for the Russians!” judges the behavior of Diaspora representatives on the shape of their noses or the color of their eyes. They react to the phenomenon of ethnic crime. This phenomenon is not discussed in the program.
Ethnic crime is not connected with the fact that some ethnic groups commit crimes more frequently than others. Of course this is not true. The point is that clan, family and ethnic contacts are a perfect basis for organized crime to form relations of trust, relations of “ours-other.” If we speak about domestic crime, it is easier to commit a crime against a stranger,” Remizov thinks.
According to him, the program “mentions the migration inflow from Central Asia as one of problems, but there are no ways out for the problem. To integrate the North Caucasus into the common Russian civil culture, norms and principles of a secular state should be launched, or understanding the priority of Russian law over the laws of Shariah and Adat. The program has no such a goal either. If the complicated goal is supplied by the necessity to integrate millions of migrants from Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, it would be impossible.”
According to the head of the general political science subdivision of the Higher School of Economy, Leonid Polyakov, “ethnic policy in Russia is one of the most important components of internal policy in general. Ethnic policy is a key to the settlement of many problems because economic difficulties appear in such republics as Dagestan, as well as problems with social supply and social structure, as the ethnic policy doesn’t consider everything.”
However, Polyakov believes that “this difficulty occurred due to the objective situation after the collapse of the Soviet Union. In the Soviet Union a structured propaganda scheme of the so-called “friendship of the peoples” was in operation. Since childhood the machine worked to level down ethnic and confessional differences. Today there is no such a propaganda machine, and tension in cooperation between various ethnic groups in Russia leads to a great problem which should be settled.”
As for the role and responsibility of the mass media for developments in the North Caucasus, Polyakov thinks that “we should remember about it every day. It is easy to add gasoline to a fire which is already burning. However, we should realize that the North Caucasus is blood playing. Everybody who wants to get profit from this should remember that he quarrels with his own bread and butter. The North Caucasus is an indispensible part of Russia, and it is wrong to treat the region as a threat. All of us, including journalists, should contribute to building relations between the North Caucasus and the rest of Russia, citizens of one country, making it clear that we are one nation.”
