New Republic published an article by Julia Ioffe devoted the recent nationalistic riot in Moscow's Birylyovo district.
"This weekend, a working class neighborhood erupted in violence after a 25 year-old Russian was stabbed to death, allegedly by a migrant from Russia's Caucasus region. Hooligans and soccer fanatics quickly joined the fray, as did local residents, shouting "Go Russians!" and "Russia for Russians!" They looted fruit and vegetable stands run by migrants from former Soviet republics. They beat up people who looked distinctively non-Russian. Police chased the protestors around, and arrested nearly 400 of them," the article begins.
"Now, Russia has a serious problem on its hands. It's second only to the U.S. in the number of illegal migrants, except that it is far worse at counting them and, unlike the U.S., does not even try to keep them out. They too live abysmal, perilous lives, and they too cause tensions with the local population. And, like in the U.S., the law of the land is far, far behind the reality," the author writes.
"But the problem in Russia is that, for the local population, the tension is not an economic one, but an overtly racial one. To wit: many of the migrants from the North Caucasus are Russian citizens because the North Caucasus is part of the Russian Federation. (They are illegal because they don't have the special permits required to live in Moscow.) The problem with people from the North Caucasus is that they are Muslim and have dark hair and dark complexions; that is, they stand out from the Christian Slavic part of the population. On good days, people from the North Caucasus or from former Soviet republics in Central Asia inspire derision and nasty, racist slurs. On bad days, it's really, really bad," the article reads.
"To my Jewish readers who have roots in this part of the world, if you ever wanted to see why your ancestors left, this is very likely what it looked like, but with less Adidas," Ioffe concludes.
