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Parameters of Russian racism today

By Liz Fekete

1 August 1997

'Anti-Caucasian' racism

Chechens, Azeris, Georgians and Armenians have become the new scapegoats for national resentments. The first issue of Diagnosis, a magazine launched by the Russian Jewish Congress, focuses on prejudice again 'Caucasians' in southern Russia and argues that it is too often popularised by official propaganda. The Russian Jewish Congress estimates that 30 nationalist and neo-nazi groups are active across the country. It argues that Russians either do not know what fascism is or are attracted toward it in a search for strong discipline.

Anti-Semitism

The position of Russian Jews has changed in recent years, with more Jews visible in government than they have ever been before. Rosalina Rivkina, the author of a study on the position of Jews in post-Soviet Russia, argues that Jews have as much to lose as to gain from this new visibility as 'glasnost gave to anti-Semitism an open political character'.

Anti-Jewish sentiment resurfaced after four Russian-Jewish businessmen went on Israeli television to talk about the success of Russian-Jewish entrepreneurs in the Russian economy. The editor of the ultra-nationalist newspaper Zavtra attacked Jews who are unpatriotic to Russia but identify with Israel as a 'parasitic elite, the chosen super-few inside the state'. Other anti-Semitic incidents include the distribution of leaflets to 200000 people in the southern Russian region of Volgograd, claiming that Russia was a country occupied by Jews and with no ethnic Russians represented in the federal government.

Jews scapegoated for Chechen war

Another incident which proves that Jews living in Russia are still hostages to fortune was the kidnapping of Gilad Dadashev, the 67-year-old former chief economist of the Chechen oil ministry. Kept in a cellar in a mountain village by kidnappers who believed him to be a rich Jew with unlimited money, it took an international campaign to raise the $50000 needed to release him. His wife blames the war for destroying the previous good relations between Chechens and the Jews. 'The war destroyed everything and today the idea appears among the most backward people that it was not the Russians who are to blame for all this, but us.'

Jewish Chronicle 18.4.97, Guardian 2.5.97

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