Paul
Goble
Staunton, October 14 – The ethnic
violence in Moscow’s Biryulevo district over the weekend is only the latest pogrom
to have occurred in the Russian capital since Vladimir Putin became president,
something that all those who are following this rapidly developing story need
to keep in mind to comprehend what this latest clash.
The proximate cause of the latest outburst
of inter-ethnic violence was the killing of an ethnic Russian by someone
suspected of being from the Caucasus on Thursday, the failure of the Russian police
to find the perpetrator, and an outpouring of anger, including attacks on
non-Russians and their businesses as well as police.
Among those involved were Russian
radical nationalists who incited the crowd with calls for the expulsion of
gastarbeiters, for “white power” and for “a Russia for the Russians.” The demonstrators
received what many saw as support from Orthodox leaders who called for the
murderer of the Russian, the case that started this, to be severely punished.
The police responded with arrests, and the
event has sparked discussions about its meaning, including discussions about
whether the regime should crush the demonstrators or appease them by taking up
their slogans and about whether this weekend’s events will trigger even more
violence, something that another clash elsewhere in Moscow already shows.
For chronologies of the Biryulevo pogrom
so far, see newizv.ru/accidents/2013-10-14/190638-shod-s-pechalnym-ishodom.html,
ej.ru/?a=note&id=23418, novayagazeta.ru/news/132383.html, svpressa.ru/accidents/article/75702/
and themoscowtimes.com/news/article/moscow-erupts-in-riots-over-murder-video/487790.html.
For initial
commentator reaction, see grani.ru/Society/Xenophobia/m.220038.html,
expert.ru/2013/10/13/moskvu-doveli-do-pogromov/, apn.ru/publications/article30301.htm
www.apn.ru/publications/article30299.htm,
kasparov.ru/material.php?id=525B4A43A8C71
and http://www.apn.ru/publications/article30301.htm.
The outpouring
of commentaries in the blogosphere has assumed enormous proportions, but one
aspect of the Biryulevo events has not attracted as much attention as it
should: its precedents. Except for a few references to the 2010 clashes in the
Manezh Square, most writers have neglected to point out that pogroms have been
a regular feature of Putin’s capital.
That makes a
comment by Anton Nossik on Ekho Moskvy especially useful. In writing about Biryulyevo, he remarks that “if
anyone has forgotten, such pogroms in Moscow and the [surrounding] oblast have
occurred quite regularly” there over the last dozen years, He then lists some
of the most horrific of these (echo.msk.ru/blog/nossik/1176640-echo/).
On
April 21, 2001 – the day after Hitler’s birthday – he writes, “about 200
skinheads mostly aged 15 to 18 conducted
a pogrom in the Yasenevo market against immigrants from the Caucasus. Six months later, 300 of their kind carried
out an attack on the Tsaritsyn market and killed an Azerbaijani, a Tajik and an
Indian.
On
June 9, 2002, “in the very center of Moscow,” some pogromchiks seet affair
several dozen cars, broke store windows, and overturned buses and kiosks after
a Russia-Japan football match. Seventy-five people were injured, 49 of whom
were hospitalized and one 17-year-old later died.
On
July 7, 2002, there were pogroms in the city of Krasnoarmeysk in Moscow oblast,
and then in 2010, most prominent of all was the violence at the Manezh where 29
participants were hospitalized, including eight OMON officers. The next day, five young people attacked a Kyrgyz
at the Kolomnskaya metro station.
The one thing that links these and
similar events together is this, Nossik says. Despite all the media and
political outcry, “we to this day do not know who why or on whose money all
these actions were organized. If the
force structures have figured something us, they have not told us about it.
They’ve [apparently] forgotten.”
In a few cases, some months later, the authorities
have either charged those who couldn’t afford to bribe their way out of court. But
in most, they “have not put anyone away,” despite all their pledges to do
so. “The organizers of these
bloodlettings” clearly know that they aren’t under any threat from officialdom,
and thus they have no reason to change.
“Happily,” Nossik writes, “in
present-day Russia just as a century ago in 1913 [ -- the date of the infamous
Beilis case and the associated pogroms -- ], ethnic massacres aren’t much
demand among the broad strata of the [Russian] population.”
Less happily, he continues, “all the
pogroms which are taking place now or which occurred a 100 years ago are
connected one way or another [by acts of commission or omission] with attempts
of the authorities to solve their problem on the backs of those of different
ethnicity or faith by directing popular anger against them.”
“The experience of Nicholas II shows
that they will not obtain the slightest good from such efforts and that they
will pay a high price for them.
Unfortunately, [Putin and his team] have not learned anything from this
experience.” Like its tsarist predecessors, it “believes national conflicts are
a useful means of distracting Russians from the problems of corruption.”
Nossik concludes by expressing his conviction
and hope that “like a century ago, [they] are mistaken.”
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