Jokes about Ethnic Minorities Open the Way to Their Oppression, Tatar Commentator Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 15 – When people and especially political leaders tell jokes about ethnic or other minorities, Ruslan Aysin says, that is part and parcel of a xenophobic campaign and opens the way to the oppression of these groups -- however much those who tell such jokes try to insist that their critics lack a sense of humor.  
    The Kazan Tatar political commentator is reacting  to the case of Russian actress Valeriya Lomakshina who told a joke about the Karelian language but then was compelled to apologize (idelreal.org/a/iz-etogo-vyrastaet-nadmennoe-otnoshenie-k-nerusskim-narodam-ruslan-aysin-pro-shutku-o-nepopulyarnosti-karelskogo-yazyka-na-rossiyskom-tv/33201895.html).
    Lomakshina’s suggestion during a stand up routine in Moscow that the Karelian national theater was the only place on earth where Karelia is spoken and that Karels who attend programs there make sure they can listen to translations because they can’t understand that language outraged many in Karelia and elsewhere.
    Not only were her words untrue, Aysin continues; but they were hurtful both to Karelians and to other national minorities of the Russian Federation who are now under enormous pressure from Moscow to stop using their native languages and shift instead to Russian and who could see that such a joke was intended to add to this pressure.
    The real tragedy, he says, is that many Russians think what Lomakshina said and now feel empowered not only to laugh alongside her but to engage in repressive behavior toward linguistic and other minorities, a problem unfortunately not limited to Russia but certainly widespread there.