Ethnic Bullying in Russia Fundamentally Different from Ordinary Bullying Because ‘Nationality Can’t Be Changed,’ Tomilina Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Jan. 31 – Russian officials and commentators loyal to the Kremlin do everything they can to suggest that clashes between members of different ethnic or religious groups are not ethnic or religious conflicts, preferring to insist that these are driven by other factors that are more immediately important.

            That approach until recently has extended to bullying along ethnic or religious lines in Russian schools. But in 2025, the Guild of Interethnic Journalism carried out a project to “STOP EthnoBullying” among young people in the Russian Federation and has now held a conference about the lessons learned (nazaccent.ru/content/45095-stop-etnobulling-itogi-i-perspektivy/).

            Among those who carried out this project and then spoke at the conference was Inna Tomilina, a Moscow psychologist and business coach, who said that focus groups in eight federation subjects confirmed that “children out of insecurity, shy away from people who are different from them … and that this misunderstanding often leads to bullying.”

            She stressed that “ethno-bullying is different from regular bullying. A situation leading to bullying in children’s groups can be corrected by improving academic performance, building physical skills or if need be changing schools. [But] nationality cannot be changed.” (stress supplied)

            Unfortunately, Tomilina said, “no one in Russia is yet talking about ethno-bullying as a phenomenon.” Indeed, she suggested, the very first articles about this phenomenon and practical tools to combat it “appeared precisely during the STOP EthnoBullying project carried out over the last year.

            For the Kremlin, Tomilina’s suggestion that “nationality cannot be changed” is close to a provocation; but her insistence that ethnic conflicts among the young are fundamentally different from other kinds of conflicts is a point of view that may inspire more attention to what is clearly a growing problem not only among school-age children but among adults as well. 

Moscow Continues to Use Outdated Infrastructure Plans Drawn Up More than Half a Century Ago, Baliyev Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Feb. 1 – That the Russian government continues to depend on the achievements of the Soviet Union in various sectors is widely recognized. That it continues to rely on plans the Soviets made but never released is much less so, although with the passing of time, that dependence may place even more limits on what Moscow can do now, Aleksey Baliyev says.

            In an essay on the Military-Political Analytics portal about railway development plans in the southern portions of the Russian Federation continue to be based on Soviet plans from as long ago as the early 1950s without changing them to reflect changes in the situation there (vpoanalytics.com/point-of-view/mezhregionalnye-infrastrukturnye-izyany-mnozhatsya-i-chrevaty/).

            A large fraction of railway development projects included in the Russian Federation’s current development plan for the rest of this decade are little more than copies of projects that were finalized by the early to mid-1950s and not modified in any significant way despite all the changes in the world since then, Baliyev continues..

            This situation, the analyst says, “shows that a comprehensive approach, one which takes into account both existing trends and anticipated developments does not yet prevail in the planning of transport infrastructure development in the Russian Federation” despite all the talk about modernization.

            This pattern is “detrimental to the economy and social sphere of the regions lying along these routes, to economic relations with neighboring countries, and to the ensuring of the country’s security” given the possibility of military actions. Existing plans from the past need to be changed given the demands of the present and the future.