Paul Goble
Staunton, June 4 – Following the
disintegration of the USSR, Kseniya Knorre-Dmitriyeva says, many Russians began
using ethnic slurs about other nations both within the Russian Federation and
in the post-Soviet states, terms which had their origins in either military or
criminal jargon “where nationality always played a particular role.”
“In the army, Uzbeks were called ‘Uryuks,’
Daghestanis ‘Dags,’ and so on, the semiotician says. In the army “everyone always knew who was who by
nationality, even though few civilians could distinguish a Daghestani from an
Ingush” (zen.yandex.ru/media/lenta.ru/v-90e-perestali-stesniatsia-negramotnosti-5b07bdf3dd24845157cc32a9).
And “in such
closed communities, groups often are formed on the basis of where people are
from.” As to the expression “persons of
Caucasian nationality,” she continues, that “was borrowed by the newspapers at the
end of the 1980s from the language of militia protocols” when the militia began
focusing on ethnic crime.
That and not the earlier
use of the term “persons of Jewish nationality” is the explanation for its
widespread appearance especially in the early 1990s. The former term, she
suggests, “undoubtedly was more correct because Jewish nationality, in contrast
to a Caucasian one, exists; and the
new expression arose on this basis.”
Knorre-Dmitriyeva’s
observation is important as a corrective to the widespread assumption both
among Russians and among Russian specialists in the West that “persons of
Caucasus nationality” was a direct expansion of “persons of Jewish nationality”
and had equally ominous terms for members of the former that the latter did for
Jews in the last days of Stalin.
But
her conclusion is even more important because they show the ethnicizing rather than
integrating role of the military and the police not only in Soviet times but
subsequently, a reminder that military and militia service heightens ethnic awareness
and sensitivities rather than reduces
them as many in Moscow are inclined to think.
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