Chechens Don’t Like Muscovites Any Better than Muscovites Like Them, New Study Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, March 4 – Numerous surveys have found that residents of the Russian capital do not like Chechens, but there have been few polls on how Chechens feel about the people in Moscow. Now, one has appeared, and it shows what might have been expected: Chechens don’t like Russians any more than Russians like them.

            Sociologists Kseniya Grigoryeva and Inzhila Khamidova examine that question in an article, “Rural Residents of the Chechen Republic about Moscow and Muscovites” (in Russian), Monitoring obshchestvennogo mneniya: Ekonomicheskiye i sotisalnye peremeny, 3(2018): 230-247 at wciom.ru/fileadmin/file/monitoring/2018/145/2018_145_12_Grigoryeva.pdf. A summary is at ttolk.ru/articles/chechentsyi_o_moskve_eto_opasnyiy_gorod_zlyih_i_amoralnyih_lyudey.

                Muscovites have a negative view of Chechens, Grigoryeva and Khamidova say; but “Moscow and Muscovites in the eyes of those from the Chechen Republic also look to be other than the best.” Chechens view them as amoral and dissolute, and more than a third say that Moscow is a dangerous place to walk about at night.

            The two sociologists focused on the image of Moscow among potential migrants from Chechnya. They surveyed 300 people in three rural areas of the republic and conducted 15 in-depth interviews with people who had not left the republic but who had at least considered doing so.

            They drew four conclusions:

·         “The overwhelming majority” of the rural Chechens “did not want to live in Moscow.”

·         Most thought that “Moscow is a quite dangerous place especially after dark.”

·         Muscovites are typically amoral, inhospitable, arrogant and angry people who seek to impose their habits on others.

·         Young Chechens share the same negative views of Moscow and Muscovites their elders do but in slightly smaller numbers.