Paul
Goble
Staunton, March 24 – The recent
events in Yakutsk stand out because unlike elsewhere in Russia, they are “anti-immigrant
in a pure form without any signs of racism,” because the Sakha and the Kyrgyz
are of one race and speak closely related Turkic languages, Sergey Baymukhametov
says.
Elsewhere in Russia, the commentator
points out, local protests against immigrants are usually mixed with racism.
Thus, Muscovites are upset by the arrival of Central Asians and Caucasians but
not by that of Belarusians or Ukrainians (newizv.ru/news/society/24-03-2019/yakutskiy-sindrom-kogda-nechem-gorditsya-nado-unizhat-drugih).
This suggests two things, both of
which are worrisome, Baymuhametov says. On the one hand, it almost certainly means
that the crime the Kyrgyz migrant worker has been accused of committing was
only an occasion for the protests and not the cause and that the authorities played
up this case to redirect the anger of the population away from themselves.
And on the other, this demonstration
of the ability of the authorities to do that suggests that as things
deteriorate, officials elsewhere in Russia will be able to use the media and
other means to channel the anger of the population against immigrants even of
culturally and linguistically similar groups, like the Ukrainians and Belarusians
for Russians.
To the extent that is true, the
commentator suggests, that will mean that even if Moscow is able to draw most
of the ten million from such closely related nations, such selection by itself
will not be sufficient to avoid the spread of xenophobia and attacks on
outsiders to those groups as well.
He cites the words of Levada Center
sociologist Lev Gudkov: “People will not risk speaking out against the
authorities. Instead, they will shift their anger to more suitable figures. That
is a typical transference of aggression: if you have nothing to be proud of,
you need to humiliate others.”
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