Putin’s Promotion of Slavic Identity Broader than Ethnic Russian Leading Some to Behave in Racist Fashion to Non-Slavs

Paul Goble

            Staunton, July 14 – A scandal which broke out last month when Moscow’s Jewish Museum and Center for Tolerance advertised a vacancy for a barkeeper with a Slavic appearance has both sparked controversy and highlighted a danger inherent in Vladimir Putin’s downplaying of ethnic identities and playing up Slavic versus non-Slavic divisions. 

            Aleksandr Boroda, director of the Jewish Museum, said that the online ad had been placed not by the museum itself but by a contractor who had been hired to set up a new café in the facility. He has now called the advertisement “a provocation” (nazaccent.ru/content/33384-v-evrejskom-muzee-nazvali-obyavlenie-o.html).

            Any sensible person would view such an ad – and these are often encountered in various spheres, Boroda said, would have only “a sharply negative reaction” to them and know that most people who read them would as well.  He said the museum had ended its contract with the development firm involved.

            It is entirely possible and even likely this advertisement was designed to harm the image of the Jewish museum, but such advertising is so extremely common in Russian cities. (For other examples, see nazaccent.ru/content/33609-trebuetsya-rabotnik-slavyanskoj-vneshnosti.html and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2020/07/russians-display-racism-in-dealing-with.html.)

            But one aspect of this specific situation and many others that is not being discussed in Russia yet is this: few if anyone would dare to put up an ad saying that “only ethnic Russians need apply” or “no Central Asians need apply.”  But for many “Slavic” is an acceptable euphemism for what is really bigotry.

            Until relatively recently, few in Russia used this substitute; but Putin’s talk about a broader and super-ethnic Russian or Slavic identity has opened the way for some to do so. Aleksandr Boroda reacted promptly and properly, but all too many in Russia do not yet see “Slavic” as a code word for this Putin-promoted identity and a basis for discrimination.

            One can only hope that others will react as Boroda has and that use of this term in this way will be punished by the authorities and not used by the population.