Paul Goble
Staunton, Aug. 6 – Four months after a Moscow court prohibited landlords from declaring in advertisements that they would rent their properties “only to Slavs,” another court in the Russian capital has prohibited landlords from making analogous declarations that they will rent “only to Muslims.”
On the one hand, of course, the two court decisions parallel one another and are even consistent (nazaccent.ru/content/43904-sudy-zapretili-obyavleniya-o-najme-na-rabotu-s-pometkoj-tolko-dlya-slavyan/ and nazaccent.ru/content/44337-moskovskij-sud-zapretil-obyavleniya-tolko-dlya-musulman/).
But on the other, they are very different. Since 1991, Russian landlords have said in their advertisements that they won’t rent to “persons of Caucasus nationality” or other non-Russians, insisting they will rent “only to Slavs.” In short, this has been a long-standing problem, and Russian courts are seeking to root it out only now, or at least make it appear they are.
The situation with regard to those landlords in the Russian capital who are saying they will rent “only to Muslims” is different: That such declarations are being made now highlights the growth of the Muslim population in the Russian capital and helps to promote the formation of ethnic neighbors or even ghettos.
That is something the Kremlin does not want to see happen, and so the new decision is far more important politically than those about renting “only to Slavs” even though examples of those saying they will rent “only to Muslims” are far fewer in number at least up to now (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2025/04/russians-worried-about-rise-of-closed.html).
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