Russia’s Parliamentary Parties Adopting Ever More Radical Anti-Immigrant Positions as Election Approaches

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Sept. 17 -- In every Russian election since Gorbachev’s time, observers have expressed concern that electoral campaigns will exacerbate inter-ethnic relations in the country. Usually, that has not happened; but this time around, Russia’s major parties are contributing to that by taking ever radical anti-immigrant positions.

            Alena Itskova, a journalist for Novaya Gazeta Europe, traces this development, one likely reflecting the experience of candidates who find that attacking immigrants and demanding their expulsion is a winning issue in Russia today (novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/09/17/vsekh-v-deportobus).

            That has happened, she suggests, because attacking immigrants is popular and also is an issue which the Kremlin has not yet “prohibited;” but it is disturbing because playing the anti-immigrant card could easily lead to precisely the kind of increases in tension among Russia’s indigenous nationalities as well.

            Itzkova traces how this trend in Russian politics has developed from the LDPR for whom anti-immigrant attitudes has long been a mainstay to the KPRF which has generally but ever less consistently opposed anti-ethnic minority messaging. She doesn’t address what is the largest question: can this issue be pushed back into the bottle after the parties have loosed it?

            That is unlikely to be the case, and the Kremlin may then take even more radical positions against immigrants and against indigenous nationalities who many view as somehow related even when that harms the Russian economy and threatens to trigger more conflicts and even more pro-independence movements among them.