Twenty Years On, Kondopoga Clashes Still Cast a Shadow across Russia and Former Soviet Space

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Sept.8 – Twenty years ago, at the end of Augusta and the beginning of September 2006, ethnic clashes between local Russians and Chechen refugees broke out in the Karelian city of Kondopoga leaving at least two dead and creating in the minds of many Russians a picture of what could happen in any place in Russia at any time.

            That event, perhaps even more than the FSB-staged attacks on Russian apartment houses in 1999, created a groundswell of opposition to ethnic minorities and especially toward those viewed as migrant workers regardless of whether they came from abroad or not and an even more powerful growth in support for tough, even authoritarian measures against them.

            Indeed, in Russia and several of the other former Soviet republics, Kondopoga even two decades on remains less an historical event than a word that which is used about all kinds of ethnic conflicts not only by journalists and politicians but by ordinary people who fear they could easily become victims of similar outbursts.

            On that continuing influence of the Kondopoga events, see a commentary this week at veter.info/posts/dFu50tvutJbD.  For some examples of how Kondopoga has become a symbol, see windowoneurasia.blogspot.com/2007/06/window-on-eurasia-spectre-of-kondopoga.html, windowoneurasia.blogspot.com/2008/01/window-on-eurasia-kondopoga-like.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2013/02/window-on-eurasia-tatar-activists.html,  windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2014/02/window-on-eurasia-ethnic-clashes.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2021/08/kondopoga-like-violence-breaking-out-in.html and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2022/01/kondopoga-like-violence-breaks-out-in.html.