September 19, 2019

Xenophobia is on a steep rise in Russia

topic:	Racism
located:	Russia
editor:	Igor Serebryany

Xenophobia has been on the rise in Russia since 2017, a recent survey conducted by sociologic Levada Center shows.

Seventy one percent of the respondents have said they supported the ultra-nationalistic slogan "Russia for Russians", with Romas, Chinese, Vietnamese, people of Central Asian and North Caucasian origin, Jews and even Ukrainians seen as the least desirable ethnic minorities.

In 2017, the xenophobic sentiments were admitted by 54 percent of the respondents. After a lull that lasted several years, anti-migrant sentiments are back, Levada's sociologist Karina Pipiya says. She points to 2019 when several riots targeting ethnic minorities, namely Romas and Kyrgyzs occurred. According to the sociologist, 72 percent of Russians are in favour of restricting economic migration, with 64 percent believing that migrants "steal" their jobs.

"The factor fueling that hatred is, in the first place, envy because less privileged people consider migrants as more successful competitors who dump salaries. Poverty has increasingly been a hot topic in Russia, so poor people look for someone to blame, and ethnic minorities are the most convenient target," Pipiya says.

Strange as it may seem, the rise of nationalistic sentiments may be a result of the Russian federal authorities' policy of encouraging immigration, head of the Institute for the Regional Problems, Dmitry Zhuravlev says. "In the world as a whole and in the former Soviet Union, in particular, there were few ethnic Russians left to reverse the demographic downward spiral in the country. So the newly-adopted immigration policy drops the requirement for a Russian citizenship aspirant to prove his/her right to be granted a Russian passport. Now everything that is needed is a desire to become a Russian national", he says.

Although today, the easing of immigration requirements take into account mostly Russian-speakers from the former Soviet Unio, formally such a limitation did not exist. "So any refugee or economic migrant from anywhere in the world can now apply for a Russian passport", Zheravlev says. "When I worked in the Kremlin Administration, I used to inspect the places where the resettlers lived. In the Kaliningrad region (on the Baltic Sea), for example, 100 percent of the settlers were ethnic Uzbeks. I think this is going to be a typical situation from now on", he foresees.

Xenophobia among the ethnic Russian population is a completely irrational phenomenon, a member of the Federal Migration Service's Public Board Yuri Moskovsky is convinced. "There will always be provocateurs who attempt to render any criminal showdown or domestic dispute ethnic overtones. It has happened several times when Russian nationalists attempted to present criminal settlements as 'national liberation wars' against migrants", he says. Moskovsky stressed that while the Russian Federal Migration Service deports hundreds of thousand of illegal migrants every year, the authorities do not discriminate between particular ethnic groups.