Hate crimes in Russia: Citizens of former Soviet republics fear Russia’s streets. Part 2

Skinheads have already killed 57 people in Russia in 2008. Why are citizens of former Soviet republics afraid to roam Russia’s streets?

I’m riding the same metro line in Saint Petersburg where Sayana Mongush was beaten in December 2007. I see Tajiks sitting in the corner of the car quietly with their caps pulled down over their eyes. I also see peoples from the North Caucasus staring ahead fearlessly, prepared for a confrontation. And I blush. This is xenophobia.

Everyone has these feelings – only the degree varies from person to person.

You can learn to restrain yourself. You can turn your back on skinheads attacking a migrant, or scream “Hit me instead!” as did an elderly Russian woman in the same metro car as Mongush. But one thing is clear. If internal limitations aren’t set, it’s easy to get carried away on both a personal and national level. Deep down many people have the “fascist seed.” It only needs to be fed. There’s nothing simpler.

An incident in the history of the Polish city Kielce is a model demonstration of how xenophobia works.

It was 1946. World War II was over and nearly all Europe’s Jews had been killed. The world had learned the horrid truth of the Nazi deathcamps Auschwitz and Treblinka. But new pogroms began. And these were orchestrated by Poles – not Hitler’s army.

A young Pole went to visit his sister in secret in a neighboring town. He returned home three days later. Afraid his parents would reprimand him for his actions, he decided to lie. He told them he had been held captive in a cellar by a group of strangers who spoke a foreign tongue.

The boy walked through Kielce with a group of local men, looking for the home where he had been held captive. He pointed to the first Jewish home he saw. His elders paid no mind that the house didn’t have a cellar. Forty-six people died as a result.

Of course, similar tragedies have transpired in the newly independent states – specifically in Karabakh, Transnistria and Fergana. Russians are all too familiar with these stories.

Xenophobia isn’t the biggest problem facing Russian society, says the Russian Public Opinion Research Center, but it’s grave nonetheless. Forty-four percent of Russians disagree with the slogan, “Russia for Russians,” while the remaining 56 percent went from Soviet internationalism to Russian nationalism in only 15 years. How did this happen? READ MORE