Hate crimes in Russia: Citizens of former Soviet republics fear Russia's streets – Part 3

"I wouldn't defend a Tajik!" Nikolay Bondarik says unabashedly.

Final installment. See previous stories in KP issues on April 28, 29

In the two earlier segments of our story, we tried to understand why citizens of former Soviet republics fear Russia's streets, and why Russia is suffering from a bout of radical nationalism.

"Go ahead and write it!” said Nikolay Bondarik, commander of the Saint Petersburg Russian Guard. “I wouldn't intervene if I saw skinheads attacking a Tajik! It would be stupid for me as a leader of Russia's nationalist and patriotic movement to suffer at the hands of skinheads!"

I went to see Bondarik because the only way to stop skinheads from acting out against non-Slavs is to ask nationalists who are recognized by the movement to appeal to the masses. It would have been wonderful if Dmitry Bobrov had made the announcement, but he's in prison. His contacts were frightened when I explained the situation over email, so we had to go with the most available option.

We chose Bondarik from those who aren't in jail. He's a nationalist with a long history of "patriotism." He was one of the first people convicted of a hate crime in Russia in 1994.

Our operation was surprisingly easy. Bondarik was very composed, likely because he planned on being sent to jail the following day for holding an unsanctioned "Russian March." This is what he asked us to pass along to the skinheads:

"Dear Friends! If you are genuine Russian patriots who care with all your heart about the fate of the Russian people and our country, then quit the foolishness! Russia will be no better off should you attack a Tajik with your friends and get sent to prison for 10 years. If you want to help your people, then join patriotic political parties. Yes! You must take part in meetings, pickets and distribute leaflets. I am speaking to you as my brothers. I will be sorry if your fate is ruined and you end up spending your near future in prison. No one will be any worse off but you."

Maybe his message will affect someone. But that's unlikely. The young boys who go hunting for non-Russians at local metro stations don't want to get organized or attend meetings. They have a different mentality than the police force, which consolidated its efforts to catch Bondarik the following day in Saint Petersburg. The number 6,000 policemen comes to mind... Heavy jeeps lined up along Nevsky Prospect. Small "State Electrics" vans hid in the alleys. Armed police were packed inside. Bondarik wanted his arrest and trial to be a loud scandal, but things didn't go his way. He was caught so quickly the telephone operators didn't have time to turn on their cameras. There were about 12 policemen for each participant in the Russian March.

Standing there, waiting for the participants to be dispersed, I thought that if so many policemen monitored the metro we'd have no problems with skinheads attacking non-Slavs.

An elevator, Akhmet and a dog

It's impossible to send all skinheads to jail, just as it's impossible to kill all foreigners.

"There are 25 million of us non-Russians here," Tuvinian journalist Sayana Mongush said. "What are they going to do with us all? A long time ago I could have complained to the District Communist Party. But what can I do now?"

The problem has nothing to do with the lack of a complaint book. The Strasbourg Court could easily serve as a substitute for the District Communist Party. But Russia no longer has a governmental organ that focuses only on ethic-related issues. After the Ministry of Ethnic Affairs was dismantled in 2002, the Ministry of Regional Development began to handle these issues.

Tolerance is the polar opposite of xenophobia. It's a unfortunate concept as discredited as the words "patriot," "liberal" and "democrat." Of course, it's impossible to force a nation to fall in love with foreigners over night, but there are solutions. For three years a special program has operated in Saint Petersburg — one of Russia's most xenophobic cities — encouraging tolerance. The program has printed posters with calenders about how to live peacefully. Maybe that will help.

It's wrong to think that nothing is being done to promote tolerance in Russia. An entire state program existed until 2005 that was managed by top European specialists from the European Commission (TASIS). I took a look at their textbook. It was sadly upsetting.

For example: "A young boy named Akhmet moved to Moscow with his parents not long ago, and became friends with a local girl named Vera. They visited each other at home and drank tea. Several days later Vera greeted Akhmet in the elevator after returning home from walking her dog. But Akhmet didn't respond. Instead, he crowded into the the corner of the elevator and stood there quietly. Reason: Akhmet's religion considers dogs to be dirty animals. Lesson: Vera should have left the elevator right away so as not to offend Akhmet." They don't mention that Akhmet lives in Moscow and needs to get used to the Russian way of life.

This option might suit the British, but certainly not the Russians. The British went as far as refusing to use "The Three Little Pigs" at schools to appease their large Muslim minority. That's how most programs work in the West. But that simply won't pass here.

We can't fight xenophobia on separate streets or cities. We need to clean the air throughout the entire country. First, we need to solve our problems with migration and crimes against ethnic Russians. We can't sit back and rely on the government to fix the situation. Xenophobia is growing like a cancer. It's so widespread in Russia it's difficult to determine where it starts and where it ends. What's the solution? We need to educate ourselves and our youth. This goes for everyone — our policemen, teachers, judges, journalists and doctors. We need to set daily limitations for ourselves to change the way we think and the situation at large.

Neo-Nazi guinea pigs

How can we teach tolerance to people like skinheads who are so greatly infected with xenophobia?

We need to teach children while they are young and still don't know anything about nationalism. The older generations still remember Soviet internationalism. They're not the problem. When we look at the problem from this angle, it doesn't seem so bad. There may be hope after all.

1. "Only with the help of athletics!" said State Duma Vice Speaker, Olympic champion Svetlana Zhurova. That's a spectacular idea! So I asked young Aleksandr Seregin what he thought, who was convicted of killing a Kyrgyz yard-keeper together with his friends. If you had been playing sports everyday, would you have searched the streets so adamantly for non-Russians? He raised his head and asked sincerely: "What else would we have done on the weekends?"

2. What if we take a group of skinheads to Uzbekistan or the Kyrgyz Republic to see how locals treat Russians? Greeting them with open arms, feeding them local dishes and joyously showing them around...

It's useless, I was told at the Israeli Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum. A group of young neo-Nazis were brought to the museum from Austria. The exhibitions had absolutely no effect — the pictures of dead Jewish children and their burning bodies. The whole week they were laughing about how they had gotten a free trip to Israel on Jewish money.

3. Should we return to our Soviet past and children's camps when we learned about other peoples and skin colors? Seregin only spoke with one non-Russian his entire life before the murder. Should we create multinational schools? Pedagogues learned, interestingly enough, that children from normal schools are far more tolerant than their peers at specially integrated schools. Thus, multinational schools aren't a panacea. Xenophobia can only be conquered by culture.

4. Here's a good idea that's popular in Latvia and Estonia. Russian children are sent to camps in the summer to study the local language. This could work someday, but personally I don't know a single family that would send their child to Ingushetia or Chechnya.

5. "We need to write more about outstanding members of other nationalities," said Tuvinian Ondar-Chimit. That's not a bad idea. But I don't know any newspapers that would print the materials free of charge. I also don't think skinheads would read the articles.

6. What about cinema? Director Tatyana Lioznova said in an interview that she included positive images of Germans in the classic film "70 Moments of Spring", depicting them as kind and sharp people so the audience would realize Nazis and Germans were not one and the same. Only one film in recent years has made audiences feel for a victim from the North Caucasus, Mikhalkov's "12." Other modern hits like "Brat" have depicted non-Russians in a negative light.

This is why the formula for tolerance as presented by Director of the Ethnology and Anthropology Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences Valeriy Tishkov is too far outside our realm of comprehension. But who said we need to aspire to it? ("Tolerance isn't when the residents of a city or village are OK with a mosque or synagogue being built near their orthodox church, it's when they build the temple together with the members of the other faith.)

Turning back the clock

Last summer I had a strange conversation in Tatarstan. It was quite an idyllic moment. It was evening by the river. We were all sitting and laughing and eating shashlyk.

"Everything's great, a Tatar was made head of city TV!" my colleague in Kazan said gleefully. He thinks that he's an internationalist.

"And why would it be so bad if a Russian had been appointed?" I asked surprised.

"Well it's our home here!" he said.

My next question caught him off-guard. "And 'our home' is where?" I asked.

This is a difficult question to answer.

This year we approached the 20th anniversary of the collapse of the Soviet Union. The Armenian-Azeri conflict over Nagorniy Karabakh sparked a cycle of xenophobia that hasn't yet passed.

It's no longer important what sent the empire tumbling down. Those days are behind us. Today Russia stands on a new threshold. And what's happening today could lead to another dreadful collapse. The anger felt by non-Slavic peoples grows with each coffin sent home from Moscow or Saint Petersburg, as does the anger of Russians who live in national republics and are forced to play second fiddle in society due to the color of their skin. The technologies of the collapses coincide to the very last detail. A country is only as strong as its weakest link. Is this just another virus of instability injected into Russia by evildoers in the West?

Let's leave the conspiracy theories to the political scientists. It's not important who's responsible for our current bout of radical nationalism. What's important is that a country that once conquered fascism wasn't prepared to fight the rhetoric again.

Galina Sapozhnikova is waiting for your feedback on our site.

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