Julia Ioffe describes last weekend’s violence in Moscow:
[Russia is] second only to the U.S. in the number of illegal migrants, except that it is far worse at counting them and, unlike the U.S., does not even try to keep them out. They too live abysmal, perilous lives, and they too cause tensions with the local population. And, like in the U.S., the law of the land is far, far behind the reality. In fact, it doesn’t address it at all, leaving the more extreme elements in the country to take action themselves—kind of like in the U.S. (See: Arizona.)
But the problem in Russia is that, for the local population, the tension is not an economic one, but an overtly racial one. To wit: many of the migrants from the North Caucasus are Russian citizens because the North Caucasus is part of the Russian Federation. (They are illegal because they don’t have the special permits required to live in Moscow.) The problem with people from the North Caucasus is that they are Muslim and have dark hair and dark complexions; that is, they stand out from the Christian Slavic part of the population. On good days, people from the North Caucasus or from former Soviet republics in Central Asia inspire derision and nasty, racist slurs. On bad days, it’s really, really bad.
The Dish 