Post-Soviet Ethnic Relations in Stavropol'skii Krai, Russia: ‘A Melting Pot or Boiling Shaft’?

Abstract

According to the Russian NGO SOVA Center, 20 people were killed and at least 148 were injured in racist and neo-Nazi attacks in 2011 in Russia. Although a decline on 2007 (when 89 people were killed and at least 618 injured), the figure remains worryingly high. These people, as well as many others who are not included in these statistics, are victims of Russia's violent geographies of ethnic relations. Through research conducted over the course of two years in 2008 and 2009, supplemented by an analysis of research conduced by NGOs and independent researchers, I document post-Soviet ethnic relations in Stavropol'skii Krai.

Notes

¹See http://inmoscowsshadows.wordpress.com/2010/01/01/the-latest-russian-police-reform-the-kremlin-is-likely-to-be-the-only-beneficiary, accessed 19 July 2012.

²In the 1990s, this process of ‘ethnic segregation’ (Kolossov et al. 2001) led to calls for combining ethnic Russian dominated areas of Chechnya (Naurskii Raion and Shelkovskii Raion) and Dagestan (Kislyarskii Raion and Tarumovskii Raion) with Stavropol'skii Krai (Matveeva 1999, p. 42).

³See also, Foxall (forthcoming).

⁴See http://www.stavkomnat.ru/, accessed 19 July 2012.

⁵See, for example, Kolossov et al. (2001); O'Loughlin et al. (2007a).

⁶http://www.eawarn.ru, accessed 19 July 2012.

⁷ http://sova-center.ru, accessed 19 July 2012.

⁸There is reason to believe that Dmitri Kuzmin (Major of Stavropol’ gorod in 2007) sympathised with ultra-nationalists. During an investigation into allegations of official misconduct, he was found to have kept Nazi paraphernalia in his office. See von Twickel (2009).

⁹In 1991, there were only a handful of these groups operating in Russia, but in 2004 their number stood at more than 33,000. On 11 March 2001, the ‘National Anti-Terrorist Committee’ (Natsional'ni Antiterroristicheskie Komitet, NAK) released a report that cited data from the MVD (a member of the NAK) suggesting that right-wing extremist movements had 200,000 members. These are official figures, but experts agree that the number of Russians in ultra-radical nationalist organisations is greater. See Jamestown Foundation (2009).

¹⁰These groups are not necessarily mutually exclusive though; in 2005, SOVA reported that Cossacks had begun to coordinate with skinheads, seeing each other as ‘comrades-in-arms’ (Kozhevnikova 2005).

¹¹I use the term ‘neo-Nazi’ here only because it is the term used by Russian authorities to identify the groups in question. In reality, as Laquer (1996, pp. 178–96) notes, National Socialism defined Slavs as racially inferior Untermenschen and thus this ideology appeals to few people in Russia. Instead, Russian neo-Nazi groups are characterised by: racism; anti-Semitism; Islamophobia; and extreme xenophobia towards people from Asia and the Caucasus. See Laquer (1996).

¹²In 2004, there were approximately 6,000 young neo-Nazis in Moscow, over 3,000 in St Petersburg and well over 2,500 skinheads in Nizhni Novgorod. See Tarasov (2004).

¹³For an overview of the state of interethnic relations in Stavropol'skii Krai in 2007, see Astvatsaturova (2007).

¹⁴Ethnic Azeri, 25, female shop worker, 27 July 2009, Stavropol’.

¹⁵Ethnic Chechen, 45, unemployed male, 10 July 2009, Stavropol’.

¹⁶Ethnic Russian, 51, business man, July 2009, Stavropol’.

¹⁷Ethnic Ossetian, 68, business man, 17 July 2009, Stavropol’.

¹⁸Ethnic Russian, 38, unemployed male, 23 July 2009, Stavropol’.

¹⁹Ethnic Russian, 27 male shop worker, 24 July 2009, Stavropol’.

²⁰Ethnic Russian, 51, business man, 10 July 2009, Stavropol’.

²¹Ethnic Russian (Cossack), 71, retired male, 20 October 2008, Stavropol’.

²²Ethnic Russian, 68, male shop owner, 3 August 2009, Stavropol’.

²⁴Ethnic Russian, 42, male politician, 13 July 2009, Stavropol’.

²³For an overview of human rights in Stavropol’, see Selyukov (2008).

²⁵Ethnic Russian, 34, male academic, 24 October 2008, Stavropol’.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Andrew Foxall

Research for this essay was supported by a CEELBAS Doctoral Studentship from the ESRC that the author held at the University of Oxford between 2007 and 2010. The author would like to thank Judith Pallot, the Guest Editors and two anonymous reviewers for their supportive comments and suggestions on earlier drafts, as well as numerous contacts, friends and research participants in Russia without whom this research would not have been possible.