[lbo-talk] Racism in Russia

" Chris Doss " nomorebounces at mail.ru
Sat Feb 21 07:02:01 PST 2004


Two comments:

1. There is very little "racism" in Russia, as I have said before, because there is very little concept of "race." "Race" is a shitty Western invention. What there is xenophobia (being directed against outsiders, including by the way me) and interethnic hostility (being directed as people belong to an ethnicity branded as negative), both of which are different from "racism." Talking about racism in Russia is like talking about nationalism in the Roman Empire ("in a burst of Roman nationalism, several dozen ethnic Germans, Gauls and Jews were crucified today on the outskirts of Rome!") or like racism playing a role in the Hutu-Tutsi conflict.

There are, what, 4-5 "races" in the Western way of subdividing the human species, which is based on skin color; there are dozens of Russian nationalities, and the concept of nationality has little if any biological content. Moreover, the faultlines of ethnic conflict in th former Soviet Union do not run down anything that would resemble "racial" demarcations: they are Russians vs. Ukrainians, Slavs vs. Tatars, Tatars vs. Bashkirs, Georgians vs. Abkhazians, Slavs vs. Caucasians, Armenians vs. Ajerbaijanis, certain Tajik tribes vs. other Tajik tribes, Jews vs. everybody else, and Chechens vs. everybody else. (Then, in Moscow, there is Muscovites vs. everybody who is not a Muscovite.)

2. "Some nationalist politicians have gone as far as calling for the city to be cleared up.": Nobody would be left to do any menial labor! Moscow would cease to function. :)



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