Alamgir

KAZAKH OFFICIALS HUSH UP MOUNTING RUSSIAN NATIONALISM

By Marat Yermukanov
Friday, April 21, 2006

Unlike Kazakhstan's Russian-language papers, the Kazakh-language media are full of frightening stories of frequent attacks by Russian extremists in Moscow, St. Petersburg, and other locales. The complacent attitude of the Russian authorities toward the surging attacks on foreigners leads observers to believe that official Moscow is using the skinhead movement as a tool in dealing with Central Asian and Caucasian states with large ethnic Russian populations. To many members of the Commonwealth of Independent States, it seems implausible that a Russia that is still powerful enough to challenge the United States in military terms cannot curb the rising racial tensions and violence. Even pro-Moscow officials in Astana wonder if Russia can be regarded as a law-governed state after a gang of nationalists from Kabardino-Balkaria severely beat the popular singer Zaur Tutov earlier this month (Sana, April 6).

The rise of fascist and nationalist movements in Russia is an uneasy issue that Moscow and Astana carefully avoid in official talks. But public reaction to nationalist attacks in Russian cities is something hard to couch in diplomatic prose. Late in February a 32-year-old Kazakh woman was stabbed to death by a group of nationalists in St. Petersburg, apparently for talking in Kazakh on her cell phone. Immediately after the killing, the Kazakh national movement "Fate of the Nation" and the youth organization "Future" staged a protest rally in front of the Russian Embassy in Almaty and sent an open letter to Russian President Vladimir Putin demanding punishment for the perpetrators of the racially motivated crime. Later, the leader of Future, Dauren Babamuratov, announced that St. Petersburg's Kalinin district court had ignored the protesters and reduced the case to an act of common hooliganism (Turkistan, March 2).

Kazakhstan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, seeking not to irritate Moscow, publicly declined popular demands to send a note of protest to the Kremlin over the incident, saying that the woman killed by the Russian skinheads, although ethnically Kazakh, was a Kyrgyz citizen.

This is not the first instance of Kazakh nationals being beaten or killed in Russia. Yet none of these tragic incidents has been raised in top-level talks with Russian officials. Most of the incidents of savage attacks on Kazakh nationals in Russia remain unknown in Kazakhstan. In 2004 Russian extremists led by Anatoly Gruzdev killed a Kazakh citizen, and a similar murder took place in Volgograd in 2002, but authorities in Astana had no official reaction. As Astana looks away, similar extremist movements have begun to emerge in Kazakhstan. A small square near the Saryarka cinema in Almaty has turned into a gathering place for local Russian skinheads. The walls of houses in Almaty's Orbita residential area are stained with fascist-style graffiti. The estimated number of skinheads in Almaty does not exceed 50 or 70 people, but the trend is alarming (Turkistan, March 2).

Some reports indicate that nationalists in Russian cities are winning supporters among ethnic Russians in Kazakhstan who maintain contacts with the Russian-nationalist Freedom Party. There have been cases of Koreans and other ethnic minorities of Asian origin living in Kazakhstan being beaten by local skinheads. But like Russian authorities, Kazakhstan's law-enforcement agencies dismiss these ethnically motivated crimes as minor hooliganism. Many analysts underestimate the potential danger of the incipient Russian nationalism in Kazakhstan, erroneously believing that a skinhead movement cannot take root in Central Asia. In a letter of solidarity written to the Russian-nationalist Freedom Party, an ethnic Russian resident of Astana complain that although Russians make up 30% of Kazakhstan's population, Kazakh has displaced the Russian language in schools. Thus skinheads are the last hope for ethnic Russians in Kazakhstan to preserve their language and culture (Turkistan, April 13).

Over the last decade many place names in Kazakhstan associated with the colonial past have been changed. But this process has faced resistance from ethnic Russian activists. In Pavlodar (North Kazakhstan), for example, Russian residents, who make up half of the population, launched a public campaign to protest plans to rename the city (Zhas Qazaq, April 14).

The surge of Russian nationalism and xenophobia, fuelled by Kremlin complacency, signals the revival of Moscow's great-empire ambitions. Kazakhstan is the most vulnerable target for Russian nationalism in Central Asia at least for two reasons. First, despite the ongoing efforts of Kazakhstan's government to reach a level of demographic safety by encouraging the return of Kazakhs living abroad to their motherland, Russians have retained their ethnic and cultural dominance, largely due to political and economic pressure on Astana from the Kremlin, which uses the ethnic factor as an efficient lever in inter-state affairs. Second, Astana's current inter-ethnic policy merely declares ethnic harmony, tolerance, and national accord, ignoring deep-rooted problems. Kazakhstan has to face the reality of nationalism and adopt a more pragmatic ethnic policy conforming to standards of international law.

http://jamestown.org/edm/article.php?article_id=2371011

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Alamgir

There are a number of other news reports and articles i have read about there being as many as 50,000 "skinheads" in Russia, frequent attacks on non-Russian ethnic minorities and a rise in 'neo-nazism'.

I find it kinda ironic that Russians would take to neo-nazism and treat Hitler as one of their heroes when to the Nazis the Russians were a subhuman slavic race not fit to live among the "Aryan master race". Have the forgotten the atrocities of the Nazi army on Russians that quickly?

bugs

aryan referrs to a population with indo-european origin, iran included. so were is this going to ?

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Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.

entropy

These problems have a number of causes.

The fall of the Soviet Empire gives the people the same nostalgy to power as the NSDAP experienced in Weimar.
Because "we" are never in fault, and it's always "them", people start pointing fingers at "them".
Historically, we have the Jews. The belief in a Jewish conspiracy is strong amongst the Russian uneducated ones, and they now believe that the Jews are stealing things from the country.
Then, we have the Chechen. Not willing to discriminate, I still have to say that the vast majority of these people are bandits. This as well has a number of causes, mostly their traditions that teach the children to trust no one and be self-reliant to the extreme.
The Chechen do cause a lot of problems on the streets (they do everywhere, even in Belgium!). But being well-armed and organized, the angry Russian low-lifes fear to take on them.
Slightly more intelligent and even more frustrated individuals take a look at Hitler. They see him as the liberator that would free Russia from the Jew, but was stopped by the ziono-communist Red Army.
They start neo-nazi ideologies, which instantly become well-liked by the moronic youth. It's not us, but them who did it, we should get rid of them, and get a racially pure Russia. When the last "black-arse" is dead or gone, everything will automatically become better.
Having caucasians ruling the marketplaces and Chechens ruling the criminal world, the skinheads start to beat everyone not racially pure.

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If memory serves...

FibrillatorD

Really?

Is it because they don't want their children to be aware of the Russian nationalist thuggeries reported in the Kazakh papers?

urmomma158

Apparently they even coerce children to make their parents vote for Putin's party.Scary stuff.

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Lunatock

How tough can it be to lead that flock of sheeple anywhere? They were willing to embrace putin's totalitarian enslavement, being so docile and bovine from the godless heathen commie rule that is making a comeback in Russia.

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imishin

Sheep? Heh, you should have lived in Russia in the 90s, I'd love to see how that might have changed your point of view. Everything was bad and with Putin everything is times better, whats no to like? The fact that he isn't all hugs and handshakes with the west? Thats only an advantage, not a point against him. Russia will never be an American satellite, simple as that. US is very two-faced in its policies, supporting dictatorial regimes is fine as long as they obey now that Russia said no you guys suddenly have a problem. Russia is a global player and is reemerging as one of the most powerful nations on earth like it or not. You're the ones that are sheep, electing that monkey twice in a row out of sheer stupidity. I bet you don't even know how your own "democratic" system functions and how its actually an oligarchy.

As for the article, skinheads are problem, and we're not the only ones who have it.Their not anything you witness on a daily basis living in Russia, mostly some brainwashed kids used as cattle by local criminal elements. Forty percent of people in Moscow are immigrants, you don't see them moving out, infact more and more are coming in. Its a problem yes, but the article overexaggerates it.