Carnegie Moscow Center
Russia has repeatedly resorted to imposing embargoes on EU countries to test Europeans’ unity. Yet in almost all cases, Moscow’s bullying has failed to break EU solidarity.
The problem with the nation-building effort in Russia is that a nation cannot be built from above. Unless people begin treating their state as their own, Russia will continue to be a country and a state, but no nation.
The simple axiom is: as far as you have a sufficient economic growth, you can be generous to the immigrants, but if the economy goes wrong, you should limit the inflow of foreign workers. The Russian economy is now ill, with a growth rate at slightly above one percent. And the more frustrated the Russians become, the more acute the ethnic problem becomes.
As outbursts of ethnic violence grow more frequent, the Russian government relies first and foremost on police measures, such as roundups, detentions, or tightened migration policy. The rhetoric of administrators of various levels increasingly caters to xenophobic sentiments which risks to incite such sentiments even further and lead to new ethnic clashes.
Though it is far more convenient to simply consider the last pogrom in Biryulyovo, Moscow, a sad occurrence and continue acting ad hoc, as usual, the authorities must take a strategic look at these events and act energetically, consistently, and, above all, intelligently.
Introducing visas and closing borders with Central Asian countries should not be the first steps in solving the problem of ethnic hatred in Russia. Instead, there should come a transformation of the entire Russian state, a regime change, and a resolution of the problem of the North Caucasus.
Biryulyovo was not the first anti-immigrant outburst in Russia, or even the biggest one, and it is unlikely to be the last. The core issue is systemic corruption in the police, migration service, and municipalities, which the new measures taken by the government in response to Biryulyovo are unlikely to reduce, much less to end.
The Chinese-Russian energy alliance is a product of growing bilateral relations, but it also reflects developments in the global energy market and in non-energy geopolitics.
The influx of labor migrants is an economic necessity for Russia, which does not have enough native workforce. But the newness of this migration, coupled with a social distrust of authority, is causing problems.
Last weekend, two districts of Moscow became a battlefield between the police and the people described as nationalists by mass media or as hooligans by the authorities. Moscow has been a place of pogroms many times, but this time the authorities were more efficient than in previous cases.