Where Russians Are Hurting, Racism Takes Root
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Subject: Where Russians Are Hurting, Racism Takes Root
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Where Russians Are Hurting, Racism Takes Root
The New York Times
Where Russians Are Hurting, Racism Takes Root
By CELESTINE BOHLEN
Here, along Russia's southern border, where refugees from a crumbling
empire have settled in the ruins of the local economy, it does not
take much to disturb the festering sores of Russian nationalism.
All it takes is an enemy.
For Nikolai Kondratenko, a Communist-Nationalist elected Governor of
the Krasnodar region in 1996, that enemy is Zionism - or rather what
he calls "zionacrats," using a new code word for Jews in government,
finance and the news media. According to Mr. Kondratenko and
like-minded Russians, these Jews are part of a sinister worldwide
conspiracy to bring Russia to its knees.
For local Cossacks, descendants of the swashbuckling czarist horsemen
who have been assigned by Mr. Kondratenko to help police the region,
the enemy can be Armenians, Turks, Chechens - any nonethnic Russians
who have had the temerity to move here, laying themselves open to
charges they are responsible for crimes ranging from rape to epidemics
of head lice.
The Cossacks patrol regularly, checking documents to see who has
complied with the region's arcane residency requirements, specially
written to ward off unwanted strangers.
International human rights groups have put Krasnodar and neighboring
Stavropol on a watch list, a move that local atamans, or Cossack
chieftains, shrug off with a hearty laugh.
"I have had a hundred human rights complaints registered against me
personally," said Ivan Bezugly, a radical ataman whose Tamansky
Division is spread over eight districts, his booming voice ricocheting
off the walls of an office covered in Cossack flags. "What do you want
me to tell you - that I personally burned down the homes of Turks
because of their outrageous behavior? Even if I didn't, I have 44,000
Cossacks at my command who would."
Mr. Kondratenko, for his part, has chosen a more distant scapegoat,
albeit one historically favored by Russian nationalists. Like his
fellow anti-Semites in Moscow, whose recent diatribes have set off a
national scandal, Mr. Kondratenko attacks "yids" - the word is a
Russian slur for Jew - with total impunity, despite laws that forbid
the fomenting of racist hatred.
The local Jewish population, now only 1,500 after a decade of steady
emigration to Israel, fears that unless somone steps in to halt the
Governor's regular rantings about dark Zionist plots, the words will
eventually spread to action.
"Now, we don't feel anything -- not at work, in the schools or on the
streets," said Aleksandr Kaplan, deputy head of Shalom, a cultural
organization. "But these things happen in stages. German nationalism
started 15 years before Hitler came to power."
At the heart of Mr. Kondratenko's conspiracy theory is the prominent
positions held by a number of Russian Jews, some of whom were
architects of Russia's recent economic reforms, others the so-called
oligarchs who have amassed fortunes and political influence since
1991.
Two weeks ago, at a local ceremony honoring the 80th anniversary of
the now-defunct Communist Youth league, Mr. Kondratenko let loose
again. "Why haven't we revolted against that scum, a bunch of people
for whom Russia, Russians, patriotism, the land of Russia is something
alien?" he said. "Their policy is the losing one, and those who will
continue torturing Russian will burn more than just their tongues."
Mr. Kondratenko's stated convictions are shared by members of his
team, which was elected by more than 80 percent of the vote in a
region of five million people. If nothing else, their shared
conspiracy theory - rooted in czarist-era paranoia about imagined
Judeo-Masonic cults, and Communist-era labeling of Jews as a distinct
nationality - serves as a simple-minded explanation of why one of the
richest agricultural regions in Russia has suffered so badly during
Russia's seven-year experiment with economic reform.
"What is the result of Zionism?" asked Nikolai I.Kharchenko, Deputy
Governor. "The result is the collapse of Russia. Native Russians never
would have allowed all these reforms to happen. Of course, it is all
coordinated."
The litany of economic failure here, particularly after this year's
drought-stricken grain harvest, is echoed across much of Russia.
Industry is in a slump and agricultural production has dropped so low
that Krasnodar, fearing more hardship this winter, has taken the
legally dubious step of blocking farmers who have not paid back
credits to the local government from "exporting" their grain beyond
the region's borders.
The region also feels the strain of the migrations that began in the
late 1980's as the Soviet Union was collapsing. By official reckoning,
about half a million new residents, most of them ethnic Russians, have
moved here, drawn by Krasnodar's moderate climate and its rich black
earth.
To stem the influx, the region has instituted stringent residency
requirements, skirting a recent ruling by the Russian Constitutional
Court that bars residency permits within the Russian federation.
Various nationalities here have fallen under varying sets of rules:
ethnic Russians, for instance, can be registered provided they find a
place to live - a requirement that tens of thousands of ethnic Russian
refugees from the war in Chechnya say they do not have the cash to
meet.
Of all the groups that have drifted into Krasnodar in the last decade,
the Meskhetian Turks are the most unfortunate. Deported en masse from
their homes in Soviet Georgia by Stalin during World War II, they were
deposited in Central Asia where, in 1989, they were forced to flee
from a pogrom by Uzbek nationalists. Russia has pressed Georgia to
take them back, but it has refused.
As one of the 13,000 Meskhetian Turks in Krasnodar, Tamal Miradov is a
regular target for local police and Cossack vigilantes. Without
Russian citizenship, or permanent residence, he cannot find work and
cannot even legally sell the house he bought when he moved here nine
years ago. To keep his documents in order, Mr. Miradov must either
register as a "guest" every 45 days at a cost of 180 rubles (about
$12), or pay a fine of 400 rubles each time he is caught by police or
Cossack patrols.
"They don't let us go, they don't let us stay," said Mr. Miradov, who
recently made a quick dash up the local highway to visit his parents
in a neighboring village, his eyes peeled for Cossack patrols. "If I
see the police, or the Cossacks, I have to hide."
But some local officials are clearly fed up with the kind of "help"
they get from the Cossacks, who strut the street in camouflage
uniforms adorned by the odd 19th-century accessory.
"There are 78 nationalities living in our district," said a police
official in the Krymsky district, where Mr. Bezugly has his
headquarters. "And crimes are committed by everyone - Armenians,
Turks, Greeks and Cossacks. We work with the Cossacks, but now they
walk around, with handcuffs and nightsticks, and extort money,
claiming to be a security service."
In Anapa, a down-at-heel resort town on the Black Sea, local Cossacks
like to boast about how they administer their own justice against an
Armenian population, whom they blame for 70 percent of local crimes,
including six rapes that they say were never prosecuted because of
corruption.
Nikolai Nesterenko, who gave up his job as an archeologist to become a
deputy ataman in Anapa, is happy to show off the plaited leather whips
that he says his volunteers have used against offending Armenians.
"These are the traditional methods of our grandfathers," he said
proudly.
But a local police official, who declined to give his name, refuted
the Cossacks' claims that Armenians commit most of the crime. "You
think I don't know who is spreading these rumors," he said. "For the
most part, these things are not confirmed."
--
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