XENOPHOBIA IN SLEEP MODE

A couple of years ago, the papers and news agencies were full of reports about attacks on nationalist grounds and brutal murders committed by gangs of skinheads in Moscow, St. Petersburg and several other Russian cities. But now the picture has somewhat changed.

According to the report of the Moscow Bureau for Human Rights on the results of research in the first nine months of the current year, in 2014-2015, Russia has seen a decline in the level of aggressive xenophobia and radical nationalist sentiments. And one of the major reasons for this, along with the successful activities of the law-enforcement forces who "neutralized the leaders of the armed underground in the North Caucasus", is the Ukrainian crisis and tough sanctions pressure on Russia from the United States and Europe. This, according to human rights activists, contributed to the consolidation of society and the government.

The director of the Moscow Bureau for Human Rights and a member of the Presidential Council for Civil Society Institutions, Human Rights and Interethnic Relations, Aleksandr Brod, told R+ that "Rus-sian society learned a lesson and got some sort of vaccination after seeing that the Maidan leads to bloodshed, mass violations of human rights and ethnic tensions. The situation in Ukraine made all of us sober, not only the nationalists, but also the authorities at various levels."

Also, according to the report, the relative calm was furthered by the fact that "there has been a split in the ranks of Russian ethno-nationalists in connection with the events in Ukraine". Some of them consider the Maidan as a fight for a nation state and support Kiev. Others thought it was "a threat to Russia's national security". Most of the right-wing radicals are fighting on either side of the conflict in Ukraine, the report says. The radical ethno-nationalists remaining in the country have become less active: "Their marches and rallies failed to bring together even half of the former number of participants. There are fewer so-called nationalist raids in search of illegal immigrants." The harsh sentences handed down on the leaders of neo-Nazi groups such as "Russian Nationalists", "Piranha-74" and others also contributed to the decline in the activity of radicals.

And yet from January to August this year more than 20 incidents of xenophobia and extremism, in which at least 10 people were killed, were reported in Russia. In total, more than 50 people were injured during mass conflicts on ethnic grounds. Such cases were reported in Moscow and the Moscow region, Stavropol area and Yekaterinburg, Kaliningrad, Rostov and Ulyanovsk regions. At least 22 acts of vandalism were reported in 17 regions of the country in nine months - mosques were desecrated in Moscow, Vologda and Perm region, a synagogue in Arkhangelsk, and memorial graves and monuments were damaged in Derbent, Simferopol, Volgograd, Krasnodar and Chelyabinsk.

However, there are new threats to the security of the country - the recruitment of Russian citizens by the Islamic State terrorist group has increased. In 2013, it was known that 300 Russian citizens are fighting on the side of Islamic State. Now, according to various estimates, their number is from 2,000 to 5,000 people. It is mainly young people that go to fight for the ideals of Islamic State. The most resonant cases were the recruitment of student Barbara Karaulova, who was detained on the Turkish border, and the death of the Russian actor Vadim Dorofeyev for the ideals of Islamic State. In June, YouTube posted a report about militants belonging to the structural units of the Caucasus Emirate terrorist organization swearing allegiance to the leader of Islamic State, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

A "round table" held in Moscow was devoted to the forecasting of the future dynamics of manifestations of aggressive xenophobia and radical nationalism and the search for ways to overcome modern risks of international relations.

We must say that the experts, who included representatives of government, science, religion and social organizations, were unanimous in defining threats to the domestic stability of the Russian state. According to them, ethnic conflicts have given way to modern challenges such as international tensions and the rise in prices. This trend, as noted by the participants in the "round table", is confirmed by opinion polls.

But we must not forget, said Aleksandr Brod, quoting the well-known sociologist Vladimir Mu-komel, that "xenophobia is dormant. As protest moods, social tensions and unresolved problems in the field of migration and national policies grow, xenophobia can be activated as radical nationalists like to capture the protest mood and transfer it to the ethnic plane."

But there are still too many unresolved issues. For example, there are cases where officials are striving to reduce clashes on interethnic grounds to domestic reasons, without trying to understand their nature. Often, in order not to spoil the rosy picture of well-being in their territory, regional functionaries try to hide various outbreaks of ethnic strife and violence.

There is more disturbing information - the film "Stop the Islamization of Kuzbass" was distributed in the Kuzbass region ahead of the elections of the governor. Opponents of Aman Tuleyev tried to create an explosive situation in the region for the sake of political dividends. There are also very interesting cases, for example, in Moscow - not so long ago, the Moscow Department for Religious Affairs was headed by an official who specialized in trade issues. A few years ago, experts developed standards for training civil servants dealing with national issues, but they are still not being used.

Moscow courts have asked to change the federal law on migration in order to reduce the burden for migrant offenders. Human rights activists are still unsuccessfully challenging the order of the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation on admission to educational institutions, according to which last year Russian schools stopped accepting migrant children and children from other regions. This situation is contrary to the Constitution, the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Federal Education Act.

A very old problem that cannot be resolved is the expert evaluation of texts containing calls for extremism. It would seem that a good lesson was the thoughtless actions of seven years ago that led to an interstate scandal, when the famous "Testament" of Ayatollah Khomeyni was recognized as extremist literature. A philologist and a psychologist without scientific degrees, aged 21 and 24 respectively, drew the conclusion that the text contained incitement to violence and was emotionally dangerous. This document is considered to be one of the most memorable and respected ones in Iran. By the way, the writings of Khomeyni are not banned in any country of the world.

But since then, not a single year has passed without another scandal. In 2013, the District Court of Novorossiysk recognized the "Semantic Translation of the Holy Quran into Russian" by Azerbaijani theologian Elmir Quliyev as extremist. This year, the country's public is still unable to secure the repeal of the decision of the Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk city court, which recognized the book "Prayer (du'a) to God: its purpose and place in Islam", which represents a brief explanation of the ayats of the Quran given in Arabic and Russian, as extremist in August.

Yet the mufti of Moscow and the Central Region and a member of the Public Chamber of the Russian Federation, Albir Krganov, "thanks God" for inter-ethnic relations in Russia.

According to Krganov, the Tatar community of Riga, which has been living there since 1838, as usual, gathered in a mosque after Eid al-Fitr this year. However, 15 people did not fit there and prayed outside. The police turned up immediately and fined them 3,000 euros. In Moscow, there are 100,000 Muslims and such events are supported by the city government, law enforcement agencies and there are no such incidents, "thank God", he said.

"By the way, it is very important that the president attended the opening of the Moscow Cathedral Mosque. Never before in the history of Russia, have the leaders of the country - either under tsarist or Soviet rule - taken part in the opening of mosques. The head of state showed his attitude to the citizens of the country, the Muslims, who now number twenty million," the mufti said.

During the discussions at the "round table", many proposals were made for confronting radical nationalism and any form of extremism - from enhancing the role of public, non-government, youth and religious organizations and national-cultural autonomies to the introduction in schools of the subject "terralogy", which reveals the essence of terrorism. They could not do without predictions either. A member of the Presidential Council for Interethnic Relations, Galina Bogolyubova, said that "Russian marches are deliberately inflamed actions, especially on People's Unity Day (4 November - Editor). I think that there will be no nationalist marches on People's Unity Day this year."

Well. The holiday is coming up soon. So let's check it out.