Chechen responses to murders of Markelov and Baburova

Chechnya's human rights ombudsman Nurdi Nukhazhiyev, who is officially appointed by President Ramzan Kadyrov, has said in a public statement that he suspects Yuri Budanov, the Russian army colonel who was found guilty of murdering a young Chechen woman, Elza Kungayeva, but recently released on parole, of complicity in the murders of the lawyer Stanislav Markelov and the journalist Anastasia Baburova in central Moscow yesterday, UNIAN reports. Kadyrov's press spokesman Lyoma Gudayev has also issued a statement carried by RIA Novosti in which he says that Markelov's murder will lead to a worsening of tension in inter-ethnic relations in the republic.

However, Michael Schwirtz, writing in the IHT, reports that

Lela Khamzayeva, another lawyer for Kungayeva's family, was adamant... that the killing of Markelov could not be linked to his connection with Budanov, because his role during the actual proceedings against the former colonel was, as she put it, "insignificant."

"If someone is trying to link this murder with Markelov's participation in the Budanov case, well, that's just ridiculous," she said

The article points out that the list of potential suspects is very long, and may include extremist groups that seek revenge for Markelov's role in pursuing cases that were not specifically Chechnya-related, such as those that concerned the racist killings and attacks that have been carried out in Russia by neo-fascist and xenophobic thugs with increasing frequency in recent years.

Racist Russia

Paul Goble writes in his Window on Eurasia blog about the fateful consequences of officially sponsored xenophobia and racism in Russia,summarizing an article in the current issue of Novaya Gazeta by the Russian journalist Natalya Mursaliyeva:

Aleksandr Asmolov, a psychology professor at Moscow State University, told her that as a result of the attitudes the authorities have expressed and thus sanctioned, prejudice has overwhelmed reason and Russia now finds itself in a situation in which those who engage in “lynch law” are turned into heroes.

Because of that, he continued, the country is becoming “a closed society,” one in which tolerance for other groups is viewed not as a public and private virtue but rather as a limitation on the rights of the majority. And the spread of that attitude in recent years, Asmolov suggested, has put the country on “a suicidal path.”

Vyacheslav Sharov, a social psychologist and psychotherapist, supported that view. He told Mursaliyeva that until officials change their public messages, “xenophobes of all kinds will receive from [the current comments] a signal of approval,” a sense that attacking migrants is something that the authorities actually welcome.

Moreover, he continued, the behavior of such xenophobic individuals and groups is one that can be called “fascism” or even “terrorism” because its victims often are not those guilty of any crimes at all but rather innocent bystanders who are only ethnically similar to those the xenophobes blame for their problems.

But the most damning comments about this trend and Putin’s responsibility for it were offered by Lev Gudkov of the Levada Analytic Center. Although arguing that no one index measures all aspects of xenophobia, he said the rapidly growing support for the idea of “Russia for the Russians” as indicative of the problem.

“Before Putin,” the current high level of public backing for that idea simply “did not exist.” At the same time, however, Gudkov carefully noted that Putin and his team had not so much created something out of nothing but rather had made use of “mass prejudices” to generate support for themselves and their policies.

Unfortunately, in playing to the worst in the population rather than the best, he continued, Putin and his command had encouraged many xenophobic Russians to assume that their attitudes were entirely justified. And that in turn has not only intensified these feelings among those who already had them but led more to adopt them as well.

Many officials, he continued, have an interest in ensuring that migrants are kept in a position of fear. Such a situation pays “its own dividends.” And as to officials in the “law enforcement organs,” there, Gudkov said, “the level of xenophobia and hostility [to non-Russians] is stronger and greater than in any other sphere.

All this promotes the notion among Russians that their nation is “always right,” that others are trying to diminish it, and that attacks on representatives of these “others” are thus justified and even backed by the authorities themselves. “They don’t respect us,” Russians say; “we have to show them who is boss.”

Gudkov noted that research shows that “the propaganda of racism” of this kind is increasing, with ever more Russians concluding that “the superiority of the titular nationalism has risen to the status of an official rule of behavior.” This rule is as yet “unwritten,” he continued, but it has been accepted at the highest levels.”

Mursaliyeva concludes with the following observation: “The genie of xenophobia has escaped the bottle” during Putin’s administration, but it might still be controlled if the new president changed the messages he sends to his countrymen about how they should behave.

But if that does not happen, she argues, the future is truly frightening. As anyone who has examined what happens when governments play to the racism of the crowd knows, such regimes quickly find themselves prisoners of the very monster they have allowed to emerge.

Kristallnacht

In Haaretz, Amiram Barkat discusses Martin Gilbert’s new book on Kristallnacht:

The Americans refused to increase the immigration quotas, on the grounds that this would necessitate far-reaching legislative changes. The British explained that in the expanses of their Empire, they found no place suited to mass Jewish settlement.

Why were the United States and Britain not forthcoming? Many of the quotes provide an answer. A senior British administration official, one of the people who set immigration policy, said in the summer of 1939 that the Jews were unnecessarily alarmed and did not have to leave. Many of them, added the official, were not suited to immigrate, and there would be serious problems if they were brought to Britain. And then-British prime minister Neville Chamberlain wrote in his diary: “No doubt Jews aren’t a lovable people; I don’t care about them myself.” A venomous (Gilbert called it “critical”) editorial in the British newspaper The Sunday Express stated that Kristallnacht should serve as a warning to the Jews of Britain, and added that absorbing too many foreigners would exact a price from all Britons.