Central Asia and Russia(n): Is It Farewell?

Excerpt from “Tashkent: The End of An Era” (Mark Weil, 1996). A full, subtitled copy of the film can been seen here.

Recent trends in world politics have led several analysts to emphasize the idea of the retreat or recession of Russian power abroad. Yet few have commented on a key aspect of this retreat, namely the growing movement across Central Asia to unseat the Russian language from its position, often enshrined in law, as an official language on a par with the native tongue. Trends across the region demonstrate state action to diminish the role of the Russian language, growing political discussion of the issue, or socio-economic trends working to reduce the hegemony of the Russian language. These trends also display both Russia’s mounting anxiety about such trends and its increasingly visible inability to reverse or stop them.

BACKGROUND

Russia’s recent reversals in Syria, Venezuela, the Caucasus and potentially Iran have triggered a flood of articles proclaiming the retreat of Russian power. However, none of these writings noticed the parallel ongoing dethronement of the Russian language from its previous eminence in Central Asia. Nevertheless, this epochal development, like Russia’s aforementioned geostrategic defeats, possesses profound political as well as cultural significance. Given the importance of linguistic policies in the Tsarist, Soviet, and now post-Soviet regimes, the retreat of the Russian language from a position of linguistic-political primacy in Central Asia signifies major political and cultural transformations.

Specifically, Kazakhstan’s new constitution subtly but overtly downgrades the status of Russian as an official language. Article 9 of the new constitution establishes Kazakh as the dominant language of the country, relegating Russian to the status of an official language used by the government “alongside” Kazakh. This new constitution obtained massive public support although much of it was probably engineered from above, forcing Putin to congratulate President Tokayev on its ratification. However, those congratulatory remarks, as Tokayev and his team well know, probably came through clenched teeth and were preceded by much Russian public criticism of Kazakhstan’s language policies.

An analysis of Russian press perspectives on the return of Kazakhstan’s Latin alphabet, originally introduced in the 1920’s, from the Cyrillicization of the alphabet during the height of Stalinism, displays a politicized perspective where this process is seen as a repudiation of a Russian orientation in favor of a Turkic-Western one. Insofar as Turkey and Western powers like the EU and the U.S. have stepped up their presence and interest in Kazakhstan and Central Asia as a whole, this politicized perspective sees language and alphabet policies as manifestations of the growing regional presence of those parties at Moscow’s expense. Thus, Russian press coverage warns Central Asian audiences against alleged foreign plots of an imperialist nature.

Russian media also minimize or deny the agency of Kazakhstan and other Central Asian states in formulating and then executing their own alphabet and language policies while implicitly and often overtly extolling the superior, imperial role of Russia’s language and culture as a vehicle for connecting Central Asia with modern civilization and culture. In other words, much of this literature reflects an imperial echo with deep roots in late Tsarist and then Soviet imperial policies that Russian elites seek to preserve.

IMPLICATIONS

Kazakhstan’s assertion of its linguistic sovereignty challenges the Russian dream of maintaining its cultural-political hegemony over Central Asia because it is losing the means to enforce that claim on Kazakhstan and because Astana’s example is being replicated across Central Asia, e.g. in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan. In Uzbekistan, as a 2024 paper makes clear, Russian must coexist if not compete with Uzbek and Tajik while English, a global lingua franca, is rapidly gaining on it as well. In Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan’s example has simultaneously stimulated debates on emulating its language policy.

Predictably the Russian government, sensing another threat to its receding hegemonic pretensions, has reacted strongly. On March 19, its embassy in Bishkek forcefully demanded that Kyrgyzstan’s government suppress “provocative statements of certain public figures” about the place of Russian in Kyrgyz society. The statement also complains about “language patrols” where vigilantes purportedly try to intimidate people to stop speaking Russian and speak only Kyrgyz. The embassy deemed such calls incitement to ethnic hatred and a threat to Russo-Kyrgyz strategic partnership and, in a conscious echo of Soviet propaganda, “deep alliance between our fraternal peoples and countries – Russia and Kyrgyzstan.”

This atavistic employment of Soviet tropes is no accident. Whereas Lenin’s language policies, likely inspired by his father’s work in teaching Orthodoxy to Muslims, wagered that teaching socialism would lead Soviet Muslims to socialism; Stalin decisively imposed Russification by giving the Russian language primacy and Cyrillicizing Central Asian alphabets. Putin’s consistent attacks on Lenin’s nationality policies, many of which stemmed from an appreciation of socio-political realities during the early Soviet period, reflect his clear preference for the centralizing, Stalinist, and more openly imperialist policies of Stalin and his successors.

Nevertheless, a generation after independence and having devoted much effort to fostering large-scale national identification among their populations, Central Asian leaders are openly moving to assert not just their foreign policy sovereignty, but also their linguistic nationalism. The use of Russian across Central Asia will likely remain pervasive because of the benefits it offers in economic relations with Russian and possibly Central Asian entities. However, Russian will not be the only regional lingua franca or the language of Russian imperial hegemony either in the Caucasus or in Central Asia. Since we can readily imagine a similar outcome in Ukraine due to Russia’s war against the country, which underlies many of the causes for the retreat of Russian hegemony, the trends discernible in Central Asia go far beyond its borders.

CONCLUSIONS

Even as the Russian government is currently discussing legislation allowing it to intervene anywhere abroad on behalf of its citizens, Central Asian developments presage the ongoing erosion of Russian cultural and thus political power. The whole idea of the “Russkii Mir” (Russian World) based on speakers of the Russian language that furnishes a pretext for interventions abroad is rapidly falling to pieces. From Tsarist and Soviet times, Russian authorities consistently regarded Russian as the sole “civilized” and therefore hegemonic language of the empire and often sought to enforce that hegemony by coercion. Those days are visibly ending as Central Asian governments are, with increasing confidence, asserting their own native tongues while also opening up to greater economic-cultural interaction with other countries. While Russian will not disappear in Central Asia; it is being decentered and increasingly deprived of its superior legal-political standing.

This process is clearly linked to the global recession of Russian power even as Russia fights to retain its erstwhile imperial and global great power status. For its rulers, expression of that status through all the forms of cultural power, e.g. alphabets and languages, was a critical component of empire. Yet what we see today, despite Moscow’s threats or even forceful efforts to arrest or reverse that decline, is an imperial sunset that evidently cannot be stopped either in culture or in hard power.

AUTHOR’S BIO

Stephen Blank is a Senior Fellow with the Foreign Policy Research Institute, www.fpri.org.

Source: Stephen Blank, “The Retreat of the Russian Language from Central Asia,” Central Asia-Caucasus Analyst, 23 April 2026

When anthropology researcher Ashley McDermott was doing fieldwork in Kyrgyzstan a few years ago, she says many people voiced the same concern: children were losing touch with their indigenous language. The Central Asian country of 7 million people was under Russian control for a century until 1991, but Kyrgyz (pronounced kur-giz) survived and remains widely spoken among adults.

McDermott, a doctoral student at the University of Michigan, says she also heard that some kids in rural villages where Kyrgyz dominated had spontaneously learned to speak Russian. The adults largely blamed a singular force: YouTube.

McDermott and a team of five researchers across four universities in the US and Kyrgyzstan have released new research they believe proves the fears about YouTube’s influence are valid. The group simulated user behavior on YouTube and collected nearly 11,000 unique search results and video recommendations.

What they found is that Kyrgyz-language searches for popular kid interests such as cartoons, fairy tales, and mermaids often did not yield content in Kyrgyz. Even after watching ten children’s videos featuring Kyrgyz speech to demonstrate a strong desire for it, the simulated users received fewer Kyrgyz-language recommendations for what to watch next than, surprisingly, bots showing no language preference at all. The findings show YouTube prioritizes Russian-language content over Kyrgyz-language videos, especially when searching or browsing children’s topics, according to the researchers.

“Kyrgyz children are algorithmically constructed as audiences for Russian content,” Nel Escher, a coauthor who is a postdoctoral scholar at UC Berkeley, said during a presentation at the school last week. “There is no good way to be a Kyrgyz-speaking kid on YouTube.”

McDermott recalls one frustrated Kyrgyzstani mother in 2023 explaining that she paid the internet bill a day late each month to regularly have one day without internet and, thus, YouTube at home.

YouTube, which has “committed to amplifying indigenous voices,” did not respond to WIRED’s requests for comment. The researchers are attempting to meet with YouTube’s parental controls team to discuss the potential for language filters, according to Escher.

The researchers say their work is the latest to show how online platforms can reinforce colonial culture and influence offline behavior. Under Soviet control, people in Kyrgyzstan had to learn Russian to succeed. Today, many adults are fluent in both Russian and Kyrgyz, with Russian remaining important for commerce. Kids are required to learn at least some Kyrgyz in school. But many spend several hours a day online, and watching YouTube is the leading activity, McDermott says. Quoting from Russian language videos is common, whether creators’ refrains like “Let’s do a challenge,” adaptations of American words such as “cringe,” or parroting accents and syntax.

In one of the researchers’ experiments, they searched for several subjects which are spelled the same in Russian and Kyrgyz, including Harry Potter and Minecraft. The results were predominantly Russian. Overall, just 2.7 percent of the videos the research team analyzed appeared to even include ethnically Kyrgyz people.

YouTube “socializes youth to view Russian as the default language of entertainment and technology and to view Kyrgyz as uninteresting,” the researchers wrote in a self-published paper accepted to a social computing conference scheduled for October.

The researchers say there is ample Kyrgyz-language children’s content for YouTube to promote. In 2024, the 35th-most viewed channel on YouTube across the world was D Billions, a Kyrgyzstan-based children-focused content studio with a dedicated Kyrgyz-language channel that has nearly 1 million subscribers.

Azamat Duishenov, head of the program management office for D Billions, tells WIRED that their team believes Kyrgyz content helps promote the language. Duishenov suspects YouTube may find it worthwhile to err toward recommending content in Russian because Russian speakers outnumber Kyrgyz ones.

The researchers suggest potential remedies to parents such as creating playlists of Kyrgyz-language content or sharing devices with their children. When the researchers simulated adult users watching non-kid’s content in Kyrgyz, they received predominantly Kyrgyz-language recommendations. Then, when kids later used the same device, they experienced a moderate uptick in exposure to Kyrgyz-language videos, despite younger users gravitating toward Russian content during their sessions.

Source: Paresh Dave, “This Indigenous Language Survived Russian Occupation. Can It Survive YouTube?” Wired, 1 May 2026

The Hidden Face of the Confessional Empire: Islamophobia in Russia | A book talk by Paolo Sartori

Thursday, May 7, 2026 | 12:00 PM — 1:15 PM CT

Online

Please join the East Asia Research Forum as they host a Zoom talk with Paolo Sartori.

Description:

In May 1854, the Russian imperial authorities arrested Ishan Muhammad Sharif Mansurov on suspicion of conspiratorial activities. The investigation, which lasted about nine years, sparked a media frenzy and rumors of possible mass unrest in the Kazakh steppe on religious grounds, and drew public attention, including from ruling circles. Why was the figure of the Sufi Mansurov of such interest to the colonial administration, and what danger did he pose? What knowledge did government officials possess regarding Sufism in the Kazakh steppe at that time? By analysing the documentary traces left by the Mansurov case, I offer a set of reflections on the relationship between the Russian confessional state and Islamophobia.

Speaker Bio:

Paolo Sartori (PhD 2006) is Distinguished Fellow of the Austrian Academy of Sciences where he presides over the Committee for the Study of Islam in Central Eurasia. He is the author of A Soviet Sultanate: Islam in Socialist Uzbekistan (1943-1991) and, more recently he has guest-edited a theme issue on Russian Colonialism for the Slavic Review.

Please register for this online event.

Source: PlanIt Purple Events Calendar (Northwestern University)

My guest today was born in 1991, the same year as the independent states of Central Asia. A few years ago, he set out to explore what’s happened in the former Soviet republics since the collapse of the USSR, and whether they have flourished over the last 35 years without the “big brother” Russia.

His book, Farewell to Russia: A journey through the former USSR, has just been published in the UK and the US. His name is Joe Luc Barnes, and you might also recognise his voice from our audio documentaries. In this episode, we talk about his book, travelling and living in Central Asia, and the (often problematic) craft of travel writing.

Source: Agnieszka Pikulicka, “Episode 33: Lessons on independence from the former Soviet republics,” Turan Tales, 18 March 2026

Mark Weil, who has died aged 55 after being stabbed on his way home from a rehearsal, was the founder and director of the first independent theatre in the Soviet Union – the Ilkhom, in the Uzbek capital, Tashkent. To this day, the Ilkhom remains the only venue for original, uncensored drama in a country where freedom of expression is severely limited. An extraordinary man, he created an artistic space in which people could ask questions and explore their experience.

Born in Tashkent, Mark was not an Uzbek but a Russian Jew, part of the world of central Asian Russians that is now disappearing. Russian-speaking, but with much of the style and gentleness of Asia, these people were insiders, but often with the outsider’s powers of perception. Russian traders had first come south to central Asia during the Arab empires (a cross-cultural theme that Mark loved) but the Russian presence really took off in the Soviet era. An intellectual, nonconformist scene began to grow. Solzhenitsyn’s time in Tashkent (in 1953) became Cancer Ward. Mikhail Bulgakov’s widow managed to hide the manuscript of The Master and Margarita until it was safe to publish.

This eclectic, offbeat world was Mark’s heritage. He studied drama in Moscow and St Petersburg in the early 1970s, but returned to take his MA in history and artistic theory in Tashkent in 1974. In 1976, he opened the Russian-speaking Ilkhom – the word means “inspiration” in Uzbek – with a piece of improvisation that came straight from central Asian street culture, called Makharaboz-76 (Clown 76). Throughout the Brezhnev era, he staged the debuts of young playwrights at the Ilkhom, the only theatre in the Soviet Union that had no state funding.

After the collapse of the USSR and birth of the new country of Uzbekistan, Mark made contacts with foreign theatre groups, thrilled to meet experimental, thoughtful people from all over the world. The Ilkhom company took its shows to France, Germany and Italy. In 1988, he visited Seattle and held workshops at US universities. But along with new freedoms came disappointments. President Islam Karimov’s rule became ever more authoritarian.

Most Russian-speaking intellectuals queued for Russian passports and got out. Mark did not. “This is my city, I was born here, and I will never leave,” he often said. But he never courted collision with the authorities. He simply got on with his work.

In the 1990s, Mark set about a huge project close to his heart, a documentary history of Tashkent. He hunted down and restored lost archive of the city, and added his own footage. Laughing wryly, he told me how he went out to film part of the medieval quarter that was being ripped down and built over with flats. “I was just standing quietly, filming, when the foreman saw me. With no warning, the shovel swivelled round and tipped its load over my camera and tripod, and broke it.”

With the government denouncing “foreign” entertainment, the Ilkhom produced Brecht (a constant in the repertoire) and Gozzi (1992). It put on a musical version of John Steinbeck’s Tortilla Flat (1996). It staged Edward Albee’s Zoo Stories (2005). It examined the forbidden theme of homosexuality through the short stories of the Uzbek writer Abdullah Kadiri. Mark relied heavily on foreign partnerships, including the British Council, to fund these ventures, but money was extremely tight. The actors worked for almost nothing.

Disaster struck Uzbekistan in May 2005, when thousands gathered to call for jobs and a better life in the ancient eastern city of Andijan. The army moved in and shot dead about 500 people, almost all of them unarmed. The government denied this account – it said it had scotched an Islamic uprising – but refused an international inquiry. It then closed down many foreign agencies, while others left in protest. For the Ilkhom, its vital sources of funding were reduced still further.

Mark was attacked on his way home from the dress rehearsal of Aeschylus’s tragedy, the Oresteia. It was to have been a triumphal start of a new season, in the bleakest times, and he was thrilled by the production and its exploration of revenge and the rule of law. He is survived by his wife Tatyana and daughters, Julia and Aleksandra. His death has not been reported in Uzbekistan.

· Mark Yakovlevich Weil, theatre director, born January 25 1952; died September 7 2007

Source: Monica Whitlock, “Mark Weil,” Guardian, 10 October 2007

Something I Learned Today: The Pamirs Are Melting

a Map of the Kyzylsu catchment. The names of the main glaciers are indicated in black. The elevation information is taken from the AW3D Digital Elevation Model (DEM), while the hillshade was derived from high-resolution Pleiades DEMs acquired in 2022 and 2023. Glacier outlines and debris extents are from the RGI 6.0 inventory. Lakes were manually delineated from a Pléiades 2022 ortho-image. The inset maps show the location of the study site in Central Asia with a base map from Esri, along with glaciers shown as blue areas and sub-regions outlines from the RGI 6.0 inventory. b Picture taken by Jason Klimatsas in September 2023 of the on-glacier automatic weather station, located on the debris-covered portion of Kyzylsu Glacier. Maidakul Lake can be seen in the background,as indicated by an arrow. c Pluviometer station photographed by a time-lapse camera in March 2022, with the snow-covered terminus of Kyzylsu Glacier visible in the background.

Source: Communications Earth & Environment

This week’s episode of the CAPS Unlock podcast opens with a discussion about a show of diplomatic unity in Central Asia. Following Israel’s strike on Qatar, all five governments of the region quickly issued statements of condemnation. Some went as far as calling the strike an act of aggression. We examine why these unusually swift and aligned reactions matter, how they highlight the region’s growing ties with Gulf states, and what they reveal about Central Asia’s selective application of principles such as territorial integrity.

Our interview segment features Achille Jouberton, visiting scientist at the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research, and lead author of a major new study on the glaciers of Tajikistan’s Pamirs. Long thought relatively stable compared to the shrinking ice fields of the Himalayas and Tien Shan, the Pamirs are now losing mass at troubling rates. Jouberton explains how declining snowfall since 2018, measured through field stations, pressure sensors, and climate reanalysis, is reshaping water availability in the region. He discusses the role of large-scale climate systems, the combination of less snow and hotter summers, and the downstream implications for agriculture and hydropower.

We close by looking at President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev’s State of the Nation address in Kazakhstan. Among an eclectic mix of themes, including long passages on artificial intelligence, Tokayev floated the possibility of transforming Kazakhstan’s bicameral parliament into a single chamber. Though short on detail, the proposal hints at possible institutional re-engineering ahead of 2029, when Tokayev’s presidential mandate ends. We assess what this might mean for Kazakhstan’s political system and why even seemingly technical reforms can reshape the balance of power.

Links:

Snowfall decrease in recent years undermines glacier health and meltwater resources in the Northwestern Pamirs: https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-025-02611-8

Tokayev’s state of the union speech: https://www.akorda.kz/ru/poslanie-glavy-gosudarstva-kasym-zhomarta-tokaeva-narodu-kazahstana-kazahstan-v-epohu-iskusstvennogo-intellekta-aktualnye-zadachi-i-ih-resheniya-cherez-cifrovuyu-transformaciyu-885145

Source: Peter Leonard, “The Pamirs melt, Tokayev retools, Central Asia rallies,” Havli, 16 September 2025

For years, the Pamir-Karakoram anomaly stood as a rare outlier in global climate trends: a region where glaciers remained relatively stable despite accelerating global warming. Now, new research from the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA) confirms that even these “last strongholds” have begun to lose mass at an alarming rate.

Snow Deficit and Rising Heat

Data collected from a climate monitoring station on the Kyzylsu glacier in the northwestern Pamirs, active from 1999 to 2023, reveals a sharp shift. According to an international research team led by Francesca Pelliccotti, the tipping point came in 2018, when a significant decline in snow cover and precipitation irreversibly altered the glaciers’ mass balance.

Once past this “point of no return,” glaciers began rapidly depleting their own reserves to compensate for the lack of new snowfall, a process accelerating their melt.

Since 2018, the region has experienced a persistent snow deficit. Snow depth has fallen by approximately 40 cm, and annual precipitation has declined by 328 mm, about one-third of the historical average. Seasonal snow melts earlier, is less stable in spring, and is no longer sufficient to replenish glacier mass.

July 2022 was the hottest month on record, and during this period, the Kyzylsu glacier recorded unprecedented mass loss, melting at a rate eight times faster than the 1999-2018 average. Scientists identify increasingly hot summers and a lack of precipitation as the primary causes.

Even the intensified ice melt has not made up for reduced snowfall: water inflow into rivers dropped by roughly 189 mm in water equivalent. The contribution of glacial runoff to total river flow rose from 19% to 31%, but this increase was still insufficient to offset the overall decline in water volume.

The situation is most severe at altitudes above 4,000 meters, where solid precipitation has declined sharply. Snow from avalanches, which previously helped sustain the glaciers, has dropped nearly threefold from 0.21 to 0.08 m per year.

Implications for Central Asia

Experts warn that this is not a localized issue. The Pamir and Karakoram glaciers feed the Amu Darya and Syr Darya rivers, lifelines for millions across Central Asia. Diminishing glacial mass threatens freshwater availability, agriculture, hydropower generation, and overall socio-economic stability.

“Due to the lack of accurate forecasts, we cannot yet say definitively whether the Pamir glaciers have passed the point of no return. However, since 2018, the processes have changed dramatically, and the reduction in precipitation has had a critical impact on their stability,” said ISTA researcher Achille Joubert.

Data Gaps and New Monitoring Efforts

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, glacier monitoring in the region was largely suspended for nearly two decades. Systematic observations resumed only in 2021, when international researchers reinstalled instruments on the Kyzylsu glacier, one of the Vakhsh River’s primary sources.

These new measurements confirmed a drastic drop in precipitation and snow thickness starting in 2018, with consistently unfavorable conditions persisting since.

Compared to the late 1990s, spring and summer snow now melts much faster, and the “cold reserves” that once preserved glacier stability are disappearing rapidly.

The study’s findings were published in Communications Earth & Environment, reinforcing that even the most resilient glaciers in Central Asia are succumbing to climate change.

“The disappearance of glaciers means not only a shortage of water, but also a threat to climate stability,” the researchers warn.

The loss of these natural freshwater reserves could trigger cascading effects from reduced electricity generation to ecosystem degradation.

The end of the Pamir-Karakoram anomaly is not just a regional alarm bell. It signals the urgency of coordinated international climate action. Without it, scientists say, the process may already be beyond reversal.

For Central Asia, this carries profound geopolitical and economic implications. Water stress is already a driver of tension between upstream and downstream states, and shrinking glaciers will exacerbate disputes over allocation and dam construction. Governments are under pressure to accelerate adaptation strategies – modernizing irrigation, investing in alternative energy, and expanding regional cooperation on water-sharing agreements.

Researchers also stress the importance of filling data gaps with sustained monitoring. Long-term, high-resolution observations are critical for forecasting river flow and planning infrastructure. International support, they argue, could help countries like Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan upgrade their hydrological networks, while linking local data into global climate models.

Ultimately, the fate of the Pamir and Karakoram glaciers will not be decided in the mountains alone. Their survival, or disappearance, depends on global emissions trajectories and the political will to implement serious mitigation measures. What happens here, at the heart of Asia’s water towers, will ripple far downstream into the lives of millions.

Source: Vagit Ismailov, “Pamir Loses Its ‘Ice Shield’: Scientists Confirm End of Glacier Stability Anomaly,” Times of Central Asia, 4 September 2025

Textbook Wars: Moscow’s Former Colonies Strike Back

Researchers at INION RAN analyzed depictions of Russia in the history textbooks of CIS and Middle Eastern countries. They found that these textbooks in post-Soviet countries mostly portray Russia as a colonial power.

The Institute of Scientific Information for Social Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences (INION RAN) has drafted a study edited by Vladimir Avatkov, head of the Institute’s Middle and Post-Soviet East Department, on how Russia is depicted in history textbooks in the countries of the Middle and post-Soviet East, as well as in China.

Most of these textbooks portray Russia as a colonial state which has oppressed the peoples in the annexed territories and damaged their culture, Razil Guzayerov, one of the co-authors of the study and a junior researcher in INION’s Middle and Post-Soviet East Department, told RBC. He noted, however, that often much less attention is paid to Russia’s contribution to the growth of these countries.

According to the authors of the study, “the promotion of false and distorted events in history textbooks shapes a negative attitude towards Russia, and in the future may become the basis for the growth of xenophobia and Russophobia.”

What RAN researchers read about Russia in CIS textbooks

“Colonial politics” in Kazakhstan

According to INION’s analysis, the authors of Kazakh textbooks for eighth graders view the Russian Empire as a country which sought to use Kazakhstan as a platform for its military and economic interests. They note that the Russian Empire’s policy of “military and colonial expansion” was the key element of its relations with the hinterlands. It aimed at establishing control over the new territories, exploiting their resources, and managing their populations.

In a textbook for colleges and universities, the authors criticize the policies of the Soviet regime. They pay special attention to the famine of 1921 in Kazakhstan, brought on by crop failure and drought. The authors note that the prodrazverstka, which by late 1920 had extended to all agricultural products, was regarded by the local population as robbery, leading to growing discontent. The famine, the textbook authors point out, seriously impacted the population of Kazakhstan, triggering mass hunger riots and deaths. According to their data, the population of the region decreased by more than two million people compared to 1914.

In a history textbook for tenth graders, the Russian Empire’s policy towards Kazakhstan is described by the author [sic] with terms like “territorial expansion,” “protectorate,” and “colonial politics.” The textbook characterizes the policy of the Russian Empire in Kazakhstan as “aggressive and ineffective,” citing as an example Prime Minister Pyotr Stolypin’s resettlement policy, which, according to the authors [sic], led to social conflicts and popular uprisings.

“Invasion” of Azerbaijan with the aid of ”traitorous forces”

The establishment of Soviet power in Azerbaijan is referenced in that country’s textbooks as a “military invasion,” which was carried out with the support of “traitorous forces.” Uprisings against the Soviet regime and its “exploitative policy” are described in detail. The authors emphasize that the Azerbaijan SSR was established not by the Azerbaijani people but by Soviet Russia, and that the entire Soviet system was “aimed at satisfying Russia’s interests and ensuring its hegemony.”

“History textbooks for general education institutions in Azerbaijan imagine Russia as a colonial empire. The entire history of Russia is covered as the seizure and occupation of lands with subsequent exploitation of the local population. It is important to note that such anti-colonial discourse is especially exacerbated in new textbooks,” the authors of the collection [sic] write. “The current period of relations between Russia and Azerbaijan is presented in more neutral tones, although Moscow is occasionally accused of supporting Armenia and creating the Karabakh issue.”

Russia is identified in textbooks as the cause of the Karabakh conflict and other negative events in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Thus, the ninth-grade textbook The Hstory of Victory describes the coming to power of the “pro-Armenian” General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev, under whom “the separatists ratcheted up their activities.” The authors of the textbook explain the success of “Armenian separatists” in terms of Moscow’s active support.

The INION researchers also note that the authors of some textbooks seek to introduce a divide between the central and local authorities in the Soviet Union. Thus, in these textbooks, life in the Azerbaijan SSR runs its normal course: while the local government carries out industrialization and raises the standard of living, the central government creates misfortunes for the republic.

The authors of the study detect a tendency towards a strengthening anti-colonial discourse around the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union, a negativization [sic] of the entire historical period which “will eventually cause Azerbaijani youth to reject our countries’ common past.”

“Identity damage” and despotism in Uzbekistan

In a basic history textbook for students at the Academy of the Uzbekistan Interior Ministry, the authors describe the annexation of Central Asia as a violent conquest. They also “refute the opinion of historians that the policies of Tsarist Russia in colonized Turkestan had progressive consequences.” The authors challenge arguments about the construction of railroads, telegraphs, and industrial enterprises in Central Asia.

The textbook argues that any imperialist state “attempts to justify its wars of conquest by various propaganda myths, such as that it brings progress and civilization to the conquered peoples and liberates them from despotism, and they voluntarily join the metropole.” The Russian Empire in this context appears to be just such an “imperialist” state.

The textbook offers a harshly negative characterization of the period when Central Asia was part of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union. With a few exceptions, such as education, the textbook’s main thrust is that Russia damaged both Uzbekistan’s national identity and its economic prospects.

Eradicating the Basmachi and transiting to a settled way of life in textbooks in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan

According to INION’s analysis, textbooks in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan describe Russia’s influence more positively. Textbooks in Kyrgyzstan thus indicate that relations between Russia and Kyrgyz tribes evolved in different ways at different times — from moderately hostile attitudes to petitions by the Kyrgyz to join the Russian Empire. The authors positively assess Kyrgyzstan’s accession to the USSR, which enabled the Kyrgyz to grow their economy, education system, and industry, and marked the final transition to a settled way of life.

The Soviet period is generally not regarded and, most importantly, not depicted in a negative way by [the country’s] scholars, the researchers point out.

Tajik history textbooks positively assess the actions of Soviet Russia during the civil war in the country [sic]. They point out that Soviet troops were the main force protecting the local populace. The textbooks also note Russia’s contribution to the growth of science in Tajikistan.

In general, Tajik historians assess positively the rise of the Communists to power in Russia, which subsequently led to the attainment of independent statehood by the Tajik nation. And yet, Russia during the Tsarist period is assessed negatively as an imperialist power. Soviet policy is evaluated positively for “eradicating the Basmachi,” and for contributing to Tajikistan’s agriculture, industrialization, culture, and education. Although “individual problematic points” are also noted, they are described as inevitable parts of a complex historical process.

What RAN researchers read about Russia in Israeli and Iranian textbooks

Israeli textbooks describe the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union as anti-Semitic states, while many positive aspects of bilateral relations between Israel and the USSR, especially during the Jewish state’s emergence, are ignored, according to INION.

Russian policy in Iran is often associated with interference in the country’s internal affairs and support for regimes favorable to the empire. Iranian historians present Russia as an aggressor implementing a policy of “expansion” into territories formerly belonging to Persia. The authors also draw attention to the consequences of the Russo-Persian Wars for the mindset of the Iranian people. They see these wars as emblematic of colonial domination and loss of sovereignty.

A textbook for eleventh graders ambiguously assesses the founding of the Tudeh Party of Iran, whose purpose, according to the authors, was anti-government agitation and the forcible secession of Southern Azerbaijan and the country’s northern regions. The textbook notes that the party, which was supported by the Soviet Union, was a factor of destabilization in Iranian society, causing tension and threatening civil war.

Moscow’s provision of arms, military specialists and technical support to the Iraqi army, including Soviet military equipment and missiles, is seen as a factor that complicated the Iran-Iraq conflict and caused great harm to Iran.

According to Murad Sadygzade, president of the Center for Middle East Studies and guest lecturer at the Higher School of Economics, such descriptions of events in history textbooks are not distortions of events, but their interpretation from the position of the losing countries.

“In fact, there were three bordering empires — the Russian, Persian and Ottoman empires — which divided territories between them. Textbooks in these countries describe the events from their own point of view. Of course, they may present Russia as a conqueror. But we can say that this is their position as the losing party. This does not mean that these countries have a drastically negative attitude toward Russia and its people,” Sadygzade says.

Sadygzade argues that Russophobia in the countries of the post-Soviet space and the Middle East is not promoted through [the writing and teaching of] history. Rather, “there are only some figures who try to present it in such a way so as to drive a wedge between countries.”

Diplomatic disputes over textbooks

In August, the Russian Foreign Ministry criticized an Armenian history textbook for the eighth grade, saying that it “depicted events in the South Caucasus during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in a distorted manner.”

The Foreign Ministry detected an attempt to revise the outcome of the Russo-Persian War of 1826-1828. “The Treaty of Turkmenchay is labeled as nothing other than the ‘annexation’ of Eastern Armenia. Such a framing is capable of causing consternation for any historian,” the ministry said. It noted that the treaty, which ended the Russo-Persian War of 1826–1828, has so far been regarded as having “colossal significance for the future restoration of Armenian statehood.” Moscow viewed this interpretation as “another shameless attempt” to rewrite the common history “in the best traditions of Western propaganda and political engineering.”

As a result, the authors promised to make changes to this chapter of their textbook.

On September 26, Konstantin Zatulin, first deputy head of the State Duma Committee on CIS Affairs, Eurasian Integration and Relations with Compatriots Abroad, voiced concern about the way Russian history was portrayed in foreign textbooks. “I am certainly concerned, as we all are, about the interpretations that are permitted everywhere and anywhere outside of Russia, when it is depicted in a different way than we would like in the national versions of the history of the newly independent states,” he said during a discussion of a draft law on an agreement that would establish an international educational center for gifted children in Tajikistan. According to Zatulin, the Education Ministry and the Foreign Ministry were obliged to respond to all “unfriendly phenomena” in neighboring countries.

RBC sent a request to the Foreign Ministry and Rossotrudnichestvo to provide their own assessments of INION’s finding.

Source: Margarita Grosheva, “RAN researchers describe ‘negative images’ of Russia in CIS textbooks,” RBC, 28 September 2024. Translated by the Russian Reader

The Russian Reader Reads: Havli

This is the first in a series of posts in which I showcase a few of the newsletters, blogs, Substacks, and websites — all of them produced by hardworking, passionate lone wolves or tiny, perpetually underfunded grassroots collectives — which inspire me to continue making the Russian Reader and inform me about parts of the world and communities about which I would otherwise be utterly clueless.

Peter Leonard describes Havli as “a Central Asia-themed Substack written by me, Peter Leonard, a former editor at Eurasianet and the one-time Central Asia correspondent for the Associated Press. By drawing on my decades of experience visiting, studying and reporting on the region, I intend to make this newsletter an informative and, fingers crossed, engaging way to keep abreast of developments of note.”

Mr. Leonard’s latest post on Havli dovetails with so many of political and social trends I’ve been tracing over the years that it seems tailor-made for my website. Enjoy! I hope you’ll consider subscribing to Havli and supporting it financially. \\\ TRR

Closed-circuit television footage showing a teacher at a Tashkent school grabbing a pupil by the neck.

In the worst-case scenario, giving a teacher lip usually ends with the offending pupil visiting the headmaster’s office.

Things have to get pretty bad for a classroom kerfuffle to provoke a diplomatic incident.

A teacher at a school in Uzbekistan’s capital, Tashkent, managed to do just that this week by manhandling a pupil who complained that she was conducting her Russian language class entirely in Uzbek. Closed-circuit television footage obtained by the boy’s parents shows the teacher grabbing the child by the neck, and then slapping and screaming at him.

The video images quickly circulated on social media, eliciting howls of protest from self-avowed Russian patriots indignant at this alleged case of maltreatment of their ethnic kinfolk.

“You can just imagine what a racket there would be if a similar thing happened in Russia with a migrant. And it is not like Uzbekistan is confronting a wave of ethnic crime from Russia; you don’t get murderers, thugs, drug dealers, and Wahhabis going there from our country,” wrote the author of a Telegram account that disseminated the footage.

This was quite the overreach. Expatriate labourers from Central Asia living in Russia face systematic harassment and violence, often from the police. This happens so frequently it barely makes the news.

The spokeswoman for the Foreign Ministry in Moscow was quick to demand an investigation.

“If it is justified, action must be taken against the perpetrator of this cruel treatment against the child,” Maria Zakharova said. “We are monitoring this situation closely.”

The response from Uzbekistan was swift. Alisher Kadyrov, the deputy speaker of parliament, suggested that Russia “mind its own internal business.”

“The rights of this child are being violated in a school in Uzbekistan, the offence was committed against a child of an Uzbek citizen, and measures will be taken on the basis of laws adopted on behalf of the people of Uzbekistan,” he wrote on Telegram.

Uzbek Foreign Minister Bakhtiyor Saidov delivered the same message in person, albeit more obliquely, to his Russian counterpart on the sidelines of the ongoing United Nations General Assembly, noting that their meeting “underscored the importance of commitment of states to the principle of non-interference to each other’s internal affairs.”

Following this outcry, news emerged that the teacher at the Tashkent school assaulted another pupil in an unrelated incident and has since been sentenced to serve seven days in jail.

Moscow shows every sign of relishing the opportunity to make hay of this episode.

Claims of Central Asia’s allegedly spiralling Russophobia problem have been wielded with increasing readiness by surrogates for the Russian authorities since the start of the invasion of Ukraine. The Kremlin perceives the region’s rulers as more or less loyal, but it worries that the general public is not as reliably slavish. The nightmare scenario for Moscow is that a groundswell of anti-Russia sentiment across parts of Central Asia could eventually force a gradual shift in diplomatic stances.

The concern looks overblown at present, but it is not fully unjustified.

Older generations, especially the shrinking cohort with vivid memories of the Soviet Union, are typically more sympathetic to Russia and its bellicose conduct. Younger people whose media diet does not consist of consuming Russian state propaganda are more hostile.

Russian chauvinists are alarmed that the increasingly exclusive use of local languages in Central Asia is weakening their ability to project their message.

Research by Central Asia Barometer, an attitudes-surveying think tank, suggests that there is some association between language use and views on the war in Ukraine. Russian speakers in countries like Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan are more likely to justify the invasion of Ukraine than those who speak their own languages.

Fears that the status of Russian is slipping leads at times to comically petty whining.

Earlier this year, famous Russian TV presenter Tina Kandelaki complained in a Telegram post that Kazakhstan was poised to rename a number of train stations to make them sound less Russian. She cast this move — which comprised in the event of changing names like Railway Siding No. 13 to Akshi Railway Siding — as the start of a slippery slope that would end with the closure of Russian schools, the banning of the Russian language and “[Russian] pensioners getting kicked out into the cold.”

Historians in Central Asia crafting narratives that highlight the negative aspects of Russian and Soviet rule are another trigger. The mere suggestion that the region owes its civilisation to an era pre-dating the arrival of the Russians is enough to irk some.

In August, scholars from all over the region assembled at the Eurasian National University in Astana for the first-ever edition of the Forum of Historians of Central Asian States. “It is important for us to begin to rethink our common history,” Kazakh Science and Higher Education Minister Sayasat Nurbek told the scholars.

Mirziyoyeva is taking a leading role in lobbying for a vision of Uzbekistan’s history that looks beyond the role of the Russians and the Soviet Union.

The political elite has taken the lead on this. Saida Mirziyoyeva, a senior advisor to her father, Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev, in August delivered a speech in Kazakhstan that strongly signals what areas of the official narrative on recent history will be emphasised going forward. She alluded in her talk to a pair of reformist and softly nationalist movements that emerged in what are today Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan as having been thwarted by Soviet oppressors.

“At the beginning of the 20th century, both the Jadids and representatives of the Alash movement fought for a single goal: the liberation of the people, for the development of their motherlands. But they were not given the opportunity to realise their dreams,” she said.

Russian critics of this kind of talk smell a rat.

They point to the content of one history textbook in Uzbekistan as evidence of dangerous revisionism. A passage from a book cited by outraged Russian patriots talks of how the “Soviet regime subordinated Uzbekistan’s economy to the interests of the centre, turning it into a raw materials appendage.” This is loathsome ingratitude designed to demonise Russians, they grumble.

Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan are far more economically dependent on Russia than either Kazakhstan or Uzbekistan, but they too have in their own small ways worked to forge narratives that are gently but implicitly critical of the legacy of Muscovite rule. In July, Kyrgyz President Sadyr Japarov officially recognized five victims of Soviet repression as founders of the modern statehood of Kyrgyzstan. All the men were executed in 1930s during waves of Stalinist repressions against perceived nationalist movements.

That anti-nationalist campaign was the same one that crushed the Jadidist and Alash movements referenced by Mirziyoyeva.

Central Asian leaders periodically try to soothe the nerves of Russians eager to winkle out evidence of xenophobia in the region.

In his address to the nation earlier this month, Kazakhstan’s President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev reprised a tried-and-tested Astana mantra.

“In Kazakhstan, there is no — and cannot be any — space for discrimination on linguistic, religious, ethnic or social grounds,” he said. “Incidents and provocations do sometimes occur, but these happen because of the thoughtlessness and ignorance of individual citizens. When these things happen, they are dealt with — and will [always] be dealt with — by law enforcement agencies.”

The large community of vocal Russian revanchists monopolising the public conversation inside their country do not buy it. And they are seizing on any excuse to make their point heard.

Source: Peter Leonard, “Russophobia panic fanned by school scuffle in Uzbekistan,” Havli, 27 September 2024. The link in the sixth paragraph was put there by me. \\\ TRR

Bayan Mirzakeyeva: Where Do You Begin?

Anti-University
Facebook
August 7, 2020

“My name is Bayan Mirzakeyeva. I am 21 years old, and I am an ethnic Kazakh from Almaty. I have been living and studying in St. Petersburg at the Architectural University for several years. It was here, in Russia, that I realized that I was “non-white” and learned about this condescending and contemptuous attitude towards myself. Since almost no one around me talks about racism and migration, I wanted to make my own statement. I posted these pictures on social networks and have faced different reactions, from support to aggression and rejection. This was expected, but it has been a kind of impetus for me to continue working with this problem.”

Bayan sent us her illustrations, and we are publishing them for you.

Come and talk about racism and migration at the open events that we are doing together with the Viadrinicum Summer School. Details here: https://www.facebook.com/AntiUniversityMSK/posts/626498341315382

I had never been called a “wog” [churka].

“So what’s it like in Moscow”?

“It’s the same old same old. Only there are more wogs.”

“There aren’t that many of them, actually.”

But this time it was if I had been called that name personally.

“But the Gypsies are everywhere.”

“Ha-ha-ha.”

But how do I differ from those who are called “wogs”?

Am I different because I finished high school with honors?

Because I got a scholarship to university?

Because I speak Russian without an accent?

I have the same narrow eyes, the same coarse black hair. An unusual name.

Where does “wog” end and where do you begin?

Thanks to Sofiko Arifdzhanova for the heads-up. Translated by the Russian Reader

tellme_sister

Elena Nazhmetdinova. Photo from her Instagram page

“Tell Me, Sister”: A Tajik Woman on the Web Urges Young Woman to Speak Out About Harassment
Zarnigor Dadabayeva
Asia Plus
June 30, 2020

When she launched her first blog on Instagram, 23-year-old Elena Nazhmetdinova could not have imagined that it would garner more than 1,500 subscribers in a single day. On the blog, Nazhmetdinova tells the stories of women who have been sexually harassed. She has already posted thirty-six such stories.

“There Are No Such Problems in Tajikistan!”
This is not the first time that Nazhmetdinova has spoken about sexual harassment. She started writing about it a long time ago, when she first started blogging on Facebook.

“But there was no response from the people who were reading me. I think this was due to the fact that Facebook is mainly used by the adult generation. While most of the people on Instagram are young people, who are not unfamiliar with the topic of sexual harassment on the streets. It was there that I decided to find my own voice, and it wasn’t a miscalculation: more than 70% of my audience now is young women,” the blogger says.

Elena Nazhmetdinova. Photo from her Instagram page

Recently, according to Nazhmetdinova, young men who could not ignore this painful topic for young women had also started to swell the ranks of her readership.

“But they did not come [to the blog] to support us. On the contrary, they came to insult, humiliate, and hate on us and thus, supposedly, persuade us that there was no sexual harassment in our country. They would say, ‘There are no such problems in Tajikistan!” Nazhmetdinova says, quoting her male readers.

That was why, the young woman explains, she came up with the idea of launching a separate project on Instagram called Tell Me, Sister. This was so that others who have suffered from such humiliation can tell their painful stories along with her. Nazhmetdinova received exactly thirty-six stories within a day.

“I’m really scared to go out in the evening, or in revealing clothing.” A story of sexual harassment on the Instagram page tellme_sister

Tellme_sister
“Without knowing it, I was inspired to create this project by male readers whose comments often started with the words ‘Sister, don’t dress like that . . .’, Sister, don’t look up [at men] . . .’, ‘Sister, it’s your own fault . . .’,” Nazhmetdinova explains.

Elena Nazhmetdinova. Photo from her Instagram page

“So, I decided to write a post in this vein, and surprisingly it was the most read and the most commented-on post, in the end. It was then that I decided to dub the project Tell Me, Sister,” Nazhmetdinova explains.

As soon as Nazhmetdinova launched the project, she began receiving stories from women and girls that ended the same way: “I haven’t told this to anyone yet.” According to the blogger, her subscribers realized that they could trust her.

“As I ran away, I heard [him] shouting in my direction that I was a ‘prostitute,’ ‘not a Muslim,’ and basically a ‘chalab’ [slut].” A story of sexual harassment on the Instagram page tellme_sister

“The main goal of the project is to give women an opportunity to speak out, to give them a virtual shelter where they will be supported and understood. Naturally, I understand that this will not vanquish sexual harassment on the streets. However, I hope that eventually we will be heard, and it will stop being considered a normal thing,” Nazhmetdinova says.

Over the past six days, the number of subscribers to tellme_sister has grown to 2,180, which Nazhmetdinova is sure only points to the problem’s urgency in Tajik society.

Thanks to Sergey Abashin for the heads-up. Translated by the Russian Reader

Little Kyrgyzstan

Moscow’s Little Kyrgyzstan (2017)

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Russian Federation has become one of the most important destinations for immigration in the world, second only to the United States and equal to Germany. Unlike Europe, however, the majority of people going to Russia aren’t political refugees and asylum seekers, but economic migrants looking for employment opportunities.

Most of the migrants are from the former Soviet space, with Central Asia at the forefront of this massive human flow. Tens of thousands leave the republics of Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan every year to find seasonal employment in Russia’s main cities. Many stay for years, others never return, but their remittances form an important share of their country’s economy. The World Bank estimates that, in 2014, money sent back home by migrants represented 36% of Tajikistan’s GDP, and 30% of Kyrgyzstan’s.

Moscow’s Little Kyrgyzstan presents the story of ten immigrants from Kyrgyzstan living in Moscow, showing the diverse reality of millions of immigrant workers in Russia in their own words. It also broaches various themes that affect their everyday lives, such as the overbearing and corrupt Russian bureaucracy, harassment from the police, and anti-immigrant sentiment among the general population. It looks into the effect of the current economic crisis in Russia on the lives of migrant workers and the changes that followed Kyrgyzstan’s entry into the Kremlin-led Eurasian Economic Union in August 2015.

To provide context, the stories of the ten characters are punctuated by comments from two leading Russian experts on migration—Dmitry Poletaev and Valery Solovei—as well as an exchange between participants to a round table in Moscow on the need to introduce a visa regime for Central Asian migrants to Russia.

Credits:
Franco Galdini, Producer & scriptwriter
Chingiz Narynov, Director
Susannah Tresilian, Narrator
Soundtrack by Salt Peanuts

For more on the story visit:
https://thediplomat.com/2017/03/a-glimpse-into-moscows-little-kyrgyzstan/

_________________

Thanks a billion to Bermut Borubaeva for the heads-up. The extraordinary challenges faced by Central Asian migrants in Russia have been an abiding theme of this website over the nearly thirteen years of its existence and will continue to be in the future. // TRR

Scapegoats

anatrrra-dvorniki Central Asian yardmen in Moscow taking a break from their work. Photo by and courtesy of Anatrrra

‘People shout “Coronavirus!” at me as if it were my middle name’
Lenta.ru
March 29, 2020

The coronavirus pandemic has led to an increase in xenophobic attitudes towards people of Asian background around the world, even though the US has already overtaken China in the number of infected people, as have European countries, if you add up all the cases. However, according to an international survey of several thousand people, it is Russians who are most likely to avoid contact with people of Asian appearance, although one in five residents of Russia is not an ethnic Russian. Our compatriots of Asian appearance have been subjected to increasing attacks, harassment, and discrimination. Lenta.ru recorded their monologues.

“Being Asian now means being a plague rat”
Lisa, Buryat, 27 years old

Sometimes I am mistaken for a Korean, and this is the best option in Russia, when you are mistaken for Chinese, Koreans or Japanese. The disdainful attitude is better than when you are mistaken for a migrant worker from Central Asia, because the attitude towards them is clearly aggressive. At least it was before the coronavirus.

Now, basically, being Asian means being a plague rat.

A couple of days ago, a young woman approached me at work—I’m a university lecturer. The lecture was on fashion, and naturally I had talked about the epidemic’s consequences for the fashion industry. The young woman works in a Chanel boutique. She said right to my face that “only the Chinese have the coronavirus,” and she tries not wait on them at her store, but “everything’s cool” with Europeans.

My mother has to listen to more racist nonsense because she has a more pronounced Asian appearance than I do, because my father is Russian. For example, there are three women named Sveta at her work. Two are called by their last names, but she is called “the non-Russian Sveta,” although she has lived in Petersburg since the nineteen-seventies. And when I enrolled in school, the headmaster asked my father to translate what he said for my mother, although five minutes earlier my mother had been speaking Russian.

In the subway, she can be told that immigrants are not welcome here and asked to stand up. A couple of times, men approached her on the street and asked whether she wasn’t ashamed, as a Muslim woman, to wear tight jeans. She is learning English, and when she watches instructional videos, people in the subway, for example, say, “Oh, can these monkeys speak Russian at all? They’re learning English!” Police are constantly checking her papers to see whether she’s a Russian citizen. When I was little, we were even taken to a police station because the policemen decided she had abducted an ethnic Russian child—I had very light hair as a child.

Recently, she was traveling by train to Arkhangelsk, and children from two different cars came to look at her. At such moments, you feel like a monkey. (By the way, “monkey from a mountain village” is a common insult.)

Everyone used to be afraid of skinheads. Everyone in the noughties had a friend who had been attacked by skinheads. Everyone [in Buryatia] was afraid to send their children to study in Moscow. But being a Russian Asian, you could pretend to be a tourist: my Buryat friend, who knows Japanese, helped us a couple of times make groups of people who had decided we were migrant workers from Central Asia leave us alone. Another time, the son of my mother’s friend, who was studying at Moscow State University, was returning home late at night and ran into a crowd of skinheads. They asked where he was from, and when he said he was from Buryatia, one of them said, “I served in Buryatia! Buryats are our guys, they’re from Russia,” and they let him go.

Now all Asians are objects of fear. People shout “Coronavirus!” at me on the street as if it were my middle name. They get up and move away from me on public transport, and they give me wide berth in queues. A man in a store once asked me not to sneeze on him as soon as I walked in. I constantly hear about people getting beat up, and I’m very worried. My Buryat girlfriends, especially in Moscow, are afraid to travel alone in the evening. People also move away from them on transport and behave aggressively.

You can put it down to human ignorance, but you get tired of living like this. When you talk about everyday racism with someone, they say they worked with an Asian and everything was fine. This constant downplaying is even more annoying. You haven’t insulted Asians—wow, here’s your medal! It doesn’t mean there is no problem with grassroots racism in multi-ethnic Russia.

“When are you all going to die?!”
Zhansaya, Kazakh, 27 years old

On Sunday morning, my boyfriend, who is an ethnic Kazakh like me, and I got on a half-empty car on the subway. We sat down at the end of the car. At the next station, an elderly woman, who was around sixty-five, got on. When she saw us, she walked up to my boyfriend, abruptly poked him with her hand, and said through clenched teeth, “Why are you sitting down? Get up! We didn’t fight in the war for people like you.”

I am a pharmacist by education, and I have seven years of experience working in a pharmacy. The pharmacy is next to a Pyatyorochka discount grocery store. Recently, I was standing at the register when a woman of Slavic appearance, looking a little over fifty, came in. She came over with a smile that quickly faded from her face when she saw me. I only had time to say hello when suddenly she screamed, “When are you all going to die?! We are tired of you all! You all sit in Pyatyorochkas, stealing our money, and then act as if nothing has happened!”

I didn’t hold my tongue, replying abruptly, “Excuse me! Who do you mean by you all?” The woman was taken aback as if something had gone wrong. Then she said something about “CISniks” [people from the Commonwealth of Independent States], ran out of the pharmacy, and never came back.

I had always dreamed about driving a car since I was a kid. At the age of eighteen, I found a driving school, where I successfully passed the classroom training, and after three months of practice I had to pass exams at the traffic police. I got 100% on the written test the first time. But during the behind-the-wheel exam, the examiner began talking crap the minute I got into the car. When I introduced myself by first name, middle name, and last name, he said something I missed since I was nervous. Then he, a rather obese man, hit me on the thighs and screamed, “Do you want me to say that in Uzbek?”

I immediately unbuckled my seat belt and got out of the car. I gave up for good the idea of taking the driving test.

covid-19-coronavirus-actions-ipsos-mori Results of an Ipsos MORI poll published on February 14, 2020

“The chinks piled into our country and brought this plague”
Anna, Buryat, 27 years old

We live in a multi-ethnic country that supposedly defeated fascism, but now every time I go into the subway, the police check my papers as if I were a terrorist. People really have begun to move away from me, give me a wide berth, and throw me contemptuous glances, as if to say “There goes the neighborhood!”

I live near University subway station [in Moscow], and there really are lots of Chinese students there. I feel quite sorry for them: they are constantly stopped by the police in the subway, and people look at them with disgust and demonstratively steer clear of them. If there are Chinese people who have stayed here, they probably didn’t go home for the Chinese New Year. Where would they bring the virus from? If they had gone home for the holidays, they would not have returned to Russia, since the border was already closed by the end of the holidays. Accordingly, the Chinese who are here are not carrying the virus.

Recently, I was going down an escalator. My nose was stuffy from the cold, and so I blew my noise softly. I thought I was going to be murdered right on the escalator: some people bolted straight away from me, while others shouted that I was spreading the contagion.

Recently, in a grocery store, a woman and her teenage daughter were standing behind me. The woman said something to the effect that all sorts of chinks have come to our country and brought the plague. She said it out loud and without any bashfulness, aiming her words at me. She and her daughter were less than a meter away from me, as if I didn’t understand them. My level of indignation was off the charts, but I didn’t say anything.

Another time, I went into my building and approached the elevator. A woman and her children literally recoiled and almost ran out—they didn’t want to ride in the elevator with me! I said I’d wait for the next one. They were not at all perplexed by the fact that I spoke Russian without an accent.

“I will always be second class here”
Malika, Uzbek, 21 years old

Recently, a mother and daughter passed by my house. Tajik yardmen were cleaning the yard. The girl asked the mother why she was rolling her eyes, and the mother explained that the yardmen were probably illegal aliens and terrorists. I walked next to them all the way to the bus stop—it was unpleasant.

During three years of living in Moscow, I very rarely felt like an outsider: the people around me were always sensible, and I was almost never stopped by police in the subway to check my papers. But when I decided to leave the student dorm, I realized that I would always be a second-class person here. It took four months to find an apartment. A girlfriend and I were looking for a two-room flat for the two of us for a reasonable amount of money, but every other ad had phrases like “only for Slavs.” There were jollier phrases like “white Europe” or “Asia need not apply.” But even in cases where there were no such restrictions, we would still be turned down when we went to look at flats.

After a while, I started saying on the phone that I was from Uzbekistan. Some people would hang up, while others would make up ridiculous excuses. In the end, we found a place through friends, but the process was quite unpleasant.

I’m no longer bothered by such everyday questions as “Why is your Russian so good?” I like talking about my own culture if the curiosity is not mean-spirited. But I am terribly disgusted to see how my countrymen are treated on the streets and realize that I’m left alone only because I’m a couple of shades lighter. Because of this, people take me for a Russian and complain about “those wogs” to my face.

“He shouted that I was a yakuza and had come here to kill people”
Vika, Korean, 22 years old

I’m an ethnic Korean. I was born and raised in North Ossetia, and graduated from high school in Rostov-on-Don. I have lived in Moscow since 2015, and I encounter more everyday racism here.

One day a woman on the street started yelling at me to get the hell out of Moscow and go back to my “homeland.” Another time, a madman in the subway sat down next to me and shouted that I was a yakuza and had come here to kill people.

When I was getting a new internal passport at My Documents, the woman clerk asked several times why I was getting a new passport and not applying for citizenship, although I had brought a Russian birth certificate and other papers.

Once my mother was attempting to rent an apartment for us and humiliated herself by persuading the landlords that Koreans were a very good and decent people. I wanted to cry when she said that.

There is a stereotype that Asians are quite smart and study hard, that they have complicated, unemotional parents, and so on. As a teenager, I tried to distance myself as much as possible from stereotypical ideas about Koreans. Now I can afford to listen to K-pop and not feel guilty about being stereotypical.

Generally, we are not beaten or humiliated much, but I don’t feel equal to the dominant ethnic group [i.e., ethnic Russians], especially now, when everyone is so excited about Korean pop culture, generalize everything they see in it to all Koreans and can come up to you out of the blue and say they love doramas. That happened to me once. It is very unpleasant—you feel like a pet of a fashionable breed.

In questionnaires on dating sites you can often find preferences based on ethnicity, and they can take the form of refusals to date people of a certain race, as well as the opposite, the desire to date such people. It is not a sign of tolerance, however, but the flip side of racism—fetishization. It still reduces a person to her ethnic group, suggesting she should be perceived not as an individual, but as a walking stereotype.

“Several times it ended in attempted rape”
Madina, from a mixed family (Tatar/Tajik/Kazakh/Russian), 25 years old

I was born in Moscow. My Russian teacher from the fifth grade on liked to repeat loudly to the entire class, “Can you imagine? Madina is the best Russian and literature student in my class!” By the end of the sixth grade, my classmates were sick and tired of this, but instead of boning up on Russian, they decided to throw me a blanket party. They got together, backed me into a corner, and kicked the hell out of me.

I recently returned from doing a master’s degree abroad and was looking for an apartment to rent in Moscow. Several times, landlords offered to rent an apartment without a contract, explaining that I undoubtedly needed a residence permit. When I showed them my internal passport and Moscow residence permit, they turned me down anyway.

Before moving to the United States, I had to forget about romantic relationships for several years because several times it all ended with attempted rape under the pretext “You’re an Asian woman, and I’ve always dreamed of fucking a woman like you in the ass.”

Nor was it strangers I’d met on Tinder who told me this, but guys from my circle of friends at school and university. There were three such incidents, and all of them combined racism, objectification, and a lack of understanding of the rules of consent.

“She looked at me like I was death, shoved me, and ran out of the car”
Aisulu, Kazakh, 22 years old

Recently, I was a little ill: I had a runny nose and sneezed once in a while. I wouldn’t even say it was the flu, just the common cold. I decided to attend lectures and put on a mask for decency’s sake.

I went into the subway, where people got up and moved away from me twice. I wasn’t particularly offended, but it was unpleasant when I stood next to a women after moving to another car and sneezed. She looked at like I was death, shoved me, and ran out of the car. That was quite odd.

I told a classmate about the incident, and she asked why I was wearing a mask, because it attracts more attention. I felt even worse, and took it off.

Translated by the Russian Reader

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Petersburg police muster at five in the morning on May 29 in the parking lot of the Soviet-era Sport and Concert Complex (SKK) in the southern part of the city before heading off to raid the homes and workplaces of Central Asian migrant workers. Photo courtesy of Fontanka.ru

Petersburg Police Raid Migrant Workers After Diaspora Refuses to Help Find People Involved in Brawl
Mediazona
May 29, 2019

The press service of the Russian Interior Ministry’s Leningrad Directorate informed Interfax that Petersburg police began raiding places migrant workers lived. The raids kicked off when two diasporas [sic] refused to help security forces find people implicated in a large brawl involving knives.

Roman Plugin, head of the Interior Ministry’s regional directorate, gave the order for the raids. He ordered that people involved in a large brawl that took place on Salov Street on May 20 be found. Four people were stabbed during the brawl.

According to police, natives of the North Caucasus and people from a country of the near abroad, who are hiding in Petersburg [sic], were involved in the brawl.

Fontanka.ru writes that three hundred police officers are involved in the raids. 78.ru adds that the police officers, in particular, raided the wholesale vegetable market on Sofia Street and a wholesale warehouse on Salov Street. They were supposed to find people involved in the brawl, which occurred after a “group of Uzbekistanis refused to share turf with Russian nationals from the North Caucasus” [sic].

According to the news website’s source in the police, the security forces had attempted to negotiate the issue with prominent figures who had a say in circumstances at the major wholesale vegetable markets. They, however, had pretended not to know who was involved in the brawl.

Thanks to Yana Teplitskaya for the heads-up. Translated by the Russian Reader

My Generation

frenkel-subway trial The defendants in the Petersburg subway bombing trial. Photo by David Frenkel

After a terrific, well-attended solidarity talk in support of the defendants in the Network case, held here in Berlin the other night, I spoke to a lovely young Russian activist.

I said to them that there were, of course, many more instances of wild injustice in Putinist Russia with which an engaged foreign audience could be regaled, such as the ongoing trial of several Central Asians, accused of complicity in the alleged terrorist suicide bombing in the Petersburg subway on April 3, 2017.

Like the Network case, the Petersburg subway bombing case has all the hallmarks of a frame-up. As in the Network case, there have been numerous allegations the defendants have been tortured by investigators.

“But the difference,” the young person interrupted me, “is racism.”

They meant that, since all the defendants hailed from Central Asia, there was no way to mount the successful solidarity campaign that has shown a harsh light on the Network case and garnered it widespread notoriety, especially within Russia.

The young person went on to tell me that a friend of theirs had been attending the subway bombing trial. She had told them it was horrific. The defendants had been assigned state-appointed lawyers who did nothing to defend them. The trial was such a flagrant frame-up the interpreters working it had banded together to try and do anything they could to help the young people, who in all likelihood have been accused of terrible crimes they did not commit.

It goes without saying that all of them will be found guilty and sentenced to long terms in prison.

The case has been covered spottily by Petersburg and Russian media outlets, but I have seen very little outrage or even mild concern about it from my acquaintances on Russophone social media, most of whom live in Petersburg.

Many of these same people are now visibly bent out shape about the goings-on in Israel-Palestine. In the past few days, they have been treating virtual friends like me to generous helpings of unsubstantiated hasbara.

Are they unconcerned about the miscarriage of justice perpetrated on nearly a dozen young Central Asians because they think all Muslims are terrorists and, by definition, guilty of every charge of terrorism laid at their door?

It has been a commonplace of Russian quasi-liberal thinking that Stalinism affected Russians so deeply it infected their collective DNA. The Stalinist bug, so this spurious argument contends, has been passed on to the new generation as well, even though the Soviet Union collapsed almost thirty years ago, before my interlocutor and huge numbers of other terrific young Russian social and political activists I know were born.

Supposedly, several generations must pass before the Stalinist bug will finally be expunged from the national genetic code and Russians can build a more democratic polity in their country.

In reality, there is a great deal of anecdotal evidence pointing to the new generation’s eagerness and readiness to live that way right now.

On the contrary, it is my own age mates, the so-called last Soviet generation, who were born after Stalin died, who seem most afflicted by a kind of cognitive and emotional Stalinism that, often as not, emerges in their thoughts and deeds not as nostalgia or admiration for the real Stalin, but as dogmatic worldview that makes events in, say, Israel more real and important than most events in their own country and cities.

Given recent oddities around the Network trial and the unwonted negative publicity the case has generated for the FSB, I think there is a slight chance the powers that be might have decided to ratchet things down a bit. I could be wrong, but I would not be surprised if, when the trials in Penza and Petersburg resume after a long, unexplained recess, the defendants were indicted on lesser charges and then immediately released on probation, taking into account the long time all of them have spent in remand prisons since their arrests in late 2017 and early 2018.

There is no chance this will happen in the subway bombing trial for the simple reason that almost no one in Petersburg can be bothered to go to bat for a group of non-Russian Muslims or even bat an eye when they are tortured and framed exactly like their non-Muslim contemporaries. {TRR}

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