Russia Is Not a Land of Opportunity for Central Asians

Tajikistan has condemned what it called an “ethnic hatred” attack in Russia after a 10-year-old boy from a Tajik family was stabbed to death at a school near Moscow, in a rare public rebuke aimed at a key partner for labor migration and security ties. The killing happened on December 16 in the village of Gorki-2 in the Odintsovo district of the Moscow region, according to Russia’s Investigative Committee, which said a minor attacked people at an educational institution, killing one child and injuring a school security guard.

A video of the attack circulated on Russian social media after the incident. According to reporting by Asia-Plus, footage published by the Telegram channel Mash shows the teenage assailant approaching a group of students while holding a knife and asking them about their nationality. The video then shows a school security guard attempting to intervene before the attacker sprays him with pepper spray and stabs him. The assailant subsequently turns the knife on the children, fatally wounding the 10-year-old boy.

A statement released by Tajikistan’s interior ministry said it feared the case could “serve as a pretext for incitement and provocation by certain radical nationalist groups to commit similar crimes.” Tajikistan’s response also drew attention after the foreign ministry said the attack was “motivated by ethnic hatred.” Dushanbe subsequently summoned the Russian ambassador to protest the attack, handing him a missive “demanding that Russia conduct an immediate, objective, and impartial investigation into this tragic incident.”

The condemnation is particularly notable as Tajikistan rarely issues public criticism of Russia, which remains its main destination for migrant labor and a key security partner.

According to Russian media, the attacker, who has admitted their guilt, subscribed to neo-Nazi channels and had sent his classmates a racist manifesto entitled “My Rage,” in which he expressed hostility toward Jews, Muslims, anti-fascists, and liberals, a few days before the incident.

Tajik migrants form one of the largest foreign labor communities in Russia and across Central Asia. Millions of Tajik citizens work abroad each year, most of them in Russia, sending remittances that are a critical source of income for families at home. According to the World Bank, remittances account for roughly half of Tajikistan’s gross domestic product in some years, making labor migration a cornerstone of the country’s economy. Many Tajik migrants work in construction, services, and transport, often in precarious conditions and with limited legal protections. The killing comes as Central Asian migrants in Russia face growing pressure to enlist in the war in Ukraine, with coercion through detention, deportation threats, and promises of legal status having been reported.

The killing has also renewed scrutiny of rising xenophobia in Russia, particularly toward migrants from Central Asia. The Times of Central Asia has previously reported an increase in hate speech, harassment, and violent attacks targeting migrants, especially following major security incidents. Human Rights Watch has warned that Central Asian migrants in Russia face growing discrimination, arbitrary police checks, and racially motivated abuse, trends that have intensified in recent years amid heightened nationalist rhetoric.

Source: Stephen M. Bland, “Tajikistan Condemns Fatal Stabbing of Boy in Russia Citing Ethnic Hatred,” Times of Central Asia, 17 December 2025

It’s curious. I looked through some of the [social media] pages of Russia’s [most prominent] political émigrés—[Ilya] Yashin, [Vladimir] Kara-Murza, [Ekaterina] Schulmann, [Leonid] Volkov, [Elena] Lukyanova, [Dmitry] Bykov, [Marat] Gelman, [Boris] Zimin, [Boris] Akunin—but I couldn’t find a word about the violent death of a Tajik boy in a school near Moscow. They have expressed no sympathy, voiced no criticism of racism and xenophobia. It seemingly should be their direct obligation to speak out on this issue. But for some reason, mum’s the word. I also looked at the Telegram channels of the leading official anthropologists, and there is a mysterious muteness among them too. Surely it is their professional duty not to remain silent on such a matter. They even published a book called Tajiks and themselves speak everywhere of interethnic harmony. But in this case, it’s as if they’ve dummied up.

Source: S.A. (Facebook), 18 December 2025. Translated by the Russian Reader

As FB is reminding, there were times I believed I could protect my non-Slavic looking friends, lovers, relatives, foreign students and migrant workers from the nazis marching in the streets, from the nazis working as policemen, from the general xenophobia and unsensibility by magic tricks of art.

Source: Olga Jitlina (Facebook), 18 December 2025

Thomas Campbell just translated our migrant labor board game Russia – The Land of Opportunity!!!

Russia – The Land of Opportunity board game is a means of talking about the possible ways that the destinies of the millions of immigrants who come annually to the Russian Federation from the former Soviet Central Asian republics to earn money play out.

Our goal is to give players the chance to live in the shoes of a foreign worker, to feel all the risks and opportunities, to understand the play between luck and personal responsibility, and thus answer the accusatory questions often addressed to immigrants – for example, “Why do they work illegally? Why do they agree to such conditions?”

On the other hand, only by describing the labyrinth of rules, deceptions, bureaucratic obstacles and traps that constitute immigration in today’s Russia can we get an overall picture of how one can operate within this scheme and what in it needs to be changed. We would like most of all for this game to become a historical document.

Source: Olga Jitlina (Facebook), 17 December 2011

Life for migrant workers is Russia is becoming increasingly difficult after stringent new controls introduced over the past year. These include a registry of “illegal” migrants, restrictions on enrolling migrant children in schools, new police powers to deport people without a court order, and a compulsory app for all new migrants in Moscow and the surrounding region to track their movements.

Working in Russia was already less appealing because of the war in Ukraine and the weakening rouble. Now, with these new restrictions, a growing number of young people from Central Asia are starting to look elsewhere — including to countries in Europe — in search of better opportunities.

Dreaming of Europe in Moscow

Like 89% of young Kyrgyzstanis, 25-year-old Bilal* had always dreamed of working abroad.

Young people in Kyrgyzstan grow up in an environment where leaving the country to find work is common, widespread, economically essential, and socially accepted — and where the domestic economy still cannot offer comparable opportunities.

The average monthly salary in the country is about 42,000 soms (around $480), while in Russia, for example, wages in manufacturing can reach 150,000 rubles (nearly $2,000). Unlike most of his peers, Bilal never planned to work in Russia. “Because many of our people face racism there,” he explains.

Europe was his dream, but without connections getting a job offer from an EU employer seemed nearly impossible. So Bilal turned to “intermediaries” — fellow Kyrgyzstanis who had established ties with European companies that were constantly seeking workers. They advised him to travel to St. Petersburg, where, they said, it would be easier to prepare the paperwork and apply for a visa.

But it was the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Many Schengen countries had stopped issuing visas and temporarily shuttered their consulates. Bilal didn’t want to return home empty-handed, so he decided to stay in Russia — “not by choice,” as he puts it.

“At first I worked illegally at a ski resort. Mostly we chopped firewood and cleared snow around the cabins. They paid us in cash,” he says.

Two months later, Bilal moved to Moscow and obtained a patent — the work permit that allows citizens of visa-free countries to be legally employed in Russia. He found a job as a courier for Yandex.

Bilal speaks excellent Russian — something he says explains why, unlike many of his friends, he didn’t encounter xenophobia all that often. But conflicts still happened. “You’d run into people who’d say, ‘Migrants, coming here in droves…’ Especially when a customer had put down the wrong address and the delivery got messed up — somehow it was always the migrant’s fault.”

Bilal left Russia two months before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. “Back then it wasn’t like it is now,” he recalls. “Yes, the police would stop you on the street, but they’d take some money and let you go. Now my friends talk about Amina (a Russian mobile app for monitoring migrants), about police rounding people up, and about being sent to the war.”

He decided to set his sights on Europe instead.

Watched and bullied

In Russia, the path to legal employment for migrant workers runs through a processing centre known as Sakharovo — located about 60 kilometres from Moscow and notorious for its massive queues, where people often wait for hours. The perimeter is guarded by armed security forces, and inside migrants undergo procedures such as blood and urine tests to screen for “socially significant diseases”. Those who manage to obtain their documents can work legally, but that doesn’t protect them from future problems.

Russians often refuse to rent apartments to migrants. Schools and kindergartens decline to accept migrant children, citing “lack of space,” while the adults themselves face workplace “raids” or frequent “document checks” on the street or on public transport. Even Russia’s war in Ukraine has become a tool for pressuring them: many migrants are pushed to join the military in exchange for various “bonuses,” such as fast-tracked citizenship.

After the attack on Crocus City Hall — which authorities say was carried out by four Tajik citizens —the security services launched large-scale raids. Tajikistan’s government, fearing a surge in xenophobic incidents, even advised its citizens not to leave their homes.

Lawmakers soon joined in. Over the past year, they have restricted the ability to obtain residency through marriage, granted the Interior Ministry the power to deport migrants without a court ruling, required migrant children to pass a Russian-language exam before being admitted to school, and created the Registry of Monitored Persons — a database of foreign nationals who supposedly lack legal grounds to stay in Russia. There are already known cases of people being added to the list by mistake, and effectively losing the right to move freely around the country after their bank accounts were frozen, and their driving permits revoked.

Officials have justified all these measures as necessary to fight illegal migration and prevent crime. In July, the Interior Ministry reported a rise in crimes committed by migrants, but migrants still make up only a small fraction of overall crime statistics. A study by the “To Be Exact” project found that adult Russian men are statistically more likely to commit crimes than migrant workers.

On September 1, a new pilot project went into effect: migrants from Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Moldova, and Ukraine who are living in Moscow or the Moscow region must install a mobile app called “Amina.” Authorities openly acknowledge that the app’s main purpose is to continuously track users’ locations.

The app that doesn’t work

If a phone fails to transmit location data to Amina for more than three working days, the participant is automatically removed from the system. If the migrant cannot fix the issue quickly, they risk being added to the “monitored persons” registry — which can lead to frozen bank accounts, job loss, or even expulsion from university.

Imran, a 27-year-old Tajik citizen, is worried: “Location services on my phone are on, and Amina shows that everything is being transmitted, but several times a day I get notifications saying the app isn’t receiving my location. The app works terribly. And I have no idea what consequences this could have for me.”

Users report constant problems with Amina. Some can’t get past the first screen; others say the app won’t accept their photo; still others receive alerts that their data failed verification. But the most common issues are related to location tracking.

In comments on RuStore (Russia’s internal apps store), representatives of the developer respond that “specialists are constantly working to improve the app’s stability” and advise users to contact technical support. But migrants complain about waiting on the line for hours.

Anton Ignatov, the director of the Sakharovo centre, claims the programme will improve public safety and help “prevent violations by unscrupulous individuals”. He cites situations in which migrants buy a work patent — a permit to work — for a short period and then disappear “into the shadows,” “vanishing somewhere in the industrial zones of Moscow and the region”.

Such cases do happen, and the most obvious reason is money. Since January 1, the monthly payment for a work patent in Moscow and the Moscow region has been 8,900 roubles (about $115). For many migrants working in low-paid jobs — for example, in construction or warehouse work — this is a significant share of their income, pushing some into the informal economy.

Another factor is wage delays in the sectors where migrants from Central Asian countries most often work. Mukhammadjon from Uzbekistan, works on a construction site outside Moscow, hasn’t been paid in two and a half months. A month ago, he stopped paying for his patent — simply because he had no money left. He sees no tools to defend himself.

Employers, meanwhile, benefit from hiring such vulnerable workers: they can avoid paying social contributions, hand out wages in cash, and rely on employees who are willing to work overtime for low pay.

Getting a job is becoming harder

Kudaibergen, 32, from Kyrgyzstan, worked at a warehouse on the outskirts of Moscow — “to support my family”, he says. His employer provided hostel-style housing for migrant warehouse workers.

“OMON came to our building. They treated us like they were arresting dangerous terrorists. They showed up with batons and tasers, as if storming the place. They drove us all outside. We stood by the door with our hands behind our backs for about two hours while they checked everyone’s documents,” he recalls. “Some guys didn’t understand Russian well — it was very hard for them. If they didn’t understand something, they were beaten. […] Thank God, my documents were in order.”

Russian authorities typically insist that such inspections are carried out strictly within the law and that no unlawful actions are taken against migrants. As evidence, the Interior Ministry points out that migrants rarely file complaints with the police afterward.

As the new year approached — 2025 — the checks intensified, Kudaibergen says. Because of all the new rules and the overall treatment of migrants, he realized that working in Russia had become too difficult, so he returned home.

“But I still have to provide for my family,” he adds. “I’m thinking about Europe now. I ask friends and acquaintances how to leave. But I don’t know if it will work out. They say getting a visa is very hard.”

Gulnura, 35, a mother of three, had lived in Russia with her husband for more than ten years. In the spring of 2025, she flew with her children to her native Kyrgyzstan for a short break. Only after arriving did she learn about the new requirement obliging migrant children to pass a Russian-language exam in order to enroll in school. Her children speak Russian fluently, yet even before the rule change they hadn’t been admitted — schools said there were “no available places”.

“We originally planned to return to Moscow. But my friends who are still there complain that they can’t get their kids into school,” Gulnura says. “One friend has been collecting documents since April, but the school won’t accept them. Another managed to get her child to the test, but after the exam they sent a rejection: ‘Your child doesn’t know Russian well enough.’ Her daughter was born and raised in Moscow, speaks Russian fluently, went to kindergarten and prep classes, reads and writes.”

“Requiring language proficiency provides a pretext for an already widespread practice of arbitrarily refusing to admit migrant children to schools across Russia,” says Sainat Sultanaliyeva of Human Rights Watch. “By depriving migrant children of access to education, Russian authorities are effectively taking away the life opportunities schooling provides. Banning them from school undermines long-term social integration, increases the risk of harmful child labour, and heightens the danger of early marriage.”

Gulnura decided not to return to Russia with her children. “My husband is still in Moscow for now. He’ll come when everything is ready here, when he has work. But we — me and the kids — we’ve come back for good. It’s become impossible to live there.”

A chance to get into Europe

Despite numerous accounts of migrants becoming disillusioned with Russia, it’s impossible to say definitively whether labour migration has decreased in recent years: the available statistics are fragmented, and data from different government agencies often contradict one another.

The picture is further complicated by the Interior Ministry’s decision to stop publishing key data, as well as several changes to the methodology of migration accounting, which make year-to-year comparisons unreliable.

In 2024, researchers at the Higher School of Economics concluded that labour migration to Russia had fallen to its lowest level in a decade.

Since then, the number of entries into the country has grown, but the average annual presence of legal labour migrants has remained stable at around 3–3.5 million — noticeably lower than in previous years.

Rossiyskaya Gazeta writes that foreign workers are less willing to come to Russia for two reasons: tougher migration policies and declining incomes. With the rouble’s depreciation, earnings in dollar terms have fallen by roughly a third.

Yet Russia still remains the most popular destination for labour migrants from nearly all Central Asian countries.

In second place for migrants from Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan is Kazakhstan, where most work in construction, wholesale and retail trade, and various service industries.

Third is Turkey, where Central Asian migrants are employed in manufacturing — especially textiles and clothing — as well as construction, hospitality, and seasonal agriculture.

South Korea recruits migrant labor for factories, agriculture, construction, and the fishing and seafood-processing industries.

But for many — like Bilal, who left Russia behind — the dream is still to secure a job offer in Europe. In the end, he managed to do so through the same intermediaries he had relied on earlier, paying them $2,000, he says. They helped arrange an invitation from a logistics company.

“If you don’t have work experience in Europe, it’s hard at first to get a job with a good trucking company. There are bad employers who take advantage of newcomers not knowing their rights. They might underpay you or force you to work overtime. At the same time, the police keep a very close eye on work-and-rest rules and can fine you, so nobody wants to break the law. By law, if your driving time is up, you have to stop and rest,” Bilal says, recalling his first job at a Slovak company.

After gaining some experience, he moved to another company, where he now earns around €2,500 a month.

According to the International Road Transport Union (IRU), more than half of European transport companies cannot expand their business because of a shortage of qualified drivers. Across the EU, Norway, and the UK, more than 233,000 truck drivers are currently required. The crisis is deepened by the fact that the profession is aging rapidly, and young people are not drawn to it, despite decent pay.

Ukrainian citizens once made up a significant share of long-haul drivers in the EU, but because of the war many had to return home for military service. In addition, some European employers terminated contracts with Russian and Belarusian citizens (or their visas weren’t renewed), forcing them to return home as well.

In Slovakia, where Bilal is officially employed, the shortage reached 12,000 drivers last year. As a result, the country simplified visa procedures for several nations — including Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Ukraine — for applicants willing to work in freight transport.

Poland actively issues work permits to citizens of Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan; the Czech Republic attracts workers from Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan by fast-tracking work visas; Lithuania also issues visas to those seeking jobs as drivers.

In 2023, the number of first-time work permits issued in the EU to citizens of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan rose by 30%, 39%, 50%, and 63% respectively compared to the previous year.

But Bilal believes that even with the current labour shortages, getting into Europe from Central Asia is still far from easy. “If you don’t have people here who can recommend you to a company, it’s a difficult process for ordinary working people,” he says.

All the more so because public frustration over migration has been growing across Europe in recent years, pushing some governments to tighten rules for third-country nationals — even in sectors suffering from labour shortages.

Bilal likes living in Europe. He’s satisfied with the good pay and the way people treat him — especially Italians and the French.

He describes his job as demanding. “We spend more time away from home than at home. Years go by, and people hardly see their families,” he says.

Bilal himself doesn’t yet have a wife or children. In a few years, he’ll be eligible to apply for permanent residency in Slovakia, but he hasn’t decided whether he’s ready to spend his whole life driving long-haul trucks across Europe.

*The protagonist’s name has been changed at his request. With contributions from Almira Abidinova and Aisymbat Tokoeva. Read this story in Russian here. English version edited by Jenny Norton.

Source: “Why Central Asian migrant workers are giving up on Russia,” BBC News Russian (Substack), 18 December 2025.

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

All the Tabs Open in Chrome

https://raspad.network

Yekaterina Duntsova, who wants to run for president, said the Kremlin should end the conflict in Ukraine, free political prisoners and undertake major reform to halt the slide towards a new era of “barbed wire” division between Russia and the West.

Nearly 32 years since the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union stoked hopes that Russia would blossom into an open democracy, Duntsova, 40, said she was afraid as she spoke to Reuters in Moscow.

Source

In opinion polls, Russians voice support for the Putin regime’s action in Ukraine. And yet, many Russia would like the war to end, and the dynamics of recruiting “contract” soldiers does not demonstrate that a large number of people are ready to rise up “to fight the West in Ukraine.” What are the real sentiments of Russians? What do they think about the war and how do they justify it?

Lev Gudkov, deputy director, research director, Levada Center, “The war and collective identity,” (online)
Andrei Kolesnikov, senior researcher at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center in Berlin, “A semi-mobilized society in a hybrid totalitarian regime” (online)
Svetlana Erpyleva, Humboldt Fellow, Research Center for Eastern European Studies at the University of Bremen; researcher, Public Sociology Lab and the Centre for Independent Sociological Research, “Accepting the inevitable: how Russians justify the war in Ukraine”

Source. Annotation translated by the Russian Reader

Viktor Filinkov, convicted in the Petersburg portion of the high-profile Network Case, turned twenty-nine in early November. It was his third birthday in the penal colony, and for the first time he was not given any special “gift” there. Previously, surprises had been waiting for him that were even hard to imagine—for example, a new uniform with a piece of razor inside it. Filinkov has been imprisoned for six years total. During this time, he has seen a lot, including being threatened with dispatch to a war zone, but he quickly put a stop to such “jokes.” Now he is housed in the high-security wing along with other “repeat offenders.” And he constantly files suits against the penal colony. We talked to his girlfriend and public defender Yevgenia Kulakova, who loves him with all her heart and helps defend his rights behind bars.

Source. Excerpt translated by the Russian Reader, who looks forward to the day when he can see his friend and heroine Jenya Kulakova again and meet his hero Viktor Filinkov in person.

Putin noted that visitors from Tajikistan can stay in Russia for an extended period—fifteen days—without registering with the immigration authorities. They can also apply for a work permit that is valid for up to three years.

In addition, Putin announced the expansion of the quota for university students and postgraduates from Tajikistan—from 900 to 1,000 individuals.

The head of the Russian Federation added that the state would allocate 200 million rubles annually from this year for purchasing textbooks for Russian-speaking schools in Tajikistan.

Various regions of Russia have recently imposed restrictions on migrant labor. There have also been proposals to introduce such bans everywhere for visitors from countries where the Russian language is not recognized at the state level. In Tajikistan, Russian is enshrined in the constitution as the language of interethnic communication.

Due to the unstable financial situation, migrant workers have been leaving Russia. Up to a third of Tajik and Uzbek nationals may leave the country.

Source. Translated by the Russian Reader

As of February 24, 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin declared the beginning of what he dubbed the “special military operation” and the Russian Armed Forces invaded Ukrainian territory. What the Russian authorities assumed would be a swift operation soon became a drawn-out, full-fledged war. Many events occurred over the course of the first year of war, keeping Russians in suspense, forcing them to detach themselves from the situation, giving them hope, and then driving them to despair. When we conducted our first interviews in spring 2022, many thought the war would not last long.

Since then, it has become clear that the war will be with us for a while. The daily life of Russian citizens has been invaded time and again by dramatic events. The Russian retreat from the occupied territories, the annexation of new regions, the bombing of Kiev, the first Crimean Bridge explosion, and the “partial mobilization”— to name just a few. Have these events changed the average Russian’s view of the war, and if so, how? How did residents of the Russian Federation perceive the “special military operation” more than half a year later? These questions are the focus of the report you see before you.

There are several research teams monitoring changes in Russian perceptions of the war through opinion polls (for example, Russian Field and Chronicles). The work they are doing is very important. However, like any research method, surveys have their drawbacks—there are some things they simply will not show. For example, surveys do not always allow us to understand a respondent’s attitude towards sensitive or hot-button topics, as sometimes people have a tendency to hide their true views. But more importantly, for Russians largely removed from the political process, perceptions of such politically-charged issues as the “special military operation,” war, and military conflict do not fit neatly into the standardized set of coherent positions that a survey is capable of capturing. These perceptions may be complex and contradictory, and in this case, in-depth interviews and long conversations with people allow us to better understand the idiosyncrasies of each viewpoint. To our knowledge, we are the only team that systematically monitors Russian perceptions of the war using qualitative (interview) rather than quantitative (survey) methods.

We released our first analytical report in September 2022. You can read it here (in Russian) and here (in English). In it, we presented the results of our qualitative study through interviews conducted over several months after the start of the war, in March, April, and May 2022. Our interviewees held a variety of opinions on the military conflict—there were those who supported the hostilities in one way or another (war supporters), those who condemned military aggression (war opposers), and those who tried to avoid giving any explicit assessment of the situation (undecided). We compared these three groups of respondents with each other: how they perceive the armed conflict, what emotions they associate with it, and how they consume information, assess the victims of the conflict, discuss the situation with loved ones, reflect on the consequences of the war, and so on. We have also published the results of this research in analytical media outlets, a few examples of which can be found here, here, and here, as well as in scientific journals, such as those found here (in Russian) and here.

The paper you are currently reading is the second analytical report we have published and a continuation of this research. It is based on qualitative sociological interviews with Russian citizens conducted in fall 2022, from 7 to 9 months after the outbreak of the war. We wanted to determine how Russian perceptions of the war had changed during this period. This time, we excluded subjects who consistently opposed the war from the sample and decided to focus our study on the specifics of perceptions held by Russian citizens who did not have an unambiguous anti-war stance.

Source

In audio intercepts from the front lines in Ukraine, Russian soldiers speak in shorthand of 200s to mean dead, 300s to mean wounded. The urge to flee has become common enough that they also talk of 500s — people who refuse to fight.

As the war grinds into its second winter, a growing number of Russian soldiers want out, as suggested in secret recordings obtained by The Associated Press of Russian soldiers calling home from the battlefields of the Kharkiv, Luhansk and Donetsk regions in Ukraine.

The calls offer a rare glimpse of the war as it looked through Russian eyes — a point of view that seldom makes its way into Western media, largely because Russia has made it a crime to speak honestly about the conflict in Ukraine. They also show clearly how the war has progressed, from the professional soldiers who initially powered Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion to men from all walks of life compelled to serve in grueling conditions.

“There’s no f—— ‘dying the death of the brave’ here,” one soldier told his brother from the front in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region. “You just die like a f—— earthworm.”

The prospect of another wave of mobilization lingers, even as Moscow has been trying to lure people into signing contracts with the military. Russia’s annual autumn conscription draft kicked off in October, pulling in some 130,000 fresh young men. Though Moscow says conscripts won’t be sent to Ukraine, after a year of service they automatically become reservists — prime candidates for mobilization.

Source

Twenty months ago, after Vladimir Putin had launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine, many high-ranking Russians believed that the end was near. The economy faced disaster, as they saw it, and the Putin regime was on the brink of collapse.

Today, the mood has changed dramatically. Business leaders, officials and ordinary people tell me that the economy has stabilized, defying the Western sanctions that were once expected to have a devastating effect. Putin’s regime, they say, looks more stable than at any other time in the past two years.

Restaurants in Moscow are packed. “The restaurant market is growing, not only in Moscow, but throughout Russia, facilitated by the development of domestic tourism,” said a top Russian restaurateur. “And the quality of food is also changing for the better. Sure, panic struck the industry in early 2022, but it quickly passed.”

Source

Due to Helsinki’s decision to temporarily close the border with Russia, Finnish resident Yevgeny doesn’t know when he will be able to see his father again. He and other Russian-speaking residents of Finland are trying to get through to the authorities to convince them to open at least one border crossing.

Source. Annotation translated by the Russian Reader

Unprecedented dragnets for conscripts have been taking place in Moscow. The capital’s military enlistment offices have launched a large-scale “single-day” conscription campaign, dispatching people with serious illnesses and visitors from other regions to the army. The Russian conscripts have not yet been sent to Ukraine for full-scaled combat. But the number of lawsuits against draft commissions has tripled compared to 2022 and is approaching a thousand cases. The BBC tells how conscription is taking place in the Russian capital, which lawyers describe as lawlessness.

Source. Excerpt translated by the Russian Reader

Maria Andreeva, whose husband has been fighting in Ukraine for more than a year, is also waging a battle in Moscow: to get him home.

She is not alone.

A growing movement of Russian women is demanding the return from the front of their husbands, sons and brothers who were mobilised after a decree by President Vladimir Putin in September last year.

Initially, the movement pledged loyalty to what the Kremlin calls its “special military operation” (SVO) but what they regard as the perfunctory response they have received is hardening some of their opinions.

Source

The Udege language is so phonetically rich that linguists have devised several Cyrillic-based alphabets for it in an attempt to capture this wealth. Udege has both an inclusive and exclusive first-person plural pronoun (“we”), and the terms describing spatial relationships have parallel meanings in the home and beyond its confines. The language of the Udege people reflects their idea of the equality of time and space, and the starting point for the speaker is either a river or a hearth. Linguist Elena Perekhvalskaya acquaints us with the Udege language.

Source. Excerpt translated by the Russian Reader, who was told the other day by a prominent Udege civil rights activist that the number of native speakers of Udege is now eleven.

In reality, as the testimony of numerous witnesses shows, the armed conflicts between the Russian state and the subjugated peoples of Siberia demonstrate that Russian colonization differs little from European colonialism in Africa, Asia, and the Americas. The only apparent difference was how the colonizers treated the people they conquered. While the Spanish Conquistadors committed large-scale massacres in their pursuit of gold, the Siberian Cossacks were more interested in extracting lucrative tributes from locals. These tributes, paid in the form of furs collected by the legendary hunters of the conquered peoples, became a major source of wealth for the tsars. The legend that indigenous peoples were such expert hunters they could “shoot a squirrel in the eye” persists to this day.

Source

Irina Gurskaya, a human rights activist and volunteer, arrived in Cologne from Penza a year ago. More precisely, she did not come willingly but fled to Germany on a humanitarian visa. At the age of sixty, the pensioner had to leave her home, fearing for her life. The reason for Irina’s intimidation and harassment by the security forces in Penza was that she had helped Mariupol residents taken to Penza to return to their homeland or leave for safe countries.

Source. Excerpt translated by the Russian Reader

We don’t know whether there will be a stalemate on the battlefield moving into 2024, or more dramatic changes in the frontline like we saw in May and November 2022. It remains to be seen whether a more ambitious mobilization campaign will be attempted after the presidential elections in March 2024. It would face the same problems as those I have described here. Utter lack of capacity and resources among the commissariat, informal institutionalized ways of avoiding or undoing the will of the centre to recruit. Massive labour shortages which make industry hostile. A counter-productive administrative system of coercive command. Active and passive agency of the vast majority to avoid the draft. There are various indirect signs that the authorities collectively fear the results of having to implement further mobilization.

The botched first mobilization created an atmosphere of bitterness, fear and hostility to the state’s conduct regarding the war. It would be a mistake to say that mobilization in 2022 broke the social contract between state and people, because there was none to begin with. If the war continues, Russian society will become ‘insurgent’. Not literally, but figuratively, people will become more actively resistant to recruitment to the meatgrinder. No monetary offers, nor spreadsheet autocracy will be effective.

Source

Despite decades under Putin’s rule, it is too simplistic to assert that authoritarianism in Russia has eliminated activism, especially in relation to everyday life. Instead, we must build an awareness of diverse efforts to mobilize citizens to better understand how activism is shaped by and, in turn, shapes the regime.

Varieties of Russian Activism focuses on a broad range of collective actions addressing issues from labor organizing to housing renovation, religion, electoral politics, minority language rights, and urban planning. Contributors draw attention to significant forms of grassroots politics that have not received sufficient attention in scholarship or that deserve fresh examination. The volume shows that Russians find novel ways to redress everyday problems and demand new services. Together, these essays interrogate what kinds of practices can be defined as activism in a fast-changing, politically volatile society.

An engaging collection, Varieties of Russian Activism unites leading scholars in the common aim of approaching the embeddedness of civic activism in the conditions of everyday life, connectedness, and rising society-state expectations.

Source

The Bolshoy Kinel River flows among the forests of the Orenburg Region. Its name derives from the Bulgar word kin, meaning “wide.” When the ancient Bulgars first encountered it, they saw a wide, full-flowing river and decided to settle there. But nowadays the river is gradually disappearing: the banks have shoaled, the bottom is silted up, and the springs that feed it are clogged. And yet, the Bolshoy Kinel is only source of water for several towns. Its tributaries are also drying up. In 2021, the Turkhanovka River, which flows through the entire length of the city of Buguruslan, completely disappeared. It was a tragedy for the townspeople. The local residents joined together and together cleared the river of debris—and the water returned. It transpired that there are many people living in the town who feel a great love for their land. I spoke with them. And, as I gathered their stories, I saw how everyone’s small deeds, like rivulets, combine into one big, important cause—just as the Turkhanovka River flows into the Bolshoy Kinel, the Bolshoy Kinel into the Samara, the Samara into the Volga, and the Volga into the Caspian Sea.

Source. Excerpt translated by the Russian Reader. Photo by Darya Aslanyan for Takie Dela

There’s an idea about how children learn to read that’s held sway in schools for more than a generation — even though it was proven wrong by cognitive scientists decades ago. Teaching methods based on this idea can make it harder for children to learn how to read. In this podcast, host Emily Hanford investigates the influential authors who promote this idea and the company that sells their work. It’s an exposé of how educators came to believe in something that isn’t true and are now reckoning with the consequences — children harmed, money wasted, an education system upended.

Source

Both sides of the author’s family were remarkable. His maternal grandfather, Alfred Wiener, was a prominent German Jew who created the most extensive archives documenting the Holocaust; Alfred’s wife and daughters were deported to a concentration camp. The author’s paternal grandmother was transported to a gulag in Siberia. A tale of survival, eloquently told.

Source

A lyrical excavation of trauma and healing in the midst of early motherhood – the debut work of an endlessly inventive poet whose work ‘fizzes with energy, physicality, and the levitating openness of song’.

Source

It was snowing heavily when Yulia walked across the only open border between Ukraine and Russia last month, carrying her two cats and dragging a large suitcase behind her.

She had left her village on the edge of Russian-occupied Melitopol, a city in Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region, more than 24 hours earlier, paying a Russian ‘carrier’ with a minivan around $250 (nearly £200) to take her to the border-crossing in Ukraine’s northern Sumy region.

Walking across the two-kilometre no-man’s land was the final step in a long journey that is not without risk. Just two weeks earlier, a Russian volunteer who was transporting Ukrainians to the Sumy checkpoint was detained and tortured by Russian security personnel.

It was Yulia’s second attempt at the crossing. The first time, in early autumn, she was turned back at the border because she did not have a Russian passport and her name was flagged in a Russian state database as she had been questioned by the security services twice: once for tearing down Russian propaganda posters and then for arguing with a neighbour about life during the Soviet Union.

Source

If you’d like to see any of the Russian-language articles excerpted here translated in full and published on this website, make a donation in any amount to me via PayPal, indicating which article you’d like me to translate, and I’ll make it happen. ||| TRR

(A Quiet) Civil War

(A Quiet) Civil War • Dictionary of War, Novi Sad edition, January 25–26, 2008

My concept is “civil war”— or rather, “a quiet (civil war).” Another variant might be: cold civil war. I will talk about how the (global) economy of war—hot war, cold war, civil war—is experienced by victims and bystanders in a place seemingly far from actual frontlines. In reality, the frontlines are everywhere—running down the middle of every street, crisscrossing hearts and minds. This permanent war is connected to the project that posits the presence of civil society in one part of the world, while also asserting the necessity of building civil society in other parts of the world where allegedly uncivil social, political, and economic arrangements have been or have to be abolished. The real effect of this high-minded engineering is the destruction of people, classes, and lifestyles whose continued survival in the new order is understood (but hardly ever stated) to be either problematic or unnecessary. The agents of this destruction are varied—from random street crime, assassinations, inflation, alcoholism, factory and institute closures, to pension and healthcare reform, the entertainment and news industry, and urban renovation. The place I will talk about is Russia and Saint Petersburg, where I have lived for much of the past fourteen years. My concept is intended as a memorial to a few victims and local eyewitnesses of this war—people I either know personally or came to know about through the stories of friends or other encounters. I will also sketch the tentative connections between that civil war and the troubles in this part of the world; and, very briefly, show how the victors in this war claim their spoils.

This term—(a quiet) civil war—was suggested to me by the Petersburg poet Alexander Skidan during a conversation we had last spring. I had been telling Alexander about the recent murder of my friend Alexei Viktorov. Alexei is fated to remain a mere footnote in Russian art history. I mean this literally: in a new book, Alexei is correctly identified as the schoolmate of the Diaghilev of Petersburg perestroika art, Timur Novikov, and the painter Oleg Kotelnikov. I met Alexei in 1996, when Oleg let me live in his overly hospitable studio in the famous artists squat at Pushkinskaya-10. Alexei showed up a few weeks later. He had spent the summer in the woods, living off mushrooms and whatever edibles he could find. In his youth, he had acquired the nickname Труп (Corpse). With his gaunt features and skinny frame, he certainly looked the part. As I would soon discover, he was one of the gentlest men on earth. He was also a terrific blues guitarist. And he was the first Hare Krishna in Leningrad and, perhaps, the entire Soviet Union—which was quite a feat, considering that his conversion took place in the dark ages of the seventies.

Last winter, friends chipped in on a plane ticket, and Alexei was able to fulfill a lifelong dream and travel to India. When he and his companions arrived at the Krishna temple, Alexei was greeted by the community as a conquering hero. Since Alexei’s life had been quite miserable of late back home, his friends insisted that he stay behind in India. Instead, he decided to return to Petersburg. A few days after his arrival home he was walking from the subway in the northern Lakes district of the city to the house of a friend. Along the way he was attacked—the police say by a gang of teenagers. The teenagers beat Alexei within an inch of his life and pushed him into a ravine. The police investigator guessed that Alexei had lain unconscious for some time. When he came to, he had apparently struggled to raise his battered body up and clamber out of the ravine; in his struggle, he had for some reason started tearing off his clothes, perhaps because his rib cage and chest were so badly crushed that he was suffocating. His body was discovered a couple days later. The police held it for another few days while they completed their investigation, which led to no arrests. Alexei’s funeral was held a few days afterwards at the Smolensk Cemetery on Vasilievsky Island. He was buried a few hundred meters from the grave of his schoolmate Timur Novikov, who died in 2002.

It was this story that prompted Alexander Skidan’s remark to me: “A quiet civil war has been going on here.” What did Alexander have in mind? What could the random albeit violent murder of a single human being have in common with the explicitly political and massively violent struggles that have taken place here in the former Yugoslavia and such parts of the former Soviet Union as Abkhazia, Southern Ossetia, Tajikistan, Nagorno-Karabakh, and Chechnya? How could Alexei—who, as the Russian saying has it, lived “quieter than the water, lower than the grass”—be viewed as an enemy combatant in such a war? Can we really compare his unknown assailants to representatives of the opposite warring party? Given what they did to him, it is clear that they viewed Alexei as their enemy—an enemy subject to sudden, violent execution when encountered in the proper (hidden, invisible) setting.

I anticipate serious objections to my line of argumentation. One such objection I have already heard in the person of my friend Igor. Igor, whose father is Ossetian, and whose mother is Ukrainian, grew up in Dushanbe, which was then the capital of the Tajik Soviet Socialist Republic. I have never been to Dushanbe, but I have heard Igor describe it so many times in such glowing terms that I have come to think of it as heaven on earth. While I am sure that much of the paradisiacal tone in Igor’s recollections has to do with temporal and physical distance, it really does seem that the Dushanbe of the sixties and seventies was a kind of cosmopolitan oasis—a place where all sorts of forced or voluntary exiles from all imaginable Soviet ethnic communities and other cities ended up living in something like harmony.

This harmony bore the name “Soviet Union,” and Igor himself has often seemed to me the ideal homo soveticus (in the positive, internationalist sense of that term), a person to whom the refrain of the popular song—“My address isn’t a street or a building, my address is the Soviet Union”—fits perfectly. Before the collapse of the Soviet Union, Igor was the country’s leading expert on the seismic stability of electrical substations. From the onset of the Tajik civil war, in the early nineties, Igor was unable to return to Dushanbe. This had to do with the fact that in his internal Soviet passport, his place of birth was identified as Khorog, the capital of the Pamir region, which is where some of the “anti-government” forces had their power base. If Igor had returned to Dushanbe, he could easily have been stopped by soldiers during a documents check and executed on the spot. This is what happened to a number of his friends and schoolmates.

After the war was over, Igor’s father was able to reclaim the family home near Vladikavkaz, in Northern Ossetia, which had been confiscated by the authorities when Igor’s grandfather had been executed as an enemy of the people in the thirties. Northern Ossetia was a relative oasis during the nineties, despite the fact that Chechnya and Ingushetia were just over the mountains and neighboring Southern Ossetia had broken away from Georgia. This relative calm came to an abrupt end in September 2004, when terrorists besieged the school in neighboring Beslan. During the siege, members of Igor’s extended family were killed.

This is how Igor puts it: “Civil war is when the bus you’re on is stopped by soldiers and some of the passengers are taken off to be shot. And you sit there in the bus listening to the sound of gunfire and waiting for it to be over so that you can continue on your way. That’s civil war. What you’re talking about is not civil war.” Igor is certainly right.

He is also wrong in another sense. The quiet civil war I am describing here—among whose victims, I claim, was our friend Alexei—draws its energy and some of its methods from the real civil wars that have been fought in the hinterlands that are literally unthinkable to folks in such seemingly safe, prosperous places as Petersburg and Moscow. An immediate consequence of the siege in Beslan was that President Putin abolished gubernatorial elections in the Russian Federation’s eighty-four regions and federal cities. This, it was argued, would strengthen Moscow’s control—its so-called power vertical—over local officials whose incompetence and corruption had led, supposedly, to guerrillas infiltrating Beslan and capturing the school with such ease. Meanwhile, the civil wars and socioeconomic collapse in places like Tajikistan have led to a flood of refugees and migrant workers into Central Russia and its two capitals. The booming building trade in Moscow and Petersburg to a great degree now depends on the abundant, cheap supply of workers from Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Moldova, and other former Soviet republics.

These workers are literally visible everywhere nowadays: with the oil economy fueling a tidal wave of consumerism whose major players have now turned to real estate as an outlet for investing their wealth, the capitals have become gigantic construction sites. And yet the conditions of their work and their lives are just as literally invisible. For example, Tajik workers and other darker-skinned Central Asians and Caucasians are subjected to frequent, unnecessary documents checks in public places such as subway stations. This is something that every Petersburger and Muscovite has seen ten thousand times, but it is also something they pretend not to see, judging by the lack of public reaction to the practice. Even less reaction is generated by neo-Nazi attacks on such workers, other foreigners, members of Russia’s ethnic minorities, and anti-fascist activists, which have become more and more common in the past several years.

I want to paint one more, brief verbal portrait of another victim in this quiet civil war. This portrait is connected with the violence inflicted on this city and other parts of Serbia during the NATO bombing campaign of 1999. The official and popular reaction in Russia to this violence was quite harsh. There were massive demonstrations outside the US embassy in Moscow; unknown assailants even fired a grenade into an empty office at the embassy. What surprised me were the more spontaneous reactions to the bombings. One day, a young American artist and I were standing in the courtyard of the squat at Pushkinskaya-10 chatting with a local artist. Two acquaintances of ours—members of a well-regarded alternative theater troupe—entered the courtyard. When they saw us, they shouted, “Don’t talk to those Americans! They’re bombing our Serbian brothers!” Since they said all this with a smile, it was hard to know to what extent we were supposed to take their warning as a “joke.”

It occurred to me then that a fundamental shift was occurring in the consciousness of Russians who had been, both in practical and philosophical terms, “westernizers” and “liberals” not long before. That this shift was also extending into the “masses” was confirmed for me a few days later. Late one night, I suddenly heard a drunken-sounding young man yelling up to an apartment across the street: “Masha! Goddammit, come downstairs and let me in!” Since repeated requests had no apparent effect on the silent, invisible Masha, the young man became more explicit in declaring his unhappiness with Masha’s thwarting of his affections. “Masha, you fucking bitch, come down and let me in! You’re breaking my fucking heart!” The turn the man’s soliloquy took next, however, signaled to me that we all were living in a new world. “Masha, go fuck yourself! NATO, go fuck yourselves!” (Маша, пошла ты в жопу! Блок НАТО, пошли вы в жопу!) This effusive condemnation of Masha and NATO continued for some time, after which the thwarted lover fell silent or fell over drunk.

If I had known that I would be invited to speak at this conference nine years later, I would have recorded the whole performance. Instead of speaking to you now, I would have played back the recording in full. Not in order to make fun of the young man whose heart had been broken in two by the combined forces of Masha and NATO, but so that you could hear what the quiet civil war I am trying to talk about sounds like. This is what I meant when I said, at the beginning of my remarks, that the frontlines in this new kind of war cross through hearts and minds and run down the middle of streets. This is not what happens when civil society breaks down; it is what happens when “civil society” is a code word (pronounced and enacted in tandem with other code words such as “democracy” and “liberal economy”) used to camouflage the incursion into the city of invading forces. The new regime they have come to establish can in reality do quite happily without “civil society,” democracy, and liberalism. But these words and the real actions taken and deals made behind their smokescreen are quite effective in destroying the historic and imaginary forms of solidarity that might have given folks like our unhappy young lover the means to defend themselves somehow. Instead, we end up with the muddle in our heads that lets us imagine that Masha and NATO are allied against us. Or that NATO is bringing democracy and security to Afghanistan. Or that, instead, to thwart NATO’s expansion to the east we have to round up Georgian restaurant workers and deport them back to Georgia—which, paradoxically, used to be nearly every Russian’s favorite place on earth.

As Alexander Skidan himself told me, the NATO bombing campaign of 1999 really had destroyed the illusions that he and most everyone else he knew had both about the west and about the meaning of the radical transformation of Russian society that was carried out under the banner of a rapprochement with the west and a leap forward into liberal democracy and neoliberal capitalism. What Alexander and his friends saw as the west’s treachery in the Kosovo crisis had thrown a new retrospective light on a period they had until then been experiencing as a golden age for artists and ambitious young people like themselves—an age of unprecedented opportunity for self-expression at home and dizzying trips abroad. Why hadn’t the massive immiseration and unemployment of the post-Soviet population during the early nineties produced this same enlightenment? Or the violent disbanding of the Russian parliament, in 1993? Or the first war in Chechnya? Or the fact that, in Alexander’s case, his own father, a professor at the city’s shipbuilding institute, had gone in a matter of a year or two from being a respected member of his society to being an outmoded nobody who had to struggle to survive? Somehow, Alexander and his kind had noticed all this, of course, and not seen it. Or seen it and decided that these were the sort of temporary measures and necessary obstacles on the road to a better future. As he sees it now, the whole point of the Russian nineties was to decommission and eliminate whole sections of the population—teachers, doctors, factory workers, the poor, the aging, the less ambitious, and the more gullible. And this civil war, which continues to this day, paved the way to the quite logically illiberal current regime.

Which of course is wholly staffed by the victors in the quiet civil war of the nineties—not by the victims, whose victimhood is converted into ever-greater quantities of political, symbolic, and real capital by those same victors. Thus, the current favorite to win the Russian presidential elections in March announced the other day that his goal was to create a strong civil society where the freedoms and rights of all citizens would be cherished and protected.

This is one way to cash in your chips at the end of a successful quiet civil war. But our globalizing economy is such that you can even profit from someone else’s civil wars. My favorite new example of such capitalization is the American alternative band Beirut, the brainchild of 22-year-old Zach Condon, a native of Santa Fe, New Mexico. Overly sensitive types might wonder how you grow up in peaceful Santa Fe and end up calling your band Beirut—but as we Americans love to say, It’s a free country.[1] (In its article on the band’s “Balkan-inspired” debut album, Gulag Orkestar, Wikipedia helpfully explains that the “Gulag was a system of Russian [corrective labor camps] in Siberia.”)

It is too much to expect that alternative radio stations would play, instead of Beirut’s fake Balkan wedding music, the 1999 lament of Masha’s spurned lover. Besides, I didn’t have the good sense to record it and release it as an album.

[1] “One of the reasons I named the band after that city was the fact that it’s seen a lot of conflict. It’s not a political position. I worried about that from the beginning. But it was such a catchy name. I mean, if things go down that are truly horrible, I’ll change it. But not now. It’s still a good analogy for my music. I haven’t been to Beirut, but I imagine it as this chic urban city surrounded by the ancient Muslim world. The place where things collide.” Rachel Syme, “Beirut: The Band,” New York, 6 August 2006.

Mardikor

“Every Day We Go Out on the Road”: A Documentary About the Lives of Female Mardikors Has Been Made in Tajikistan
Fergana
July 2, 2020

Tajik journalists have made the documentary film Mardikor [“Day Laborer” or “Handywoman,” as the filmmakers themselves have translated the term], which details the plight of female day laborers in the city of Bokhtar, 100 kilometres from Dushanbe. The picture was created as part of MediaCAMP (Central Asia Media Program), implemented by Internews with financial support from USAID, writes Asia-Plus.

Pop-up mardikor markets exist in all the cities and major towns of Tajikistan. But whereas earlier only men offered their services there, women’s markets have also recently appeared. Women who are divorced or left without the support of husbands who have gone to work abroad are willing to undertake any hard work for the sake of two or three dollars a day.

“The short film Mardikor tells the story of these women, most of whom are the abandoned wives of migrant workers. Their husbands do not return from the Russian Federation for years on end and do not send money to support their families. The majority of unemployed women at this labor market do not even have a school-leaving certificate. More than half are mothers with many children,” says the film’s director Mahpora Kiromova.

Thanks to Sergey Abashin for the heads-up. Film poster (below) courtesy of Mahpora Kiromova’s Facebook page. Translated by the Russian Reader

mardikor

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

Outcasts

Migrant workers from Tajikistan stranded at Moscow’s Vnukovo Airport, March 31, 2020. Photo by Alexander Zemlianichenko. Courtesy of AP and Radio Azzatyq

Around 300 Migrant Workers Driven from Domodedovo onto Street at Night
Radio Azzatyq
Март 31, 2020

In the early hours of March 31, unidentified uniformed men chased about three hundred migrant workers, two hundred of them Tajik nationals, from the terminal building of Moscow’s Domodedovo Airport, as reported by Russian journalist Galiya Ibragimova on her Facebook page. All of them, she wrote, were trying to return home, but had been stranded at the airport due to the coronavirus and closed borders.

According to Ibragimova, she got a call from Farukh, a migrant worker from Tajikistan who was stranded at Domodedovo, and he told her what happened.

“We were kicked out of the airport. Uniformed employees arrived, asked how many of us there were, and told us to get everyone together. They promised that we would fly home tonight. We gathered everyone, nearly three hundred people. When we had gathered, they just tossed us out on the street at night, in the cold. They said, That’s it, you can’t be in the airport. And they kicked us out. People are now out on the street. We don’t know what to do,” he told Ibragimova.

Farukh also complained that the migrant workers did not have the means to leave the airport and get to temporary accommodation.

“We work like oxen in Russia. We rarely have a day off. But now no one wants us. We were simply thrown out like an unnecessary burden. Why are things this way? Help us!” Farukh complained to Ibragimova.

Farukh also made a video of how people ended up on the street in the wee hours of March 31.

The TV channel Current Time also made a report about migrant workers who were stranded at Domodedovo: they had no way to wash up and slept on chairs.

According to the migrant workers, neither the Tajik embassy nor the Russian authorities helped them in any way—it was volunteers and compatriots who brought them food and water. A promised charter flight to Tajikistan on Somon Air was canceled.

Translated by the Russian Reader

Sergey Abashin: Remittances by Central Asian Migrant Workers in Russia during the First Quarter of 2018

Central Asian migrant workers hard at work on a roof in central Petersburg on a Sunday in early May.

Sergey Abashin
Facebook
June 18, 2018

Finally I’m writing again about migrant workers, a subject that right at the moment interests very few people.

Data on remittances by private individuals from Russia to other countries for the first quarter of 2018 has been released by the Russian Central Bank after a great delay. Here is the picture they present.

Uzbekistan was the leader among the CIS countries. Its nationals remitted $726 million, which is 17% more than in the first quarter last year.

Tajikistan came in second place with $487 million, which is 15% more than the same time last year.

Kyrgyzstan took third place with $434 million, 9% up from the first quarter last year.

The figures thus show a significant increase in remittances, which testifies to an growth in the wages paid to migrant workers and an increase in the numbers of migrant workers themselves. Remittances to Kyrgyzstan have been growing more slowly, but in fact that means a large portion of the money earned by Kyrgyz nationals now stays in Russia to be spent on setting up their lives here.

P.S. By the way, the champion in terms of private remittances received from Russia is Switzerland—to the tune of $1.7 billion.

Photo and translation by the Russian Reader

Sergey Abashin: Reading About Migrant Workers

Central Asian migrant workers queueing to obtain work “patents” at the Russian Interior Ministry’s migrant workers processing center on Red Textile Worker Street in central Petersburg, March 10, 2017. Photo by TRR

Sergey Abashin
Facebook
March 19, 2017

Very few people are interested in reading about migrant workers in Russia. True, many people readily believe the myths and repeat them, but they don’t want to get to the bottom of things, even if you hand them the data on a silver platter. This apathetic attitude to figures and facts is also typical of how migration is regarded.

I wrote yesterday [see below] about the trends in the numbers of migrant workers from the Central Asian countries in Russia for 2014–2016. Let me remind you that the number of Kyrgyz nationals first fell and then began to grow, exceeding the previous highs by 10%. The figure is now about 0.6 million people. (I am rounding up). The number of Tajik nationals has decreased by 15–25% and has been at the same level, about 0.9 million people, for over a year, while the number of Uzbek nationals has decreased by 30–40%, to 1.5 million people.

Now let us look at the data on remittances, all the more since the Central Bank of Russia has published the final figures for 2016. In 2016, private remittances from Russia to Kyrgyzstan amounted to slightly more than $1.7 billion, which is 17% less than during the peak year of 2013, but 26% more than in 2015. Meaning that, along with an increase in the number of migrants, the amount of remittances has grown quickly as well, even at a faster pace. Remittances to Tajikistan amounted to slightly more than $1.9 billion in 2016, which is 54% less than the peak year of 2013. The amounts have been continuing to fall, although this drop has slowed as the number of migrant workers has stabilized. Remittances to Uzbekistan were slightly more than $2.7 billion in 2016, which is 59% less than in the peak year of 2013. Meaning the largest drop in the number of migrants has led to the largest drop in remittances.

*****

Sergey Abashin
Facebook
March 18, 2017

Data on the number of foreign nationals living and working in Russia has not been made public since April 2016, when the Federal Migration Service was disbanded. But this does not mean there is no such data. The figures exist, and they become available from time to time. For example, an article published in RBC [on March 16, 2017] supplies some data as of February 1, 2017. What follows from the figures?

The number of Kyrgyz nationals has increased since February 2016 by 5.6%, and since February 2015 by 8.9%, and amounts to 593,760 people.

The number of Tajik nationals increased by 0.7% over the past year, and by 13.3% over two years, and amounts to 866,679 people.

The number of Uzbek nationals has decreased over the past year by 15.2%, and by 31.7% over two years, and now amounts to 1,513,694 people.

So we see three different trends. After Kyrgyzstan joined the Eurasian Economic Community [now, the Eurasian Economic Union], the number of its nationals in Russia has continued to grown. After a decline of 15–20%, the number of Tajik nationals has stabilized, while the number of Uzbek nationals has fallen by 30–40%.

There are slightly less than a total of 3 million people from Central Asia living and working in Russia. (I did not take Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan into account. If I had, the figure would have come to about 3.6 million people.)

Sergey Abashin is British Petroleum Professor of Migration Studies at the European University in Saint Petersburg. His most recent book is Sovetskii kishlak: Mezhdu kolonializmom i modernizatsiei [The Soviet Central Asian village: between colonialism and modernization], Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2015. Translation and photo by the Russian Reader

Not My Job

Film about Tajik Migrant Worker Wins Special Prize in Switzerland
Russia for All
April 26, 2016

Главный герой документального фильма Дениса Шабаева «Чужая работа» мигрант из Таджикистана Фаррух<br /> Главный герой документального фильма Дениса Шабаева «Чужая работа» мигрант из Таджикистана Фаррух — Still from *Not My Job* (2015), Denis Shabaev, director

Denis Shabaev’s film Not My Job has won a prize for “most innovative first film” at the international documentary film festival Visions du Réel, which just wound up in the Swiss town of Nyon. The film was shown in the Neuf Regard competition.

The documentary tells the story of a native of Tajikistan who has come to Russia not only to work but also to launch a career as an actor.

“Farrukh is a migrant worker. With his father, mother, and brothers he lives in New Moscow and takes any job that will bring even a little money. But this is not why he has traveled from his native Tajikistan, leaving behind his young wife and small children. Farrukh wants to become an actor, a famous actor,” write the filmmakers in their annotation of the film.

While Farrukh searches for roles, he plays a migrant worker mistakenly accused of murder in a film. However, a bit later, Farrukh really causes the death of another man in a traffic accident and ends up behind bars.

“The camera literally follows the footsteps of this tragic character trying to find his way between the respect of his traditionalist parents and the will to integrate into a universe where no one is expecting him. With this first film, Denis Shabaev tells a cruel parable, whose dry and elliptical form captivates us from the first shot to the last,” writes Emmanuel Chicon in his synopsis of the film on the festival’s website.

The winner of the main prize in the Neuf Regard competition was The Dazzling Light of Sunset, by Georgian filmmaker Salomé Jashi.

Visions du Réel was founded in 1969. It was the first festival to open its doors to documentary cinema from so-called Eastern Bloc countries. This year was the forty-seventh edition of the festival, and over 180 pictures were shown in competition.

Migrant workers from Central Asian countries often feature as characters in fiction and documentary films in Russia. Thus, one of the most high-profile Russian films of recent years was the feature film She, in which most of the main roles were played not just by people from Tajikistan but real migrant workers.

She tells the story of a young Tajik woman who breaks the taboo and escapes from marriage in Tajikistan to join her boyfriend in Russia. He works illegally in a landfill, where he sorts garbage with other migrant workers and lives in a shanty. The main characters of the film will initially settle there and experience all the hardships faced by migrant workers.

Still from She, Larisa Sadilova (2013) — Still from *She* (2013), Larisa Sadilova, director

The film is based on real events, and nearly all the characters were played by non-professional actors. The casting for the lead female role in Dushanbe took a long time, but ultimately Nilufar Faizieva was chosen for the part. Subsequently, the actress and the picture would win several awards at Russian and international film festivals.

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