Real Russian darkness

[I wasn't sure whether I should post this. But Mom, I figured that you read the news anyway and would have read about what happened over the weekend. Thank G-d I haven't seen any of this with my own eyes, and have been far away when anything happened. And... unfortunately, this is Russia, too.]

Nationalism. Chauvinism. Racism. Whatever you call it, it's alive and well in Russia.

Russian racism tends to center on Central Asians, meaning people from the Caucasus' and the -stans. Sometimes they illegally come to large Russian cities to find work, usually off-the-books as construction workers or house cleaners. They tend to be poorly educated and not speak Russian well. And they don't look Russian, so they're that much more noticeable on the street. I don't think two wars in Chechnya and lots of terroristic acts (like the bombings on the Moscow metro in March) helped. Neither does the complete lack of political correctness in Russian culture, where it's perfectly normal to make remarks about different ethnicities. But people who look like they could be from the provinces of Chechnya, Ingushetia, Dagestan, or one of the -stans are much more likely to get stopped on the street and harassed.

In Moscow on December 5 an (ethnically Russian) football fan was killed by a migrant from the North Caucasus.
On December 11 a crowd of 5,500 people gathered in Moscow on Manezhnaya Ploshad' right near the Kremlin to yell racist slogans like "Russia is for Russians!", attack dark-skinned passersby, and fight with the riot police who were sent to break up the crowd and help victims of attacks. Here in Saint Petersburg, 3,000 people attended a 'memorial march' for the killed fan which ended up at Gostiny Dvor, right in the center of Nevsky Prospect.
Today in Saint Petersburg there were vague rumors going around to avoid Sennaya Ploshad', a major metro station. The skinheads had planned another массовый беспорядок (mass disorder). Luckily everyone knew about it, so the police were ready and waiting. As of now the police have detained more than 80 people. In Moscow, they've detained about 700.

On blogs people have been speculating that certain elements in the government have stirred up the unrest and are hoping to use it for their own means. I'm not sure that's true, seeing as the Putin/Medvedev government prides itself on the lack of unauthorized demonstrations. And I think they're smart enough to know that this kind of anger never comes to anything good. I wouldn't put it past some of the more extreme politicians though, like Zhirinovskii. But, as the Russians would say, Б-г один знает (only G-d knows).

I hope that's it for now. I hope it stops for good and that Russians learn to live with diversity -- or, as a matter of fact, with their fellow Russian citizens. But I worry that everyone who is against this kind of politics will just give up on Russia and leave for the West. And if that happens, Russia will destroy itself entirely, from the inside out.