The flood of “others” into Russia has never happened before, and the country is having to deal with it at the worst possible moment.

‘We’ve Had It with These Blacks’

by Daniil Kislov

In Moscow, people who were once part of a brotherhood of nations

 are riven by frustration, bitterness, and racism. 

When I take the lift down from my flat in a standard Moscow suburban high-rise and go outside, it feels like I’m back home in Uzbekistan, as the caretakers, electricians, and plumbers from the maintenance department all greet me with an “As-salaam alaykum! How are things? How’s the family?” I know 10 or so of the team of 30 who work in my area by name: Abdullazhon, the crew leader, and Malika, the cleaner, are both Uzbeks; Rustam, the carpenter, is from Tajikistan.

I was born in Uzbekistan, but have lived in Moscow for 20 years now. The stream of migrant workers from other former Soviet republics into Moscow, which in the last few years has grown into a flood, puzzles me, but doesn’t scare me as it does native Muscovites. If you’ve grown up in an ethnically mixed area you don’t think about people in racial terms, but as individuals – is someone a good or bad person, welcoming or cold, friendly or aggressive?

But for most of the people who live here in Moscow the incomers are not individuals, but a mass, a swarm of aliens with their own, unfamiliar, fantasies and myths. If you live here, this is something you come up against all the time. My mother-in-law, for example, lived in Tashkent for most of her life but was recently really worried when some “suspicious Asians” got into one carriage of our local train and then for some reason got out and went into a different carriage. Some of my friends automatically tense up at the sight of “non-Slav” faces in buses, cafes, and cinemas. And Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the leader of the phony Liberal Democratic Party (which nevertheless has seats in parliament) organizes show raids on markets in search of “real Russians.”

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