Framing Ethnic Issues Through the Notion of Discrimination: Th E Case of Russia

Alexander Osipov *

Framing Ethnic Issues through the Notion of Discrimination: Th e Case of Russia

In recent decades, the notions of racism and discrimination have become some of the major frames of reference in addressing ethnicity-related issues worldwide. Narratives resting on the respective terminology do not look odd anymore in any country outside North America or Western Europe. Th is global shift prompts applying the same approach to Russia: the country has an ethnically diverse popu- lation; a ban on violation of equal rights is declared in the Constitution and national legislation; Russia bears international obligations concerning nondiscrimination, and international law still serves as a system of reference for the government and a large part of the general public; for decades social equality was an idol of the ruling communist party, and the vocabulary of equality penetrated numerous offi cial dec- larations; academia and legal professionals have no obstacles to being aware of the disputes about racism and discrimination outside the country. Th is article provides a brief overview of how the Russian society at large reacts to the phenomena that would be labeled racism or racial discrimination. Regretfully, the theme remains insuffi ciently studied so far; almost all of the few academic publications available are dedicated to ethnic violence and radi- cal nationalist activities.1 More clarity in addressing this general issue can be achieved by dividing it into several questions narrower in scope. Are interpretative schemes resting on the notions of racism and racial discrimination employed in Russia? What kinds of social phenomena become visible and thus publicly debated through these terminologies and explanatory frames? Do people follow alternative ways to describe and explain prejudices, aggression and inequalities on ethnic or

* Alexander Osipov is a Senior Research Associate of the European Centre for Minor- ity Issues. 1 Marlene Laruelle, In the Name of the Nation: Nationalism and Politics in Contempo- rary Russia (Palgrave/MacMillan, New York, 2009); Michael McClintock, Everyday Fears: A Survey on Violent Hate Crimes in Europe and North America (Human Rights First, New York, Washington, D.C., 2005), 102-106; Anna Sevortian, “Xenophobia in Post-Soviet Russia”, 3 Th e Equal Rights Review (2009), 19-27.

European Yearbook of Minority Issues Vol 9, 2010, ISBN 978 9004 22934 1. pp. 21-53. © 2012 Koninklijke Brill NV. Alexander Osipov racial grounds? Which manifestations are viewed as social problems under this or that descriptive model? What is the social context of these perceptions and respective reactions? To what extent and in what ways can conceptualisations and the respective policies used in Russia be compared with the approaches employed in the EU and North America?

I. ‘Racism’ and ‘Discrimination’ as Practical Categories and Cognitive Tools Mapping the Russian case invites one to draw a parallel with ‘racisms’ or ‘counter- racisms’ in other regional or national frameworks, and this, in turn, raises questions. In addressing ethnicity-related issues, Russia employs a blend of diff erent categorizations, and public discourses incorporate racial, ethnic, and ‘national’ (in the meaning of ethnic origin or ascribed ethnicity) terminology. Words like ‘racial’ and ‘racism’ are in use in Russia, although in a limited capacity with blurry and shifting meanings and basically remain unpopular. Russians prefer to speak about ‘ethnic discrimination’ or ‘national (with ethnic connotations) discrimination’. For this reason, the terms ‘ethnic’ and ‘racial’ discrimination will be employed here as full synonyms. Th e labels of racism and discrimination, once a ‘local knowledge’2 predomi- nantly in North America, have become an agenda actively pushed toward global acceptance;3 nevertheless, until recently, there was no uniformity in their interpre- tation and application in many respects; each term marked diff erent approaches and practices in numerous areas of human activity. Th e word ‘racism’ has been vaguely defi ned in a variety of ways and encompasses ideas, attitudes, and behav- iors such as hate speech, violence, and diff erential treatment of people.4 In most cases, the term is employed in civil activism and sociology of race relations and may mean the belief that socially relevant characteristics of human beings must be regarded as derivatives of their belonging to certain categories defi ned in terms of origin (often taken with biological connotations), phenotypic characteristics,

2 Cliff ord Geertz, Local Knowledge: Further Essays in Interpretive Anthropology (Basic Books, New York, 1983). 3 Pierre Bourdieu and Loïc J. D. Wacquant, “On the Cunning of Imperialist Reason”, 16(1) Th eory, Culture & Society (1999), 41-58; Alastair Bonnett, “Th e Americanisa- tion of Anti-Racism: Global Power and Hegemony in Ethnic Equity”, 32(7) JEMS (2006), 1083-1103. 4 Michael Banton, Th e International Politics of Race (Polity Press, Cambridge, 2002); George Fredrickson, Racism: A Short History (Princeton University Press, Princeton, N.J., 2002); Robert Miles, Racism (Routledge, London, New York, 1989); Martin Reisigl and Ruth Wodak, Discourse and Discrimination: Rhetorics of Racism and Antisemitism (Routledge, London, 2001), 1-30; Les Back and John Solomos (eds.), Th eories of Race and Racism (Routledge, London, New York, 2000); Michel Wiev- iorka, Th e Arena of Racism (Sage, London, 1995).