Racial and ethnic violence is becoming more visible in Russia as some high profile cases have entered the news. There have been many explanations given for this rise of racial extremism. What tends to be missing however is the view that this is all connected to the general reconfiguration of Russian national identity.

The first high profile case was this weeks sentencing of Alexander Koptsev, 21 years old, to 13 years in prison for attacking worshipers at a Moscow synagogue. On January 11, Koptsev broke into the synagogue with a knife. According to witnesses he began shouting ???????I will kill Jews!??????? and slashed nine people before he was wrestled to the ground. Koptsev was sentenced for ???????ethnically and religiously motivated attempted murder.???????

But while Koptsev sentencing is justified, many were shocked this week when a group of eight youths were convicted of hooliganism, while a ninth was acquitted for the killing of Khursheda Sultanova, a 9 year-old Tajik girl who was murdered by a group of youths with baseball bats as she walked home with her father and 11 year old cousin. This is how Amnesty International describes the incident:

???????At around 21.00 on 9 February 2004, Khursheda Sultanova was returning to her home in St Petersburg with her father Yusuf Sultanov and her 11-year-old cousin Alabir Sultanov. As the Sultanov family reached the courtyard by their home they were set upon by a gang of youths carrying knuckledusters, chains, sticks and knives. During the violent assault that ensued, the attackers are reported to have shouted racist slogans at the victims, such as “Russia for Russians”. Khursheda Sultanova died at the scene of the attack from excessive blood loss ???????? according to police reports she had been stabbed 11 times in the chest, stomach and arms. Yusuf Sultanov sustained head injuries during the violent attack but reportedly refused hospitalization. Alabir Sultanov ???????? who later managed to hide under a nearby parked car to avoid further injury ???????? also sustained head injuries and received hospital treatment.

According to reports, several youths were detained by police soon after the attack and then released without charge. A criminal investigation into the murder has been opened, although the alleged racial intent of the attack has so far not been acknowledged by the authorities.???????

Yet despite this gruesome account, the court didn????????t charge the youths under Russia law for extremism and racial violence.

No one was more shocked than the father, Yusuf Sultanov. “No one told me that there will be a trial today,” he said in an RFE/RL article. “I did not received any written notice. And it is strange that they confessed earlier and now say they are not guilty. I could not understand. I am completely shattered as to why they do not want to punish murderers.”

Racial violence is on a steady rise in Russia. Immigrants mostly from Africa, Tajikistan, Azerbaijan, and other southern former Soviet Republics have been the victims. Concern for their citizens safety has led the Organization of African Unity to call for the Russian government to do something about racial violence against Africans. And just today, the St. Petersburg prosecutor????????s office has opened an investigation into the internet posting of a text called ???????Street Terrorism Handbook,??????? which urges readers to attack anyone who has violated ???????white order.??????? According to the St. Petersburg Prosecutors Office, there were 23 racially motivated deaths in 2004 in St. Petersburg alone. There were 34 in 2005. In Moscow there have already been 38 murders of Tajik migrant workers this year. Most, if not all, of these were perpetrated by skinheads.

In an article submitted to David Johnson????????s Russia List (#73), Michigan Professor of Sociology Vladimir Shlapentokh put the problem of racial extremism in Russia in the context of the long historical role of the hatred of others in Russia culture, and the present day difficulties of post-Soviet life. In the end he argues that while ???????crying wolf??????? about the specter of Russian fascism has been a frequent tactic by Russian liberals and Western critics since the collapse of Communism, today????????s extremism has new elements that can????????t be so easily ignored. The increase of racism and xenophobia from ???????below??????? is what is most alarming. According to a poll conducted in 2005 by the All Russian Center of Public Opinion 58 percent of those polled agreed with the slogan ???????Russia for Russians.??????? This was up from 46 percent in 1998. In addition, in February 2006, another poll by the Center found that only 8 percent connected this slogan to fascism.

Xenophobia, nationalism, and racism have only been exacerbated by politicians, like the Rodina (Motherland) Party, who in the Moscow City Duma elections in December used a television advertisement that equated Caucasian migrants to ???????trash.??????? Rodina was banned from participating in the elections as a result.

These views have also been generated from other areas. The ???????colored revolutions??????? in Ukraine, Georgia, and Kyrgyzstan, the push for NATO to expand eastward and the increasingly cool relations with the United States have increased Russians???????? view that they are embattled by the West. This view goes conveniently with the already held notion that the United States was directly responsible for the economic horrors of ???????shock therapy??????? in the 1990s. The emergence of a new cold war around the US attempts to facilitate the spread of Western-style democracy in former Soviet space has not only cooled relations between leaders, it has increased the skepticism of the legitimacy of ???????colored revolution??????? itself.

This of course has only increased the faith in Putin as a leader, his use of Russia????????s energy might to influence its former Republics, and support for authoritarian rulers like Viktor Lukashenko, to name a few.

It also doesn????????t bode well for liberalism in Russia. In anything the liberal center has dropped out of the political spectrum. The center is now firmly dominated by Putin????????s United Russia Party, which vows to serve as a stable alternative to both left and rightwing extremism. In fact, there have been several proclamations by Putin, United Russia, and their youth organization, Nashi (Our Own) against fascism. In a meeting with CIS leaders in May 2005, Putin declared that ???????Nazism, extremism and terrorism are threats that feed on the same ideology.???????

Platitudes against these aside, many have charged the Putin government with passively fanning the flames of xenophobia. The recent allegations that the British were using a rock to spy on Russia, the legislation tightening foreign NGOs, as well as the use of the media to denigrate Ukraine and Georgia after their ???????colored revolutions??????? are often cited as examples.

The question, however, remains why. Many point to the manipulation of the public by elites. Others point to the long tradition of Russian hatred of the Other. Some even blame the vestiges of Stalin. I personally find these insufficient though not without impact (however I do reject the Stalin explanation. Everything seems to place blame on Stalin as if Russia hasn????????t changed in the last 50 years). Instead, I would argue that along with all of this is a reconfiguration of Russianess itself. The collapse of an overarching national category of Soviet opened a space to be refilled by a more ethnic based nationalism. This is a process going on in most former Soviet states. Nationalism has existed but was suppressed in the Soviet period, and now a process of redefinition is occurring. The old symbols are gone thus new ones need to be created. The recent law before the Duma on ???????On the foundation of State national politics of the Russian Federation??????? is just one indication. I????????ve dealt with this law elsewhere. This sense of Russianess is in part formulated through the Other????????migrants coming into Russian cities as cheap labor; nations on its border which are moving out of its traditional imperial orbit; a sense of inferiority on the national stage; a reevaluation of the Soviet period, its achievements, and the place of Russians in it; the development of a historical continuity between Imperial Russia and Soviet Russia through the placing of leaders like Lenin and Stalin in the tradition of Peter the Great and Nicholas I. All of these are contributing to a new Russian national idea. And all them are predicated in distinguishing Russian from non-Russian.

None of this is new in the history of nationalism. Benedict Anderson argued long ago that nationalism is based on the creation of an ???????imagined community??????? of peoples based on similar ethnic, religious, geographical, or cultural backgrounds, while at the same time distinguishing them from Others. British national identity was formulated in relation to the French. And the French, the British. The American national identity is a combination of relations between internal and external others. The list could go on and on.

But the (re)formation of national identity often includes violence. Russia is no different in this respect. The brutality of the war in Chechnya and Russia????????s refusal to let it have independence is connected to this. As is the reason why the response to Belsan was more than the shock of horrific violence against children; it was also viewed as a violation of Russia itself. Shamil Basayev knew this as he placed the attack within the context of Russian patriarchy. He explained it as more than an attack on Russia????????s policy toward Chechnya, but also as a direct attack on Putin????????s ability to protect Russian children.

Whether racial extremism will become the official ideology of Russia is doubtful. But this doesn????????t mean that it will cease to exist from ???????below??????? or be used by those ???????above??????? for political purposes. However, one cannot ignore the role its playing not only in how Russians evaluate the Others inside and outside their country, but also in how they evaluate themselves as a people, a culture, an ethnicity, and as a political identity.