The economic crisis in the North Caucasus has produced a flourishing black market and underground economy there. By some estimates, 70 percent of the financial activity in Dagestan is generated in the region’s shadow economy. 31And it is not alone. According to official statistics, nearly a third of all economic activity in Russia’s Southern District—which encompasses Dagestan, Chechnya, and Ingushetia, as well as the republics of Adygeya, Kabardino-Balkaria, North Ossetia, and Karachaevo-Cherkessia—derives from illicit trade and informal financial transfers. 32
The Muslim regions of Russia’s heartland have fared better—thanks largely to the area’s role as a hub for energy and trade. As of 2010, unemployment rates in the republics of Tatarstan and Bashkortostan were officially estimated at 7.7 and 9.6, respectively—roughly equal to the national average. 33Nevertheless, problems remain. According to the United Nations Development Programme, in 2005, the Middle Volga region’s overall poverty rate was between 22 and 30 percent. 34
These statistics are telling. A pronounced prosperity gap has emerged between Russia’s Muslim and Slavic populations. “Muslims are more likely to be unemployed, to have a wage below the subsistence minimum, and to have below-average-sized apartments,” a recent study dissecting statistics from Russia’s 2002 Census concluded. 35The result is an expanding Muslim underclass that is seen, and that sees itself, as separate from the rest of Russia.
A BACKLASH FROM BELOW
On December 11, 2010, Moscow’s famed Manezh Square, just steps from the Kremlin, was overrun by demonstrators from Russia’s Far Right. The occasion was a rally of some five thousand soccer fans and nationalists memorializing Yegor Sviridov, a backer of Russia’s Spartak soccer club who had died a week earlier in a clash with other fans, many of them migrants from the Caucasus. The rally quickly deteriorated into a race riot, and thirty people—most of them immigrants—were injured in the violence, some at the hands of the Kremlin’s security forces.
The Manezh riot was far from an isolated event. Recent years have seen a marked increase in xenophobia, racism, and violence against non-Slavs within the Russian Federation. Experts say they are a reflection of widespread anger over economic stagnation and corruption. They are also a reaction to a surge of migrant workers from Russia’s “near abroad” of the Caucasus and Central Asia. With foreign arrivals now totaling thirteen to fourteen million, Russia’s migrant labor force ranks second only to the United States. 36
But whereas the United States largely assimilates its immigrants, Russia does not. According to research conducted by Mark Ustinov of Moscow’s Higher School of Economics, nearly 70 percent of Russians exhibit negative feelings toward people of other ethnicities, and one in five believes that they have no place in Russia. 37Most Russians, moreover, want their government to do something about it. A November 2012 nationwide opinion poll carried out by Moscow’s Levada Analytical Center found that nearly 65 percent of respondents favor some form of restrictions on labor migration. 38
Not surprisingly, race-related violence in Russia has surged in recent years, especially in Moscow and other cities. In 2012 alone, eighteen people were killed and nearly two hundred were injured in racist attacks throughout Russia, according to estimates by SOVA, a Russian human rights watchdog group. 39But experts say the real number is probably much higher, since most attacks go unreported. 40
The rise in ethnic violence in Russia has been propelled by a surge in extreme right-wing nationalism. Historically, nationalist ideas and rhetoric have pervaded Russian politics, empowering derzhavnost—the idea of Russia as a great power—and helping to define a sense of self among the country’s citizens during turbulent economic and political times. But today’s Far Right in Russia goes far beyond the nationalist rhetoric espoused by parties like Vladimir Zhirinovsky’s Liberal-Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR) and Dmitry Rogozin’s now-defunct Rodina(Motherland) faction. It is made up of an assortment of small, violent neo-Nazi groups and “political nationalists,” such as the Russkiyemovement and the Novaya Silaparty, that promote an ethno-nationalist agenda in Russian politics. 41These right-wing groups are growing in influence. “Although the extreme right remains a marginal phenomenon in Russian politics up to now,” Alexander Verkhovsky of SOVA has written, “it is a widely held view in Russian society that nationalism is an ideology with a future and will gain more popularity in the years to come.” 42
The Far Right’s ascendance has been aided by the Kremlin, which has sought to harness nationalist sentiment for its own ends. 43While cracking down on the most violent offenders, Vladimir Putin’s government has nurtured nationalist ideas via youth groups like Nashi, Walking Together, and the Young Guard—groups whose members tend to share a common vision with Russia’s ultra-right. 44
Russian nationalism is not only a Far Right notion, however. More and more, Russians from across the political spectrum are identifying with and organizing around a nationalism that is increasingly tinged with racism. “The level of xenophobia today is rising among various social groups,” Russia’s Civic Chamber, an official civil society oversight body created by Vladimir Putin in the early 2000s, noted in its 2012 annual report. “An especially sharp rise can be observed among the citizens of major cities and among those people with a high level of education. Their phobias relate first and foremost to migrants from the Caucasus and Central Asia, and are motivated by ‘insurmountable’ cultural differences.” 45The result has been the creation of what one specialist has called a “fashion for xenophobia” throughout the country. 46
Resentment among ordinary Russians over ongoing violence in the Caucasus and protectionist sentiments toward jobs taken by migrant workers have heightened tensions and made Russia’s Muslims an easy target.
ISOLATION FROM ABOVE
The Kremlin’s actions haven’t helped. Over the past dozen years, Putin’s government has carried out what amounts to an “authoritarian counter-revolution” in Russia. 47
During Boris Yeltsin’s presidency in the 1990s, Russia’s shattered economy and uncertain political direction helped to incubate deep internal divides within the Russian government.
Putin consequently made “strengthen[ing] the unity of the state” a central focus of his administration from the time he succeeded Yeltsin in 1999. 48Putin’s efforts resulted in a dramatic increase in central authority—what Kremlin insiders call the “power vertical.” This centralization was accomplished by:
Taking power away from Russia’ s regions. Among the first steps taken by the Putin government was the creation of seven new federal “super districts” to oversee the country’s eighty-eight (now eighty-three) regions. Each corresponded roughly with the country’s military districts and was headed by a special representative appointed by the Kremlin. In addition, a change was made in governance in Russia’s various regions and oblasts: governors and the presidents of the country’s constituent republics would henceforth be appointed by presidential decree rather than by popular election. 49That meant that Moscow, not the Russian electorate, now possessed the power to fire regional officials, who were no longer elected but selected—reversing a trend of the Yeltsin era that saw tentative steps toward democratization and federalism.