Black candidates stir up local elections in Russia

Joaquim Crima is a new face of Vladimir Putin's modernisation plans

He grows watermelons, loves Vladimir Putin and is widely respected in his small rural community in southern Russia.

But Joaquim Crima – an aspiring politician standing in local council elections in October – differs from his Russian neighbours in one crucial respect: he's black.

In a country notorious for its deep-seated racism and skinheads, Crima's decision to run for his local council has prompted a storm of interest in the Russian media, with some rather predictably comparing him to Barack Obama.

It also appears to have rattled the local authorities. They have come up with a second candidate of African descent, Filipp Kondratyev, in an apparent attempt to split the pro-Crima vote.

Born in Guinea-Bissau, Crima told the Russian daily Kommersant he had dreamed of travelling to Russia since childhood, after meeting a Soviet military adviser who told him about the Russian cosmonaut and first man in outer space, Yuri Gagarin. Crima arrived in the Soviet Union 20 years ago, to study. He married an Armenian woman, and settled in Srednyaya Akhtuba district, near Volgograd.

He is building his own house, on the proceeds of his watermelon business. His neighbours speak highly of him, referring to him respectfully by his Russian patronymic, Vasily Ivanovich.

"I'm a Russian eagle, but with a suntan," Crima told Kommersant. After posing for campaign photos hoeing his garden, he said that he was keen to implement Putin's plan to modernise Russia by 2020.

Experts are sceptical, however, that Crima has much chance of success in a country where elections are fixed in advance. An independent, he has lambasted local officials, complaining that residents do not have water or gas.

Few believe his candidacy marks a breakthrough in race relations. Last year 102 people were killed in racial attacks in Russia, and 450 beaten or wounded.

"The level of racism in Russia is pretty monstrous," said Galina Kozhevnikva, deputy director of Sova, which monitors xenophobic incidents. "We don't have data from Volgograd, but all anecdotal evidence suggests things are not good." continues here

Russia Calls the EU's Planned Mission to Kosovo Illegal

Russia said on Wednesday, Feb. 20, that sending an EU mission to Kovoso would be a breach of international law, and called the plan symbolic of the West's double standard in recognizing Kosovo's independence from Serbia.


The European Union has already agreed to send a mission to Kosovo, consisting of some 2,000 police officers, justice and customs officials to aid and train authorities there and help stabilize the region following Kosovo's declaration of independence.


Russia on Wednesday said Kosovo's proclamation of independence was a "gross violation" of international law and said the EU mission had no legal basis since the decision was made without approval from the U.N. Security Council.


"The European Union, unilaterally, and without any sanction from the UN Security Council, is sending a mission to Kosovo to ensure the supremacy of the law," Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told reporters at a news briefing with Turkish Foreign Minister Ali Babacan.


"To put it mildly, it is a bitter irony that this mission to ensure the supremacy of the law in Kosovo is being sent in breach of the highest international law," he continued......Article conts (-)

The Great Danger If Russia Stays on the Path It's On

Andreas Umland

Dr. Andreas Umland teaches at the National Taras Shevchenko University of Kyiv, edits the book series “Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics and Society,” and compiles the biweekly “Russian Nationalism Bulletin.” This article is a summary of an interview that he gave to the Russian-language information agency “Washington ProFile.”

The roots of Russia’s currently rising nationalism are threefold: pre-Soviet, Soviet and post-Soviet. The idea of Moscow as the “Third Rome,” i.e. of a special Russian mission in world history, goes back several centuries. Russian nationalism had been – contrary to what many in the West believed – an important element of Soviet ideology ever since the 1930s. Like in the early 19th century when Moscow’s so-called Slavophiles applied German nativist thought to Russian conditions, ideas of various Russian nationalist movements today are often imported from the West.

A factor accounting for Russia’s recent nationalist resurgence is the mode of thinking learned in Soviet schools and universities – a Manichean world-view which sharply distinguishes between “us” and “them.” Although the basic definitions of “us” and “them” have changed, a number of Soviet stereotypes, for instance, about the US have survived glasnost until today.

The major determinant in Russian nationalism’s recent rise is that the Kremlin’s political technologists have discovered it as a tool suitable to reconfigure political discourse in general. In the Kremlin’s new political reality, Putin is not competing with alternative programs or parties. Putin’s opponents are not socialists, liberals or other Russian political movements. Instead, Putin is juxtaposed to Chechen terrorists, Estonian fascists, Georgian russophobes, Ukrainian neo-Nazis, American imperialists, Western conspirators, and, in general, to various non-Russians who desire to destroy, divide or, at least, humiliate Russia. In this atmosphere of paranoia, it is only logical that those opposing Putin are not acknowledged to constitute legitimate (not to speak of useful) political opposition. Instead, they are represented as a “fifth column” of the West, as traitors who are, in Putin’s words, skulking around foreign embassies like jackals.

This has made politics an easy game for the Kremlin: If the government is busy to defend the country’s pride and integrity, one cannot expect that all niceties of mass media independence, pluralistic public debate, or fair party competition can be observed. Instead of debating what is best for the country, political discussant are searching for a plausible pretext to label the opposite side an enemy of Russia.

The radical, often neo-fascist wing of Russian nationalism, naturally, has been rising together with the movement as a whole. To be sure, both the Kremlin and mainstream public discourse demonstratively condemn manifest expressions of racism. Yet, the extremists - whether active in the neo-Nazi skinhead movement or publishing in high-brow conspirological journals - are part and parcel of the xenophobic hysteria that much of Russian society has recently gotten into. A widespread fear among Russian and Western analysts observing the rise of Russian nationalism is now that the Kremlin could loose (or, perhaps, is already loosing) control of the genie it has let out of the bottle. Russian nationalism might transform from a political technology tool of the Kremlin into a societal force of a proportion beyond the limits of manipulation by the cynics in the Kremlin......Article conts (-)