ETHNIC VIOLENCE

Ethnic violence: translation

Beginning in the late 1980s, ethnic violence emerged as a significant problem within the Soviet Union. The comparatively open environment enabled byglasnostforced many ofJosephStalin’s crimes against the country’s non-Russian populations, particularly thepunished peoplesandUkrainians, into the open. With ethnic nationalism on the rise, Stalin’s delimitation of borders based on the principle of “divide and rule” came under question, as did the situation of “relocated” Soviet citizens, either as internal deportees or “colonizers.” Resentment ofethnic Russiansin theBaltic States(andKazakhstan) andMeskhetian Turksin Uzbekistan led to street clashes and urban rioting with ethnic overtones.

InMoldovaand theCaucasus, the situation degenerated into outright conflict. Slavs and Russophones, fearful of “Romanianization,” mobilized against ethnic Moldovans and created theTransnistrianenclave;Armeniansand Azeris conducted a series of pogroms against one another that led to a war overNagorno-Karabakh;IngushandOssetiansclashed over property disputes linked to the former’s deportation toCentral Asiaduring World War II; and, inGeorgia, there were bloody episodes between ethnic Georgians and minority Abkhazians and Ossetians.These disputes played a high-profile role in thedissolution of the Soviet Unionin 1991. The newly independent Russian Federation continued to suffer from ethnic conflict in theNorth Caucasus, whereMuslim/Christian, Turkic/Circassian, and Slav/non-Slav determiners frequently led to ethnically charged violence.

Since the mid-1990s, the number of xenophobic attacks on nonRussians has skyrocketed. In recent years,neofascistand neo-Nazi youths have targetedimmigrantsfrom Central Asia and other parts of the former Soviet Union, including the beheading of a Tajik man in 2007, an attack broadcasted on theInternet. Attacks onJewsand synagogues have also increased in recent years. There have even been attacks onnational minoritiesfrom within Russia, such as the murder of aSakha(Yakut) in 2007. Violence directed at ethnic Georgians within Russia also flared around the time of theSouth Ossetian War. Clashes between non-Slavicethnic minoritiesare also on the rise. The majority of such attacks among ethnic groups are rooted in commercial and/or political disputes.

See alsoLiberal Democratic Party of Russia.