Is there racism in Russia? Russian officialdom denies the existence of such a phenomenon completely! In a philistine, primitive consideration of the problem, it turns out that, on the one hand, there are no Afro-Russians in Russia, so the division by skin color is not striking. And on the other hand – “churki”, “narrow-eyed people” – what kind of words are these? Is it a manifestation of brotherly love and equality? It is true, these contemptuous nicknames cannot be completely identified with racial exclusion, because Russians / Great Russians have such nicknames in store for representatives of other nations – of the same race with them, but of a different culture. They even call their “brothers” Slavs in a similar contemptuous way: “khokhols”, “bulbashi”. Just as lovingly, they call all others, albeit Europeans, but not Great Russians, they name-calling – there are “mamalyzhniki”, and “hachi”, and “rodents”, and “animals”, and yids … For centuries, for example, in the Russian Empire and in the USSR, of which Putin’s Russia is the heir, there was institutionalized state anti-Semitism, when Jews could not get certain professions and freely pursue a career. And many other foreigners were assigned a decorative and representative role in governing the country; in real life, their place was, at best, among the voiceless executors of the decisions of the central Great Russian authorities.
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