Translated material
Dear fellow citizens
Russia is experiencing a surge of love for people from the Caucasus
Moscow streets were filled with expressions of solidarity with South Ossetia, in the form of billboards with intertwined Russian and Ossetian flags. For those who still don’t know that the white-yellow-red tricolor is the flag of Ossetia, under the picture it is written in large letters: “Tskhinvali, we are with you!” Although the mourning of August 13 as a whole was not particularly noticeable, attention to the events in South Ossetia, as well as in Abkhazia and Georgia, is clearly paid more than, for example, the tragedy in Beslan.Beslan, as you know, is located on the territory of North Ossetia, an integral part of Russia. The terrorist attack in Beslan in the minds of Ossetians has undoubtedly become one of the most terrible milestones in modern history. At the moment when live broadcasts from the captured school were shown on all television channels, the majority of viewers empathized with the residents of this city. But it never became a national tragedy. Only relatives of the victims and the survivors themselves retain interest in the investigation into the circumstances of the death of the hostages. The authorities, aware of the ambiguity of their role in a critical situation, tend to encourage oblivion, and Moscow, for example, does not hesitate to organize a noisy city day every year, which almost coincides with the days of commemoration of Beslan.
With the events in South Ossetia, the situation is fundamentally different, because the authorities in this case initially position themselves as protectors of Russian citizens from external aggression. The All-Russian Center for the Study of Public Opinion (VTsIOM) found that 79% of Russians (with an error of about 3.4%) know that their fellow citizens live in South Ossetia. And 87% are confident that Russia should protect their interests.
The desire of people to live in a country that, almost in an American way, is ready to defend its own by force even beyond the state border is quite natural. But precisely in the case of South Ossetia this is a largely paradoxical manifestation. Firstly, despite the optimistic data from VTsIOM, there is a feeling that even well-educated residents of the capital with well-paid jobs who follow the news do not have a particularly clear idea of where South Ossetia is and how it differs from North Ossetia. However, the situation may not require knowledge of all geographical and historical nuances. Something else is striking: the same sociologists regularly record in Russia a fairly high increase in the hostility of the indigenous population towards various kinds of strangers. Moreover, people from the Caucasus - no matter the North or the South - occupy a stable leading position as the object of this very hostility. According to the Levada Center, more than 40% (and in some years up to 50%) of Russians are inclined to support the idea of limiting the freedom of people from the Caucasus to live in Russia. The reasons, as even federal officials responsible for ethnic policy admit, are the lack of habit of the indigenous population to the current migration diversity, as well as the difference in behavior patterns and cultures, which no one is particularly trying to level out. Finally, in the not unfounded ideas about ethnic crime and vague knowledge of the history of the actual expulsion of ethnic Russians from the Caucasian territories.
One can only assume that most Russians simply do not have a clear idea of who exactly lives in Abkhazia and South Ossetia. The average resident of a Russian city, even taking into account the fact that the flow of visitors, including from the Caucasus, has increased significantly in recent years, can hardly distinguish, say, an Ossetian from an Ingush or an Abkhazian from a Kabardian. Unless, of course, this resident himself spent half his life in the Caucasus, did not fight in Chechnya, Abkhazia, Ossetia or Karabakh, or does not study, say, Caucasian linguistics.
In this vagueness of our ethnographic ideas lies both part of the reasons for xenophobia (because the alien and incomprehensible is always hostile), and the key to understanding, say, the quickly formed indifference of public opinion to the Beslan tragedy or the events in Chechnya (because it is “far” and “not about us").
With Georgians, everything seems to be clear - the image of a Georgian is well known, known, and can be identified. In this regard, by the way, noteworthy is the demand of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in no case to allow a repetition of the surge of ethnic hatred towards Georgians, which, during the aggravation of relations between Moscow and Tbilisi in 2006, was, in fact, encouraged by the state machine: deportations took place Georgians based on ethnicity and even attempts to limit the right of Georgian children to school education.
Who the Abkhazians are is known to at least those relatively few Russians who are accustomed to spending their summer holidays in Abkhazia. Tourists, by the way, almost always return from Abkhazia with good impressions of the local residents. Even fewer Russians travel to Georgia, but it is obvious that the current official rhetoric has a very limited effect on this small layer. Absolutely non-tourist South Ossetia and its inhabitants are generally a blank spot in everyday consciousness. But it, consciousness, is quite ready, apparently, to divide the Caucasian peoples into “ours” and “not ours.”
It is characteristic that the thesis about the indivisibility of Russia and the undoubted belonging of the North Caucasus to it is supported by the majority of Russians, although almost half of them would not want to live in the same house with the peoples inhabiting it. Moreover, according to the same VTsIOM, 39% of Russians would like Russia's Caucasian possessions to expand - by accepting South Ossetia into our country, as the South Ossetian public has long been asking for this.