Translated material
Muscovite Administrative Code
Unworking laws as a significant obstacle to the adaptation of migrants
Last night, in the courtyard of a high-rise building on Verkhnyaya Syromyatnicheskaya Street, right next to the Garden Ring, people from the Caucasus were celebrating something all night. At two o'clock in the morning, an incendiary lezginka roared under the windows of residents trying to sleep. Then everything seemed to calm down, but at four the music started thundering again, and machine gun fire hit the air. After this, the patience of some residents ran out and they began to call their local police officer. The district police officer, who in Moscow, unfortunately, often considers only his office hours to be working hours, and he obviously does not have them at four in the morning, did not answer. Surely the residents would have found someone to call for help, but the problem resolved itself: the participants in the celebration got tired of celebrating, sheathed their trunks and left.A week ago, the head of the Committee for Interregional Relations and National Policy of the Moscow Government, Mikhail Solomentsev, gave an interview to Rossiyskaya Gazeta, in which he recalled the long-standing idea of the Moscow government to create a Muscovite Code - a certain set of rules that were still considered unwritten. Mr. Solomentsev's interview renewed a heated public debate: supporters of the idea began to say that the code should be adopted as soon as possible so that no one would shoot under the windows with machine guns to the sounds of Lezginka, and opponents accused the Moscow deputy of trying to infringe on the rights of ethnic minorities in the Russian capital.
Mr. Solomentsev said that the draft code would be ready by the end of the year, that it would be agreed upon with ethnic communities and scientists, and did not say a word that it would be a mandatory legislative act, like, for example, the Code on Administrative offenses. According to the developers, it should be just a book in which a visitor can read what is accepted in Moscow and what is not accepted. It is not customary, according to Mr. Solomentsev, to slaughter a sheep in the yard, grill shish kebab on the balcony and walk around in national clothes, but it is customary to speak Russian on the streets.
This list, of course, immediately aroused indignation among many who read it, especially in terms of the Russian language, since Mr. Solomentsev himself further strengthened his idea with words about the need to reduce the ethnocultural component in school education and eliminate everything related to "native languages" in addition to Russian, in the field of extracurricular electives. Of course, it is difficult to imagine a ban on communicating on the street in any language other than Russian, as well as a ban on wearing national clothes. Many began to speak out in the sense that if such a code appears in Moscow, then other cities will also be tempted to draw up a code for residents of St. Petersburg, Kazan or Grozny.
But if we assume that Mikhail Solomentsev was talking about an educational brochure, and not about a set of rules and a list of strict sanctions for violating them, then it may turn out that the idea of the mayor’s office is not so inhumane. According to official data from the 2002 census, Moscow remains an ethnically Russian city by 84.8%, but the foreign ethnic segment is growing rapidly and, according to some forecasts, by 2050 it could make up more than half of the population.
This already obliges the city authorities to ensure that guests quickly learn the norms of behavior accepted in the capital, and that local residents get used to living with guests in a city that is rapidly changing its ethnic face. Exactly how to achieve success in this matter is not known exactly anywhere, including in European cities, which have long been faced with an influx of culturally different migrants. But a “cheat sheet” about what is accepted and what is not could well become part of a system of measures aimed at achieving the goal set by the mayor’s office: emphasizing what unites, not what divides.
As for other cities, and especially the cities of the North Caucasus, many of them have long since developed their own unwritten codes. In some cities, for example, it is customary to rudely call out from passing cars girls walking on the sidewalk without a headdress. It has also been forgotten that if there is at least one person in a company who does not speak the language of the “titular nationality,” it is considered polite to talk to each other in a way that is understandable to everyone present. At the same time, it is easy to imagine what kind of reaction awaits, say, a Muscovite who makes a remark to adherents of the Khasavyurt or Gudermes way of life while in Khasavyurt or Gudermes.
Unfortunately, there is a high probability that the Moscow educational booklet will still result in a gendarmerie order. Which, of course, will not change the situation at all, because it will not work. Moscow really doesn’t need a new set of strict sanctions - we already have a Code of Administrative Offences, and for particularly serious cases (when, for example, questions arise about the legality of storing guns used for celebratory shooting into the night sky) and the Criminal Code RF. By the way, it is clearly written there that turning on the Lezginka at night and shooting in the city, even in the air, is prohibited. But in fact, the ban does not work, that is, it does not mean anything. Moreover, those who are supposed to apply the law are often lazy or afraid to come when called. And sometimes they themselves participate in small ethnocultural festivals.
Residents of a high-rise building on Verkhnyaya Syromyatnicheskaya do not really believe that the Moscow police will save them from new nightly impressions when the construction of a seven-story office of the Moscow representative office of Chechnya is completed next to their house.