Unwanted special Russians

Once again I come across a message about the next order of some regional Federal Migration Service on special registration of immigrants from the North Caucasus. Just yesterday there was a story about a Dagestani who was registering in Surgut, and he was asked to fill out a special questionnaire for North Caucasians. Or another student I know from the Russian State University for the Humanities told me that before they were registered in the dormitory, Caucasian students were all taken together to the nearest police station to roll their fingers. These instructions did not appear yesterday.

I myself remember how six years ago my husband and I checked into our new apartment, purchased with a mortgage. We collected and took the documents to the passport office. But they were not accepted. The aunty at the window saw that our last place of registration was Vladikavkaz, handed back a folder with documents and said that we had to go to the police to give fingerprints. I asked to show me the order, the order, or at least some paper explaining why I had to give fingerprints. But to no avail. Then I asked for a written explanation from the passport office employees themselves - and again to no avail. At home, I sat down at the computer and began to look for all the provisions and additions to the provisions concerning the rules for registering Russian citizens in Moscow. And not a single document I found contained a word about fingerprints of residents of the Caucasian republics.

Well, then I started calling the Moscow Federal Migration Service, from where they sent me to the Russian Federal Migration Service. From there I was sent to the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs, and from there to the Moscow Main Internal Affairs Directorate. And everywhere they told me that there was some order from either the Central Internal Affairs Directorate, or the Ministry of Internal Affairs, or the FMS. The whirlwind of my phone calls eventually led me to my very first interlocutor from the district’s migration service, who, remembering my first call, irritably stated that instead of calling and bothering me with my questions, I would have come and given my prints long ago. And she would not create problems for herself or others.

Then my husband and I wrote a letter to the FMS office in our Danilovsky district. This is very threatening. They listed all the violations committed by the employees of the passport office, who did not accept my documents, made an illegal demand to undergo fingerprinting, and then denied me the right to information and access to unclassified documents. Well, at the end of the letter they wrote a note that if they still refuse to register us in our apartment, we will be forced to contact the prosecutor's office. The answer came immediately. And the answer was that the actions of the passport office employees were illegal and their demands were untenable; an explanatory conversation was held with them. Well, we can easily go register and don’t need to give any fingerprints.

That is, it is clear that there is still an indication; after all, they demanded these prints from us. But it still doesn’t exist, as evidenced by the response signed by the head of the district FMS. What is this? A mistake by ordinary employees? No. Could the whole department be wrong? Moreover, so aggressively that I burst into tears from powerlessness at that very window.

This means, after all, an unspoken, absolutely illegal instruction. An instruction that is not supported by anything. The North Caucasus is not the most criminal region in Russia. For example, last year, 2011, the Trans-Baikal Territory took first place in terms of crime in the country. According to police statistics, 14.7 crimes are committed there per thousand people. But, for example, in Chechnya, for the same thousand people, almost two crimes are committed. Well, who needs to roll their fingers?

So why exactly are people from the Caucasus forced to fill out special forms and undergo fingerprinting? Are they obvious suspects? Or will the data from special questionnaires and fingerprints of Caucasians help the police fight crime in the most criminal Transbaikal region? Or is this information needed for the future, to fabricate a case, to find fault with unfriendly relatives who remained in the unreliable Caucasian republic?

Or are these links in one chain in the slow but sure alienation of the North Caucasus: refusal to draft Caucasian guys into the army , come up with special registration conditions, send letters to schools demanding to indicate how many Caucasians are studying there?

The feeling is that all this is being done only to make ordinary people from the Caucasian republics feel like they are non-Russians, different. And ordinary people from the Caucasus are perhaps the only ones in Russia who do not want the Caucasus to secede. Because for them, this is the most terrible scenario, in which territorial disputes easily develop into wars, and interethnic conflicts that easily flare up into bloodshed.

If a resident of the Oryol province can easily shrug it off and say: “Screw them, let them separate and sort out their own Caucasus,” then an Ossetian or Kabardian will not wave their hands, because for them it is a matter of life and death. And these people are being made to understand in an intrusive manner that their patriotism is not needed at all; Russia does not need Kabardians, Chechens, or Ingush. And if it is necessary, then like this, in a special position, with fingerprints and special forms. And here there is no time for patriotism.