Identification of a xenophobe

There have been reports in the Moldovan press that a criminal case has finally been opened against the geography teacher, who promised to kill Russians several months ago.

However, if you look at it, the sower of the “reasonable, good, eternal” just repeated what can be seen, heard, read in the Moldovan mass media. I am far from justifying it, but it is not very clear why the publicist Pyotr Bogat can write an article with the title “Rusofilialovesteomenia” (Russophilia beats humanity), or this - “ Russian? Davai, dosvidania! ”, but a geographer cannot? A teacher's audience is no larger than a journalist's audience.

The famous poet Nicolae Dabija, the author of the concept of the inferiority of children from mixed Moldovan-Russian marriages, not only continues to publish the newspaper “Literature shi arta”, but under the new government he was awarded the “Ordinul de Onoare” award.

And here is another amazing character in the Moldovan media field - African John Onoje, who imagines himself to be a Romanian and regularly makes anti-Russian statements. Humanly speaking, he can be understood - he cannot return from the civil war in Sierra Leone, but why is he allowed to incite ethnic hatred in Moldova?

The Timpul newspaper, and many others, regularly take anti-Russian and xenophobic positions, and this does not bother anyone. One of these authors, Octavian Cicu, is expected to be appointed Minister of Youth and Sports. What an example for young people...

We have a wonderful parliamentarian, Mihai Godea, who believes that conductor Antonescu was an honest officer and “did not dirty his aiguillettes.”

On the Moldova-1 TV channel, historian Veaceslav Stavila, known for denying the Holocaust in Romania and glorifying the personality of Antonescu, hosts an entertaining children's history program. Why is everyone allowed, but the Balti teacher should be punished?

In the Romanian-language media, xenophobia has become so commonplace that it has ceased to be noticed. Society is unhealthy and unaware of its illness. The problem is not that there is such a teacher in Balti, but that there are hundreds of such teachers.

Immunodeficiency

There are no restraining mechanisms in Moldovan society, at least not working ones. Neither “human rights activists,” nor organizations of “independent” journalists, nor “intellectuals,” nor the state—the prosecutor’s office and the audiovisual committee—react to xenophobia.

Take a look at the portal of Moldovan “non-governmental” organizations - http://ong.md/ - how can you protect the rights of Russian-speaking citizens if there is not a single Russian letter on the portal?

The courts and the prosecutor's office have statements from citizens accusing the authors of Moldovan textbooks. But there is no hope that any changes will come: the prosecutor’s office is built on an ethnocratic principle, like the Moldovan state as a whole - the police, the court, the government.

The Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Culture are built on the same principle. Recent evidence of this is an open letter from the Association of Russian Writers of Moldova to the Ministry of Culture. Or here is the list of nominees for the Ministry of Culture award for the last year, find at least one Russian-speaking cultural figure.

It is unlikely that the new Law “On Equal Chances” will change anything, since the “Council for Preventing and Combating Discrimination” will be formed exclusively from representatives of “civil society”, that is, from people with five years of experience in “human rights organizations” (this is the requirement Law, Art. 11), accustomed to ignoring the rights of Russian-speaking citizens. Most likely, they will focus on protecting sexual minorities.

Radical nationalists usually represent a rather archaic type of consciousness, not at all European. When such tough totalitarian personalities as Ghimpu, Cicu, Bogatu, Saharneanu, Gutu talk about “totalitarianism,” it is not always clear whether they are praising the regime or scolding it. Paradoxically, ethnocrats like to think that they are bearers of civilization, democrats and Europeans. The Europeans, in all likelihood, like it too, in any case, they do not express dissatisfaction.

Russia, meanwhile, is a strategic partner of Moldova - the largest market, a country of migration for Moldovan guest workers and an almost uncontested source of energy. How can we explain the Russophobic propaganda on the state television channel and the silence of Russian diplomacy?

What's ahead?

Russians acutely feel rejection from national structures - governmental, non-governmental, creative, as well as the lack of interest on the part of Russia. Therefore, the Russian-speaking part of society, deprived of access to public structures, begins to develop its own informal structures (we are not talking about organizations of “professional Russians” - helpless and useless), which is vital and necessary for Russian speakers, but is hardly good for society as a whole.

Recently, cases of speaking up for one's rights have become more frequent. There are no significant results yet, but the fact that things are called by their proper names is extremely important.

Sometimes they say that Russian-speaking people are also not always tolerant of their Romanian-speaking fellow citizens. Anything can happen, but in the Russian mass media there is no xenophobia; there it is considered bad form. Perhaps because the ethnically diverse Russian-speaking population is not inclined towards nationalism.

Among other things, under the pressure of ethnocrats, Russian-speaking people of different origins - Russian, Ukrainian, Moldavian, Gagauz, Bulgarian and others - are increasingly compressed into a single conglomerate, and we can already talk about Moldovan Russian-speaking people as a “new historical community.”

I don’t know whether squeezing out the Russian language and culture can lead to Russian-speaking citizens knowing the Romanian language better, but something else is clear - as a result of such pressure, the country will receive citizens who are disloyal to the state.

An attempt to build an ethnocratic state, to isolate Russian-speaking citizens from participation in the public life of Moldova, is perhaps one of the main reasons for the country’s degradation over the years of independence.

litmus test

I am not calling for the severity of punishment, but the case of the xenophobic teacher is symptomatic - if the geographer is convicted, this will be the first case of punishment for xenophobia in the Moldovan ethnocratic state. But this is already a timid hope for the future.