Trading in threats is widely in demand by security officials who want to increase their political and apparatus status on the eve of elections. However, trading in extremely vague and throw-away threats can lead to the opposite result, raising the question of the ineffectiveness of the security agencies both before the authorities and before citizens.

On Wednesday, Interior Minister Vladimir Kolokoltsev, speaking at a government hour before State Duma deputies, spoke of the threat of growing interethnic tensions in certain regions, without naming specific regions. The minister did not even name the source of his concerns, despite the fact that special services traditionally conduct such studies by interviewing a large number of people in the regions, notes regional expert Natalya Zubarevich. However, the results of such studies remain closed to the public.

Denis Sokolov: Ethnic Oil on the Fire of Conflicts

Opinions

Public sources do not record the heightened level of threat that Kolokoltsev reported to the deputies. According to the FOM geo-rating conducted in April 2016 (a survey of 77,000 people across the country), more than 5% of respondents have encountered hostility based on nationality or violations of rights based on nationality, but in certain regions (Karachay-Cherkessia, Kabardino-Balkaria, Tuva, etc.) their share was 10-12%. In certain Caucasian regions (except for those already mentioned - in Dagestan and Stavropol Krai), unresolved conflicts over the seizure of land in favor of local elites remain mothballed, notes sociologist Denis Sokolov. In conditions when budgets are being cut and official incomes of the population are declining, the role of land in the informal economy and maintaining the usual standard of living is growing.

The aggravation of land conflicts may also lead to an increase in interethnic contradictions.

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In some regions, Moscow is also playing to exacerbate the contradictions. The refusal to sign a new bilateral agreement between Moscow and Kazan in itself can hardly be a reason for conflict, but the center's attempts to limit the teaching of the Tatar language in Tatarstan schools are capable of hurting the feelings of hundreds of thousands of people and provoking discontent where it could have been avoided. Moscow understands this too: soon after it became known that teachers from a school in Naberezhnye Chelny had filed a lawsuit with the Supreme Court demanding that the study of Tatar be made mandatory in schools, the Russian Ministry of Education agreed to make such amendments to the federal state educational standard, the Tatarstan Minister of Education reported.

The level of tension and protest activity is growing mainly due to socio-economic problems and corruption, ethnic reasons are secondary, notes political scientist Alexander Kynev. However, talk about the growth of interethnic tensions without specifying the threats and designating their causes can increase the level of anxiety in society and the authorities, and at the same time raise the question of the effectiveness of the security forces in preventing conflicts.

Time to throw threats around