Where are the boundaries of religion in secular life: discussion at Svoboda

We publish a discussion about post-Soviet religiosity, the secularism of Russian society and the state, about anti-Semitism and anti-Islamism in Russia. Alexander Verkhovsky, director of the SOVA Center, and Denis Sokolov, director of RAMCOM, took part in the discussion on Radio Liberty. Interviewed by Sergei Medvedev.

Sergei Medvedev: Last week, at the Faculty of Geography of Moscow State University, a teacher refused to take an exam from a student in a kippah, telling him: "Either leave the classroom, or take off the kippah." Details in the story of our correspondent Anton Smirnov.

Anton Smirnov: Hijab, kippah, skufya, niqab, tallit, cap - this is not a complete list of religious attributes that can be seen in a modern metropolis, especially in such a multi-confessional city as Moscow.

The appearance of an orthodox Muslim, Jew, or Christian is hardly surprising to passers-by. It seems that the city has overcome the period of "cultural exchange". Although quite recently Moscow was seething with xenophobic sentiments - here are the actions "Stop feeding the Caucasus!" and attacks on migrants, and endless "Russian marches". Against this background, the story of Levi Boroda, a student of Moscow State University, whose teacher refused to take the exam, looks especially strange because he came to take it in a kippah. This story caused a sharp reaction in the media and the Internet, but the number of those who tried to justify the actions of the teacher was small. All this shows that, despite everything, Moscow is becoming a more open city.

Sergei Medvedev: Alexander is our guest Verkhovsky, director of the Information and Analytical Center "Sova", and Denis Sokolov, director of the RAMCOM Research Center.

A special tsimes of this situation is that this student later said: in connection with Yom Kippur, he wanted to take time off from physical education classes, and the teacher advised him to be baptized. To what extent are such cases typical of today's Moscow and other Russian megacities?

Alexander Verkhovsky: I think this happens relatively rarely. With Jews who wear some visible signs of their Judaism, this happens very rarely. More often this happens with Muslim women who wear a more or less closed headscarf. But still, as far as we know, there are not very many such cases in big cities. People gradually get used to it. And this is more often regulated at the local level and does not reach the scandal.

Sergey Medvedev: Is it possible to have a passport photograph in a hijab, in a kippah?

Alexander Verkhovsky: You can definitely wear a kippah. Actually, for a passport photo, it is required that some certain parts of the head be open there so that a person can be identified.

There has been a court case in the last decade. Several women in Tatarstan, if I am not mistaken, tried for a long time and, in the end, they won the case: yes, you can take a passport photo in a headscarf that covers your ears.

Sergei Medvedev: Let's return to this case. Teacher Vyacheslav Baburin, according to colleagues, is a man of old communist views. He referred to the fact that there is a charter of the university, according to which, firstly, one cannot be in the classroom in outerwear and headdresses, and secondly, the use of such religious symbols as a kippah, hijab, a cross on the chest is prohibited. To what extent is it possible to follow the letter of the law?

Denis Sokolov: There is a charter of the university, but there are also laws of the Russian Federation. And if the charter contradicts them, then the laws apply. Here the issue is a personal decision at the local level, this is such a phenomenon of delegated power. In my opinion, this somehow resonates with Vladimir Vladimirovich's statement that 146 million were sanctioned. This is about the very pyramids, that is, he, and not only him, probably sees the country in the form of such pyramids, which diverge from great people who have fallen under sanctions, and everyone, everything, everyone will rise with them. This is such a single people, such a corporate country. This corporatism implies that some piece of this power is delegated to each next level.

And now a person with this piece of power sees that a student in a kippah comes to him, and feels in this some kind of sedition, some kind of challenge to the authority delegated to him. He does not allow himself to come to the rector in a kippah or shorts, so why can a student allow himself to come somehow wrong? If I come to the ruler, walking backwards or bending in three deaths, then the next level must also somehow show respect for me. And then this can be explained by the Charter of the University, some modern ideas from the Soviet Union, whatever you like, however, this is a kind of offense for violation of subordination.

And why did I link this to the 146 million who suffered from the sanctions? Because if I do not consider myself a victim of these sanctions, then I also somehow violate this subordination.

Sergey Medvedev: The traditional status hierarchies have been violated - a student has allowed himself what is not allowed to the lowest in rank.

However, looking at France or Belgium, I understand that this is far from a far-fetched problem - the wearing of religious symbols in public space and especially in state institutions. For example, now in Moscow schools there are entire classes, where half are girls in hijabs.

Alexander Verkhovsky: There is a concept of secular society, secularity. But in fact, this is not one concept. And if you ask people: "Is France a secular state?" Everyone will say: "Secular!" Is Germany secular? Also secular, but they are different. This super-secularity in France is clearly different from the secularity that exists in Germany, in the States, in our country. Therefore, it cannot be said that there is any standard. It is impossible to match it, because it does not exist.

But there is a federal law on freedom of conscience. And it directly says that restrictions on the freedom of conscience, of course, can be established, as on any constitutional freedom, but they must be established by the Federal Law, and not at all by the rector or someone else. It is clear that all the same, the law cannot cover everything in one phrase. Therefore, I would say that if a student comes in a kippah or with a colander on his head, if he is a fan of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, then this is his realization of freedom of conscience. And there is no attempt at secular education here.

Sergei Medvedev: Recently in Austria, a man was photographed for a passport with a colander on his head and proved his right to do so in court.

Alexander Verkhovsky: Denis correctly said that there is some kind of reference to the Soviet norm about the separation of the school from the church. Some even believe that this is still written in our constitution, but it is not written there. The secular nature of education is not that all are secular, but that the school does not engage in religious or anti-religious indoctrination. But religious students cannot go anywhere, and their freedom to wear anything, in theory, cannot be limited by anything except federal law.

There is also a classic case of the ECtHR - "Lautsi v. Italy" (about crucifixion at school). Moreover, the European Court decided the case twice, and the second time it decided differently than the first. The final decision was that crucifixion at school is so integrated into the local cultural tradition that it should not be seen as a deliberate indoctrination - and thus it does not encroach on secularism. It is clear that this line cannot be clearly drawn, and in the modern world, at least in a metropolis, it is impossible to say clearly that our cultural tradition exists here and it is easy to separate it. Many traditions are already mixed.

Denis Sokolov: There are even dramatic cases. In some villages in Dagestan, where everyone goes to mosques, where a religious revival took place in the early 1990s, all girls go to school in headscarves. And in another village, where secularization went deeper under Soviet rule, everyone walks without headscarves, and suddenly someone starts walking in a headscarf. And this is where the conflict arises between the principal of the school or some member of the teaching staff and the group that is trying to protect the right of their daughters to wear the hijab to school. And this is where everything gets mixed up. The director of the school, from that Soviet position, separates the school from religion. To this is added his personal conflict or the conflict of one group in the village with another group. I cannot say that this is a religious conflict: it is political, domestic and religious at the same time, and social too.

Often, another story is added to this - the imam of the old school, who feels threatened by these new people who are more literate in Islam and take young people away from him, also contributes to the fight against the idea of ​​wearing hijabs at school. And as a result, conflict arises out of the blue. There were even cases when the principal of a school was killed because he forbade wearing hijabs. And it cannot be said that a command came from Moscow to abolish hijabs.

Sergei Medvedev: Yes, a lot of things are really decided on the spot here.

Denis Sokolov: The same thing happened in the Stavropol Territory, when hijabs suddenly became a symbol of the struggle against an entire religious group, as a result of which more than ten religious figures were liquidated. They died over the course of several years, and these murders have never been solved. This is a solution to the issue of non-traditional Islam, which in the North Caucasus often happens in this way.

Sergei Medvedev: Are icons in classrooms possible in Russia?

Alexander Verkhovsky: If the logic of this decision of the European Court, then - no, because the crucifix in the Italian school, roughly speaking, always hung.

Sergei Medvedev: Or, say, the cross over the entrance to the school is already architecturally integrated.

Alexander Verkhovsky: It's not about what is integrated there. The European Court spoke about this crucifix not because it was a crucifix (it could be anything else), but because it was part of the cultural decoration for all generations. If you hang something new there, then another situation arises.

It is clear that this is all rather vague. But this situation with some kind of religious or anti-religious innovation is always accompanied by conflict. It is good if this conflict remains local, between two groups of people. But if it is placed in the broader context of state security, then other forces are involved. And this is not by someone's evil will, it happens naturally.

A well-known story about hijabs, similar to Stavropol, but less dramatic (there were no murders), took place in Mordovia, where there were many Salafists in a certain village. In the old days, some Salafists left from there to fight in Afghanistan. But the state at the local level, of course, remembered this story.

It is quite difficult to distinguish between Salafis who are going to fight and Salafis who are not going to fight, and many simply do not want to at all. These people are perceived as a risk group. But since this is a national security risk, the people responsible for national security deal with it. They could not preventively arrest the whole village, and a bold idea arose - to ban girls from wearing hijabs, because hijabs, unlike traditional village headscarves, were worn by Salafi girls. And the result simply exceeded all expectations - a long-term conflict began there, which reached the Supreme Court. The local Muslims lost.

Denis Sokolov: The entire Islamic Ummah was involved in it.

Alexander Verkhovsky: And at the local level there was a very strange interim final: in this very village, which was, as it were, a source of danger, the school was turned into a school with a national-cultural component. And there it became possible to walk in headscarves, starting from some class, but in the rest of Mordovia it was impossible. This is nonsense! Mordovia is not very big, but it is impossible to take all children to one school. And someone just took their children to homeschooling, which is not very good from the point of view of national security. But it is always brought in - that's what matters! These culture wars are colored by the theme of security.

Denis Sokolov: It is believed that some Muslims become radical, and radical Muslims suddenly turn to armed struggle. And, therefore, an armed jihadist is a radical Muslim. This is a very dubious statement! Radical beliefs and violent practices, armed conflicts are two completely different phenomena.

Sergey Medvedev: Let's say, icons in the classroom, icons in the office… Zvyagintsev's film "Dislike" parodies an Orthodox businessman, and only people who are married in a church are hired there, you can't talk about divorce and so on. Are some constitutional rights being violated here?

Alexander Verkhovsky: It is impossible not to hire people on religious or some other grounds - this is discrimination, it is prohibited by law. Doing this using your official position is a criminal offense. And if someone wants to hang an icon in his office, a poster of Madonna or whatever he likes there, then this is his office.

Denis Sokolov: This is not a school, which is a state territory.

Alexander Verkhovsky: This is not a place for indoctrination of others. If the boss tells everyone to hang icons, that's not the point. But not all such behavior should be described as discrimination - here you have to try to somehow distinguish.

Sergei Medvedev: What if some parents and students at school are against it?

Alexander Verkhovsky: I would say even if they don't mind...

Sergei Medvedev: Shouldn't this be?

Alexander Verkhovsky: From my point of view, no. Because, from the point of view of the Lautsey case, this is not a tradition, that is, this tradition is so interrupted that it is no longer such. And this is an undeniable gesture of religious indoctrination. It's as if every classroom had the phrase "There is no God!" written in large letters. This also cannot be done.

Sergei Medvedev: Dovid Karpov, rabbi of the Darkey Shalom community, speaks about the problem of wearing a kippah in public space and how free a person is to express his religious or ethnic identity.

Dovid Karpov: I was born into a non-religious family, I graduated from the Faculty of Chemistry of Moscow State University. I came to religion, to faith somewhere at the age of 25. But still, this was long before perestroika, and problems arose. And to walk down the street in a kippah - this was out of the question: it attracted attention, raised questions. At the same time, for some time I worked by profession, that is, a chemist. Worst of all, the authorities had questions, they were afraid that something would not work out.

We know the Soviet era, when any deviation from the norm aroused suspicion. Still, we are all Soviet people in the past. I am not ashamed of my Soviet past, but, of course, I am no longer a Soviet person in my perception, in my worldview. I think this teacher is too. It's just some kind of personal rejection, a phobia. I do not want to say that this is some kind of anti-Semitism: well, for some reason it just hurt him. It happens.

I also had this episode. It was somewhere in the process of perestroika, when I had to be present in the people's court. I took off my hat and had a kippah. The judge reacted very sharply to this, rather rudely, in an ultimatum form, demanded to remove the skullcap. Naturally, I didn't do it. But it was clear that she had some personal attitude to this.

I think this topic gets too much attention. This is just a single episode.

Now we see that this very Jewish theme is present everywhere. Not only has it ceased to be taboo, but it has simply become a normal, common topic.

Sergei Medvedev: The theme comes back: anti-Semitism in Russia. Remember, as in Erofeev: "Homosexuality has been eliminated entirely, but not completely." Is it the same here?

Alexander Verkhovsky: In post-Soviet times, anti-Semitism was eliminated at the official level, that is, officials were no longer allowed to display it. This taboo was greatly weakened with the beginning of the Ukrainian war, simply because the rampant propaganda demanded to let go of the reins a little, and then it flooded. Cases are still, thank God, episodic, but they do exist, and in these few years there are clearly more of them than in the previous few years. This is not a wave of anti-Semitism, but…

Sergei Medvedev: Yes, I think, about a year ago, Pyotr Tolstoy said: "They jumped out of the Pale of Settlement, brandishing a revolver."

Alexander Verkhovsky: Anything can escape from one person, but the authorities did not consider it necessary to stop him, and this is more unpleasant.

Sergei Medvedev: These days marks the 65th anniversary of the "cause of doctors", soon the anniversary of Stalin's death, which then put an end to this. We can say that over the past 25 years, Russian society has come a long way in regards to anti-Semitism.

Alexander Verkhovsky: Absolutely! I will even say that the most radical elements of society in this sense have also strongly departed from anti-Semitism. We monitor all kinds of violent incidents, and physical attacks on Jews precisely for anti-Semitic motivation are the rarest thing, this does not happen every year. Even acts of vandalism (such as painting something in a cemetery or a synagogue) are less and less.

Denis Sokolov: It is gradually being successfully replaced by anti-Islamism. There are many examples when people who declare their liberal views sometimes cannot hide their fear of Islam or outright Islamophobia. If we remember the events of Bolotnaya and Sakharov in 2011, then there was this moment too. Somehow, the Muslims who tried to participate in these liberal protests with their liberal project were not accepted, at least they felt that they were outsiders in this political agenda. To some extent, this is one of the very important reasons that Islamic youth, on an intellectual level, choose not to…

Sergei Medvedev: Liberal Islam.

Denis Sokolov: It's not even about liberal Islam. First, the anti-liberal rhetoric within the Islamic agenda is both anti-American and anti-liberal.

Sergei Medvedev: And anti-Israeli, probably.

Denis Sokolov: Of course. Secondly, this is a choice of rather radical political projects, because there are simply no others offered, there are no options. This is the Islamic State banned in Russia, and Ramzan Kadyrov is a completely radical, very fundamentalist political project. In the past two years, those Muslims who, to some extent, considered Kadyrov an enemy of Islam, say: “Yes, of course, he is what he was, he remains the same, but he protects Muslims, creates the building of political Islam, and it doesn’t matter whose hands The Almighty does it." This lack of a political alternative for the implementation of Muslims in our society leads them to the fact that there are two projects left: one is the Islamic State, and the second is Ramzan Kadyrov.

Sergei Medvedev: Is he becoming the informal leader of Russian Muslims?

Denis Sokolov: You can't say that either, because not all Muslims perceive him as an informal leader, but he has quite a lot of support. Now a lot depends on how it is presented in the media. Remember those rallies about Myanmar, Rohingyas? Yes, of course, they were a project. This was not a natural movement of a million Muslims in Grozny who took to the streets of this city (although, most likely, no million took to the streets there).

There has been an active campaign in social networks for at least a year. It was simply quite competently and intensively picked up by people who work with Kadyrov, developed and brought to the point where the rallies in Moscow and the million-strong rally in Grozny became plausible. The question is not whether that rally was, but whether it was plausible.

Remember, a few years ago there was a story with a million-strong Muslim rally on Manezhnaya Square, which was tried to be coordinated by several Dagestan guys who wanted to promote it? So, at the "round table" after the failed rally, people who represented a liberal or conservative group in Moscow spoke as if this rally had already taken place. In social networks there was a story about a million-strong rally of Muslims. It wasn't! But people have postponed it as if it has already happened, and they are already afraid of it.

Alexander Verkhovsky: They are still a priori afraid. For balance, I will say that, yes, of course, Muslims are everywhere, there is no place for Muslim activists - they are afraid.

Denis Sokolov: And the line between an activist and a non-activist is constantly moving.

Alexander Verkhovsky: This is a problem on both sides. It has always been, even if you remember the 90s or early 2000s. For some reason, people who presented themselves as Muslim figures always got involved in some rather strange campaigns - Mufti Tadzhuddin, for example, met with Dugin ... There are some serious internal problems here.

Sergei Medvedev: Because there are no institutions, no structures into which political Islam could be integrated.

Denis Sokolov: This is important. After all, it turns out that this intellectual elite, this intellectual avant-garde is not accepted by our society, and it seems to be losing its authority within the Islamic Ummah. And authority in the Islamic Ummah is acquired by those people who sit in the Duma.

Sergei Medvedev: Are there non-conservative Islamic leaders and preachers who are open, ready for discussion, and who could come up with an opposition program?

Denis Sokolov: Of course, there are, but they have a problem, because they are not accepted by society, they are treated with caution. We say: "Let's take off your hijab, take it all off, put on a suit and come to us." If they go for it, they completely lose their authority in the ummah. If they do not go for it, then they are told: "You tried, they did not let you in."

Sergei Medvedev: And that is why the liberal Moscow intelligentsia associates Islam with Kadyrov as a kind of ultra-conservative force that goes hand in hand with Chaplin, Dugin and gives some completely medieval advice on how people should live. There is such built-in racism and rejection of the other, including in the liberal segment of society, the notion that the threat comes from any religion.

Alexander Verkhovsky: It's true. Secular thinkers may be neutral or suspicious of active manifestations of religion. We constantly hear from people who position themselves as secularists that believers (priests, muftis, and so on) should sit in their own fence, and let them do whatever they want there, do not stick out. But it is not a form of communication. Of course, this does not end well. And it is clear that even the most liberal wing of any religious tradition will still look conservative for a secular liberal society. You have to get used to it somehow.

Denis Sokolov: Especially if the intellectual vanguard of this Islamic group chooses such tools as the fight against Charles Darwin or against Israel - these are the main enemies. It is difficult to discuss a topic when they say: "Let's first cancel the evolutionary theory."

Sergei Medvedev: In Chechnya, do all girls in schools and women on the streets wear hijabs without exception?

Denis Sokolov: I would not say so. Of course, in Chechnya, this has become an official dress code, and a local Chechen woman cannot afford to go without a headscarf. But in Grozny you can meet girls without headscarves. And outside the Chechen Republic, many Chechen women go without these attributes.

Alexander Verkhovsky: But there are certain requirements.

Denis Sokolov: Yes, on Friday all men come to work in Islamic clothes.

Sergei Medvedev: And the requirements in state institutions for women to wear headscarves?

Alexander Verkhovsky: Yes, even if a non-Chechen comes there.

Sergei Medvedev: But this is unconstitutional!

Alexander Verkhovsky: Absolutely unconstitutional. What should the federal center do here? If it is said that these things - the right to wear or not to wear something for religious reasons - is freedom of conscience, and this can only be limited by federal law, then it turns out that the federal center should force local authorities not to impose such restrictions. But try to do it!

Denis Sokolov: He doesn't have the resources to force the local authorities to accept the restrictions. After all, even if formally Kadyrov admits that this does not exist, he has a huge number of tools for this to happen informally.

Sergey Medvedev: Isn't there a discussion about the hijab in Islam in the 21st century?

Denis Sokolov: It is external.

Sergei Medvedev: So it's not called into question at all?

Denis Sokolov: Since the hijab is often fought at the school level and at the level of near-official rhetoric, Muslims are fighting for the hijab in schools. And it becomes more of a symbolic struggle. In general, the hijab is not discussed.

Sergei Medvedev: It's like a cross on a Christian's chest.

Denis Sokolov: Yes.

Alexander Verkhovsky: It is clear that in reality these Chechen girls who do not wear a headscarf can consider themselves Muslims.

Sergei Medvedev: This is a question of how flexible the norms of religion are in the 21st century.

Alexander Verkhovsky: To be honest, the norms of religion are always flexible. All religious institutions, no matter how many times you write them down, change in reality. It's just that religions that are based on tradition always assert in principle that everything is always the way the founding father commanded. In reality, this is not the case. This is the problem with all the big religions that rely on tradition.

Denis Sokolov: And all the big ideologies.

Alexander Verkhovsky: In Christianity, in theory, all the decisions of the Ecumenical Councils must also be observed, which, to put it mildly, is not true.

Sergei Medvedev: The interaction of big religions with the world generates friction at the border. And we are constantly trying to define the boundaries of what is secular, what is religious, and what is constitutional in the public space. In this regard, Russia is a multiregional and multiform country. Within Russia itself there are several Russias, and if we talk about national republics, then there are several levels of attitude towards the Constitution of the Russian Federation.

Word to Michael Alekseevsky, head of the Center for Urban Anthropology.

Mikhail Alekseevsky: It seems to me that the situation has changed radically over the past few years. And the very fact that such an event became the subject of heated public discussion is very, very significant. After all, some time ago, this story would almost certainly not have caused any excitement and heated discussions: well, the teacher said, well, the student was dissatisfied, but this would hardly have penetrated the media. And the fact that this is now being discussed in blogs, the teacher is making excuses, the general public is arguing about this is a very good signal, a clear sign that Moscow is really turning into a real big metropolis. A metropolis is always a mixture of very different people, traditions, ideas, it is always poly-confessional, poly-ethnic.

I live near Patrice Lumumba Peoples' Friendship University. In my childhood, it was normal to meet a black student, but at the same time I understood that for Moscow this was some kind of exotic. Now it is becoming more and more common to meet a person of any nationality with a pronounced confessional appearance.

After public discussions, such as the one that just flared up about this story at Moscow State University, society, resigned to this, moves to the next step.

Xenophobia is a kind of collective fear, the fear of someone else. And in this sense, the Jews have long ceased to be perceived as strangers. On the other hand, migrants who have appeared in large numbers are just new strangers who cause new phobias, new fears and some new negative mythology associated with them. All the talk about disguised ISIS fighters, the story about the migration that is taking place in European countries is more of a public concern, that is, a migrant from another region of Russia is already more of his own. But if some mysterious, evil and bad migrants from another country arrive, then they will probably be the most afraid of them.

Sergey Medvedev: If we compare the discussions that constantly reach us from France, Belgium… In large Russian cities, is the issue better resolved, the level of tolerance is higher, the level of integration is higher?

Alexander Verkhovsky: It's unlikely. France and Belgium have a more rigid secular order. In this sense, it is softer here. And the fact that there is such a tough confrontation is largely due simply to the fact that people are more active there, and if they actively do not want to see people in the hijab, they can promote it in a variety of ways. Here it is not so at all. The state pretty much crushed everything, including this side too.

Sergei Medvedev: And if there were a more liberal, free society, would there be more protests against mosques, against open worship?

Alexander Verkhovsky: Of course! I still cannot imagine how this open and free society will exist in Russia in an ideal capacity, but if you just remove the pressure, stop prohibiting it ...

Sergei Medvedev: But locally it is going to, say, for the construction of mosques. How strong are local protests in major Russian metropolitan areas?

Denis Sokolov: There are not so many of them. To a greater extent, the construction of mosques is hampered at the level of officials.

Alexander Verkhovsky: This is a bit outdated, as it was a few years ago.

Sergei Medvedev: That is, this issue has been removed, and people from the surrounding houses do not mind?

Denis Sokolov: There are times when this raises some questions in people, but this is not widespread. Where there is a political problem, for example, in the Eastern Stavropol Territory, where the construction of mosques is perceived as a political action, as the emergence of a new space for newcomers, this can become political history, although it has also been overcome. The number of migrants is already so large, and everyone has been living together for so long that it is not such a conflict.

The obstacle to the construction of mosques mainly comes from officials. They have such a phobia: they believe that this will be the spread of Islam.

Sergei Medvedev: But the same official will coordinate the construction of an Orthodox church.

Denis Sokolov: Yes, it turns out: you are building a mosque - let's build an Orthodox church, and it should not be lower than a mosque.

Alexander Verkhovsky: It depends to a decisive extent on the officials. Local protests in Moscow districts against the construction of mosques are all rather old stories. All the activists who participated in this fled somewhere a long time ago, left or sat down, so you won’t protest very much. But the Moscow authorities still do not allow the construction of new mosques. In principle, everything is regulated, if there is a desire.

Sergei Medvedev: In Switzerland, for example, they introduce a ban on the construction of minarets - there have been referendums.

Denis Sokolov: This society is exactly the same story that we have not yet reached.

Alexander Verkhovsky: There are protesters, there are local referendums.

Denis Sokolov: We are just emerging from the post-Soviet state, in which the majority of the population lacks both religious and ideological identity. There are such post-Soviet echoes. It seems to me that the new generation, which will not put up with the Soviet recognition of a senior in rank, can reconsider these things in a new way. But so far it hasn't. There are a few facts of conversion to Islam, and this is quite clearly perceived by people around, although these are isolated cases. But there is no such social movement.

Alexander Verkhovsky: Not enough discussion. All these things are discussed in a very strange way, that is, people declare their position - "I am against this, or I am for" ... Usually this happens at the level of three or four references to some stories in other countries - period. There is no discussion. This, in fact, is the state of our public discussion on many issues.

Sergei Medvedev: Is this a deferred issue?

Alexander Verkhovsky: Yes.

Denis Sokolov: Frozen.

Sergei Medvedev: If it unfreezes, maybe it won't exist. Everyone says that something has changed in the last few years. Now I conclude that society, at least at the level of Russian megacities, is changing very strongly towards tolerance and multiculturalism.

Alexander Verkhovsky: But this does not mean that in ten years everything will disappear and no one will see any problem. Problems will still be. If, due to some circumstances, public discussions develop on this topic, they will develop in a conflict form. It's unavoidable. I wish these conflicts didn't go too far. But if you don’t discuss at all, then it doesn’t work out well either.

Sergei Medvedev: Is it possible for Moscow to become a Muslim city? It is the matter of time?

Denis Sokolov: I do not think that Moscow, as a huge metropolis, can turn into a completely Islamic city, because the non-Islamic population is very large. But this movement exists, and the number of Muslims in the city is increasing. And it is interesting that in terms of economic niches, Muslims occupy ... They work in a lot of places.

Sergei Medvedev: Yes, they are more active.

Denis Sokolov: Young (second, third generation) migrants from Islamic regions perceive the development of the city in the modern world much more acutely, what is happening with changes in the urban economy, the structure of jobs in the city, with urban space, because they perceive it directly. They do not live by inertia, they come and try to master this space. It seems to me that second and third generation Muslims can take a very active part in shaping the new urban environment.

Sergei Medvedev: They are more successful than their parents. They earn more than people from the same age group in the local population. And they are more highly educated. This is a much more ethnically cohesive, consolidated group.

Denis Sokolov: And they have an ideological framework in which they are ready, and can, and want to discuss the structure of the city and urban discourse.

Sergei Medvedev: And why is everything happening in Russia so differently than in the West? We read how exactly these guys of the second and third generations of migrants come to the West and become the most frostbitten radicals, go to ISIS. It seems that their parents arrived, settled down, received housing in Marseille, a residence permit, and people from ethnic ghettos are becoming more archaic and conservative. What is the difference? Why do western cities ghettoize migrants, while here there is a lot of integration?

Alexander Verkhovsky: The social structure of the ethnic groups that are labeled as Muslim here and are, relatively speaking, in inner Russia, not counting the North Caucasus, is completely different. It is the matter of time. But we cannot say that everything here will certainly develop in exactly the same way as in France. No, because if young people are drawn into urban life, into the arrangement of new social relations, then this changes both sides. The question is which way? We extrapolate some abstract Muslims into the future, and in the future they will be different.

Denis Sokolov: This is a question of competitiveness - how competitive are the people who now live in a big city compared to those who live in big cities in France or the USA in terms of education, cohesion, and willingness to make a career. The Muslims who have arrived are making a career. In this sense, there is a difference.

Sergei Medvedev: In any case, the discussion in Russia is still developing in a positive direction, although, of course, there is very little discussion itself, it's just that the practices of urban life themselves are rather integrative. In general, this is a conversation about the importance of city life, which teaches us to rejoice in differences, to the fact that difference is not a threat, but the lifeblood of the city.

Sources

• Missing a kippah // Freedom. 2018. January 31.