On April 20, 2004, 22-year-old Alem Assef (according to other sources, Assef), the son of a native of Ethiopia and a Russian woman, a seller in a skateboard store and his friend, was beaten in Moscow. He and his friend were attacked at the Borovitskaya metro station by two men. When A. Asef's friend, who woke up after a blow to the head, asked "Why?", one of the attackers shouted for being "black" , and the other raised his hand in a fascist greeting. The attackers fled the scene. A.

On April 20, at the fourth National Prayer Breakfast, Stepan Medvedko, assistant chairman of the State Duma Committee on Public Associations and Religious Organizations, announced that more than 4,000 Protestant communities are registered in Russia today. At the same time, he noted that "it is impossible to keep accurate statistics of Protestants in Russia." "According to the Protestant churches themselves, up to 2 million believers belong to them.

The website of the Public Opinion Foundation publishes the results of polls of Russians about their attitude to religion that have been conducted annually since 1997 (usually on the eve of Easter or shortly after it) (the sample size in all cases is 1,500 people). The respondents were asked the following question: "Do you consider yourself a believer?

The portal "Religion and Media" publishes, with a link to the website of the Yuri Levada Analytical Center, the results of a sociological survey of Russians conducted by the center on their attitude to faith in God, in the existence of heaven and hell, in miracles, etc. (December 20-23, 2003, sample size - 1600 people; see also the results of a similar study conducted in the USA). The questions were divided into two groups. The answers were distributed as follows.

On April 9, 2004, in the program "Freedom of Speech", dedicated to the revival of religiosity in Russia, State Duma deputy Natalia Narochnitskaya justified her dislike for America by its intellectual inferiority. In particular, she stated the following: "If you can talk about America's leadership, then, of course, it is a leader in the cultural debilitation of mankind. And there is no need for two entertainments for a forty-year-old father and a seven-year-old son. One Mickey Mouse is enough.

According to the Polit.Ru website (with reference to RIA Novosti), the government approved a new list of its coordinating and advisory bodies. It was decided that Alexander Sokolov, Minister of Culture and Mass Communications, will become the Chairman of the Commission on Religious Associations. Sources 146 government commissions abolished // Polit.Ru. 2004. April 20.

In September, the regional political discourse focused on the debate on the problems of combating terrorism, connected with the reaction of society to the explosions in Krasnodar at the end of August. The main topic of discussion was the tightening of migration policy. This vector was set by the head of the regional administration A.N. Tkachev.

The selection of analyzed publications at this stage has undergone minor changes and has the following form. Daily Newspapers: :Kuban News;; :Free Kuban;; :Krasnodar News;; : Kuban today; Weekly Newspapers: :Krasnodar;; :7 days of Kuban;; :Moskovsky Komsomolets in the Kuban;; :Regional News;; :Independent voice of Kuban;. The main trend of the regional journalistic discourse continues to be the practice of updating the ethnic when debating the topic of migration.

On April 20, 2004, at about eight o'clock in the evening in Nizhny Novgorod, fifteen skinheads staged a mass brawl on Pokrovka Street, near the Oktyabr cinema, beating up three passers-by. Nobody called an ambulance. Fortunately, no one died. Surveillance cameras are installed on this street. However, the cameras were not connected. The police department of the Nizhny Novgorod region did not receive any information about the fact of a fight.

According to the website "NEWSru.com" (with reference to "Interfax"), the Savelovsky District Court of the capital satisfied the submission of the Prosecutor of Moscow Anatoly Zuev on the recognition of the treatise of Muhammad ibn Suleiman at-Tamimi (Muhammad ibn Abdel Wahhab) "The Book of Monotheism" as extremist literature.

Viktor Bolotov, head of the federal service for supervision of education and science, said in an interview with RIA Novosti on April 19 that by the end of 2004 work on a school textbook for the optional course "History of Religion" should be completed. According to him, two teams are working on the textbook. V.

On April 16, 2004, Nezavisimaya Gazeta published an article by Professor of the Institute of State and Law of the Russian Academy of Sciences Veniamin Chirkin. The author turned to the recently discussed problem of a possible change in the Constitution of the Russian Federation. He argues that this should not be done, since "the positive potential of the Russian Constitution is far from being exhausted ," but "raising the question of amendments is quite fair .

On April 19, 2004, Novaya Gazeta reported that they were going to erect a monument to Vladimir Putin in Pskov. Where the monument will be located is not reported. According to one version - on the ruins of the unfinished Palace of Pioneers. In addition, the name of the current president is supposed to be given to the new regional children's polyclinic center. Both initiatives were put forward by the Union of Citizens of the Pskov Region.

On April 16, an agreement on cooperation was signed between the Saratov diocese of the Russian Orthodox Church and the Ministry of Education of the region.

The regional academic environment and the discourse of ethnicity will be analyzed based on the materials of the interregional scientific and practical conference "Scientific and creative heritage of Fedor Andreevich Shcherbina and the present", held in Krasnodar on February 25-26, 2004. Ethnic issues were not in the focus of attention at this scientific forum, topics it is more interesting what discursive practices appeared in the reports of the speakers.