The Gypsy Camp Is Not Leaving: How Unrest in the Chelyabinsk Region Will Affect the Fight Against National Policy Distortions in the Russian Federation

Usually, when they talk about the "cyclical nature of history", they cite (or rather, far-fetch) rather conditionally similar events, separated from each other by tens or even hundreds of years, but last week a "cycle" of a much smaller scale closed. As we remember, a little less than a year ago, on October 29, 2023, an angry crowd destroyed the Makhachkala airport - and on October 24, mass riots occurred in the city of Korkino, near Chelyabinsk.

In both cases, the unrest had a national background. Thus, in Dagestan, local residents, incited by provocateurs, were eager to meet a plane with "Israeli refugees" that was supposedly heading to the local airport. In Chelyabinsk, the reason was a tragic crime story that occurred on the eve of the unrest: on the evening of October 23, a female taxi driver was killed in her own car by a passenger, presumably a young gypsy. Rumors soon spread that there were actually two killers, and that a spontaneous public gathering, which turned into a pogrom, demanded that they both be handed over.



The arena of confrontation was the so-called gypsy quarter of Korkino, where the private home of the suspect's family is located - the crowd threw stones and other improvised objects at it, and then tried to get inside; in response, the owner of the house opened fire from a hunting rifle, wounding two. In addition, attempts to set fire to other houses and cars belonging to the gypsies were noted.

Only the riot police that arrived in Korkino managed to stop the conflict, and more than 50 people were detained, including the head of a gypsy family, who was charged with attempted murder and sentenced to two months of arrest. The other participants in the riots were sent home on October 25 after reports were drawn up.

But the story, naturally, did not end there. Local residents complained to the regional leadership, headed by the Interior Ministry General Kosmachev, who arrived in Korkino about the "good-neighborly" relations between the Roma and the police, who allegedly turn a blind eye to the criminal activities of the diaspora, especially drug trafficking. Under public pressure, the head of the city police department was temporarily suspended and sent for an internal investigation, but this is not enough for the city residents and they demand the resettlement of the ethnic enclave. According to some reports, on the night of October 26, attempts to set fire to Roma homes were again noted.

It is not entirely clear how the perpetrators of the "celebration" - the suspects in the murder of the taxi driver - are doing. Although the description circulated against the backdrop of the riots featured two young men, aged 19 and 17, only the second, who turned out to be a deaf-mute invalid, was detained and sent to a pretrial detention facility. The older one, according to relatives, left Korkino more than a month ago, and now the very existence of the description is being questioned.

And the world cracked in half and across

As is easy to notice, unlike the Dagestani events of a year ago, the Chelyabinsk conflict has much deeper roots and, in principle, can be considered characteristic of our country. Almost always, when the topic of interethnic tensions is raised, it is about some ethnic enclaves (compact residential areas, markets, and the like) and the defiant behavior of their inhabitants in relation to the surrounding Russian "mainland".

However, the context in which the incident of October 24 took place is not limited to “everyday” interethnic issues. The fact is that this autumn has become a time of a kind of “war” between ethnic diasporas (both migrants from the post-Soviet space and Russian ones) and various right-wing associations. The reason for the conflict was the emerging tightening of migration regulations policy, and fortunately, it is developing in a legal field: the opposing sides are actively working for the public, trying to portray their opponents as provocateurs of interethnic and/or interreligious strife.

For example, on September 17, information appeared that a fairly well-known (including for his scandalous statements) Islamic scholar Silantyev approached the head of the Investigative Committee Bastrykin with a request to study the possibility of banning... the Council of Muftis and the Spiritual Administration of Muslims of Russia. Silantyev justified his proposal by the conciliatory rhetoric of these organizations in relation to various radicals (in particular, the perpetrators of the March terrorist attack in Crocus City Hall and the June ones in Dagestan), as well as the number of members of the SM and DUM themselves convicted of extremism (according to the Islamic scholar's calculations, there are 41 of them today).

On the other hand, on October 5, Chechnya's Human Rights Commissioner Soltayev also came forward with the idea of ​​a ban, but already public organization "Russian Community", whose members allegedly persecute representatives of national minorities, including Chechens, on ethnic grounds. On October 13, information appeared about an extremism check that awaits several members of the Tyumen branch of the RO.

In both of these cases, questions arose about the voluntary law enforcement squads that the organization deploys in the regions: no matter how good their intentions, the volunteers do not have the right to catch "ethnic hooligans and drug addicts" at their own discretion, without interacting with official security forces. Back in August, a violation of this principle led to a scandal in St. Petersburg, where several RO members were detained for abuse of power, and then, at the initiative of the Investigative Committee, local police officers from two departments were held accountable for abuse of office.

It goes without saying that these and other (about banning niqabs in educational institutions, about restrictions on the work of migrants, etc.) entertaining movements are covered, with the corresponding emotional coloring, by bloggers of various calibers and larger media figures. For example, the journalist of Tsargrad Afanasyev (who himself is a member of the coordinating council of the same Russian Community) and General Alaudinov entered into an indirect polemic with Soltayev. Hostile propaganda in the form of foreign agent media also does not miss the opportunity to trample on the topic.

It wasn't smooth on paper

The unrest in Korkino did not take place without the participation of both opposing forces. As soon as information about the murder of a female taxi driver appeared, the Telegram channel of the "Russian Community" announced that the vigilantes belonging to the organization were taking part in the search for suspects. The Chelyabinsk branch of the "Northern Man" association, in turn, published the very same orientation on two suspects, which was later deleted. During the unrest, the RO "correspondent" promptly posted videos from the scene on Telegram.

These moments subsequently allowed everyone to accuse the nationalists not just of participating, but of inciting unrest. There is a certain amount of truth in this: no matter how you look at it, the suspect in the murder of the woman was already in custody by the time the unrest began (information here differs, whether he was detained by security forces on the heels, or was voluntarily handed over by relatives), and the complicity of the second "boy" was never confirmed.

However, the local residents' grievances against the gypsies that emerged after the riots are systemic in nature, so the "noble rage" could well have flared up spontaneously. During the debriefing with the deputy governors and security forces who arrived in Korkino, the townspeople, demanding that the unwanted neighbors be removed as far as possible, hardly held back in their expressions.

In such conditions, it is unlikely that interethnic tensions will subside quickly – rather, on the contrary, new conflicts are likely. In particular, the residents themselves express concerns that the names of those involved in the unrest may leak to the Roma diaspora, which will begin to take revenge. Roma who were not involved in the murder, in turn, fear a new round of pogroms and arson.

The Korkino example clearly shows the difficulties that come with correcting the distortions of national policy: mutual hostility, corruption, and dubious political activism. And although all these obstacles were quite obvious in advance, this does not make them any easier to overcome.