This morning, in the LiveJournal top posts, I came across two interesting entries: The first is by the well-known author top_lap, the one who once wrote to Putin about a rynda (a ship’s bell used as an alarm in old Russian villages). Overall, he’s a controversial figure: for example, he regularly writes posts claiming that I stole billions in Perm—although I’ve only been to Perm twice, for a single day each time—and then deletes them. But here he makes his point well, using a simple but accurate metaphor: If you want to live here, live by our principles and customs; if you don’t, then f....... off in any direction. I’ve used this example before: the apartment example. Say my neighbor likes loud music, and I don’t much like it, so I can: 1. Ask him to turn it down 2. Call the police to calm him down 3. Punch him in the face. But I have no right to break into his apartment and impose my lifestyle on him, make him go to bed at 9:00 p.m. It’s his apartment and his life, and if his music isn’t bothering me, then all the more so I can’t tell him what to do. The situation with the “LKNs” (a derogatory Russian abbreviation for “persons of Caucasian nationality”) looks like this: my neighbor who likes loud music breaks down my door, puts a gun to my head, blasts my stereo at full volume, and says: Listen. http://top-lap.livejournal.com/369998.html (warning: explicit language) A post by an unknown author: The Technology of Separating the Caucasus.
Why did I think it was worth linking to both posts from today’s top posts? Because it is instructive and revealing. Until we acknowledge that the public debate around the issue of “people from the Caucasus vs. all the other peoples of Russia” really exists, and that it is taking place more or less in the form described in the first link; until we admit that this debate was not stirred up by “anti-Russian forces and some international cabal” but was produced by real life itself, it will keep shifting toward the format of “along which rivers should they be separated.” Where people are told, “don’t believe your own eyes, believe Channel One (Russia’s main state TV channel),” sooner or later someone will shout, “separate them!” In that sense, no one has contributed more to the idea of separating off the North Caucasus than Vladimir Vladimirovich (Putin), Ramzan Akhmadovich (Kadyrov), and their fighters against “political extremists.”
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