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If you needed proof that democracy is dead and buried in this country, the events of the last week are it. At least three people are dead; many more have been beaten; at least half a dozen are in police custody. There have been riots. There has been arson. There are several dozen refugees. Unrest has spread to the capital city of Karelia, Petrozavodsk. All of this has shown how deep, explosive and dangerous racial divisions in this country are. Unfortunately, this is not news. But it has also shown how the new, post-democratic Russia responds to a civic crisis: It does not.
Imagine race riots in a Western democracy. The media would swoop down on the place. That has happened: There are reports that at some public gatherings journalists outnumber the locals. Reporters who have traveled there say they are running into colleagues everywhere they go. In various surveys, editors of all sorts of publications and news agencies, including thoroughly pro-government ones, have for days been naming Kondopoga the top story. So the media are responding the way one would expect if there were healthy functional media in Russia.
But you would also expect the governor of Karelia suddenly to become a media face, someone who makes you sick with his anxious and repetitive declarations, his obvious attempts to save political face and perhaps even capitalize on his political fame. You would expect to see him on television, visiting what amounts to a refugee camp in his own republic, where the Chechen families from Kondopoga are staying. You would expect from him a flood of platitudes about tolerance, interethnic friendship and the like. Governor Sergei Katanadov has spoken to the media -- to blame the conflict alternately on Chechens and on Muscovites.
And you would expect the president to make his position known. You would probably expect this position to be annoyingly general and odiously cliche-ed -- something along the lines of all of us needing to live in peace, taking into consideration the multiethnic nature of our country and the difficult situation in the southern regions. Instead, Putin has been visiting South Africa. While there, he has indeed been issuing statements concerning Russia's domestic situation. These have been reported by RIA-Novosti, the state news agency, and marked "urgent." They have concerned the size of the country's hard-currency and gold reserves.
There is no reason for either the governor of Karelia to bother responding to the events in Kondopoga in a politically palatable way or the president of Russia to bother responding at all. Neither of them has to worry about re-election. The governor is appointed and serves at the pleasure of the president. The president is serving his last legal term, but that is not the reason he does not have to worry. In a democracy, when domestic events make people scared, they kick their elected officials out of office and look for someone who will do a better job. In Russia, the more scared the public is, the more secure its politicians feel.
That means no one else in the political system has to bother responding either. Vladimir Lukin, the human rights ombudsman, has announced he will visit Kondopoga on Sunday -- 10 days after the violence broke out. I find it very difficult to believe that the country's top human rights official has more important things to do than responding to race riots.
While officials slept, a different kind of intervention was on its way from Moscow. Activists from the Movement Against Illegal Immigration, an ultranationalist group, arrived right way (according to some sources, they actually got to Kondopoga before the unrest broke out). That is exactly who is stepping into the public space vacated by politicians.
Masha Gessen is a Moscow journalist.