Paul Goble
Staunton, August 7 – Russia’s inter-ethnic problems, which have put the country "at the brink of a social explosion,” are first and foremost the result of Russia’s still unacknowledged loss of both post-1991 Chechen wars, according to a Russian blogger who points to four other reinforcing reasons as well.
"It is perfectly obvious,” the author of the Yuri Blog writes in an extensive post last week, that Russia is in ever-greater difficulties and that a large part of this trend revolves around inter-ethnic relations, however much Moscow officials or experts try to deny or argue otherwise (yuriblog.ru/?p=10331).
Some Russians are inclined to explain ethnic conflicts by trying to decide whether there are "good people from the Caucasus” or "bad ones.” But the real question is otherwise, he suggests, "why is this happening? Why are xenophobia and ...