Nationalist Russian party starts campaign against immigrants

MOSCOW — On the television screen, three dark-skinned men from the Caucasus sit sullenly munching watermelon in a Moscow courtyard, then brazenly toss the chewed rinds into the path of a young blond woman pushing a baby carriage.

Two ethnic Russians glare at the watermelon marauders. "Clean it up," one of them says menacingly.

The words "Let's clean our city of trash" flash across the screen.

When the political ad in the campaign for today's Moscow City Council elections aired, human-rights groups went apoplectic. One of its "stars," Dmitry Rogozin, the leader of the up-and-coming nationalist Rodina party, insisted with wide-eyed confusion that he had been misunderstood.

But just as the ad was making its debut, members of a largely Muslim immigrant community rioted in France. Now the watermelon ad has been dubbed in French, and features a new slogan: "France, One Year Ago."

"Look at what's happening in France. Forget about talk of xenophobic policy — you have cars burning on highways!" Rogozin said. "I don't want the same thing to happen in Russia."

French riots in reverse

What Rogozin did not mention was that it already had — in reverse.

Nearly 50 Asians, blacks, Caucasians and other people of color died in racially motivated violence last year, mainly in savage street attacks by gangs of young Slavic hooligans. That's more than double the number the previous year. At least 40 foreign students have been attacked this year in the city of Voronezh alone, NTV television reported last month.

"The impoverished masses from the outskirts of town, they perceive people from the Caucasus as the root cause of all their problems, so they beat them as a way of getting back at them," said Said Bitsoyev, a native of Chechnya, a Russian republic in the Caucasus, and editor at a major Moscow newspaper. Bitsoyev's 17-year-old son was stabbed 20 times and left for dead by skinheads last month, but survived.

Russia's immigration problem is unlike that facing European capitals such as Paris, London and Berlin. Here, 80 percent of the nation's roughly 10 million illegal migrants are hardly foreigners: They are residents of the former Soviet Union, non-Slavs who grew up speaking Russian, going to Soviet schools, considering Moscow their capital.

Residents of North Caucasus republics such as Chechnya are, in fact, citizens of the Russian Federation, although it would be hard to tell that from Rodina's watermelon commercial.

Campaign gathers steam

The ad's underlying message — nip the problem in the bud before troublemaking migrants run amok — is playing big in the Moscow council campaign, seen as a dress rehearsal for issues that will dominate parliamentary elections in 2007.

The immigration issue has gathered enough steam that more than 3,000 protesters rallied in a Nov. 4 nationalist march, carrying signs such as "Clean Russia of the Occupiers."

Last month, the Movement Against Illegal Immigration sponsored a smaller rally, "Stop the Dark-Skinned Rapists," outside the People's Friendship University, a magnet for students from Asia, Latin America and Africa, and a frequent target of racist attacks.

"People are coming out into the streets of their own accord, and threatening to resolve the problem themselves — with clubs, if necessary," said Alexander Belov, a co-organizer of both marches.

Rodina, which means Homeland, has eschewed violence and insists that its campaign is focused on regulating immigration, not forcing out people of color. The party was seen as a brainchild of the Kremlin, created on the eve of the 2003 parliamentary elections to draw votes from the still-influential Communist Party.

The bloc had an unexpectedly large showing, winning 9 percent of the vote. Together with Vladimir V. Zhirinovsky's ultranationalist Liberal Democratic Party, which won more than 11 percent, it siphoned a sizable portion of the vote from the Communists, enough to leave the once-powerful party a has-been in Parliament.

The next elections, in 2007, will help determine whether there can be a democratic transition of power at the end of President Vladimir V. Putin's second term.

Opposition to Putin

Rodina and the outspoken Rogozin now appear flush with cash, stridently in opposition to the pro-Putin United Russia and eager to commune with former opposition enemies, including the Communists and imprisoned former oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky.

Whether the opposition is real or staged has yet to be determined in the chimerical world of Russian politics. Some say Putin alternately is flirting with nationalist themes himself — resurrecting the Soviet red star, the national anthem and the Kremlin Honor Guard, along with classic emblems of czarist Russia — and fabricating a fascist bogeyman to scare voters back into the arms of United Russia in 2007.

Rodina's immediate chances were dealt a setback Saturday, when the Moscow City Court ruled that the party should be barred from the City Council ballot because of the watermelon ad.

The election commission said it would delay implementing the ruling until the Supreme Court had a chance to hear Rodina's appeal.

Cheap labor for Russia

What is clear is that the party's target remains the millions of migrant workers who flooded illegally into Russia, most of them from the former Soviet republics of Azerbaijan, Armenia, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Ukraine. They sell goods in the markets, sweep streets, help homeowners remodel their dachas and work at Moscow's booming number of high-rise building sites.

Immigration critics claim that the cheap salaries accepted by workers are preventing ethnic Russians from earning a living wage at construction sites. Rogozin is demanding geographically based quotas for controlled, legalized migration.

Yet Russia's dwindling population has made it clear to most government officials that the nation's growth will be assured only with reliable supplies of immigrant labor. The Federal Migration Service, citing fears of civil unrest if it failed to act, this year announced plans for Russia's first major labor amnesty program, to be extended to millions of illegal migrant workers.