Racism in Russia

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ByJessica Golloher

Life in Russia can be hard.

The climate is punishing. Health care is not the best. And corruption is pervasive.

Russian ethnic minorities face all of these problems, and more.

Children born of Russian-and-African parents have an especially difficult time. That’s despite the fact that Africans have been going to Russia for years as part of an international student exchange program.

Even so, they face frequent discrimination.

As a result, a special program has been set up in Moscow to help them feel more at home in their own country.

At a gathering of some twenty children in the middle of Moscow, the scene is pretty typical: there’s lots of noise; running around; dirty hands and faces. One thing you notice immediately is that all of the little ones have brown skin and the adults don’t, including their mothers.

Olga, who didn’t want to use her full name, is one of the mothers.

“I have a son. We came to this charity when he was five, so we could meet with people like him, because I’ve had problems with him.”

And by problems, Olga means that her 14-year old son has an African father.

The boy was in a prestigious ballet school until the 5th grade. All of a sudden, Olga said, the school decided not to let him into the 6th grade. He was a good student, she said, a good dancer. It was incredibly stressful.

So why wouldn’t another school take him? According to Olga that’s easy to answer.

“One of the directors of the school said that he ‘would take a look’ at my son to see if he was black or white. He asked me just like that: ‘Is he black? Is his father African?’ I said, ‘yes, he’s African.’ ‘And are you the mother?’ I said, ‘yes, I’m the mother.’ ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I’ll take a look at him to see how chocolate he is.’ He said it just like that.”

It took Olga 100 days to find her dark-skinned son a place to learn. The new school is an hour and a half away from her home in the Moscow suburbs.

Marina Volkova volunteers here at the Metis Program in Moscow. She said Olga’s story is sadly part of the status quo in Russia.

“Of course there’s racism here. Everyone said there isn’t. But there is. They don’t like our children here. Russians only like Russians,” she said.

“Why? Because our borders were closed for so long. Russians got used to living only with themselves. And there are lots of skinheads in Russia. So I’m afraid for my own son.”

Volkova’s teenaged son has an African father. She said she was so worried about the safety of her son and other dark-skinned children that she asked for help.

“We asked the Orthodox Church for help but they refused. They said, ‘These are not our children.’”

So, Volkova said she searched further and finally found Metis. The program finds places for children of color, and their mothers, to gather several times a week, in a safe environment.

Alyssha Allen works with the program, sponsored, in part, by the Moscow Protestant Chaplaincy, an organization of churches based outside Russia.

“Our program is designed to give the children a sense of community we bring them together and they can interact to each other and relate with each other. They all know what they’re going through,” she said.

Even so, Allen said that a lot of the times some of the children have been so abused and bullied by other kids that they don’t even show up to the program at all.

She said some of the children don’t come because a lot of them are very shy.

“And even interacting with other children who look the same as them and who are facing the same problems they find that difficult. Often the mothers just come.”

Seventeen year-old Fatima Udayevna said it took her a long time to join the Metis program because she too was afraid.

“Its use to be even more difficult; when you would ride on public transportation and they would see a black person they would start pointing at them,’ she said. “They’d say, ‘Look, a black person!’”

But Udayevna said with help from the program, she’s really found herself and she’s comfortable in her own skin.

As for the future, the self-assured Udayevnya said she’s got big dreams, but not here in Russia.

“I play two instruments, the violin and the piano. I also work as a model and dance. My life is bright,” she said, “and in the future I hope to move to Europe and be successful there if possible.”

Métis volunteer Marina Volkova said she’s really happy that Udayevna has the whole world in front of her. But Volkova also lamented that she thinks the situation in Russia will never change. Download MP3