In July, Uzbekistan-born, Russian-speaking Israeli author Dina Rubina gave an interview to the Russian opposition channel Rain TV, which precipitated a stir within the Russophone world. Throughout the hour-and-a-half programme, she declared that there aren’t any “peaceable residents” in Gaza, Israel has the precise to “cleanse Gaza and switch it right into a car parking zone”, and that Palestinians have to be “dissolved in hydrochloric acid”.
Self-exiled journalist and producer Mikhail Kozyrev, who interviewed Rubina, determined to take out these bits, calling them “probably the most complicated half” of the interview. Though he appeared to query Rubina on the declare that there aren’t any “peaceable residents in Gaza” by evaluating it to the collective blame Russians face over the struggle in Ukraine, he didn’t reject her claims and himself took a transparent pro-Israel stance all through his dialog along with her.
And whereas many Russian audio system condemned Rubina – particularly in Central Asia the place her e-book talks have been cancelled – there have been many amongst Russia’s political emigres who supported her, didn’t condemn her brazenly, or maintained her phrases have been taken out of context.
This incident shouldn’t be an aberration. Many within the Russian liberal opposition, which now operates principally in exile, unquestioningly help Israel. This isn’t solely because of their tendency to ignore institutionalised racism in Russia but in addition because of their embrace of a civilisational hierarchy narrative that locations the white West on the high. Anti-Palestinian bias is a pure final result of this worldview.
Examples of the Russian opposition’s virulent anti-Palestinianism abound. Yuliya Latynina, a star columnist residing in exile, has made parallels between “barbarians” destroying “blossoming civilisations” and the Palestinians and known as college students protesting towards the genocide in Gaza “lazy and silly”.
One other self-exiled liberal commentator, Leonid Gozman, has claimed that European nations that voted on the United Nations in favour of a “pro-Hamas” decision calling for a truce in Gaza did so as a result of they have been “afraid of their immigrant communities”.
Andrei Pivovarov, former director of Open Russia, a now-defunct pro-democracy organisation, has stated he finds Israel’s actions in Gaza “justified”. He was imprisoned in Russia till he was launched final yr in a prisoner alternate with the West.
Russian opposition politician, Dmitri Gudkov, presently residing in Bulgaria, has declared: “For me, Israel is the embodiment of civilisation. Something towards it’s barbarism.”
Kseniya Larina, a famend Russian journalist and radio host, additionally presently in exile, has hosted on her present Israeli Russian-speaking intellectuals a number of instances. In a single occasion, a chat with an Israeli educator was titled, “Recognition of Palestine shouldn’t be antisemitism, it’s idiocy”.
These are just some examples of the numerous Russian liberal emigres who brazenly supported Israel’s genocidal struggle on Gaza. As well as, Russian pop icons, comedians, musicians, and TV personalities who’re primarily based in Israel or go to additionally always broadcast the Israeli narrative.
Widespread Russian oppositional media retailers – the Nobel Prize recipient publication Novaya Gazeta, Meduza publication outlet, and TV Rain – disproportionately characteristic pro-Israeli information with little counter-narrative supplied. In consequence, racist, anti-Palestinian rhetoric thrives in Russian-language social and conventional media.
The roots of this pro-Israeli stance amongst Russia’s liberals – who make up the vast majority of the Russian opposition – return to the twentieth century.
The Jewish individuals have been persecuted by the Tsarist regime in the course of the Russian Empire, which the Bolsheviks initially denounced. However the communist regime itself finally embraced anti-Semitic views underneath Joseph Stalin. Discrimination towards Jews continued, and it peaked throughout 1951-53, when Stalin accused a bunch of Jewish medical doctors of conspiracy towards the state and launched a marketing campaign of persecution. Even after the Communist Occasion dropped the accusations, Jews continued to be topic to pressured assimilation and structural discrimination.
Inside this context, the rising liberal opposition of the Nineteen Eighties got here to understand Israel as a protector of the victimised Jewish neighborhood and a democratic, liberal state, a part of the West.
In parallel, there was an immigration wave in the direction of Israel, which was seen as a spot of security for Soviet opposition figures. This additionally fed into an unconditional allegiance to Israel and Zionism amongst dissidents, which was inherited by subsequent generations of the liberal opposition.
The professional-Israel bias of the Russian opposition intensified much more after the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, which despatched tons of of 1000’s of opposition-minded Russians fleeing overseas. Israel has been one of many foremost locations; by some estimates, in 2022 alone, some 70,000 Russians moved there, in contrast with 27,000 in 2021, contributing to a complete of about 1.3 million Russian-speakers in Israel.
The paradox right here is that the Russian liberal opposition maintains that it’s the democratic, ethical different to President Vladimir Putin’s authoritarianism whereas brazenly expressing racist views towards the Palestinians. It largely condemns Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and Russian struggle crimes, however denies the Israeli ones.
Within the West, the self-declared democratic values of the Russian opposition are not often scrutinised. However they need to be, as a result of it isn’t simply in relation to Palestine that its racist views are obvious.
Prior to now, liberal opposition figures have regularly reproduced Kremlin-style narratives about migrants, Muslims, and different racialised individuals. For instance, the late opposition chief Alexey Navalny, as soon as hailed as Russia’s democratic hope, referred to migrants from the Caucasus as “cockroaches” and “flies” in a 2007 video on “Find out how to battle bugs”. In 2021, these and different statements led Amnesty Worldwide to revoke his prisoner of conscience standing; the organisation later apologised and continued to advocate for him till his loss of life in custody.
In April this yr, Vladimir Kara-Murza, the vice chairman of the Free Russia Basis, claimed that troopers from Russia’s minorities have a better time killing Ukrainians than ethnic Russian troopers do. The assertion was seen as an try and blame struggle crimes on racialised minorities and prompted an open letter from the Indigenous of Russia Basis denouncing it.
These attitudes expressed by Navalny and Kara-Murza are usually not distinctive. The Russian liberal opposition not often, if ever, condemns discrimination or racist violence towards minorities in Russia. Final yr, when activist Rifat Dautov died in custody from obvious torture within the Bashkortostan area, there was virtually no response from the exiled opposition communities. Against this, when a number of weeks later, Navalny died of suspected poisoning in jail, the eulogies and mourning lasted for months.
This displays a longstanding sample inside Russian liberalism: claiming ethical superiority over the Kremlin whereas sharing the identical problematic and prejudiced considering. The reality is, even when Putin’s regime have been to fall tomorrow and this opposition come to energy, it’s unlikely that it could perform any main reforms to take away structural racism. The issues of peripheralised areas that search larger autonomy inside Russia, non-Russian ethnic individuals, and Indigenous and migrant populations in Russia, don’t appear to bother Russia’s liberal opposition.
It’s no marvel the Russian liberal opposition tries accountable Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on Putin. It doesn’t need the struggle to be seen as a direct continuation of Russia’s and the erstwhile USSR’s longstanding expansionist politics and drive to subjugate peoples perceived as lesser.
Whereas within the case of Ukraine, Russian liberals are in a position to cover behind their opposition to the struggle, within the case of Palestine, they’re uncovered.
What Palestinians face right this moment – dehumanisation, dispossession, and denial of existence – mirrors what many racialised and Indigenous individuals inside Russia have lengthy endured. But the Russian opposition stays blind to those experiences and continues to see itself as the only sufferer of Russian authoritarianism.
The views expressed on this article are the creator’s personal and don’t essentially mirror Al Jazeera’s editorial coverage.
