Africans Official attitudes towards
African people were nominally neutral during the
Soviet Union, because of its
internationalist agenda. As a part of its support of
decolonization of Africa, the Soviet Union offered free education for selected citizens of African states. However, once in the Soviet Union, these students experienced everyday racism directed at them from all classes of society. In 1963, Moscow was the site of
spontaneous protests which saw African students protest the murder of a black man, who was killed by a family of the Russian woman he was dating. In 2006, some exchange students claimed that "monkey" insults were so frequent that students ceased reporting them. In 2010,
Jean Sagbo became the first black man in Russia to be elected to government. He is a municipal councillor in the village of Novozavidovo, north of Moscow. In 2013, Member of
Duma Irina Rodnina publicly posted a picture showing Obama with a banana on Twitter. A
Tatar owned supermarket in
Tatarstan sold calendars with images of American president Obama depicted as a monkey and initially refused to apologize for selling the calendar. They were then forced to issue an apology later. In mid-2016, after tensions rose between the US and Russia, a Tatarstan ice cream factory produced "Obamka" (little Obama) ice cream with packaging showing a black child wearing an earring; the move was seen as an illustration of both
anti-Americanism in Russia and enduring, Soviet-era racism in the country. The company, which stated that the ice cream was not intended to be political, halted production of the line shortly after the controversy arose.
Crimean Tatars Discrimination against Crimean Tatars was state-enforced during the Soviet era through the racially based
special settlement system, which confined the deported Crimean Tatar nation in small perimeters within Central Asia and the
Mari ASSR and deprived them of a variety of civil liberties that other peoples had. While no longer officially a state-mandated institution, prejudice and negative attitudes against Crimean Tatars remain pervasive throughout government and society; a notable example being when Russian consul Vladimir Andreev demanded that none of the invited Russian citizens attend the debut of
Haytarma, a film about Crimean Tatar twice Hero of the Soviet Union
Amet-khan Sultan, claiming that the film could not possibly be accurate because it was directed by a Crimean Tatar.
Peoples of the Caucasus In Russia, the word "Caucasian" is a collective term referring to anyone descended from the native ethnic groups of the
Caucasus. In Russian slang,
Peoples of the Caucasus are called
black; this name-calling comes from their relatively darker features. Since the
dissolution of the Soviet Union, the rise of the
Muslim population in Russia and the
Second Chechen War, many
Russian radical nationalists have associated
Islam and
Muslims with
terrorism and domestic crimes. In 2010
Julia Ioffe wrote that this was similar to stereotyping faced by
Italian Americans in historical eras. On 21 April 2001, there was a
pogrom in a market in Moscow's
Yasenevo District against merchants from the Caucasus. Ethnically motivated attacks against
Armenians in Russia have grown so common that the president of
Armenia,
Robert Kocharyan, raised the issue with high-ranking Russian officials. In September 2006, major ethnic tensions between Russians and Caucasians took place in
Kondopoga. In 2006, the crisis in
Georgia–Russia relations resulted in the
deportation of Georgians from Russia. The Russian side explained the process as law enforcement towards
illegal immigrants, whereas the Georgian government accused Russia of
ethnic cleansing. The
European Court of Human Rights concluded that the detention and collective expulsion of Georgian nationals in 2006 violated the
European Convention of Human Rights and ruled, in 2019, that Russia had to pay 10 million Euros in compensation. In December 2010, there was a massive outbreak of hostility towards Caucasians, culminating in nationalist protests at
Manezhnaya Square in Moscow and in other cities. The trigger was the
murder of Egor Sviridov, a Russian
association football fan, in a street fight on 6 December. On 11 December, thousands of nationalist rioters, outside the
Moscow Kremlin building, screamed racist phrases, cried for a "
Russia for Russians" and a "Moscow for Muscovites," attacked Caucasians and other minority groups who passed by, and some – including children as young as fourteen – made the
Nazi salute. The next day, a similar riot was held in
Rostov-on-Don, and afterwards, the city's government banned Caucasians from performing
Lezginka, their traditional dance, in the city. Later, the police chief in Moscow said that civil liberties were a hindrance in security and that migration should be restricted.
Vladimir Kvachkov, a major
Russian nationalist leader of the organization People's Liberation Front of Russia (which says its major goal is to "free" Russia from Caucasian and Hebrew "occupiers"), made the following statement: "We Russian nationalists, the initiators of the people's front, we are telling you that the events of 11 December are the beginning of the revolutionary changes in Russia, the first outbursts of the approaching Russian revolution... You are the ones who can participate in it." Racial discrimination of work-migrants from Central Asians (called
gastarbeiters, ) became a systematic norm after the fall of the Soviet Union.
Jews On 11 January 2006,
Alexander Koptsev burst into
Bolshaya Bronnaya Synagogue in
Moscow and stabbed eight people with a knife. In March, he was sentenced to 13 years in prison. In 2008, allegations of
blood libel appeared in posters in
Novosibirsk. The
Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia expressed their concern about a rising number of attacks targeting
Jews, calling it part of "a recent surge in anti-Semitic manifestations" in
Russia. In 2019, Ilya Yablokov wrote that many Russians were keen on antisemitic conspiracy theories in 1990s but it declined after 2000 and many high-ranking officials were forced to apologize for the antisemitic behavior. The 2019
Pew Research poll found that 18% of Russians held unfavorable views of Jews, dropping from 34% in 2009.
Romani Romani people in Russia face especially harsh discrimination and mistreatment, including the segregation of Romani children in schools and police "special operations" racially profiling them.
Sámi people In July, 2024, the Russian government labelled dozens of Indigenous organizations as extremist organizations, including some Sámi organizations. Russian repression of Sámi activists caused some to hide their Sámi identity or flee to the Nordic countries.
Yakuts Sergey Nikolaev, a 46-year-old man from the Sakha (Yakutia) Republic, was brutally murdered by a group of racist youths after a soccer match who were targeting people who did not look like an ethnic Russian. Nikolaev, with a Eurasian complexion, lost his life at the scene. Despite numerous witnesses, no one intervened or alerted the police for 30 minutes. Russian society grapples with the escalating violence fueled by ethnic hatred.
Vietnamese In October 2004 Russian skinheads stabbed and beat a Vietnamese student named Vu Anh Tuan, killing him. Vu Anh Tuan was 20 years old when he was killed in St. Petersburg. In October 2006 the 17 skinheads who were on trial for his murder were acquitted by a court. A protest was held by 100 Vietnamese against the murder of Vu Anh Tuan, and a protestor said "We came to study in this country, which we thought was a friend of Vietnam. We do not have drunken fights, we do not steal, we do not sell drugs and we have the right to protection from bandits". In Moscow on 25 December 2004 a crowd of people used clubs and knives to attack 2 Vietnamese students at the Moscow Energy Institute, Nguyen Tuan Anh and Nguyen Hoang Anh and they suffered severe injuries and were hospitalized. In 2005 in Moscow, three Russians stabbed a 45-year-old Vietnamese man named Quan to death. In Moscow on in 2008 a group of young men stabbed a 35-year-old Vietnamese woman, who later died of her wounds. On 9 January 2009 a group of strangers in Moscow stabbed a Vietnamese student named Tang Quoc Binh who was 21 years old and the wounds were fatal resulting in his death on 10 January. Amid hostility towards migrant workers, around 600 Vietnamese were rounded up in Moscow and placed in tents while waiting to be deported from Russia in August 2013.
Non-ethnic Russians In Moscow's challenging housing market, discrimination against ethnic minorities is prevalent, despite laws prohibiting such practices. A data journalism project, Robustory, analyzed 35,796 property listings on Cian.ru in April 2017, revealing that approximately 16 percent, or 5,780 ads, discriminated based on ethnicity or nationality. The Severny district emerged as the most discriminatory, with 58 percent of landlords specifying Slavic origins for tenants. ==Association football==