Did "ethnic cleansing" or some sort of genocide of Russians happen after the collapse of the USSR?

by coalburns

This question came up in another thread and it was the first time I heard about it. I tried to find sources in English, but only managed to find this: http://poiskpravdy.com/na-etnicheskoj-vojne-genocid-russkix-v-byvshix-respublikax-sssr/

It claims that after the collapse of the USSR in Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan ethnic Russians were slaughtered left and right. Is this true or just some strange propaganda? Thanks!

Freiheit_Fahrenheit

In the first paragraph he says "it's something you won't hear on the «Echo of Matzos»". This is his term for the "Echo of Moscow".

In the third paragraph he blames the "kikes". And you read the whole thing? Can you summarise that?

i_330

The piece you're asking about is heavily anecdotal and poorly sourced, to put it kindly. While it's true that the Russian population in the newly independent post-Soviet states declined precipitously after the breakup of the USSR (particularly in the Central Asian and Caucasian republics), there's no evidence of ethnic cleansing. Here's what we do know:

  1. This mass exodus of Russians, if you will, was in very large part an economic issue, since all the post-Soviet states experienced severe economic hardship in the early 1990s (Russia was of course also in trouble, but at the time, it was doing a little better). I think it's fair to say that there was a pervasive feeling among members of the Russian diaspora in former Soviet states that there was no future for them there, and that the economic prospects for both themselves and their children were quite bleak.

  2. There were significant ethnic tensions in former Soviet republics, more severe in some places than in others. A number of these states ended up with governments that placed a lot of emphasis on ethnic unity and were decidedly not Russian-friendly in their outlook (for example, Kazakhstan started mandating knowledge of the Kazakh language in order to hold pretty much any kind of gainful employment, which forced a lot of Russians out).

The available evidence suggests pretty strongly that most of the ethnic Russians who emigrated from former Soviet states left of their own accord, and not because of large-scale violence directed at them by the indigenous populations of these newly independent republics. It's entirely possible, indeed likely, that anti-Russian violence occurred in all of these places, but to call it ethnic cleansing or genocide would be a serious stretch.