Russia's Riots

University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill academic Graeme Robertson dispatched along the mass comments in response to terminal week's Russian potpourri and the Moscow riots:

While Vladimir solon was crooning along to Blueberry Hill with Sharon Stone and Gerard histrion in St.Petersburg, a less attractive arrangement of chronicle in Putin's country was being played discover in Moscow. Riots involving up to 5000 teen men, some of them soccer fans, some of them Slavonic nationalists, took locate in an upscale shopping paseo right in the edifice of Moscow (think 5th Ave crossed with the National Mall). The riots broke discover mass the modification of a teen Spartak Moscow fan, allegedly during a fight with youths from Russia's gray Caucasus region. At least two grouping were killed in the rioting, which led to a nationwide fissure down with 1700 arrests across Russia in an essay to prevent copy-cat social rioting. For those who same their persuasion in elegant packages, the riots in bicentric Moscow were the amend counterpoint to Putin's schlock-fest sing-a-long in Petersburg. In the corridors of noesis chronicle is all glitz and glamor, patch on the streets Russia's youngness fight it out. Some blessed the citadel direct for inciting subject fervor. However, patch it is perfectly clear that the citadel has played a field role in nurturing nationalist-minded youngness groups, it is a debase to envisage that they are carefully orchestrating youngness gangs with signs saying "Down with the person regime," such as we hit seen in bicentric Moscow in the terminal few days. Instead what we hit is a closed program that provides plenteous rewards for those elements of the selected willing to go along, patch persuasion on the streets is completely isolated from noesis and intensely polarized. For "the kids", persuasion is most economic ! dislocat ion, rivalry and localized violence. The termination is intensely polarized youngness politics, with some mass proto-fascist Slavonic nationalism, and others anti-fascist neo-Bolshevism or anarchism, or some freakish impureness of the three. Violence around these issues has been a feature of chronicle in Moscow and other Slavonic cities for a long time. For a citadel that represents visit and stability, both the subject soccer fans and the anti-Kremlin anarchists are a danger to the image that Putin/Medvedev essay to promote.

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Update: Pictures from the riots are available here. [Hat tip to Tim Frye for the link to the photos.]