student safety in St Petersburg

[Olga Meerson]

Dear Dustin, dear Michele, dear all,
Russians are racist, so everything depends on the way you look, not the way you are. I haven't seen your visage, Dustin, so it is hard to know what in the offenses can be attributed to the way you look and what, to you BEING foreigner. I personally look very Jewish and not very foreign. But that was enough to turn my childhood into something requiring a lot of caution in Moscow (late 60s-early 70s), and also enough to prompt me to always identify myself as a Jew when asked, although I am a devoted Eastern Orthodox Christian. Now actually I have said twice that I had had some Chechen blood, although I have none: just out of solidarity. Fortunately I was in the company of a very "Arian-looking" man, a colleague. The person asking was a cop, and my colleague had his Russian passport on him--all to my luck. Being taken for a Georgian is now routine for me, and I never deny that. That has happened several times in in Moscow churches. At least there is no denominational discrimina!
 tion--merely racist!
Having grown up in Moscow in the early seventies (after 1967, to be precise) has taught me one thing: I do identify myself in racial terms, not merely in the denominational ones! This has caused many troubles in Israel, where, for reasons obvious to them, I was denied my Jewishness. Rabbi Ieshaiahu Leibovitz at one point said that anyone claiming to be a Jew should be considered to be one, "because, he said, I have never seen anyone doing so without a deep spiritual reason". Interestingly, this ethos, common amongst Russians and provoked by Russians' own racism and xenophobia, makes the better parts of society identify with the oppressed and the persecuted in a much deeper and meaningful ways than often happens in the tolerant and "civilized" societies. No reason, of course, to prefer xenophobia or racism to its lack, but merely an argument that, claiming all Russians are racist is racist itself. Admittedly, I started this letter with that claim, but only because I still do !
 consider myself a Russian and therefore am somewhat tormented in my conscience and ashamed of my own people's xenophobia. Having been harassed as a Jew in my childhood hasn't changed that, oddly enough. I guess, Russians' xenophobia is partly a result of the forced and officiously implemented "internationalism" of the previous Russo-centric empire(s). Tolerance implemented from above is not too effective, especially if its message has been constantly mixed with that of the leading nation's greatness--and then has led to that nation's gross humiliation. Look at Germany, for another example... As to advising minority students, I agree: it is a nightmare, mostly of shame, to me... Lately I have had one case of an African American girl and one, of a Muslim guy from India. Хотелось сквозь землю провалиться. Before that, a former student of mine, a half-Korean girl, had been beaten on the street in Moscow, and she had been so loyal to everything Russ!
 ian. 
Perhaps we can organize some campaign that will shame "them"? What can be done here???  

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