Torsello, Davide - Pappová, Melinda: Social Networks in Movement. Time, interaction and interethnic spaces in Central Eastern Europe - Nostra Tempora 8. (Somorja-Dunaszerdahely, 2003)
Interaction, migration and change
Race and social relations 261 “African-American mafia” that worked forthe CCM. In Moscow more generally, such simmering racial tensions have only been exacerbated by the political and military struggles between Russia and Chechnya and by popular suspicion that Chechen agents are responsible for several recent bombings in Moscow (see also Lemon 2000). In Russian discourse, non-white Others are reduced to a cultural construction of "blackness” that homogenizes a range of skin colors, nationalities, and citizenships into the generic appellation “black” (chernyi).9 While riding an intercity train from Moscow, I witnessed a fight that broke out when one youth with a fair complexion called another youth with slightly darker features “black” and then viciously pummeled him, even as the second young man insisted that he was not “black” and attempted to show his attacker the notation in his passport that identified him as "Russian.” On another occasion, while waiting almost an hour for a friend outside a metro station in Moscow, I watched while three policemen stopped every dark-skinned man who walked past and demanded to see their documents. In the commercial sphere these concerns have been translated into distrust of dark-skinned traders and their goods (see also Humphrey 1999). Muscovites advised against buying produce from dark-skinned merchants; and in 1998, Moscow newspapers published warnings that watermelons from Azerbaijan were tainted. Azeri vendors at the market near my Moscow apartment in 1998 reported that they were harassed by the police more than their fair-skinned counterparts. On one occasion while I was making a purchase, I observed a policeman approach one of the Azeri women manning the booth and scold her for leaving a pile of trash along the sidewalk. Although the woman protested that the broken boxes and smashed vegetables had been left by a Russian woman who operated a stand nearby, the policeman threatened her with legal action and then demanded a "payment” (i.e., a bribe) to compensate for the alleged violation. In several parts of Moscow, neo-Nazi sympathizers have rampaged through local markets, vandalizing stalls run by
