"Novye Izvestia": Russians are not definite in their attitude to migrants

Russians have not defined their attitude to migrants. This is the conclusion of the "Novye Izvestia" newspaper based on the poll conducted by the "Public Opinion" Foundation (POF).

37 percent of Russians believe that migrants bring more good to the country, while 35 percent, on the contrary, are confident that they are all and only evil (in September 2006 this ratio was 34 versus 39 percent, and in 2002 - 41 versus 34 percent, accordingly).

To the open question whether they feel irritation or hostility towards members of this or that nationality, 69 percent of respondents answered negatively, and 25 percent - positively. Most aggressive towards strangers are Muscovites - 42 percent. "Now, unfortunately, this is already a fixed public mood, it's reproducing itself and rather skilfully supported by mass media and the state," Galina Kozhevnikova, deputy director of the "SOVA" Information and Analytical Centre, explains. "We can recollect the 'anti-Georgian' campaign, when at the highest political level people were let to know that xenophobia is not something indecent." Ms Kozhevnikova gave an example of the "anti-migrants" campaign aimed to exile foreign traders from marketplaces, which in practice transformed into exile of "non-Russian traders."

The sociologists also asked what the most frequent, in the opinion of Russians, reasons of interethnic enmity were. More often, respondents (11 percent) spoke about domination of strangers and their provoking behaviour; 8 percent - about wrong home policy of the state and corruption; 7 percent - about a huge gap between rich and poor population, and envy to rich people; 7 percent - about bad manners, lack of culture, and fieriness of people; 4 percent - about chauvinistic sentiments and actions of nationalist groupings.

The sociologists also asked the respondents, whether they came across, within the recent year, any reports in mass media about manifestations of national enmity in these or those Russian regions. Two thirds of the respondents (69 percent) came across such reports, while 20 percent never did. Moreover, 31 percent of the respondents think that such coverage of events results in stronger interethnic enmity.