Again fascist groups (skinheads) killed an Armenian young man in Russia and again this murder made people express their concerns both in Russia and in Armenia. Anyhow, people both in Armenia and Russia (as well as in the Armenian Diaspora in Russia) prefer not to speak about the reasons of this murder. But I think it is worth mentioning what Armenians and Russians understand by this.
Let’s start from the Russians. First, Russians don’t struggle only against Armenians, but against all black people (people from Caucasus, Africa, etc.). They don’t care about the citizenship of the people living in the country. Generally they know only two nations, Russians, and those that are not Russian. The most interesting thing is that the Russian authorities indirectly encourage such appearances and later during judicial processes try to justify the crimes, claiming that these cases are of social character. The Russian authorities understand that the demographic situation of their country is very bad and if it goes on like this in several years Russians will be a minority in their own country. So the authorities are not against letting the neo-fascist groups pressure other nations in their country from time to time. In fact, this is not something new in Russia. Each time when the Jewish power went up, Russians organized some “projects” to grab Jewish people without any explanations. In other words, this is not something new in Russia and goes “way back”.
As for the Armenian understanding of this appearance, it differs much from the Russian understanding. Many Armenians think that these skinheads don’t know that they are Armenians and if they know it they will not harm them. This is why all Armenians living in Russia have crosses hanging from their chains in order to show them to make sure they are Christian if needed. In such cases Armenians say different things to express the Russian-Armenian friendship. Generally if we use a little logic, we will understand that if this enmity is jointly against black people, the only situation out of this crisis is to fight against them along with all black people. But as for Armenians, it is the vice versa, they do their best to make them sure that they are Armenians and are better than all the other black people.
Almost the same thing is happening in politics. Russia has never differentiated between the Southern people. In fact there was no difference before either: “Sunny Armenia”, “Sunny Uzbekistan”. What difference does it make? It is the same today too. First Russians come to Armenia and say that Armenia is their strategic ally, then they go to Azerbaijan and say that their ties are very important for them, and later they confess that they will sell military weapons to both parties based on the same principles… There is only one purpose for them here: to keep Southern Caucasus under the control of Russia. As for the means how to do that, it is not so important. All the three Southern Caucasus countries are the same for Russia.
In this case, again it is logical to assume that the only way to fight against the Russian neo-colonization is to fight against it jointly. But in fact, it’s all vice versa. Armenia always sends letters to the Kremlin trying to make them believe that we are the best in the region and they can go ahead and allocate their military bases here, etc. As for Azerbaijan, they do the same: they try to make the Kremlin sure that they are better than Armenia, they have oil, are more powerful and developed, etc. But in fact the problem is not about being good or bad. And it is impossible to go out of the Russian neo-colonization umbrella with this political way of thinking. The only thing we can do is to replace the Russian neo-colonization with the American one and try to make them believe that Armenians are better than the other ones in that category.
And in this case we will forget again that it doesn’t make any difference for the US which one is better; anyway, all are “weak countries with undeveloped and oppressive regimes”.