A major organ of Russia’s state-controlled press has published a dubious report on the distribution of wealth among the country’s various ethnic groups. Jews, unsurprisingly, are listed as holding the most wealth of any non-Russian ethnicity. The overall message is that minorities—Jews, ethnic Ukrainians, Armenians—have grown fat at the expense of “real Russians,” who have been deprived of their fair share. This piece of “reportage,” Masha Gessen writes, suggests that Putin has settled on his regime’s newest scapegoats:
Russia is casting about for new enemies, and the media appear to feel the need to contribute to the search. For two months now the state propaganda machine has been pulling back from the intense anti-Ukrainian rhetoric that dominated the spring and summer. In Moscow, city authorities have even painted over at least one Crimea-themed mural, replacing aggressive military images with video-game characters. The rhetorical withdrawal from Ukraine probably has two goals: forestalling further Western sanctions and perhaps reversing some that have been imposed, and diverting Russians’ attention from a war that risks becoming too costly.
Read more on New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/05/opinion/masha-gessen-moscows-war-on-ethnic-minorities.html