Cultural incompatibility: Contemporary racism in Russia and its origins
The project focuses on the ideology and practice of "cultural incompatibility" which make up a core of the modern racism. Cultural racism is a new variety of racism, which is the key manifestation of racism in Russia. It emerged under a special social and political environment in Russia, and was rooted in the Soviet political practices based on essentialization of ethnicity. The Soviet political and intellectual heritage has built up a bridge between the Soviet latent and post-Soviet open racism, which was and is manifested by appeals to "pure cultural tradition" rather than "pure blood".
Chief Researcher at the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology of the Russian Academy of Sciences
Among others: Who gets the past? Competition for Ancestors among non-Russian Intellectuals in Russia. Washington/Baltimore/Maryland 1996; The Value of the Past. Myths, Identity and Politics in Transcaucasia, Osaka 2001; The Myth of the Khazars and Intellectual Antisemitism in Russia, 1970s–1990s, Jerusalem 2002. In Russian: Wars of Memory. Myths, Identity and Politics in Transcaucasia, Moscow 2003; Intellectual Labyrinths. Essays on Ideologies in Contemporary Russia, Moscow 2004; To Be the Alans: Intellectuals and Politics in the Northern Caucasus in the 20th Century, Moscow 2006; Essays on Modern Racism, Petrozavodsk 2006; "Cleaners of the Moscow streets": Skinheads, Media, and Public Opinion, Moscow 2007.