10 April 2026
By Aleksandr Podrabinek
Source: Radio Svoboda
Every card player knows that the joker is a wild card that can stand in for any other card. But there are wild cards outside of card games, too.
I recently heard an émigré commentator say that one of the most essential traits of the Russian people is a lack of conscience. The commentator himself is seemingly also Russian, but he said nothing about his own relationship to his conscience. All around me are regular people — are they all without conscience? What about Aleksei Navalny, who accepted a martyr’s fate but didn’t surrender to the villains in charge? And the thousands of Russian political prisoners held in prisons and camps because they didn’t hide their political views? Are they all without conscience? What about the millions of people who voted for democracy when we still had elections in this country? One thoughtless remark grouped us all together as lacking conscience.
It is an unbelievable journalistic oversimplification to characterize an entire nation or ethnic group as all having a certain trait, to lump everyone together based on an ethnic attribute. Such charges sound easy and forceful, and they’re persuasive to the masses. You know, if it’s a matter of nature, what’s there to argue about? That’s how stereotypes are born, which then get perpetuated by propagandists.
Politicians — ruling and opposition alike — fully exploit the ethnic factor. To those in power, their own nation is always the most worthy. Everyone envies them and wants to undermine them, while they, the defenders of the people, are always prepared to fight for their own people, whom they would never abandon. All other ethnic groups are second-rate. These are deceitful fantasies, but many people like them.
Opposition figures often do the reverse — stigmatizing their own people for laziness, cowardice, submissiveness, and self-serving behaviour. They project their own sins onto society, believing that they are distancing themselves from their compatriots and elevating themselves above the rest. For political emigrants, it is also a means of enhancing their own status, a way to justify their flight from the danger and instability in their home country.
You can always pin all your troubles on an alien and dangerous ethnic group. They’re the ones responsible for everything, those ethnic minorities: Jews, Roma, Caucasians, Asians — anyone, as long as it’s not us. Political activists, who have appointed themselves defenders of ethnic minorities, also love this wild card — the ethnic majority is responsible for everything, repressing us and keeping us from developing. Granted, this does happen. But such oppression, more often than not, takes root in soil already prepared by consent or indifference. The majority of people prefer to solve real problems rather than torment themselves over abstract ones.
There was a time when parochial animosities tore Russia apart. One principality waged war against another, and there were no enemies more vicious or treacherous than one’s own neighbours. Centuries of coexistence have smoothed out the differences — who today remembers the long-standing enmity between Vladimir and Novgorod, Tver and Moscow, Chernihiv and Smolensk?
Ethnic states are a relics of the past. What makes a nation is citizenship, not ancestral blood. The problems facing Russia today lie in its political system, not in ethnic relations. Everyone suffers under dictatorship. Not equally, though the differences stem not from ethnic distinctions, but from the deliberate actions of those in power and the suppression of civil liberties. Democratic governance easily irons out these manufactured divisions by granting all ethnic groups equal civil rights. Strict adherence to human rights will very quickly put an end to the activities of those who seek to exploit nationalist sentiments and build political careers on the basis of imaginary inter-ethnic problems. Equal rights are the ideal instrument that reduces the ethnic wild card to mere words — a worthless scrap of paper, useless in dirty political games. That’s why nationalism is at odds with democracy and the rule of law.
An excellent example that illustrates this thesis is Israel and Palestinian autonomy. There are no Jews in the criminally authoritarian Palestinian Authority; they have been exterminated or expelled. Ethnic intolerance has been enshrined in law there. In democratic Israel, it’s the opposite. Arabs have the same rights as Jews: they have mosques, newspapers, political parties, the same voting rights as everyone else, representation in parliament, and service in government and the military. There’s no discrimination, neither in institutions nor on the street. In a state governed by the rule of law, there is neither Greek nor Jew. Democracy erases ethnic boundaries; the issue becomes irrelevant. If there is any issue at all, it’s marginal and only at the fringes of public consciousness. Of course, Israeli democracy is also imperfect and has its own problems. But they are incomparable with similar problems in despotic regimes.
Unfortunately, even in established democracies, things don’t always go smoothly: there can be racial segregation, positive discrimination, or imposed collective responsibility. But if the state refrains from discriminating against some ethnic groups in favour of others, the grounds for inter-ethnic tension disappear. But alas, pro-government and opposition politicians alike continue to explain society’s ills in terms of ethnic characteristics and to shape policy around the rights of ethnic groups rather than those of the citizen. This betrays what actually motivates these politicians: an insatiable thirst for power and a blatant disregard for the values of freedom and democracy.
Translated by Nina dePalma
