Xenofobia is Concentrating: Interview with Vladimir Mukomel

Abstract

The interview  is devoted to xenophobic sentiments in Russian society. The consolidation of population is based on negative identity: enemy images like migrants, LGBT, “Caucasians”, liberals and etc. The Ukrainians are now object of disaffection after the Russian-Ukraine crisis in 2014. The drivers of xenophobia growth in Russia are lack of public confidence in power structures, dysfunction of social institutions, low citizen activism. The “search of enemy” is the strategy for substitution of positive society identity as there are not significant conditions for positive mobilization in Russia society today.