Fears over Muscovite's Code

[Rezia]

"FEARS OVER MOSCOVITE'S CODE" (The Moscow Times, June)
     City Hall claims that a new handbook will improve ethnic relations in the city, but some are sceptical. 
     Moscow authorities are planning to introduce a document called the "Muscovite's Code", which they claim will ease tensions between local residents and migrants from different cultural and ethnic environments – but not everyone is impressed.
     "At the moment, there are unwritten rules that residents of our city have to adhere to," Mikhail Solomentsev, head of the Moscow city government's Department for Inter-Regional Communications and Regional Policies, told RIA Novosti. "For instance, people shouldn't slaughter sheep in a courtyard, make shashlyk on their balcony or walk around the city in their national dress – and they should speak Russian."
     According to Solomentsev, City Hall has asked Moscow's diaspora communities to pen a joint document that would contain a set of rules for people coming to Moscow from other countries and cultures.
     "Once we have their suggestions, we'll consult experts and eventually we'll have, so to speak, a 'Muscovite's code'," Solomentsev said. "Say, a person is coming to the city; his compatriots would give him a booklet to let him know what is accepted and what in not accepted here."
     Solomentsev added that the Muscovite's Code is not going to be mandatory and would only contain recommendations for better adaptation to the city's culture and day-to-day life. "Moscow is a city were life is based on Russian culture, and everyone who moves here should take that into account," he said, adding that the document should help people moving to the city "become Muscovite" or "members of a coalition that is greater than nationality, because different cultures are intertwined in it and it has its own lifestyle and its own rules."
     The initiative apparently comes as a response to many Moscow natives' hostility towards migrants who arrive in the city in large numbers, particularly against those from regions such as Central Asia. According to a recent survey by the Levada Centre, migrants were cited as the city's biggest problem alongside high prices.
     Some diaspora communities in Moscow welcomed the idea, provided it is properly carried out. "There is a need for a document of this kind," Levon Centre, migrants were cited as the city's biggest problem alongside high prices.
     Some diaspora communities in Moscow welcomed the idea, provided it is properly carries out. "There is a need for a document of this kind," Levon Mukanyan, Vice President of the Union of Russia's Armenians, told The Moscow News. "Moscow is a megapolis where people from different cultures live and where some cultural traditions are not accepted."
     "For instance, in some Southern republics of the former Soviet Union there is a tradition to come for the bride on the morning of the wedding, loudly playing music," he went on to say. "Can you imagine this in a Moscow neighbourhood? So it is better to have all those recommendations in one booklet rather than have people moving to Moscow learn all those things by trial and error for two or three years."
      "The idea is good," Mukanyan concluded. "But it is important that it not be distorted."
     Other observers were more skeptical. "It's an inconclusive step," Vartan Mushegyan, head of the Russian Union of Diasporas, told K2Kapital web portal. "This isn't serious and only means that the Moscow government isn't doing anything about interethnic relations. If the government wants to promote tolerance, it should add new disciplines to the educational program – and this requires serious effort, it cannot be done overnight."
     Strained relations between natives and immigrants in an urban setting are not unique to Moscow. Earlier this week, Paris police banned a controversial "pork sausage and wine" street party planned by extremist groups to combat the "Islamisation" of a neighbourhood, Yahoo News reported.

[Чугуний]

This isn't serious and only means that the Moscow government isn't doing anything about interethnic relations.

Это старое правительство критикуют или команду нового мэра?

[Flos]

Это старое правительство критикуют или команду нового мэра?

Это же баян, старинный.

[Rezia]

This isn't serious and only means that the Moscow government isn't doing anything about interethnic relations.

Это старое правительство критикуют или команду нового мэра?

Это было летом за несколько месяцев до нового мэра.

[Wolliger Mensch]

Не понимаю, для кого эта белиберда пишется.

[Rezia]

"For instance, people shouldn't slaughter sheep in a courtyard, make shashlyk on their balcony or walk around the city in their national dress – and they should speak Russian."

По поводу барана -скорее всего это на праздник Курбан байрам, но как-то с трудом верится, что люди проводят этот мусульманский обряд где-нибудь на детской площадке во дворе дома, где они живут, это какие-то домыслы злобных соседей; но почему запрещать национальную одежду... это уже перебор.