European Union Institute for Security Studies November 2013 1 42 2013 It is a sad but quintessentially European story. A rich capital attracts migrants, in turn creat- ing tensions between the local population and the newly arrived immigrants. At some point, a trigger – in this case, the killing of a local man – causes these social and ethnic tensions to escalate into violence, with looted shops and burned cars. Such a scenario has unfold- ed before in Paris, London and Stockholm. But a few weeks ago Moscow joined the ranks when, in the district of Biryulyovo, hundreds of people rampaged through shops and the city’s biggest wholesale fruit and vegetable market. The recent Moscow riots highlight several par- allels between Russia and the rest of Europe in terms of societal politics, starting with so- cial tensions in large urban centres and the growth of anti-immigrant sentiment. The ri- ots are just one manifestation of a significant mutation in Russian nationalism – which has evolved from an expansionist, imperialistic and ethnically inclusive type towards an eth- nically exclusive one. The Biryulyovo riots – alas, neither the first nor the last of their kind – constitute a serious challenge for a Kremlin in search of a new modus operandi in domestic politics as well as foreign policy. A more demanding public The Biryulyovo riots and the anti-Putin pro- tests of last year are part of the same trend whereby Russians are demanding a greater say in how the country is run – a trend with both positive and negative consequences. The dem- onstrations by tens of thousands of people in Moscow against electoral fraud and Putin’s style of governance back in 2012 were a sign of the emergence of a rising middle class tired of au- thoritarian rule. This year, the anti-corruption blogger Alexei Navalny took a significant share of the vote (27%) in the Moscow mayoral race and mobilised an unprecedented army of volun- teers to campaign on his behalf. The mayoralty of Ekaterinburg, Russia’s fourth biggest city and the capital of the industrialised and relatively prosperous Ural region, recently went to anoth- er opposition campaigner, Yevgeny Roizman, an anti-drug campaigner-turned-politician. This may not (yet) be considered as a democratic awakening – but a societal pushback against the status quo is clearly discernible. The public’s demands for a greater say in politi- cal decision-making are far from confined to the desire for fair elections or traditional middle- class aspirations. Much more widespread are DMITRY LOVETSKY/AP/SIPA The Moscow riots, Russian nationalism and the Eurasian Union by Nicu Popescu