movielover said:
I happened to meet a new young immigrant from Russia (Sochi) this weekend, and we had a nice chat.
- She was no fan of Putin and blames it all on him
- When I politely brought up Minsk and the Israeli PM peace talks, she was silent
- She claimed that in Russia those that are Caucasian are seen as "real Russians"; and others are referred to with a Russian term I can't recall. I said, "Second class citizen?", and she said "Yes". I told her that the vast majority of Americans understand someone might have a different culture, but we're all equal. She said "This is what I really like about America."
- I asked her about Nazis in Ukraine; she claimed these groups exist 'all over Europe'
- Only here six months, but claims there's no good Russian food in The City. Doesn't like tacos. I advised her to find a taqueria with a grandmother who doesn't speak English. She agreed. "That's always the best."
I guess you're using "Caucasian" here is in the American framework, meaning of European stock, because in Russia, Caucasians or people hailing from the north Caucasus region are ethnic minorities, like Chechnyans, Dagestanis or Tatars who are mostly of Turkic or
Northern Caucasian extraction as opposed to European Slav. These people speak their native language at home but learn Russian as their primary language in schools and universities, and have a dual identity as ethnic Dagestani, Chechen etc and also as Russian citizens.
Russia endorses (at the very least nominally) a civic nationalist state identity where its ~20% minorities and the 3 main minority religions of Islam Buddhism and Judaism are the official state religions. Russia has the highest percentage of Muslims in Europe (excluding small Balkan states like Bosnia and Albania), at around 15%, but contrary to countries like France, Netherlands, UK etc with large Muslim minorities, the Muslim Russians have been a part of the national mosaic from day 1, and don't consider themselves as foreign, immigrant peoples.
Most ethnic minorities/migrant workers in big Russian cities like Moscow or St Petersburg are Turkic minorities hailing from former Soviet central Asian countries, the "Stans" - Kazakhstan, Tadjikistan, Kyrgyzstan etc. They might be considered as 2nd class citizens because they're usually foreign nationals who take on lower-paid/menial jobs, though that dynamic is not as strong as in most western countries where the cultural and historical gap between the locals and migrants is much wider.
By and large, the majority of Russian immigrants in the US don't like Putin, they tend to be younger liberal professionals hailing from the big cities who migrate to coastal cities in the US. This demographic also is the most anti-Putin in Russia itself. Older, blue-collar Russians however are solidly supportive of Putin, in good part because they've lived through the hellish dystopia of the 1990s, where 40%-50% of Russians were plunged into abject poverty, and their economy and civic society completely cratered.
Russians who remember the 90s credit Putin for having righted that ship and bringing relative stability and prosperity to their country. And Russia having a typical eastern European demography with a relatively small young cohort, this translates into the high ratings Putin gets at home.
