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Events in London
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Alexander Lebedev-Lyubimov, the head of the Department of Psychology of the Financial University under the Government of Russia:
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We are watching how people are looting shops and stealing mobile phones.
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We would very much like to explain this phenomenon by saying that they are hungry and would like to sell these phones and earn some money.
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In fact, maybe it is a much more complex process. Revolutions do not develop because people are hungry.
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When people are hungry, they do not think about revolutions: they are hungry and searching for food.
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When they are degraded and remain in this degraded state for a while, than the national pride, the mechanism of social comparison begins to work, sometimes in a very distort and corrupt manner.
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The social science often sees the origins of such behavior in inter-personal conflicts and confrontation which are defined by the theory of social comparison without highlighting economic factors.
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This explains the phenomenon we have already talked about regarding young people from wealthy families taking part in rallies.
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What is a wealthy family? A family which owns one or two shops, but which does not own an oil plant. There is always a place to comparison.
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Undoubtedly immigrants coming for a better life and hoping to do better than they used to do in their home countries
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while comparing themselves with the locals will sooner or later give breaks of uncontrollable aggression and discontent.
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Therefore the culture can be incorporative, when it can include others, which can be made possible by economic conditions and social norms of behavior regulation,
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values and societal stereotypes and facilitate a normal integration of people in the certain culture.
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When culture is not incorporative, it puts people in a humiliating and subordinate position people who had to leave their countries where they felt badly.
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There is a moment which we could regard as ethnic, but from the point of view of psychology, it is an issue of social comparison.
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The ethnic factor here is a formality, while the comparison is substantial. I would explain it in these terms.
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The President of the Institute of Religion and Politics and member of the Council for Cooperation with Religious Associations under the Russian president, Alexander Ignatenko:
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What is to be done? What buttons are to be pressed? Should we change the socio-economic model of the UK, or Russia, or Arab countries?
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What should the Cameron government do? What should be done in Russia, by the way? Russia has not remained untouched by this problem.
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I am talking about integrators and non-integrators - people who are grounded in the culture and who are not grounded in the culture, social norms, etc.
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In words of our new mayor, Sobyanin: immigrants are wandering without anything to do in Moscow. This is indeed true.
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And in case there will be riots in Moscow, their main participants will be not the Moscow football fans, but these hundreds of thousands of immigrants,
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who without any money, occupation, often without regular meals reside in our capital.
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I think our thinking should not go in the way of "these event have been caused by different factors" but by stating that they have been caused by concrete factors,
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which are new and which appeared in the epoch of globalization when people from some Afghan village, Arab province
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or Tajik kishlak bought a plane ticket and often using fake documents could come to London, Moscow, Paris, etc.
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These people are entirely non adapted to this environment, and - what is more important - do not follow the norms and rules of behavior which are followed in London, Paris, Marseille, etc.
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Vladimir Ovchinsky, the deputy head of the Union of Criminologists:
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Today the problem of such criminal riots is not the most important for our country, even if they might take place.
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The biggest problems are the perpetual anti-terrorism operation, the terrorist war which is taking place in the republics of North Caucasus; a possible emergence of a second terrorist front.
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If Taliban after the US and allied forces have left Afghanistan strengthens its activities and starts breaking through and outreaching the Central Asia
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- Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, then Russia as a member of the CSTO will be obliged to intervene, to close the borders and help its neighbors.
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When Russia intervenes, it will receive a second blow from the second terrorist front, from people to whom we refer as illegal immigrants from the Central Asia.
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Imagine if out of several millions of illegal immigrants on the territory of Russia there will be one percent of people with terrorist inclinations, in this case we will face divisions of terrorists.
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If it takes place, our right groups as well as simple population will respond to it by deterioration of their attitude towards the immigrants, and a number of other problems will occur.
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But these problems are in my opinion still subject to resolution and there are forces to solve it.
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However, the biggest problem that can take place in Russia is not happening in the UK at the moment, but in Israel:
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non-violent mass rallies of hundreds of thousands people which have already spread all across the country.
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Thanks to the ethnic and confessional homogeneity, they are managing it, although in some cities there are already confrontations with law enforcement bodies taking place and car tires are being burned.
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If this situation develops in our country against the background of the financial crisis
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which was announced yesterday by the head of the World Bank who said that we should be ready to the worst economic consequences...
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A serious man, with no one above him in the financial league, said that Europe and all the other countries should be prepared for the most negative development of the financial situation.
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The economic situation determines the social situation. The criminal factor is always delayed; it always takes place after the aggravation of the social climate.
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Our government must be ready for such development; it should possess algorithms of action for each direction the situation might develop in.
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