Contemporary Russians are a mixed bag. Plenty of non-Russian racists, inclusive of many racist examples. Meantime, I’m sure that among Euros, Russians collectively have had one the highest inter-ethnic rates of marriage.

Someone directed my attention to a recent piece in a leading Brit media venue which appears to essentially wish for a high mortality rate among Russians as a means of ending ethnic differences in Estonia and Latvia.

It’s easy to tell from your comment that you are not a dark-skinned person living in Moscow — nor, indeed, are you capable of imagining what it is like to be one. In fact, I daresay that you’ve never had a single meaningful conversation with such a person in your entire life.

People are the same everywhere I think. I’ve heard many similar conversations when I was driving a cab. Here almost everyone is from somewhere else, but everyone has a perception about people from other cultures. Some of us whites feel comfortable expressing prejudice when we are alone with another white person. But many celebrate diversity too.

It is changing for the better I hope. I hope many of these feelings will go away when my generation exits. Sometimes it takes a generation or two for people to forget. Things are changing fast everywhere. People cannot keep up.