> Our society just doesn't have the concept of racism I'd say "racism" those days is a fairly weird word that I've seen infrequently applied as an umbrella ter

> Our society just doesn't have the concept of racism I'd say "racism" those days is a fairly weird word that I've seen infrequently applied as an umbrella term covering many different things. It's almost certainly true that there is virtually no "classical" (black vs white) racism there. Russia never had any significant fraction of black population, and the flavors of slavery were quite different from the US. When Russian sees a black person, while their inner voice would surely say "this person is an alien", there's most likely would be no immediate derogatory prejudice involved - because to best of my awareness it was never instilled, at least not in the Soviet and post-Soviet mindspace. But in Russia there surely is something similar, just of a different flavor - again, because of different history and societal composition. Say, doubtlessly there are tons of prejudices based on ethnicity - just remember how many derogatory names and jokes are there (and always were) for neighboring nations such as Ukrainians (this is so fucked up!), Georgians, Tajiks or Uzbeks; or Russian ethniticies - especially Chechens (this nationality is pretty touchy conversation subject).