MOSCOW — On the television screen, three dark-skinned men from the Caucasus sit sullenly munching watermelon in a Moscow courtyard, then brazenly toss the chewed rinds into the path of a young blond woman pushing a baby carriage.
Two ethnic Russians glare at the watermelon thugs. "Clean it up," one of them says menacingly.
The words "Let's clean our city of trash" flash across the screen.
When the political ad in the campaign for Sunday's Moscow City Council elections aired, human rights groups went apoplectic. One of its "stars," Dmitri Rogozin, the leader of the up-and-coming nationalist Rodina party, insisted with wide-eyed confusion that he had been misunderstood.
But just as the ad was making its debut, members of a largely Muslim immigrant community rioted in France. Now the watermelon ad is dubbed in French, and features a new slogan: "France, One Year Ago."
"Look at what's happening in France. Forget about talk of xenophobic policy -- you have cars burning on highways!" Rogozin said. "I don't want the same thing to happen in Russia."
What Rogozin did not mention was that it already had -- in reverse.
Nearly 50 Asians, blacks, Caucasians and other people of color died in racially motivated violence last year, mainly in savage street attacks by gangs of young Slavic hooligans. That's more than double the number the previous year. At least 40 foreign students have been attacked this year in the city of Voronezh alone, NTV television reported last month.
"The impoverished masses from the outskirts of town, they perceive people from the Caucasus as the root cause of all their problems, so they beat them as a way of getting back at them," said Said Bitsoyev, a native of Chechnya, a Russian republic in the Caucasus, and editor at a major Moscow newspaper. Bitsoyev's 17-year-old son was stabbed 20 times and left for dead by skinheads last month, but survived.
Russia's immigration problem is unlike that facing European capitals such as Paris, London and Berlin. Here, 80% of the nation's roughly 10 million illegal migrants are hardly foreigners: They are residents of the former Soviet Union, non-Slavs who nonetheless grew up speaking Russian, going to Soviet schools, considering Moscow their capital.
Residents of North Caucasus republics such as Chechnya are, in fact, citizens of the Russian Federation, though it would be hard to tell that from Rodina's watermelon commercial.
The underlying message of the ad -- nip the problem in the bud before troublemaking migrants run amok -- is playing big in the Moscow council campaign, seen as a dress rehearsal for issues that will dominate crucial parliamentary elections in 2007.
The immigration issue has gathered enough steam that more than 3,000 protesters rallied in a Nov. 4 nationalist march, carrying signs such as "Clean Russia of the Occupiers."
Last month, the Movement Against Illegal Immigration sponsored a smaller rally, "Stop the Dark-Skinned Rapists," outside the People's Friendship University, a magnet for students from Asia, Latin America and Africa and a frequent target of racist attacks.
"People are coming out into the streets of their own accord, and threatening to resolve the problem themselves -- with clubs, if necessary," said Alexander Belov, a co-organizer of both marches.
Rodina, which means Homeland, has eschewed violence and insists that its current campaign is focused on regulating immigration, not forcing out people of color. The party was originally seen as a brainchild of the Kremlin, created on the eve of the 2003 parliamentary elections to draw votes away from the still-influential Communist Party.
The bloc had an unexpectedly large showing, winning 9% of the vote. Together with Vladimir V. Zhirinovsky's ultranationalist Liberal Democratic Party, which won more than 11%, it siphoned a sizable portion of the vote from the Communists, enough to leave the once-powerful party a has-been in parliament.
Fast forward to 2007, when the next elections will help determine whether there can be a democratic transition of power at the end of President Vladimir V. Putin's second term.
Rodina and the outspoken Rogozin now appear flush with cash, stridently in opposition to the pro-Putin United Russia and eager to commune with former opposition enemies, including the Communists and imprisoned former oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky.
Whether the opposition is real or staged has yet to be determined in the chimerical world of Russian politics. Some say Putin is alternately flirting with nationalist themes himself -- resurrecting the Soviet red star, the national anthem and the Kremlin Honor Guard, along with classic emblems of czarist Russia -- and fabricating a fascist boogeyman to scare voters back into the arms of United Russia in 2007.
