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kx's avatar

"if you call him, you should use vocativus: “o skinheadye!”."

No, you shouldn't. Unlike Polish, Russian doesn't have a real vocative case. There is something called the "old vocative", but it's limited to a few fixed expressions, e.g. "Bozhe!" or "Gospodi!" ("[oh my] God!"). There is also the "new vocative", but again it is limited to certain types of words, such as people's names (e.g. if you are colloquially addressing a girl called Lena, you can say "Len!").

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Jakub P.'s avatar

"Just like the whole phenomenon of Russian racism and nazism, it can be traced to the Soviet years."

...or to an even older tradition of the "Black Hundreds".

A bit of a side note, but the Russian tactic of pointing to Western racism in response to any criticism of their own discriminatory policies dates back to the tsarist times. The infamous "And you are lynching Negroes" card was first played by Tsar's diplomats when Russia faced worldwide ostracism following the Kishinev pogrom.

Obviously racism in the West is still an issue and was even more so over a century ago, but it doesn't make this form of whataboutism any less dishonest.

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