Ethnic and Economic Divide Splits Russian City : Violence: Fighting erupts as working-class residents square off against capitalistic newcomers from the south.

The bus drivers’ ultimatum challenged the mayor with make-my-day logic: Clear the city of ethnic Armenians, Azerbaijanis and Georgians, or we’ll do it ourselves.

Signed by 404 drivers, the blunt threat has markedly escalated the tension in Bryansk, a working-class city where ugly ethnic violence has erupted as residents have squared off with foreign peddlers who earn big profits selling fruit and vegetables at local markets.

The fighting, authorities say, stems from the frustration many Russians feel as they watch people from former Soviet republics that they had long considered inferior get rich through once-taboo capitalist practices.

For 70 years, the ruling Communist Party taught that anyone who profited from selling goods was an “economic criminal” and a dirty “speculator.” Now, Russians are bitterly flinging these labels at entrepreneurs from the southern fringes of the former Soviet Union who import produce, ranging from apples to zucchini, and sell it at high prices in farmers markets across Russia.

Easily identifiable by their dark complexion and black hair--which prompts many fair-skinned Slavs to contemptuously call them “black people”--the vendors from Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan can earn 10 or more times the average Russian salary by importing fruits and vegetables year-round.

“The problem is a polarization of society--our population is getting poorer and poorer, and these people are throwing money around in taxis and restaurants and acting like money can buy them everything,” said Yuri Lodkin, who represents Bryansk in the Russian Congress of People’s Deputies.

Furious that foreigners, some of whom barely speak Russian, are flourishing on their home turf, residents in half a dozen Russian cities have recently mounted campaigns to kick them out of the markets in the name of “ethnic cleansing.”

“They did right to chase those black people out of the city,” Nadezhda Mikhailova, a 60-year-old Russian, said as she walked through Bryansk’s Central Market. “My husband’s on a forced vacation with no salary, and those black speculators are getting rich selling on the street.”

Echoing a common sentiment, she added angrily, “We have no money here because they take all our rubles back to their countries.”

In Bryansk, a city of 500,000 about 200 miles southwest of Moscow, there had been run-ins before between the vendors and the bus drivers. Their depot is nearby, and many of them ate in an Armenian-run cafe.

But the showdown began in mid-July when a knife-wielding Armenian slashed a Russian bus driver in the stomach, setting off a series of violent scuffles. Finally, the drivers delivered their ultimatum, vowing to use all “legal and illegal” measures necessary to “clean” Bryansk if local authorities refused to act.

Although Bryansk’s police chief condemned the threat and government officials tried to calm the bus drivers, 82 of the 113 southerners--including all the produce vendors--who had been living in Bryansk’s hotels quickly fled. Other southerners staying in private homes apparently remained, but none appeared at the city’s Central Market in the days following the violence.

“This ethnic conflict has really shaken us up,” said Anatoli Konovalov, deputy administrator of the Bryansk region. “We were always proud of our city, and we always considered ourselves far from the ethnic violence in Moldova and other republics. But now we realize with shock that our society is unhealthy too.”

At a rowdy meeting in their bus repair station recently, about 70 drivers voiced their fury at the Armenians, Azerbaijanis and Georgians, accusing them of using Mafia-style tactics to bully local produce vendors and of buying scarce goods in bulk from government stores and reselling them on the streets for a hefty profit.

“They already own practically the whole town,” shouted Viktor Konovalev, a young bus driver whose face was red with anger under his spiky blond hair. “These black masses are everywhere.”

Vladimir Antoninko, 27, was cheered when he asked a bitter rhetorical question: “I see some dark guy selling vodka on the street, and I wonder: ‘Why is he richer than I am? All he does is sit there and sell vodka.’ ”

The specter of mass unemployment may have exacerbated tensions in Bryansk, where 15,000 workers will soon lose their jobs in factories that produce everything from refrigerated train cars to candy, said Viktor Dakshe, a local official. “I understand why this crisis has happened,” he told the bus drivers. “Bryansk is a center of the working class, and the working class is suffering the most. This crisis is a cry from your soul.”

Yet while the main source of friction may be economic rather than ethnic, the drivers’ fury seemed especially directed against darker-skinned southerners. At the Bryansk market, vendors from Central Asia continued to sell watermelons and other imported fruit undisturbed even after the Armenians, Azerbaijanis and Georgians had been driven away.

Although most Bryansk residents quickly agreed that not all southerners are hooligans and speculators, they said that the violent tempers and ostentatious lifestyles of a few had irreparably damaged the reputation of the entire group. Reciting the Russian proverb “One sick sheep infects the whole pen,” most said they supported the bus drivers’ blanket demand that all southerners leave.

In another incident that indicates just how widespread the anti-southerner feeling has become in Russia, taxi drivers in the Black Sea resort town of Sochi--angered by the killing of a 25-year-old taxi driver by a visiting Georgian--have petitioned the Russian Parliament Speaker to allow them to close the border with Georgia, Russia’s Itar-Tass news service reported last week.

In Moscow, Azerbaijani vegetable and fruit sellers say they are not surprised.

“Russians have always looked down on us and hated us,” said Elhan Abasov, 28, an Azerbaijani who sells tomatoes in a Moscow market. “Sometimes when you sit down next to Russians, they get up and move away. The relationship between us is getting worse and worse.”

Other southern vendors said Russians have become more tolerant of them as capitalism has caught on and “speculation” has taken on positive connotations as a form of business.

But those who had heard of ethnic conflicts in Bryansk, as well as in Tula, Smolensk and a handful of other Russian cities, said they fear a backlash in Russia’s capital too.

“They want to kick us out, but if I didn’t bring food here, what would people buy?” Murtas Aliev, 29, asked as he piled his apricots and tomatoes on a metal tray. “They say they don’t like black people, which makes us feel very bad. We’re all people, and we need to learn to live together.”