About the book: 2014 / If you don’t understand what’s happening to people, why they get into debt, taking out loans that they will never pay off, inventing their own money , and their neighbors willingly accept them; fighting for the “purity of the nation” and “preservation of roots”, some destroy “strangers”, others find other roots for themselves, etc., contact Olesya Gerasimenko. Ask her to look into the problem and tell her. She will figure it out and tell you. And everything will become clear, understandable and simple. I would call the genre in which Olesya works analytical reporting. The presentation style is easy and accessible. The method of collecting invoices and processing them is deep analytics. Each of her reports is preceded by several dozen meetings and interviews, calls, requests and letters. The “Unified Russia” project began last year, when there were no events in Biryulyovo or Pugachev. Interethnic problems had not yet risen to their full potential, separatism in the national outskirts seemed to be a thing of the past, along with the first and second Chechen wars, and regional separatism seemed to be a forgotten exoticism of the early 90s. But, as it turns out now, the conflict potential has not gone away; it has been smoldering all these years, like a peat bog near Moscow, periodically flaring up in Vladivostok, then in Kaliningrad, then in Karelian Kondopoga. The slogan of Moscow nationalists is “Stop feeding the Caucasus!” unexpectedly came back with a Siberian “stop feeding Moscow!” Olesya Gerasimenko conducted a brilliant study, analyzing and showing the reasons that give rise to dissatisfaction with the center in the regions, and the mechanisms that generate conflicts. There is almost no national coloring here (almost, because in two regions an attempt at ethnic relabeling is still visible - “Siberians” and “Pomors”), but there are signs of potential interethnic tension. The regions are dissatisfied not only with the Moscow government and business, but also with the Moscow opposition. Resentment towards “Moscow” in general. This is a classic scheme for the emergence of interethnic conflict, when “blame” is assigned to the entire foreign ethnic group. The exact opposite conclusion is also true: the “national” component of an interethnic conflict is secondary. What is primary is what is described in the reports of Olesya Gerasimenko