Same thing happened to me, only it was in Armenia and grown-up Armenians were talking sh*t to me for being a half-Russian kid (think 1st-grade age). I wouldn't say "Russians are discriminatory", just "people from the former USSR are usually discriminatory". From my experience, in both countries, Armenia was a lot worse.
I have a lot of family living in Armenia and i never caught any discrimination when i was out and about in Yerevan. Not towards me or my mother who is Russian. And I'm more Russian-looking than Armenian, with light skin and brown hair. Just my observation. Of course a few visits don't measure up to years living there. So, i can totally see what you described happen there. I wonder if this was always a problem in USSR. Every time i hear my parents talk about the good old days, they seem to describe pretty amazing, peaceful time. Especially the 70s. And now...
I didn't try to invalidate your words :), just sharing my experience. I was also more Russian-looking, especially at a younger age.
Perhaps I was just caught in a bad moment (just after the collapse of the USSR, on the wave of "independence" of Armenia). Or perhaps it's my first name, which is totally Russian (my last name is Armenian and not even Russified like yours - I suppose it's kind of a curious juxtaposition of the 2). I was constantly fighting other kids in the street and had to go to the only Russian elementary school in Yerevan, otherwise my school life would probably be miserable. When I lived in Moscow afterwards, I was just going to the local school with the Russian kids. This is not to say Russians are as a rule extremely welcoming to immigrants, but in my case I had a much better time there.
As far as the good old days, of which I don't remember much - I'm guessing Russians always had a bit of a superiority complex, being a "metropoly" within the USSR, but generally things were kept more in check than now, given the state's declared internationalist policy. Both my parents are half-and-half, which was very common in Armenia - so it must have been not so bad on an everyday level.
The same thing happened to me, except I'm 100% Armenian, but my native language happens to be Russian, because it was the primarily spoken language in our family.
It's just xenophobia.
its more than that. I remember being bullied and called little jew by kids, by teachers, by school principal, by janitors, by strangers on the subway when I was 7 or 8 because I have soft Rs and curly hair, and I am not Jewish.
