Migration of the Russian diaspora after the breakup of the Soviet Union.

• Author: Heleniak, Timothy

When the Soviet Union broke up at the end of 1991, 25.2 million Russians became part of a large diaspora population "without moving an inch or leaving their homes." (1) They went from being members of a privileged majority who arguably saw their homeland as the entire Soviet Union to minority members of 14 newly independent nation states. Some of these states were experiencing sovereignty for the first time in decades and others for the first time in history. All sought to elevate the status of the titular group to some degree, and many were quite hostile to the existence of a Russian minority that ranged from two to 38 percent of their populations. When confronted with their new status, these new Russian diaspora populations could choose from several possible reactions. These included remaining in the non-Russian states and forming political opposition groups in order to protect their minority rights, irredentism in cases where a geographically concentrated number of Russians lived in a region contiguous with Russia, or "voting with their feet" and leaving the non-Russian states.

In the newly independent states, there were 43.4 million members of the titular nationalities of these states living outside their homelands, and numerous others at the sub-national level. (2) At the time of the breakup of the Soviet Union, there were 53 ethnic homelands, 15 of which became the successor states to the Soviet Union. (3) Many thought that the reconcentration of ethnic groups in their homelands would dominate migration patterns in the post-Soviet period. (4) While diaspora migration has been a major factor in post-Soviet migration patterns, it is not the sole cause. For that reason, migration patterns of the Russian diaspora must be viewed broadly against overall migration streams into and out of Russia during the post-Soviet period. The attitude of Russia towards its diaspora population changed during the 1990s with differing migration patterns and demographic realities. The reaction of the Russian diaspora groups, whether assimilation or migration, has important implications for nation and state building in the non-Russian states and Russia, and for the diaspora population itself.

There have been a number of recent works examining the Russian diaspora. (5) While all of these allude to migration as a strategy of adaptation, and some include data on Russian migration, none provide a comprehensive treatment of post-Soviet migration patterns of the Russian diaspora population. In this paper, the levels, shares, sources, destinations, socio-economic characteristics, and causes of the Russian diaspora's return to Russia will be examined. In many cases, data from the last Soviet population census conducted in January 1989 will be used as a benchmark to describe the Russian and Russian-speaking populations in the non-Russian FSU (former Soviet Union) states. This is done with the realization that those who declared their nationality to be "Russian" on the census may not have "Russian" on the passports they present to the Ministry of Internal Affairs upon entry to or exit from the country. (6)

HISTORY OF RUSSIAN MIGRATION INTO THE NON-RUSSIAN PERIPHERY

Russians have been flowing outward from their central core of settlement around Moscow to the periphery since the overthrow of the Tatars in 1552, the year many regard as the beginning of the modern Russian state. (7) This outward expansion has been described as an imperial project that lasted for the next 350 years and beyond, into the Soviet era. While Russian out-migration to the non-Russian periphery did take place during the creation and expansion of the Russian Empire, it greatly accelerated, with more systematic state sponsorship, after the creation of the Soviet Union. A brief review of the history of the Russian diaspora is a useful backdrop for analysis of this group's movement following the breakup of the Soviet Union.

The territorial expansion of the Russian Empire can be divided into three geographic phases. The empire first expanded eastward across Siberia to the Pacific, which settlers reached with remarkable speed by 1649. Siberia and the Far East quickly came under Russian rule, and given the small numbers of indigenous peoples spread across this vast territory, Russians became a demographic majority by 1678. (8) The westward expansion started in the early 18th century and incorporated Belarus, the Baltics, parts of Poland, parts of the Ottoman Empire, and Moldova. Expansion to include the present-day north Caucasus region, Armenia, and Georgia took place during the 1800s. Expansion to include Central Asia took place in the second half of the 19th century. As the Russian Empire expanded to encompass more non-Russian areas and peoples, the Russians' share of the total population naturally declined, falling from 71 percent of the empire's total population in 1678 to 44 percent in 1897, at the time of the first all-Russian population census. By the end of 19th century, the territorial expansion of the Russian Empire was more or less complete.

In the early part of the 20th century and until the mid-1920s, the migration of Russians into the non-Russian states was relatively spontaneous. (9) The first five-year plan in 1928 marked the beginning of central planning and efforts on the part of the state to control population movements. The propiska (resident permit system) was introduced in 1932 and the first severnaya nabavka (northern wage increments) were introduced in 1933. In this early period of collectivization and industrialization, Russians streamed into the non-Russian periphery. The early years after the revolution also saw the elevation of non-Russian titular nationalities over Russians and recognition of ethno-territorial homelands. This was done partly out of political expediency, in order to secure the loyalty of the non-Russian groups to the new Bolshevik regime.

For most of the Soviet period, there was net out-migration from Russia to the non-Russian states. This trend was reversed in 1975, and from that year until the breakup of the Soviet Union at the end of 1991, net migration into Russia averaged about 160,000 annually. Opportunities for legal emigration from the Soviet Union were limited, amounting to only about 3,000 persons a year in the mid-1980s. (10) Migration is only one of three sources of the changing ethnic composition of a population, the other two being differential rates of natural increase and ethnic re-identification. It is impossible to document the latter, but differential rates of demographic growth among ethnic groups have been noted by many as a source of changing ethnic composition. This was especially true between Russians and the titular groups of Central Asia and the Transcaucasus. In 1989, Russians had a lower total fertility rate than the titular groups for all 14 non-Russian FSU states, and a lower rate of natural increase (births minus deaths) than the titular group in all but four--Ukraine, Belarus, Latvia, and Estonia. (11) Because of these differential rates of growth and out-migration, the share that Russians made up of the southern republics (the five Central Asian and three Transcaucasian) peaked in 1959 at 22.1 percent of the population of these states, and had fallen to 15.9 percent by the 1989 census. (12) The Russian share of the population peaked as early as 1937 in Armenia and Azerbaijan, and in 1959 in the other six. Meanwhile, the share of Russians in the six European republics (the three Baltic states, Ukraine, Belarus, and Moldova) continued to grow until the breakup of the Soviet Union, peaking in 1989 collectively and in all six individually.

THE RUSSIAN DIASPORA ON THE EVE OF THE BREAKUP OF THE SOVIET UNION

The number of Russians in the non-Russian states ranged from 11.3 million in Ukraine to just 51,555 in Armenia in 1989.13 The over 11 million Russians in Ukraine represented 45 percent of the entire diaspora, and the 6 million in Kazakhstan a quarter. Uzbekistan, Belarus, Kyrgyzstan, and Latvia all had sizeable populations of between 900,000 and 1.6 million Russians. The remaining republics had a half million or fewer Russians, although in some cases the smaller numbers still represented large shares of the total population. Russians made up more than 10 percent of the population in half of the 14 non-Russian states. Absolute numbers, and more importantly, large percentage shares, can be translated into political power favoring minority rights in the new states, perhaps lessening the desire to migrate.

Most Russians in the non-Russian states lived in tight concentrations in the capitals, other large urban settlements, and a few other regions of compact settlement, which served to create isolated ethnic enclaves that minimized mixing with other ethnic groups, including the titular nationality. In every non-Russian republic in 1989, the percentage of Russians in urban areas was higher than in the republic as a whole. (14) On average, Russians made up 18.2 percent of the population of the non-Russian states, but 27 percent of urban areas. In Moldova and the five Central Asian republics, the percentage of Russians in urban areas exceeded that in the republic by 10 points or more. Looking at just the capital cities, which in all cases were the largest city in the state, the differences were even starker--Russians made up on average 27.5 percent of the population. Only in Ukraine was the share of Russians in the capital smaller than in the republic as a whole. In the capitals of three republics--Latvia, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan--Russians outnumbered the titular nationality. With these concentrations, the Russian and Russian-speaking populations formed ethnic enclaves where they could speak their language and enjoy Russian cultural life, lessening the need to migrate to Russia to feel "at home." There were other geographic concentrations of Russians, such as eastern Ukraine, where...