was not evenly distributed among the various states, ranging from 11 million in Ukraine to 52,000 in Armenia. Kazakhstan had the second largest population of Russians, with 6 million, while Uzbekistan, Belarus, Kyrgyzstan, and Latvia also had large Russian populations, between 900,000 and 1.6 million. In contrast, the rest of the republics had Russian populations of half a million or less.
Russians and Russophones also represented a large proportion of the population in some cases—30 percent in Estonia, 34 percent in Latvia, 22 percent in Ukraine, and 38 percent in Kazakhstan.24 As a result, over four decades of Soviet rule, the proportion of the population from the titular nationality dropped from 90 to 60 percent in Estonia, and from 75 to 52 percent in Latvia. Russification was less of an issue in the other Baltic state, Lithuania, because the Russian population represented only 9 percent of the total population.25
In general, the Russian populations residing in the non-Russian periphery were highly concentrated in urban areas, with the exception of Kazakhstan and to a lesser extent Kyrgyzstan.26 On the whole, they were also relatively more educated than the titular nationalities, occupied higher-level posts, and had superior socioeconomic status. In some cases, this caused strong anti-Russian sentiment among the titular groups.27 Partly as a result of this and partly because of strong cultural differences between some of the titular nationalities and ethnic Russians, there was little mixing between the two groups during the Soviet years.
The ethnic Russians formed “isolated ethnic enclaves,” except in the Slavic states, where Russians had closer cultural ties with the local populace.28 Given that Russian was the official language within the Soviet Union, very few Russians learned the local language even if they had lived outside Russia for generations, a practice that further reinforced their isolation from the local populations.29
The breakup of the Soviet Union launched a gradual emigration of ethnic Russians and Russophones to the Russian Federation. Net immigration to Russia from the non-Russian states increased from 105,000 in 1991 to a peak of 915,000 in 1994, then fell back to 124,000 in 2001. The extent of the emigration from the various NIS was not uniform. Indeed, the majority of Russians and Russophones residing in the Transcaucasus states and Tajikistan chose to leave, while far fewer of them emigrated from Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Turkmenistan (25 percent) and Kazakhstan (22 percent). On the lower end of the spectrum, 10 to 13 percent of the Russians and Russophones residing in the Baltic states and Moldova chose to emigrate, while very few of them left Ukraine and Belarus.30
Despite some anti-Russian sentiment, ethnic Russians were not persecuted, nor were they targeted for major ethnic violence. Rather, their decision to emigrate was driven by some combination of more subtle factors. For one, at independence, in order to build a separate identity from the Soviet Union, the other post-Soviet states changed the official language from Russian to the local one and elevated their ethnicity, for instance by ensuring positions in the government administration and greater political representation for local ethnicities.
Some states, notably Estonia and Latvia, took even more drastic steps by restricting citizenship to just titular nationalities. This not only made the Russian/Russophone population uncomfortable but also directly threatened their acquired social and economic status, prompting many of them to leave. So too the level of cultural connections between the Russian/Russophone diaspora and the titular nationalities played a role in determining the level of emigration: the extent of emigration from the other Slavic states was minimal, while in Turkmenistan, growing nationalism as well as the rise of Islam led to increased ethnic Russian emigration.31
In other states, emigration was driven by factors unrelated to ethnicity. In Georgia and Tajikistan, for example, instability and violence following independence, while not targeted at the Russian diaspora, led many of its members to leave. Finally, the pull of the Russian economy, twice as large as all the FSU economies combined, appeared to offer better employment opportunities and earning potential.32
At the breakup of the Soviet Union, policies toward the Russian diaspora in the post-Soviet states ranged from hostile to accommodating. Some states devised exclusionary policies toward the Russians, while others shaped policies to dissuade them from emigrating, though none was prepared to give the political representation to the Russians on a scale commensurate with their share of the population. At one extreme, the Baltic states, with sizeable Russian populations, feared that the ethnic Russians would overshadow the titular groups and turn the latter into minorities within their own states. As a result, the new governments established very exclusionary citizenship and language laws. Estonia and Latvia denied automatic citizenship to Russian minorities, and in both countries ethnic Russians were considered in theory illegal immigrants, on the argument that the Soviet Union had occupied the two countries since 1940.33
In contrast, in the central Asian countries—particularly Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, and initially Turkmenistan—where the ethnic Russians constituted a large proportion of the educated labor force, the governments put in place polices to entice the Russians to stay—for instance, some political representation and dual citizenship in Tajikistan and Turkmenistan. They feared an economic loss if the Russians were to leave en masse.34
At independence, the Russian Federation did not have much of a legislative foundation for dealing with mass population movements, nor did it have the institutional experience. Therefore, in the immediate aftermath of the breakup, with the help of the UNHCR and the IOM, the Russian government took a number of steps toward adhering to international migration norms, abolishing the internal passport system and granting its citizens the freedom of movement, as well as acceding to the 1951 United Nations Refugee Convention and Protocol. In February 1992, it also devised its first citizenship law, which was in theory supposed to be ethnically neutral: anyone who was a permanent resident of Russia or who felt “ethnically or emotionally connected to Russia” could apply for citizenship, which essentially meant that all citizens of the FSU were eligible to apply.35
In addition, to avoid a mass return of ethnic Russians, the Russian government advocated forcefully for the protection of the rights of ethnic Russians and Russophones living in the other NIS. Moscow pursued a policy of dual citizenship, which was rejected by all but Tajikistan and Turkmenistan lest it weaken their nation-building efforts, and pushed for Russian to be the language of interethnic communication within the FSU.36 In addition, it pursued a policy of open borders with the other NIS. For example, in October 1992 it signed the Bishkek Accord to allow for free movement among the signatories (Belarus, Armenia, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Moldova, in addition to Russia). Georgia joined the accord in 1995.37 In 1997, Russia negotiated separate bilateral visa-free travel arrangements with Ukraine and Azerbaijan.
In terms of resettlement and integration policies in Russia, there was more rhetoric than concrete support for returnees, due in part to resource constraints. In 1994 a Russian presidential decree promulgated a “Basic Conception of a Programme to Help Compatriots” and an accompanying resolution on “Measures for the Support of Compatriots Abroad.” In these pieces of legislation, the Russian government designated the returnees as “forced migrants” or “refugees,” entitling them to resettlement and integration support. Institutionally, the FMS was set up in 1992 to manage the migrant resettlement process. It was supplemented by parallel regional organizations across the country—eighty-nine at the height of the in-migration—that were supposed to coordinate with the federal government to provide the needed support.38
However, in practice, the level of support for and receptiveness to the returnees varied greatly across the regions, depending on the number of in-migrants to the region and the particular socioeconomic and political environment. In some areas, the returnees were seen as a benefit because they represented either a way to attract more federal resources or a source of labor amid dire demographic trends, high mortality, and low fertility. In others, they were seen as a threat to the socioeconomic stability of the region. In either case, the regional organizations determined their own policies, either encouraging or discouraging in-migration. Some of these policies, particularly those geared toward restricting in-migration, contravened federal directives and international law.39
Whether they encouraged or discouraged