RUSSIA’S MIXED BLESSING
by Vladimir Radyuhin

The Hindu, India
November 8, 2004

THE SOVIET Union may have been dead for 13 years but as far as
Russians are concerned it has never been more alive. They have never
seen so many Tajiks, Azeris, Moldovans and Ukrainians walk the
streets of big cities and small townships across Russia from the
Baltic Sea in the West to the Pacific coast in the Far East. The
former compatriots build houses, sell fruit, drive public transport
buses, and do a myriad other jobs for which Russians have no taste or
ask a higher pay.

With the Russian economy growing at a healthy seven per cent a year,
it is an attractive destination for millions of workers from many
post-Soviet states where economic growth is not so vibrant. Officials
put the number of migrant labour in Russia at four million to five
million, a majority of them from the former Soviet Union. Unofficial
estimates are at least twice as high. Russia offers a source of
livelihood to three million to four million Ukrainians, two million
to three million of Azerbaijan’s eight million population, one in
three working-age Georgians and Armenians, and hundreds of thousands
of workers from Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Moldova and Belarus.

The “fraternal family of nations,” as Communist ideologues used to
describe the Soviet Union, has re-assembled itself on Russian soil,
even though it is no longer so fraternal. Migrant labour has proved a
mixed blessing for Russia. It helps alleviate an acute demographic
crisis and sustain economic growth, but also creates dangerous ethnic
and social tensions.

Russia’s population has declined by more than five million over the
past 12 years and keeps falling at a rate of about 700,000 a year,
according to the State Statistical Committee. The Ministry of
Economic Development estimates that Russia may lose half of its 144
million people within the next 60 to 100 years if no radical measures
are taken to reverse the trend.

The demographic situation has been aggravated by large-scale
emigration from Russia during the years of rocky economic reforms,
with an estimated seven million leaving the country between 1991 and
2002. The outflow was initially balanced by the influx of millions of
ethnic Russians who fled instability and economic ruin in former
Soviet republics. But their migration to Russia has dwindled to a
trickle recently, partly because many have adjusted to life in the
newly independent states and partly because the Russian Government
has failed to provide any attractive resettlement programmes.

The Government has also been slow to react to the growing tide of
migrant labour. In the absence of effective government regulation,
immigration has been chaotic, flooding Moscow and the European part
of Russia, but leaving vast areas of Siberia short of labour.
Monolithic migrant communities, often cemented by a strong criminal
component, have virtually ousted Russians from some sectors of the
economy. Azeris and Armenians, for example, have taken over wholesale
and retail trade in Russia in fruit and vegetables, construction
materials, and many other commodities, setting monopoly prices and
provoking deep resentment among local population. Authorities, who
often have a cut in the business, just look the other way.

“If the Government continues to turn a blind eye to this process of
uncontrolled immigration, Russians will eventually be ousted from
trade, banking, hotel and other profitable businesses, and will be
left to do low-paid or hard manual work,” says Yuri Godin of the
Foreign Economy Studies Centre. In a poll conducted earlier this year
in Moscow, this problem topped the list of grievances.

Migrants have contributed to high crime rates in Russia. Tajiks, for
example, have become major drug haulers from Afghanistan to Russia.
Residents of Yekaterenburg, a regional capital in Siberia, which lies
on the trunk route of drug traffickers, held an anti-narcotics rally
in May to demand a visa regime for Tajikistan. Last year Tajiks
accounted for over 90 per cent of all drug couriers intercepted at
the Koltsovo international airport in Yekaterenburg.

The influx of millions of non-Russians has also led to the rise of
violent racist movements in Russia, with many people blaming their
poverty and unemployment on immigrants. Neo-Nazi skinhead gangs are
mushrooming all over Russia, terrorising non-Russians from the former
Soviet Union, as well as nationals from India and other Asian and
African countries. Racist attacks under the slogan “Russia for
Russians” are getting increasingly brazen and violent.

A nine-year-old girl from Tajikistan was knifed to death in St.
Petersburg in February; an African student was murdered in Voronezh
the same month; a 50-year-old Azerbaijani was beaten up in Nizhnii
Novgorod in May and died later in hospital; a 19-year-old student
from Vietnam was killed in St. Petersburg in October; an Uzbek was
beaten to death in a Moscow suburb in October. About 20 murders
fuelled by ethnic hatred were reported across Russia in the first six
months of this year. The skinheads’ most outrageous crime this year
was to shoot and kill Nikolai Girenko, a 64-year-old Russian
ethnographer and anthropologist who dedicated himself to fighting
neo-Nazis in court.

Human rights organisations estimate the number of skinheads in Russia
at between 35,000 and 55,000 and rapidly rising. Russian police have
all too often dismissed racist attacks as hooliganism. It was not
until the President, Vladimir Putin, earlier this year called the
attention of the Interior Minister, Rashid Nurgaliyev, to racially
motivated crimes, that the latter admitted that ultranationalist
groups were a real problem.

However, the Kremlin still refuses to acknowledge a link between
growing racist extremism and the lack of a coherent immigration
policy. Job quotas for migrant labour introduced last year have
failed to regulate migration processes and protect local jobs. The
ridiculously low quota of about 600,000 for this year has fallen far
below the demand. There are also many vested interests in Russia who
have a stake in keeping labour migration illegal. Employers prefer
hiring illegal migrants because they are willing to work for much
lower pay than local labour and do not ask for a social security net.
In the construction business, for example, illegal workers help cut
project costs by two-thirds. Even Kremlin contractors are known to
use illegal workers.

Illegal migration has grown into a multi-million criminal business.
Last year authorities in the Volgograd region in central Russia
busted a labour traffic racket from Tajikistan. Trainloads of Tajiks
were brought to work like slaves on local farms. At one point
investigators stumbled on a farm where over a hundred Tajik children
worked from dawn to dusk practically for free. Illegal labour
migrants are also the target of constant harassing and fleecing by
police who regularly raid construction sites and hostels to check
registration and work-permit papers.

Yet, for all its negative aspects, labour migration from the former
Soviet states is a big boon for Russia. Apart from filling a shortage
of workforce, it gives Moscow a powerful policy lever in dealing with
its ex-Soviet neighbours and pushing a re-integration agenda. Many
newly independent states critically depend on the money their
nationals working in Russia send back to their families. According to
government estimates, in 2002 migrant workers from Azerbaijan,
Georgia and Armenia employed in the Moscow region alone took back
home about $ 10 billion, more than their annual budgets.

When its President, Imomali Rakhmonov, baulked at approving the
establishment of a Russian military base in Tajikistan earlier this
year, Moscow threatened to deport illegal Tajik workers from Russia.
This would spell a catastrophe for Tajikistan and the base agreement
was promptly signed. An easing of travel rules for millions of
Ukrainian workers in Russia sanctioned by Mr. Putin on the eve of
Ukraine’s presidential election last week helped shore up the
faltering campaign by the pro-Russian candidate, Prime Minister
Viktor Yanukovich.

Immigration also has a strategic dimension for Russia. Average
population density in Russia is 8.5 persons per square km, and in the
Far East it is just over 1 person per square km, hundreds of times
less than in China across the border. Further depopulation poses a
threat to Russia’s territorial integrity.

“From economic and geopolitical point of view it is a catastrophe to
have so sparse a population on such a vast territory,” says
academician Anatoly Vishnevsky of the Centre for Demography and Human
Ecology of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Russia must accommodate
700,000 to 1,000,000 migrants a year, primarily from former Soviet
republics, just to maintain its population at present level. Such a
massive injection of immigrants is fraught with great risks.

“To avoid the dangers we need a system of measures for adapting and
integrating migrants, and it yet to be developed,” the scholar says.