Will a Large-Scale Migration of Russians to the Russian Republic Take Place over the Current Decade?

Abstract

Given the headlong and convulsive pace of political change occurring in the republics of the former Soviet Union, predictions concerning future developments in that area of the world must necessarily be tenuous and hedged about with caveats. The question of the likely scale of in-migration from the other former union republics into the Russian Republic over the remainder of this decade is, however, so politically charged and so important that analysts and forecasters can ill afford to ignore it. One suspects that Western policy-makers are increasingly going to have to focus their attention upon the fate of the 25.3 million ethnic Russians living in that part of the former Soviet Union now called the “Near Abroad” (blizhnee zarubezh'e).