MOSCOW - Russia is contemplating an ambitious project for voluntary repatriation of ethnic Russians living in the other states once part of the Soviet Union in response to skilled labor shortages due to a shrinking population, media said on Thursday. The business daily Vedomosti said President Vladimir Putin had recently signed an order asking officials in the presidential administration and various other state bodies to draft a program by June 1 for bringing Russians scattered throughout the ex-Soviet empire back to Russia proper.
During tsarist times and especially in the Soviet era Russians were given various incentives -- ranging from well-paid jobs and property grants to forcible exile or imprisonment in labor camps -- to emigrate to lands over which Moscow had won political control. Many remained for generations. But in the 15 years since the collapse of the Soviet Union, many Russians have found themselves “stranded” as ethnic minorities in countries -- notably in the Baltic states -- where they do not have the same rights or opportunities as the national majority populations.
Estimates on the numbers of ethnic Russians living in ex-Soviet republics vary, but generally range between 20 million and 25 million people. Close to half live in Ukraine, where data compiled by the US government in the 1990s showed around 22 percent of the countryÂ’s population was Russian. |