|
|
|
Times Online February 09, 2006 | By Sam Knight and agencies Vladimir Putin is considering an ambitious project to invite millions of ethnic Russians home from the outlying states of the former Soviet Union, where they have been left stranded by generations of emigration and enforced resettlement. The Russian President is planning to tackle a shrinking population and a shortage of skilled workers by offering ethnic Russians voluntary repatriation, according to the Russian business newspaper, Vedomosti. The newspaper said that Mr Putin has ordered officials in the presidential administration and several other state bodies to draft a programme by June 1 which might attract Russians who have been scattered by work and exile across Central Asia and the Baltic states. Since the mid-19th century and tsarist attempts to colonise Siberia and modern-day Kazakhstan in the east, Ukraine in the south and the Baltic states of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, Russians have been enticed to wider reaches of the former USSR with offers of land and work. Under Stalin, "Russification" acquired a more compulsory character, and Russians became powerful minority populations across the Soviet Union. By the time the USSR collapsed in 1991, between 20 and 25 million ethnic Russians were living outside the borders of Russia proper, many in prosperity. But in the last 15 years, Russians abroad, especially those stranded under budding nationalist regimes in Turkmenistan and Kyrgyzstan, have suffered. In countries such as Kazakhstan, Ukraine and Latvia, where ethnic Russians make up to a third of the population, communities have watched as the Russian language has been eroded from government and schools. Many do not have passports, only Soviet-era residence permits, and feel they will never be fully accepted as citizens. Vedomosti said that Mr Putin's plan is based on Russia's declining population. Citing recent UN figures, the newspaper said Russia’s current population of 144 million could decline to 112 million by 2050 if the fall in birth rates continues, posing a threat to the country’s long-term economic viability. Since the collapse of communism, the average birth rate in Russia has plunged from 2.5 million per year between 1992 and 1995 to around 500,000 a year between 2001 and 2004, Vedomosti said. Policy analysts say that Mr Putin's project will only attract takers if it offers considerable incentives. Despite feelings of rootlessness and, in some countries, outright discrimination, many ethnic Russians still have better jobs and enjoy higher standards of living than they feel are available in Russia. Valery Tishkov, director of the Institute of Ethnic Studies and Anthropology at the Russian Academy of Sciences, told reporters in Moscow that he thought an ethnic-based scheme to attract workers to Russia was "absurd". "The repatriation of ethnic Russians from neighbouring countries that has been talked about recently is absurd, although the coming here of all who want to come, temporarily or to remains, is an extremely desirable thing," he said. |
|
|