Internal Migration Trends in Soviet and Post-Soviet European Russia

Abstract

This article compares Soviet with post-Soviet migration trends. It uses a livelihood studies approach to explore what types of Russians migrate and their motivations for so doing. It concludes that today labour migration is the most significant type of internal migration. The norm is temporary migration by individuals, which may be either short-term or long-term, but in either case it is characterised by frequent visits home and often, it seems, by failure and permanent return.

Notes

¹According to Rybakovskii (2000, p. 23) much research has remained unpublished.

²See also T. Heleniak, ‘Migration Dilemmas Haunt Post-Soviet Russia’, Migration Information Source, 2002, Migration Policy Institute, Washington, DC, available at: http://www.migrationinformation.org/Profiles/display.cfm?ID=62, accessed 12 July 2006.

³According to census data, the exact figure for migrants to Russia from other former Soviet Union republics was 4,910,278. Calculated from Itogi, Vol. 10, p. 312.

⁴Russian government estimate for ‘northern regions’ in 2001, cited in Hill and Gaddy (2003, p. 119).

⁵Personal communication from Galina Vitkovskaya, International Organisation for Migration, Moscow.

⁶Zayonchkovskaya is referring to Russian sources. Western sources on Russian migration tend to ignore postcommunist rural – urban migration completely; an exception is Wegren (1995).

⁷Also available at: http://www.socstats.soton.ac.uk/staff/micklewright/Micklewright_iwp91.pdf, accessed 23 May 2007.

⁸Even in the Soviet period many people did not work po spetsial'nosti, but it was considered the norm.

⁹For similar findings regarding small-town and rural residents, see e.g. Zubarevich (2005, p. 142).

¹⁰For the history of Pavlovsk, see Kalinin (1989) and Uspenskii (2002). The population of Pavlovsk was 26,365 according to the 2002 census and the Voronezh city population, excluding administratively subordinate suburbs, was 848,752 (Itogi 2005, Vol. 1, Table 4).

¹¹I am grateful to the British Academy for funding most of the fieldwork.

¹²‘Rossiiskii demograficheskii barometr’, Demoskop Weekly, No. 207 – 8, 2005, available at: http://demoscope.ru/weekly/2005/0207/print.php, accessed 23 May 2007.

¹³These unfortunately include international migration, but this accounts for only a small part of the total.

¹⁴ Itogi, Vol. 14, Table 36.

¹⁵The ratio of cross-regional to within-region migration in 2003 was 44:56 (calculated from Sotsial'noe polozhenie 2004, 2004, p. 57).

¹⁶Itogi, Vol. 14, Table 4.

¹⁷Some 41.78% of arrivals in Voronezh city were from small towns, although these constitute only about 37% of the glubinka's population. Data from Goskomstat, Voronezh, unpublished printouts of electronic data, Tablitsa MT2: Raspredelenie migrantov po territoriyam pribytiya i vybytiya za 2003 god. G. Voronezh and Tablitsa PT1: Obshchie itogi migratsii po vykhodyashchim territoriyam za god: 2003 goda. Territoriya: Voronezhskaya oblast’.

¹⁸Nefedova et al. (2001, p. 377) also suggest that because army officers were no longer registered as migrants this removed a large category from the statistics.

¹⁹Nonetheless, my interviews with residents at a hostel on the outskirts of Moscow in 2005 suggested that an attenuated version of the limitchik system survived into the 1990s, and even today late Soviet migrants preserve a sense of ‘limitchik’ identity. See Lonkila and Salmi (2005) for a study of a similar group of migrants in Leningrad/Petersburg.

²⁰For more details on the rural underclass, see Wegren et al. (2003).

²¹21.79% of the English Department students were from the Voronezh glubinka, cf. 21.89% of the regional population; 29.72% were from villages, which account for 37.34% of the regional population.

²²In a separate research project, I collected 100 questionnaires from women students of English at Voronezh State University in autumn 2003, inviting them inter alia to describe their career aspirations (White 2005).

²³O. Chudinovskikh & M. Denisenko, ‘Gde khotyat uchit'sya vypuskniki rossiiskikh vuzov?’, Demoskop Weekly, No. 119 – 20, Table 2, 2003, available at: http://demoscope.ru/weekly/2003/0119, accessed 23 May 2007.

²⁴47% of VGPU students named Voronezh, 11% Moscow and 12% Petersburg as their preferred location.

²⁵Interview at the Voronezh Employment Service Research Department in July 2004.

²⁶Calculated from Itogi (2005, Vol. 1, Table 2). Urban – rural migration remains quite high in the Central Federal District: it was equivalent to 84.6% of rural – urban migration in 2004 (Rossiiskii statisticheskii ezhegodnik 2005 2005, p. 133).

²⁷In, fact it seems that irregular migration continued to secure the growth of Moscow's population (Tarasova et al. 2001, p. 11; Glushkova 1999, p. 64).

²⁸Calculated from Goskomstat (2003, Table MP1) (see note 15, above).

²⁹Author's interview with acting Head of Department, Pavlovsk Education Department, 12 April 2004.

³⁰Two-thirds (19/30) of my sample of VGPU glubinka students in Years 1 – 3 who had benefited from the scheme were from urban areas. However, it should be noted that villagers were somewhat under-represented in my sample, compared with their share in the English Department's total student population.

³¹‘Sluzhby zanyatosti v Chuvashii ob”yavili orgnabor na sezonnye sel'khozraboty’, 15 June 2006, available at: www.regnum.ru/news/463519.html, accessed 14 July 2006.

³²Yu. Flyurinskaya & T. Roshchina, ‘Trudovaya migratisiya iz malykh gorodov Rossii: masshtaby, napravleniya, sotsial'nye effekty’, Demoskop Weekly, 175, 2004, available at: http://demoscope.ru/weekly/2004/0175/analit03.php, accessed 23 May 2007; Egorov (2002, pp. 91 – 93); and Badyshtova (2002, p. 84).

³³The adjective is derived from the noun vakhta, referring to the remote settlement in which Soviet migrant foresters lived. See V. Barsukov, ‘Vakhtovyi metod organizatsii rabot’ (Perm, Virtual'nyi klub yuristov), 2005, available at: http://www.yurclub.ru/docs/other/article71.html, accessed 14 July 2006.

³⁴A search of the Russian State Library electronic catalogue (29 July 2006) confirmed this, although it did uncover a kandidat dissertation, defended in 2004 (Borisov 2004).

³⁵My source is ‘Otchet o rabote Achitskogo territorial'nogo otdela Departamenta FGSZN’, 2000[Achit, Federal Employment Service (typescript)].

³⁶‘Osobennosti regulirovaniya truda lits, rabotayushchikh vakhtovym metodom’ (chapter 47), in Trudovoi kodeks Rossiiskoi Federatsii, 2001, available at: http://www.garweb.ru/project/law/doc/12025268/12025268-051.htm, accessed 14 July 2006.

³⁷Author's interview with Head of the Research Department, Regional Employment Service Head Office, Voronezh, 7 July 2004.