The Irresistible Lure of Putin's Russia

Repatriation Plan Appeals To Few Ethnic Russians
The first year of an extended program to repatriate ethnic Russians living abroad has failed to produce the wave of immigrants that proponents touted ahead of its approval.

Kremlin officials were bullish in 2006 when President Vladimir Putin unveiled the ambitious plan.

Early backers had predicted that tens of thousands of people would resettle in Russia in the first months of the six-year project, helping curb Russia's staggering demographic crisis.

They said some 100,000 repatriates would be lured in short order to the 12 pilot regions spearheading the repatriation program. But within months of the January 2007 launch, first-year estimates fell to 50,000, and then to 25,000. By year-end, just 143 ethnic-Russian families had picked up stakes and made the move to Russia.

Official figures show that 13 families settled in Russia's western Lipetsk Oblast. Another 110 members of the Dukhobor religious minority emigrated from Georgia to central Tambov Oblast, and fewer than 200 people moved to Russia's Kaliningrad exclave. Russia's Regnum news agency quoted a Krasnoyarsk Krai labor official as saying in December that two single men were the only immigrants to the region in the course of the year.

Putin's plan is primarily intended to help counter high mortality rates and low birthrates that are believed to be draining the Russian population of some 700,000 people a year.

Government officials also expressed optimism that the project would progressively squeeze foreign migrant workers out of Russia's labor market. Under new immigration quotas released last week, just 1.8 million foreigners will be legally authorized to work in Russia this year, compared to 6 million in 2007.

But Russian authorities may find it extremely difficult -- if not impossible -- to achieve the project's objectives.

"All pessimistic predictions regarding [the repatriation plan] have come true," wrote the Moscow-based "Vremya novostei" daily on December 19. "The first year of implementation has clearly demonstrated that our former Soviet fellow citizens do not want to be repatriated under the conditions set by the Russian authorities."

And most would not want to be repatriated under any conditions.

Red Tape And Local Resistance

Government officials refuse to acknowledge failure. Federal Migration Service Director Konstantin Romodanovsky recently said he expects some 90,000 people to move to Russia and for another 59 regions to join the federal repatriation program in 2008.

But those numbers are already looking unrealistic.

Russia's official "Rossiiskaya gazeta" newspaper noted on January 11 that Siberia's Irkutsk Oblast, which last year offered to take some 9,000 repatriates, has so far received only three applications. Not a single potential repatriate has applied for resettlement in the Far Eastern Amur Oblast, which was expecting some 300 people last year. Both the Irkutsk and Amur oblasts are among the 12 pilot regions designated by Putin.

Vadim Gustov, the chairman of the State Duma's CIS Affairs Committee, blames the belated implementation of Putin's repatriation plan primarily on state bureaucracy. In comments made to "Vremya novostei" in December, he said no genuine recruitment campaign could be conducted among ethnic Russians until after the necessary official documentation related to the program became available in September.

Although the first repatriates were expected nine months ago, the Federal Migration Service -- the agency responsible for implementing the program -- did not open offices abroad until later in the year.

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Kameraden Joseph Vissarionovich Jugashvili was unavailable for comment.