Soviet Migration Research Articles

Narratives of Displacement: On Embodied Experience of Migration in Ulitskaya, Lindén, and Palei

AbstractThis essay discusses representations of migrant experiences of displacement by Russian women writers Liudmila Ulitskaya, Zinaida Lindén, and Marina Palei. The theoretical approach is guided by feminist geography and narrative studies, with attention to the conceptualization of space and place through embodied everyday experiences. The authors represent different writerly positions with which today’s Russophone writers engage, including multilingual and multilocal trends in and outside post-Soviet Russia. Although Lindén and Palei reside outside and Ulitskaya in Russia, their texts address (post-)Soviet migration and displacement, bringing critical perspectives both to their new home countries and to their homeland, Russia. In each text literary figures question and/or oppose the colonizing histories of their homeland and rewrite their personal stories in the form of narratives of displacement.

ДИНАМИКА ЭТНИЧЕСКОГО СОСТАВА НАСЕЛЕНИЯ СЕВЕРНОГО КАЗАХСТАНА В СОВЕТСКИЙ ПЕРИОД (НА ПРИМЕРЕ УАЛИХАНОВСКОГО РАЙОНА)

The multiethnic population of the Republic of Kazakhstan was formed during the pre- revolutionary and Soviet migration periods, but during the post-Soviet period, the outflow of the Russian-speaking population is recorded, which leads to a change in the ethnic composition of the country. These changes are particularly noticeable in the northern regions of Kazakhstan. The article provides a comprehensive analysis of the ethnic composition of the population and interethnic relations during the Soviet period on the territory of Ualikhanov district, which is located in the South-Eastern part of Northern Kazakhstan region of the Republic of Kazakhstan. The work is based on clerical documents, data from thematic interviews and media materials.

ПРАВОВІ ТА ОРГАНІЗАЦІЙНІ ЗАСАДИ МІГРАЦІЙНОЇ ПОЛІТИКИ РАДЯНСЬКОЇ УКРАЇНИ (1922–1991 РР.)

The article deals with the legal and organizational principles of the migration policy of Soviet Ukraine. The authors aim to analyze and characterize the whole range of methods and means of regulating migratory flows used by the Soviet authorities. The article analyzes the components of the Soviet migration policy: the passport system, the controlled and compulsory population movements, the regime of external migration, and the like. It is noted that the migration legal framework was formed without taking into account generally accepted international legal standards. Regulatory acts in the field of regulating the movement of population had one goal – to achieve full control by the state for the movement of a person and subordinate these movements to the interests of the state. The methodological basis of the article consists of the principles of historicity, objectivity, versatility, complementarity and reasonableness. To analyse the development of the migration policy of the Soviet Ukraine, dialectical, chronological, systemic-structural, historical, comparative and other general scientific, as well as special scientific methods according to the subject of research are used. The study finds the main instrument for monitoring and streamlining migration flows in the Soviet Ukraine was the long-standing passport system, and but not the economic policy and human rights and freedoms. The freedom to choose a place of residence has been kept to a minimum. This was in line with the migration doctrine of the Soviet era, which was determined in the All-Union Centre and was reduced to the strict control over the movement of the population, the extreme limited travel abroad. The choice of personality was to be subject to public interests that were understood as the interests of the state. In the last years of the Soviet Union's its most odious limitations gradually weakened, but only marginally. State interests were motivated by a number of diverse controlled displacements. However, the authors prove that the desire to strictly regulate migration processes by the Soviet authorities was not fully realized. Firstly, organized resettlement had never been a dominant form of displacement of the population in the USSR, even during the most rigid totalitarian regime. Secondly, a significant part of the organized resettlement ended with the return of migrants to their former residence or relocation to another place. The authors draw attention to the fact that the constituent part of the migration policy of the Soviet Ukraine was the forced migration, which was carried out in the form of deportation of entire ethnic groups. Such voluntarist events have affected millions of different nationalities, and Ukraine has been experiencing their results to this day. Thus, the authors conclude that at the time of Ukraine's independence proclaimed, migration policy and its institutes in Ukraine were in fact absent, which is explained by the presence of only a surrogate statehood and the predominance of administrative methods over political management of migratory flows.

Transnationalism in One Country? Seeing and Not Seeing Cross-Border Migration within the Soviet Union

In the early 1990s social scientists began to refer to migrants who retained familial and economic ties with their country of origin as transnational. The term eventually gained currency among historians who had found multiple examples of such ties in earlier decades and centuries. Although migrants traveling among former Soviet republics came to be understood as transnational, Soviet-era migrants never have been so characterized. We contend that this is due to a double blindness: that of migration scholars to the Soviet Union as a “state of nations,” and that of historians of the Soviet period to migration as a complicating element in the construction of nationality. By emphasizing the transnational dimension of “internal” Soviet migration, we seek to sharpen awareness of how nationality worked in the Soviet context, particularly in its last decades. We thus posit the maintenance of economic, familial and other affective ties across Soviet national boundaries as the Soviet version of transnationalism—transnationalism in one country. We also suggest the ways that despite its well-deserved reputation for limiting international migration and otherwise restricting its citizenry, the Soviet state facilitated transnationalism within its borders.

Determinants of Residence and Migration in the Soviet Union after World War 2: The Immigrant Population in Estonia

Soviet migration literature stresses the importance both of the interests of people and of state policy in shaping the migration process in the Soviet Union. However, most empirical studies are descriptive and rely on bivariate analysis; multivariate analysis is scarcely used. Conventional Western research, in turn, mostly stresses the importance of structural factors in explaining migration in the Soviet Union. The author aims to look at the extent to which structural factors and personal characteristics determine the first residence and first migration of immigrants in Estonia after World War 2. Individual-level data of the Estonian Family and Fertility Survey (1994) on 1067 foreign-born females are used and multivariate analysis applied. The analysis shows that the first residence and first migration of the foreign-born population in Estonia differ significantly by immigration cohort—a variable reflecting structural factors. However, when the personal characteristics of immigrants are included in the model, the role of the immigration cohort (as a determinant of migration) decreases significantly. The results support the belief that migration in the Soviet Union is a complex outcome of the interaction between structural forces and the interests of people, as it is elsewhere in the world.

Mass migration and labor market incorporation: Soviet immigrants in Israel

Most of the completed research on processes of immigrant assimilation, accommodation, and conflict assumes a context in which the host population is much larger than the immigrant population. As massive immigration streams become more common, this assumption is usefully relaxed, and one might accordingly wish to investigate cases in which the immigrant group is large enough to have potentially destabilizing effects on the host country's labor market. This chapter explores that possibility by analyzing a sample of 115,425 immigrants to Israel. Soviet Jewish immigrants in Israel form a particularly instructive group since the volume of the Soviet migration stream has varied greatly over time, with the most recent wave reaching enormous numbers relative to the size of the host population. Results of regression analysis indicate that, after controls are applied, the pattern of incorporation for Soviet immigrants who arrived in Israel during the recent, large wave of migration is indeed unlike that of any other group at any other point in time.

IV. “Post-1985 Internal Migration: Spatial Patterns and Issues”

The 1980s witnessed a reversal of internal migration patterns in the Soviet Union as factors associated with ethnicity became one of the predominant influences on the character and volume of population mobility. This is one of the recent trends in Soviet migration highlighted in the presentation by Dr. Beth Mitchneck, a post-doctoral Fellow at the Harriman Institute. Dr. Mitchneck based her analysis on the censuses of 1959, 1970, 1979 and 1989, population registers and both Soviet and western estimates.

Editor's Introduction

Like so much of the recent social science literature, Soviet discussions of migration processes provide abundant evidence of the serious problems confronting Soviet society. The lead article in our current issue, by L. L. Rybakovskii and N. V. Tarasova ("Migration Processes in the USSR: New Phenomena") focuses on two particularly troubling aspects of recent population movements. The first of these concerns the markedly differing quality of population outflows and inflows in recent years. The authors characterize the outflow as a "brain drain" since it includes substantial numbers of skilled technical personnel and representatives of the creative intelligentsia (the article provides data on the ethnic groups involved and the countries to which they have emigrated). The population inflow, on the other hand, although obviously quite small, has included mainly unskilled laborers from Vietnam and North Korea. Such international migration flows have clearly contributed to "a deterioration in the labor potential of the country." The other problem discussed in some detail by the authors concerns the connection between domestic migration processes and the recent rise in interethnic tensions—what the authors characterize as "the problem of [domestic—M.Y.] refugees." This involves not only involuntary population movements associated with open and sometimes bloody groups conflicts (among, for example, Armenians and Azerbaidzhanians), but also the ouflow of Slavic nationalities from the country's southern republics, a process that the authors anticipate will soon characterize the Baltic republics. Soviet migration processes in many of the republics are now affected by the latter's attempts to move toward a "monoethnic population." This article is particularly valuable for its abundant empirical documentation.

Recent Soviet Experience and Western ‘Laws’ of Population Migration

change in Soviet policy also offers the opportunity to compare recent Soviet population movement with generalization about internal migration phenomena observed for some time now in Western nations. Probably the most famous set of generalizations is E. G. Ravenstein’s pioneering The Laws of Migration based on the British Census of 1881 and subsequent observations concerning the experience of more than twenty countries. Ravenstein concluded that most migrants proceed short distances that females are numerous in short distance moves that when migrants do move great distances they tend to travel to large urban centers and that the economic motive predominates. In addition he generalized that migration proceeds by stages and that for each stream of migration a counter-stream or reverse flow develops. Ravenstein also surmised that migration occurs more frequently in rural than in urban areas and that the level of population movement increases as an economy becomes more complex. Taking into account more current research Everett S. Lee formulated a set of laws in A Theory of Migration which summarizes much of what demographers know concerning the volume of internal migration streams and counter-streams and the characteristics of migrants. It is the purpose of this paper to determine the degree to which recent Soviet migration can be adequately described by generalizations concerning Western experience. Rather than adhering to the letter of the lawsof either Ravenstein or Lee this survey and comparison proceeds according to an outline based on both works. (excerpt)

The Improvement of the Registration of Migration

AbstractOne of the basic sources of information in Soviet migration research is the current system of registration of travelers, including migrants, at points of departure and arrival. Travelers fill out address sheets, including tear-off stubs, which are forwarded to statistical agencies for processing. A number of improvements in the registration system are suggested, both in the content of the information solicited and to insure more complete registration of departures and arrivals. Registration in urban places, which fall under the system of internal Soviet passports, is usually more complete and reliable than in rural places, which do not issue passports.

The Present State and Basic Problems in the Study of Migration in the USSR

A review of Soviet migration research finds that only a modest beginning has been made despite some useful results. Further progress in this area requires broader migration studies, beyond the manpower-oriented approach adopted thus far; wider use of mathematical techniques and improved research methods; improvements in the statistical data base on migration, and the coordination of Soviet migration research through the establishment of a central research center in this field.

Contemporary Migration in the USSR

AbstractThe predominance of individual migration and a lack of coordination among government agencies result in a situation in which migration in the USSR often works at counter-purposes, with people moving away from areas suffering from a labor shortage and into areas with a labor surplus. A system of economic measures is advocated to optimize Soviet migration patterns. Since differences in living conditions are the basic motive between migration, an effort should be made to establish relationships between region al living standards that would attract migrants to regions with a labor shortage and induce them to settle permanently, instead of taking temporary advantage of high wage rates.