Last week, "old settlers" gathered in Moscow for an all-Russian conference organized by the refugee aid fund "Compatriots". This forum, unlike the official congress of compatriots held recently in St. Petersburg, was not honored with attention from any of the powers that be. And so the delegates wrote an appeal to President Vladimir Putin, who proclaimed "support and protection of the rights of compatriots as one of national priorities", asking to "amnesty" post-perestroika repatriates and include them in the state program for facilitating the voluntary resettlement of compatriots.
According to the delegates of this conference, the fates of the migrants of the 1990s became a clear example of how the official Russian authorities "cool down to given promises and forget unresolved problems of repatriates". As Mikhail Demidov, chairman of the board of the "Compatriots" fund, told "Vremya Novostei", according to unofficial data, today about 10 million first-wave migrants live on the territory of Russia, and about 5 million of them have not yet received citizenship. "Until 1998, housing was built for them with state support, compact settlements were organized," Demidov said. "Enclaves of repatriates appeared in more than 50 regions of the country, and only, for example, in the Pskov region there were about 20 such settlements."
The mass resettlement of compatriots from the former union republics began in 1992, and for almost a decade, according to Mikhail Demidov, about 450,000 people returned to Russia annually. But today the flow has dried up – largely because Russia never became a homeland for many repatriates. "When we planned our compact settlement for refugees and migrants from Tajikistan, we also assumed the creation of jobs," said Ravza Khairutdinova, director of the Tatarstan republican public reception center for refugees and migrants. "But we have no material ability to build housing. Out of 260 families, only 70 managed to acquire houses in the settlements; the rest huddle in dormitories or live in shacks without light and water. Our two main problems: housing and employment." In the Voronezh migrant organization "Khoko", one of the first to start implementing the program for resettling the Russian-speaking population from the republics of Central Asia in the early 1990s, the same complaints. In two settlements for repatriates near the city of Borisoglebsk, for 15 years people have been living in garden houses intended for short-term stay. And the authorities are treating the newcomers worse and worse. "Illegal immigrants hide their problems, but we flaunt ours, so we are not welcome in Russia," said Anatoly Balashov, head of "Khoko".
The migrants believe that the Russian leaders who refuse to include first-wave repatriates in the program for the return of compatriots cannot count on the trust of the diaspora in the CIS. According to Anatoly Balashov, "despite the fact that many Russians today have to hide their nationality in Tajikistan, out of more than 200,000 people, hardly anyone will go to Russia today." "Everyone knows perfectly well that we were left to the mercy of fate here," he explained. "Moreover, today the Russian authorities provide significant support to compatriots living abroad, so there is no point in them returning." Repatriate Ravza Khairutdinova is also sure that "for such an adventure" today the Russian residents of the former union republics will not go. "This small cohort of people who remained in Tajikistan approaches the issue of resettlement more cautiously than we did during the conflict in the early 1990s," she said. "I lost my husband then. And, frankly, I regret that I did not use my refugee status from the CIS countries to immigrate to another country in the world, but chose Russia – as if it were a homeland."
The demands of the first migrants are also supported by many human rights activists, who believe that dividing compatriots into "old" and "new" will lead to conflicts. They also insist on including all repatriates in the state program for facilitating the voluntary resettlement of compatriots, which promises migrants payment from the state budget of travel expenses, one-time allowance for settlement and a social package. According to the head of the social service of the "Compatriots" fund, director of the Moscow regional public reception center for refugees and migrants, Alla Yakunina, without taking into account the problems of forced migrants of the first wave, "the government is pushing them into the arms of nationalists." By the way, judging by the presence at the conference of a number of odious figures such as State Duma deputy Nikolai Kuryanovich, this warning may be too late.