Another turn of the narrow road – and behind the dark silhouettes of old fir trees, three houses covered with fresh brick-red paint shone with new double-glazed windows. The former barracks of the Severny military camp (a dozen and a half kilometers from Kaliningrad) are radically changing their purpose for the third time in their eighty-year history. Before World War II, one of the best units, the Luftwaffe, was quartered here. After 1945, pilots of the Pokryshkin aviation regiment were stationed in the well-appointed German barracks. Now, after a decade of desolation, the renovated buildings have become a Temporary Stay Center for former compatriots who decided to return to their historical homeland.
The Kaliningrad region quickly and energetically joined the federal program to assist compatriots relocating from abroad. It was the first of the 12 selected regions to develop and defend a repatriate support program before the country's government, prepared for their reception, and on June 8 – again ahead of everyone – pompously welcomed the first group of migrants. So far, only nine former compatriots have moved to the Russian exclave. But the regional government's plans are grandiose: by the end of the five-year program, officials expect to increase the region's population by a third – by 300,000 people – through migration inflow. This year alone, they planned to receive the first 10,000 repatriates, but because the regional program wandered too long through the offices of federal officials, the plan was cut in half.
“We are quite ready to meet thousands of newcomers. The Severny barracks are designed for 500 people. By the end of the year, we will commission a large building complex for 2,000 people in the city of Ozyorsk. There, the military camp was maintained in ideal condition – it was guarded, cleaned, heated, so there is minimal work – only redevelopment of non-residential premises. There are other vacant military camps in the region,” assures my companion, Andrei Zemchenkov, head of the department of the Ministry for Territorial Development of the Kaliningrad Region.
But temporary housing is only the first link in a long chain of issues related to the adaptation of repatriates. Many of these problems still seem difficult to resolve.
At the outset
The temporary stay center greeted us with a hollow emptiness. Seven of the group of migrants temporarily went back to Latvia to settle legal and property issues. Arkady Martirosyan, a former soloist of the National Opera of Armenia who moved from Yerevan, was at work. “What a man! In three weeks he managed to get jobs in three places – at the Regional Philharmonic, the Red Banner Ensemble of the Baltic Fleet, and as a music teacher. And the other day he approached the administration of the Bagrationovsky district – find something else, I still have free time,” admires the work ethic of the new compatriot, Andrei Zemchenkov.
The spacious building of the center was left for the day at the disposal of two residents – Natalia Cherepanova and her five-year-old son Arseniy. Natalia, already accustomed to press attention, willingly tells her story. She was born in Latvia; her grandmother lived there all her life, whom the Germans deported from Belarus to Germany during the war. After the surrender of the Third Reich, the grandmother returned to Latvia with the Soviet troops, got married, and had a daughter. But when Latvia separated from the USSR, neither Natalia nor her mother received citizenship. Without citizenship, her higher education in economics was practically unclaimed: Natalia Cherepanova did not have the right to work in state structures, and even private companies hired her only for low-level positions with corresponding pay. “I realized that I had no prospects in Latvia. At home, in a small two-room apartment, it was cramped: my grandmother, mother, adult brother. My salary is not enough to rent normal housing; lately I was renting a room half-and-half with a friend, and so we lived four people together with children. Something had to be decided,” says Cherepanova. Compared to the Latvian communal apartment, the spacious room in the center is perceived by her as quite comfortable conditions. Although the amenities – kitchen, shower, laundry – are located dormitory-style on the floor, the renovation is excellent, all appliances are modern, brand new.
However, Natalia admits that she is partly to blame for the “incompatibility” with Latvia: “I never learned the Latvian language: I studied in Soviet times at a school in a military town, there they hardly taught us that subject. But that's not even the main thing. Their mentality is different, not Russian: closed, tense, everyone for themselves. Here I feel good, here I am at home,” explains the interlocutor. The same reasons – lack of language skills and psychological discomfort – prevented her from settling in Germany, where many of her classmates found work. For herself, Natalia decided: Russia or Belarus, and after stumbling upon a message on the Internet about the program to assist compatriots returning to the Russian Federation, she no longer hesitated.
So far, she doesn't regret her decision, although grievances are gradually accumulating. “I thought everything would be more coordinated – they would give me a job, help solve housing issues. But I have to tie up all the loose ends myself,” says Natalia. Work is offered, of course, even a choice, though not in her specialty: too long a break in her work history, and Natalia is not familiar with the intricacies of Russian accounting. But with the offered salaries (5-10 thousand rubles), renting an apartment and living with her son is problematic. And the weeks are passing: it is assumed that within three months the “returnee” should resolve the main issues and leave the center.
“If only I could get help at the very beginning, and then I'll make it on my own,” Natalia stubbornly shakes her head. A week after our meeting, she packed her belongings into two bags, took Arseniy by the hand, and headed to Nesterovsky urban district. There everything came together: municipal housing, a kindergarten for the child, a hearty job as a cook. The earnings are modest, but that's just for the start!..
Conscious necessity
The keen interest of the Kaliningrad Region in the arrival of former compatriots is understandable: the emerging economic upturn in the region could be hindered by a critical shortage of personnel. 'We proceed from the premise that the economy of Kaliningrad should reach the level of its nearest neighbors — EU countries. This is recorded, in particular, in the recently approved "Strategy for the Socio-Economic Development of the Kaliningrad Region for the Medium and Long Term," approved by a government decree. To achieve the intended indicators, we must proceed along two paths — increasing labor productivity and increasing the size of the working population,' explains Mikhail Plyukhin, Minister for Territorial Development and Interaction with Local Self-Government Bodies of the Kaliningrad Region.
The Russian government has provided for a whole system of benefits for the next 10 years, including updating in 2006 the law 'On the Special Economic Zone' (SEZ). The increased attention of the federal government and the energetic management methods practiced by the team of Governor Georgy Boos are yielding good results — industrial production volumes have been growing since 2004 by an average of 20% per year, significantly outpacing the average Russian indicators.
The special economic zone has proven attractive to investors: new production facilities for assembling televisions, cars, enterprises producing construction materials, and agricultural processing are being created monthly in the region. There is a severe shortage of labor resources — the demand declared by employers for this year is about 60,000 vacancies. As in any region of the country, qualified workers are needed: builders, shipbuilders, machine operators, mechanics, etc. Among the registered unemployed are lawyers, marketers, managers, most fresh out of college.
The situation is complicated by Kaliningrad's specifics. First, the region has an extremely unfavorable demographic situation: mortality, as in other Russian regions, exceeds birth rates, average life expectancy is the shortest in the Northwestern Federal District, and the infant mortality rate is also one of the highest. Second, the exclave status has an effect. 'We are deprived of the migration flow that is characteristic of the rest of the Russian Federation — the so-called interregional redistribution of labor resources. If you look at a map of Russia, it is noticeable that migration moves from east to west, tending towards megacities. But migrants do not reach Kaliningrad: you have to cross a border, and that is difficult both organizationally and psychologically,' says Mikhail Plyukhin. To a small extent, the deficit is compensated by foreigners coming to earn money (so-called labor migrants) — qualified specialists mainly from Poland and Lithuania, and laborers from Central Asia and Moldova, entering both on quotas and illegally. But the quality of these resources does not satisfy everyone. 'For ourselves, we have decided that labor migrants are not our path. For a specialist to be able to work at a modern auto assembly plant or become a good mechanic in agriculture (and these are exactly the areas we are going to develop), he must be trained. But what is the point of spending money on training a person who will leave in a year or two?' says Oleg Shirkin, head of the HR department of OJSC Avtotor.
A Pipe Dream
'The Russian government is 10-15 years late with its initiative: almost everyone who wanted to move to Russia is already here,' one of the participants of the presentation of the Kaliningrad Region program, held in early summer in Latvia, told me.
In the 1990s, the Kaliningrad Region was very popular among migrants from CIS countries — up to 15,000 former compatriots came here annually. After the default, the flow practically dried up. In recent years (before the resettlement assistance program), only 2,000-3,000 migrants came to the region, mainly from Kazakhstan and Central Asia. It is easy to calculate that to fulfill Kaliningrad's plans, the number of resettlers must increase by about 20 times.
Nevertheless, officials are confident that people will move to the Kaliningrad Region. Over the past year, the regional government recorded about 12,000 inquiries: by mail, telephone, and via the Internet. Former compatriots asked the same question: 'How can we move to your region?' One in ten of those who applied filled out the proposed questionnaire and is now considered a potential participant in the program (a person becomes a full participant after receiving a certificate, but they are not in a hurry to issue them yet).
The initiative of the Kaliningrad Region officials itself — studying the contingent of future fellow countrymen — deserves high praise, since the other 'pilot regions' have not bothered with such 'preventive' monitoring. But the results of the study by no means confirm the theory of hundreds of thousands of Russian-speaking residents of CIS countries eager to become Kaliningraders. First, the number of potential resettlers who filled out questionnaires fits entirely within the size of the natural migration flow. Moreover, more than half of the respondents claim salaries of 10,000 rubles per month and above, while the average real income of Kaliningraders has not yet reached that level.
'But since the main motivation is not the desire to earn money, but the intention to change country of residence due to difficulties of adaptation there and a more comfortable self-perception here, we hope that the salary level will not scare them off,' believes Mikhail Plyukhin. It seems that the list of arguments in favor of moving to the Kaliningrad Region is exhausted by this.
Hope for Business
It will be difficult for migrants to adapt to a new place. In particular, no special preferences are provided for them in solving the housing issue. On the one hand, this will avoid social conflicts caused by envy from local residents. But on the other hand, it will greatly complicate the resettlement of migrants: without serious savings, it will be difficult to purchase or rent housing with the average income level in the Kaliningrad region. Real estate prices in Kaliningrad are not much lower than in St. Petersburg.
The federal government leaves the solution of this problem to the regions, and they, in turn, gently push employers to take on the burden of settling their future workers. The latter are gradually moving, beginning to think about various schemes for helping scarce personnel. Oleg Shirkin talks about the plans of Avtotor: 'Probably, mortgage lending schemes through our bank with subsidized interest rates on loans will be applied for our new employees. We are also considering the possibility of building cottage settlements for the development of the holding's agro-industrial direction. Our agricultural workers will be able to live there and, perhaps, buy cottages into ownership under some schemes.'
The future of such projects is still quite vague. As admitted at one of the Kaliningrad enterprises, 'We are, of course, participating in the program. But our situation is not critical; we will not close down tomorrow due to a lack of manpower. Therefore, for now, we are trying to more actively attract locals; there are fewer problems with them.'
It is not difficult to predict what the business's delay in developing mechanisms to solve the problems of repatriates will lead to. The first compatriots who arrived under the program, having encountered problems, will not hesitate to tell the world about it. Subsequent migrants will be more cautious about promises and more carefully weigh the possibilities of solving their problems on their own. It is unlikely that active PR campaigns (the Kaliningrad program has already been presented in Germany and Latvia, presentations are planned in Central Asia and Kazakhstan) will bring the desired results.
The State Program to Facilitate the Voluntary Resettlement of Compatriots Living Abroad to the Russian Federation was approved by presidential decree in July 2006. The 'pilot regions' included Krasnoyarsk, Primorsky and Khabarovsk territories, Amur, Irkutsk, Kaliningrad, Kaluga, Lipetsk, Novosibirsk, Tambov, Tver and Tyumen regions. The remaining regions are to join the program later.
At the expense of the federal budget, all migrants are paid travel to their chosen place of residence, duty-free transport of a container with personal belongings and a car, if it has been owned by the migrant for at least one year. In addition, they are paid a relocation allowance, the amount of which depends on the category of the region. Thus, the Kaliningrad region is classified as category 'A', and the compensation amount here is 60 thousand rubles per program participant and 20 thousand rubles for each family member. For six months, unemployed migrants will receive a benefit equal to half the subsistence minimum. At the expense of the regional budget, they will be provided with social guarantees due to Russians (compulsory medical insurance, payment of child benefits, etc.).