Doing Business in Russia. Котова К.П - 15 стр.

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IV.   Read through the text.
               Russians Outside Russia: Potential Refugees?
         The Soviet Union’s disintegration has resulted in 25.3 mil-
         lion Russians (by the 1989 census) finding themselves in the
         “near abroad”, as Russia calls the other 14 newly-
         independent states. And in all these states Russians have
         turned into ethnic minorities with all the attendant conse-
         quences.
      Russians and Russian-speaking people now feel uncomfortable not only
in the Baltics, but in the other ex-Soviet republics as well. But I am sure that
there will be no avalanche-like migration of millions into Russia. This is pri-
marily because three-quarters of the Russian population outside Russia live in
Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan. It is safe to say that no forced migration into
Russia will occur on a mass scale from Ukraine and Belarus, nor most likely,
from Kazakhstan either. The situation in Moldova and the Transcaucasian re-
publics is in comparably worse.
      But there are few Russians there. Besides, a considerable part of Molda-
vian Russians come from Ukraine, where many of them will also return.
      The Situation is the most complicated in Central Asia. To begin with,
there is a relatively large number of Russians there – 3.3 million according to
the 2002 census. That is, there are more of them than in the Baltics, Moldova
and the Transcaucasus taken together. Additionally, there are many people of
those nationalities whose ethnic territories are within the confines of the Rus-
sian Federation – Tatars, Bashkirs, Mordvinians, and many others. Secondly,
the “European” population has been leaving Central Asia: not only Tajikistan,
with its civil war, but even stable Uzbekistan, Turkmenia and Kirghizia. Inci-
dentally, the net outflow of population from Central Asia commenced as early
as the mid-1970s, and the ten years between the censuses of 1979 and 1989,
Central Asia’s migrational losses (departure outbalancing entry) came to