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Soviet Union [USSR] Migration
Two aspects of the Soviet system tended to act as impediments
to voluntary migration: state ownership of the land and, in theory
at least, a rigid system of internal passports that regulated where
people live and work. Despite these impediments, in the 1980s
approximately 15 million citizens (5 percent of the total
population), some with the state's approval and some without it,
changed their place of residence each year. The overwhelming
majority of the migrants were young males sixteen years of age and
older. Many of these were students. Millions of pioneers arrived at
or departed from newly explored territories in western Siberia or
the Soviet Far East. Many of the migrants abandoned the hard work
and simple life on state farms and collective farms for the better
pay and amenities of the largest cities.
By far the largest percentage of migration (40 percent) has
been from villages to cities: for example, between 1959 and 1979
the agricultural work force in the nonchernozem region of the
Russian Republic declined by 40 percent as a result of movement to
cities. Since the Bolshevik Revolution, the urban population grew
by almost 85 million people as a result of in-migration from rural
areas alone. Between 1970 and 1979, more than 3 million people left
the countryside annually, and just 1.5 million moved in the
opposite direction. A substantial proportion of migration (34
percent) took place from city to city .
The pervasive influence of the severe climate exerted pressure
on migration patterns. In some parts of Siberia, the climate and
working conditions were so harsh that shifts were set up, based on
the recommendations of medical authorities, to return workers to
more hospitable climes after a tour of two or three years. As an
incentive to attract workers to sparsely settled areas such as
western Siberia, the government established a system of bonuses and
added credit toward retirement. Between 1970 and 1985, migration
patterns began to adapt to the needs of the national economy, and
the long-standing maldistribution of natural and human resources
began to improve. The incentives helped to reverse, at least
temporarily, the negative migration stream out of Siberia in the
first part of the 1970s. Still, the age-sex structure of the newly
exploited areas was one typical for frontiers. Disproportionate
numbers of young males made the area far from conducive for
establishing a stable population base and labor force.
In the 1980s, the government continued to find it difficult to
stimulate migration out of the southern parts of the country and
into the northern and eastern sections of the Soviet Union.
Contrary to the desired migratory pattern, the areas with the
greatest levels of mobility were generally those with the lowest
birth rates, in particular the Estonian, Latvian, Lithuanian,
Russian, Ukrainian, and Belorussian republics. In Soviet Central
Asia, where birth rates were considerably higher, the levels of
migration and population mobility were low. These demographic
patterns were not seen by planners as contributing to the long-term
solution of labor supply problems stemming from labor deficiencies
in the central European region and labor surpluses in Soviet
Central Asia.
Because the government continued to maintain tight control over
migration into or out of the country, between 1970 and 1985 the
population remained largely a "closed" one, in which increases or
decreases as a result of immigration or emigration were
insignificant. According to figures released in 1989, some 140,000
persons emigrated from the Soviet Union in 1987 and 1988.
Authorities expected the rate to stabilize at about 60,000 to
70,000 per year. Overall, observers estimated that as many as
500,000 émigrés, mostly Jews, Armenians, Germans, and Poles, were
allowed to leave between 1960 and 1985.
Data as of May 1989
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