‘For First Time in 50 Years,’ Immigration No Longer Compensating for Russia’s Internal Population Decline

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 24 – During the first half of this year, the population of Russia “for the first time in half a century” fell not only because of more deaths than births but because more people left the country than entered it, something that reflected the war in Ukraine and has consequences not only for the country as a whole but for many of its regions as well.

            During this period, there were 97,000 more departures than arrivals, far too few to compensate for the excess of deaths over births which amounted to 384,000. As a result and in contrast to recent decades, the population fell by almost half a million, Yevgeny Chernyshev of the Nakanune news agency says (nakanune.ru/articles/119735/).

            Since the mid-1970s, immigration into the Russian Federation had been sufficient to compensate for any natural population loss, but that is no longer the case, given that during the first six months of 2022, only 216,000 immigrants arrived while 323,000 who had been in Russia chose to leave.

            The only country from which there was still a net influx into the Russian Federation this year is Tajikistan. Immigrants increased in number in only 12 of Russia’s regions, including Leningrad, Moscow and Kaliningrad oblasts. Elsewhere, they fell in number often dramatically, in the first instance in Kamchatka, Sakhalin and Tomsk.

            While inter-regional migration within the Russian Federation fell during this period by eight percent, the number of Russian residents who moved from one federal subject to another nonetheless increased in Adygeya, Chukotka, Kaliningrad and Moscow Oblasts. Elsewhere, the number of residents leaving was greater than the number arriving.

            Among the regions suffering the greatest loss in population from outmigration to other regions of Russia were Tomsk Oblast, the Komi Republic, North Ossetia, the Jewish AD, Magadan and Murmansk Oblast and the Yamalo-Nenets AD. Taken together, these subjects lost approximately half a percent of their population in only the first six months of this year.