******* Anyone from Kazakhstan? *******

[immigrant]

I am trying to find people who are originally from Kazakhstan.

I am from Almaty, Kazakhstan originally and just had a couple of questions for those who came from there...

Thanks!

[immigrant]

I am trying to find people who are originally from Kazakhstan.

I am from Almaty, Kazakhstan originally and just had a couple of questions for those who came from there...

Thanks!

[Malinsky]

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Russophobia resulted in incidents of persecution and ethnic cleansing of against the ethnic Russian population. Worst affected was the Russian minority of Chechnya: in the 1989 census, the Russians accounted for approximately a quarter of the population, and from 1989 to 1994, as many as 300,000 people of non-Chechen ethnicity (mostly Russians, but also a notable Armenian and Ukrainian minority) were forcefully evicted from Chechnya, and an unknown number were murdered or disappeared. Many were also kidnapped, and even slave-trade was reported.

By 1979 ethnic Russians in Kazakhstan numbered about 5,500,000, almost 40 % of the total population. In fact, for some Soviet Russians, migration south amounted to little more than moving house. But since independence in 1991, all that has changed. Hundreds of thousands of Russians left Kazakhstan in the 1990s due the lack of economic opportunities as well as discrimination. Ethnic tensions also played a role, persuading many Russians to seek a better life elsewhere. Before 1991 there were one million Volga Germans in Kazakhstan, most of them emigrated following the breakup of the Soviet Union. German law allows persons of German descent living in Eastern Europe (so-called Aussiedler) to move to Germany and be granted German citizenship. After collapse of the Soviet Union large numbers of Russian Germans took advantage of Germany's liberal law of return to leave the harsh conditions of the Soviet successor states. By 1999 about 1.7 million former Soviet citizens of German origin had immigrated to Germany.

Turkmenistan's dwindling Russian population, meanwhile, seems most hard pressed. Community organisations have been banned, putting their members, in effect, in opposition to the totalitarian regime. All minority groups are forced to learn the Turkmen language and expected to lead a Turkmen lifestyle. However, the exodus of the Russian-speaking population from Central Asia is also hurting local economies and social services because it is depriving the sub-region of skilled personnel with badly needed professional and industrial skills, such as doctors, teachers and engineers.

RUSSIANS IN CENTRAL ASIA

1989 Soviet census, Kazakhstan - 6 million, Uzbekistan - 1.65 million, Kyrgyzstan - 916,600, Tajikistan - 388,500, Turkmenistan - 333,900

2005 (estimate), Kazakhstan - 4 million, Uzbekistan - 620,000, Kyrgyzstan - 500,000, Tajikistan - 137,000, Turkmenistan - 142,000