Many Ethnic Russians Returning to North but Moscow isn't Counting Them, Anthropologist Says

[Judi Lynn]

Wednesday, February 17, 2021

Paul Goble

Staunton, February 16 – Many Russians who worked in the Far North in Soviet times to make money are now returning to the region because they are relatives and friends there, Anastasiya Karaseva says. But this reverse flow has been largely ignored because there are so few registration offices in the North able to record and report about this trend.

Karaseva, an anthropologist with the Center of Social Research on the North at St. Petersburg’s European University which is studying Russians in the northern portion of the country, insists that “people are returning. It is simply the case that statistics about them aren’t seen” by many (lenta.ru/articles/2021/02/16/anthropology/).

“The Far North, already in Soviet times, was a special territory where there was higher pay, longer vacations, and paid travel to any other part of the country,” she says. “This permits many Northerners to be very mobile” and to have the chance to compare one part of the country to others.

And life in the North because many services are nonexistent or far away is different because those who succeed there are ones who carefully plan for the future, Karaseva says. That creates a different character and more than that a sense of regional identity different from those held by Russians elsewhere.

More:
http://windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2021/02/many-ethnic-russians-returning-to-north.html