Window on Eurasia

Ethnic Neighborhoods Taking Shape in Moscow

Paul Goble

Vienna, July 10, 2006 – Post-Soviet Moscow is taking on another feature of
cities around the world: the formation of ethnic enclaves. But both the
nature of these communities and the role of the formation of the state
in their formation continue to set the Russian capital apart.

In an article on “Novyye izvestiya” on Friday, five of that
newspapaper’s journalists describe the Azerbaijani, Chinese and
Vietnamese neighborhoods that are beginning to emerge, but first, they
point out something few Muscovites pay much attention to: the huge gap
between official and the actual numbers of these groups.

According to government-conducted censuses, 85 percent of the residents
of Moscow identified themselves as ethnic Russians in 2002, down only
slightly from the 90 percent who did so a generation earlier in 1979.
On the one hand, these percentages are almost certainly wrong because many
of immigrants were not counted in the latter year.

And on the other, it reflects the increasing tendency of city residents
to declare themselves Russian regardless of their backgrounds. The
paper cites the case of a Muscovite whose father was Azerbaijani, whose
mother was from Armenia, but who told census takers that he was a Russian.

Whatever the actual numbers of non-Russian immigrants into the capital
over the last 15 years – and they are certainly far higher than
official census data suggest – ever more of their members are
choosing, just as migrants elsewhere have done, to live near others
like themselves, either in certain neighborhoods or even in particular
buildings.

In Soviet times, when the government strictly regulated movement
through the resident permit (“propiska”) system, those moving to Moscow
seldom had the chance to decide where they would live. That permit
system has partially collapsed. But in addition, a combination of three
other factors has contributed to the rise of such enclaves.

First, the numbers of migrants has gone up, and many choose initially
at least to live with their co-ethnics, something that can in particular
neighborhoods lead to a situation – sometimes called the “tipping
point” -- in which the original residents will decide to leave
opening the way for the new arrivals to take over.

That appears to be the case with the arrival of Azerbaijanis in areas
near the Russian capitals’ Leningrad and Cherkizov markets as well as
with much smaller ethnic communities in the city who have arrived from
the Caucasus north and south and the republics of Central Asia.

Second, some Russian institutions, apparently with the blessing of the
city government, have chosen to rent out entire buildings to particular
groups. Thus, several buildings have been rented out to Chinese, and
according to “Novyye izvestiya,” Moscow residents now say their
city does not have a Chinatown, but it does have “China houses.”

Even more formally, officials who control the dormitory of the former
Moscow State Transportation University have rented it out en bloc to
Vietnamese, something that has converted that non-descript building
into a location that both its residents and Muscovites sometimes refer to as
“Little Hanoi.”

And third – and this is a major difference between post-Soviet Moscow
and cities outside of what was the USSR – both the central Russian
government and the city authorities are intentionally or not leading
these ethnic communities there to organize themselves, a trend that in
turn has increased interest in forming neighborhoods.

The central government has adopted legislation allowing the formation
of extra-territorial ethnic autonomy organizations, a development that
many Russian officials appear to hope and that some non-Russians fear is
intended to set the stage for the elimination of ethno-territorial
units.

Regardless of whether that is the goal, however, the creation of these
organizations in the city of Moscow and elsewhere has had the effect of
promoting intra-ethnic contacts and that in turn has helped, especially
in the age of the Internet, members of one group to find and sometimes
choose to live near one another.

And the Moscow city government not only has set up a Moscow House of
Nationalities with its own website [http://www.mdn.ru/]) but also backed the activities of a large number of ethnic groups in the capital, again something that has had the result, intended or not of allowing these communities for form up.

An indication of their importance is the current fight over the control
of one that unites 20,000 ethnic Kazakhs in the Russian capital. One
faction believes that only Kazakhs who are Russian citizens should play
a role; another thinks all Kazakhs should get a vote on its leadership
[http://www.apn.kz/opinions/print4525.htm].

In addition to these official actions, increasing anti-migrant
attitudes among many Russian residents of the capital and anti-migrant actions by the local militia, many of whose officers reportedly supplement their
incomes by shaking down immigrants, has convinced migrants that they
can best defend themselves by living together.

And consequently while Moscow city officials still deny that ethnic
enclaves are being formed there, “Novyye izvestiya” says, Russian
sociologists are “confident that Moscow has every chance to have its
own mosaic of ethnic quarters, just like the megalopolises of the
West.”

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