Tag Archives: Russian

Nationality + Migration, Race + Color + Ethnicity

Estonia News | Ethnic Russians

Estonian government reaches out to Russian Estonians to counter Kremlin influence
  • Anxious about a repeat of Ukraine in their country, government officials have begun learning Russian and conducting outreach to increase the integration of ethnic Russians in Estonia.
  • Russian speakers comprise roughly 25% of Estonia’s population, with many concentrated on the country’s border with Russia where a mix of Estonian and Russian media provide differing views on regional geopolitics.
  • Although Russians have been in Estonia since pre-WWII times, many ethnic Russian immigrants in Estonia lack Estonian citizenship after post-Soviet language tests left many holding Russian passports.
Read

“Wary of divided loyalties, a Baltic state reaches out to its Russians” (Reuters | February 2017)
“Nervous in Narva: a town caught between East and West” (The Irish Times | February 2017)
“Baltic Russians: Are They Sudetendeutsche?“* (Forbes | February 2017)

* Commentary/Opinion

Religion + Belief

Russia News | Muslims

Russian Muslim converts feel the sting of Islamophobia as the government cracks down on the community
  • Among Russia’s 16 to 20 million Muslims are ethnic Russians who have converted to Islam for reasons ranging from marriage to economics to theology.
  • Because converts are statistically more likely to convert to more conservative sects of Islam, the government cracks down on their activity, causing many to emigrate to Turkey, the UAE, and, for the radicalized, the Islamic State.
  • The deep historical roots of the Russian Orthodox Church in the country has led to a post-Soviet national identity centered on the faith, which has led to an association of religious conversion with anti-Kremlin activity.

“Lawyers who were to speak about our problem with the authorities, they said that the first thing to do was to explain to the Turkish government that there is a group of ethnic Russian Muslims, because no one has the slightest idea of this.  We know Tatars, Chechens; we know that Dagestanis of various ethnicities are killed, but that there are suppressed Russians and that you actually have a large ethnic group, we don’t know about this.”

Read the full story at the New York Times.

(Image Credit: Sergey Ponomarev/The New York Times)

Nationality + Migration

Israel News | Immigrants

Immigration to Israel from Russia and former Soviet countries up sharply this year
  • As of June 1, approximately 5,904 have arrived in Israel from the former Soviet Union, an increase of 56.94% from 3,698 during the same period in 2014.
  • 2,990 have immigrated from Ukraine, an 85.25% increase from 2014 and more than the total number of 1,982 from 2013, the year before the Ukrainian conflict began.
  • Ongoing violence in Ukraine as well as the Russian economic downturn have been credited as contributing to the jump in immigrants.

Read the full story at The Times of Israel.

(Image Credit: Gideon Markowicz/FLASH90, via The Times of Israel)

Nationality + Migration
Google VP has high praise for Russian engineers, while domestic Russian firms lament lack of resources
  • Mohammad Gawdat, Google’s VP of Business Innovation at Google X, calls Russians Google’s best engineers at economic forum in St. Petersburg.
  • According to Gawdat, Russians account for 25% of Google’s engineers.
  • Deputy Prime Minister Olga Golodets, however, says that domestic companies are suffering as tech profits and talent head overseas.

Read the full story at Meduza.