INTRODUCTION

For almost a decade, Russia has been a magnet for refugees and forced migrants, especially those from the CIS.1 Since 1993, between three and four million people migrated to Russia from the CIS, of whom about 1,200,000 are registered as refugees or internally displaced.2 In the first years after the break-up of the Soviet Union, it also became a destination for asylum seekers from outside the CIS and the Baltic states; as of February 1997 the UNHCR in Russia registered 27,694 such individuals and refugees.3 The International Organization for Migration believes the number of illegal immigrants in Russia from outside the CIS and Baltic states is rising and will become an urgent problem, and the the Federal Migration Services estimates that they number 500,000.4

Russia's most populous and economically vibrant city, Moscow, is a natural destination for refugees and forced migrants; including asylum seekers from the CIS and beyond, refugees from the war in Chechnya, and migrants who face devastated economies in their home regions, in Russia and other CIS countries. Moscow cityofficials often invoke imagery of a wave of immigrants sweeping over the city, causing a rise in crime5 and straining the city's resources and infrastructure to the brink. Motivated, no doubt, by these concerns it has succeeded in limiting the capital's official population growth and at severely limiting the number of refugees and displaced persons who settle there. Indeed, after hitting a peak of nearly nine million in 1989, Moscow's population gradually declined to 8.7 million in 1996; its decline, by 1 percent each year from 1994 through 1996 mirrors exactly the overall population decline for the Russian Federation.6

The Moscow Migration Service (MMS) attributes the growth of Moscow's population since 1989 exclusively to migration, and maintains an explicit policy of lowering the city's population to 8.5 million. This corresponds to the city's projected housing construction goal of maintaining zero population growth.7 The MMS estimates the number of unregistered residents, who are not reflected in the above statistics, to be 1.5 million, although it is unclear how it reached that estimate; an Moscow research institute estimated the number of illegal migrants to be 280,000 -300,000. The MMS faults a lax federal migration policy for the presence of illegal migrants, who, it claims threaten the city with "pollution," "spreading of various diseases" and "economic damage." Although it is unclear what the specific threats are, the city government invokes a range of them, and the need to achieve zero population growth, to support its restrictive system of registration for temporary visits and permanent residence, its highly exclusive refugee policy, and its public rhetoric on visitors, refugees and migrants.

Accordingly, Moscow accounts for only a small share of Russia's refugee population. As of January 1, 1996, the city of Moscow had registered 15,112 refugees and displaced persons, and Moscow Region8 had registered 11,657.9 Moscow's share of CIS refugees and displaced persons accounts for a mere 1.5 percent of the Russian Federation total, whereas Moscow constitutes 5.8 percent of the country's population.

Type of Information	1996	January - April 1997
Crimes committed by citizens of the Russian Federation	79.7 %	83.4 %
Serioius crimes committed by citizens of the Russian Federation	82.9 %	82.4 %
Crimes committed by citizens of the CIS and Baltic states	16.2 %	11.7 %
Serious crimes committed by citizens of the CIS and Baltic states	12 %	10.6 %
Crimes committed by refugees (raw figure)	91	N/A
Crimes committed by refugees as percentage	0.1 %	N/A

6 The population of Moscow Region similarly dropped by 1 percent until 1996, when it rose by one percent during the same period, the population of Russia for the same period rose slightly, then began to decline. Raw population figures are as follows: for the Russian Federation, 1989: 147.7 million; 1994, 148.4 million; 1995, 148.3 million; 1996, 148 million. For the city of Moscow: 1989: 9 million; 1994: 8.8 million; 1995, 8.71 million; 1996, 8.66 million. All figures are cited from The Demographic Yearbook of Russia: A Statistical Handbook (Moscow: Goskomstat, 1996), p. 26. 7 Anatoly Vasil'evich Korostylev, Chief Specialist, Moscow Migration Service. Speech at Programma "Organizatsiya seti yuridicheskikh consul'tatsii dlya bezhentsev i vynuzhdennykh Pereselentsev" (Seminar on organizing a network of legal services for refugees and forced migrants in Russia), organized by Civic Assistance, Moscow, April 24, 1994. All other information concerning migration policy in this paragraph is attributable to the same source. 8 Moscow Region (Moskovskaya oblast) is one of Russia's eighty-nine administrative units, as is the city of Moscow. Administrative units include republic, krai (territory), oblast (region), and avtonomnyi okrug (autonomous district). The city of St. Petersburg also is its own unit, as is its outlying Leningrad Region. 9 Goskomstat, The Demographic Yearbook of Russia, pp. 522-525. The overwhelming majority of these refugees and IDPs are from Azerbaijan, Georgia, Tajikistan and Russia. In 1996, the majority of newly registered refugees in Moscow came from Chechnya. For a useful survey of the social composition of Moscow's refugees and of public attitudes toward refugees in the capital, see Andrei Kamenskii, Chuzhiye v gorode ("Strangers in the City"), Moskovskiye Novosti (The Moscow News), no. 31, August 3-10, 1997, p. 12.