Includes statistics.

In the wake of the USSR's collapse, more than 25 million Russians found themselves living outside Russian territory, their status ambiguous. Equally uncertain is the role they will play as a factor in Russian politics, local politics and relations among the newly independent states of the former Soviet Union. This volume, prepared under the sponsorship of the Kennan Institute, offers a comprehensive and amply documented examination of these issues.

In 1900 over five million Jews lived in the Russian empire; today, there are four times as many Russian-speaking Jews residing outside the former Soviet Union than there are in that region. The New Jewish Diaspora is the first English-language study of the Russian-speaking Jewish diaspora. This migration has made deep marks on the social, cultural, and political terrain of many countries, in particular the United States, Israel, and Germany. The contributors examine the varied ways these immigrants have adapted to new environments, while identifying the common cultural bonds that continue to unite them. Assembling an international array of experts on the Soviet and post-Soviet Jewish diaspora, the book makes room for a wide range of scholarly approaches, allowing readers to appreciate the significance of this migration from many different angles. Some chapters offer data-driven analyses that seek to quantify the impact Russian-speaking Jewish populations are making in their adoptive countries and their adaptations there. Others take a more ethnographic approach, using interviews and observations to determine how these immigrants integrate their old traditions and affiliations into their new identities. Further chapters examine how, despite the oceans separating them, members of this diaspora form imagined communities within cyberspace and through literature, enabling them to keep their shared culture alive. Above all, the scholars in The New Jewish Diaspora place the migration of Russian-speaking Jews in its historical and social contexts, showing where it fits within the larger historic saga of the Jewish diaspora, exploring its dynamic engagement with the contemporary world, and pointing to future paths these immigrants and their descendants might follow.

This book examines the relationship between post-Soviet societies in transition and the increasingly important role of their diaspora. It analyses processes of identity transformation in post-Soviet space and beyond, using macro- and micro-level perspectives and interdisciplinary approaches combining field-based and ethnographic research. The authors demonstrate that post-Soviet diaspora are just at the beginning of the process of identity formation and formalization. They do this by examining the challenges, encounters and practices of Ukrainians and Russians living abroad in Western and Southern Europe, Canada and Turkey, as well as those of migrants, expellees and returnees living in the conflict zones of Azerbaijan, Georgia and Moldova. Key questions on how diaspora can be better engaged to support development, foreign policy and economic policies in post-Soviet societies are both raised and answered. Russia’s transformative and important role in shaping post-Soviet diaspora interests and engagement is also considered. This edited collection will appeal to students and scholars of diaspora, post-Soviet politics and migration, and economic and political development.

The break-up of the Soviet Union in 1989 left 25 million Russians living in the 'near abroad', outside the borders of Russia proper. They have become the subjects of independent nation-states where the majority population is ethnically, linguistically, and often denominationally different. The creation of this 'new Russian diaspora' may well be the most significant minority problem created by the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Paul Kolstoe traces the growth and role of the Russian population in non-Russian areas of the Russian empire and then in the non-Russian Soviet republics. In the post-Soviet period special attention is devoted to the situation of Russians in the Baltic countries, Moldova, Belarus, Ukraine and the former Central Asian and Caucasian republics. A chapter written jointly by Paul Kolstoe and Andrei Edemsky of the Institute of Slavonic and Balkan Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences, delineates present Russian policy toward the diaspora. Finally, Kolstoe suggests strategies for averting the repetition of the Yugoslav scenario on post-Soviet soil.

In the wake of the Russian Revolution and the ensuing civil war, approximately one-and-a-half million Russians fled their country. Many settled in Prague, where they were welcomed and supported by the newly formed Czechoslovak Republic. This book presents the first full account of Prague's Russian emigre community from 1918 to 1938, when the Nazi invasion scattered the inhabitants yet again. Russia Abroad examines the life of this vibrant community, its activity, achievement, and importance. Catherine Andreyev and Ivan Savicky explore the reasons that Czechoslovakia embraced the Russian immigrants, the evolution of the Russian community, and why the original idea of supporting Russian emigres and creating an academic centre of progressive Russians had to be modified in the light of national and international politics. The story they tell not only illuminates aspects of Russian life and culture of the period but also offers insights into later diasporas in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.