An unprecedented outbreak of migration from Kyrgyzstan started in the early 1990s, after the republic gained its independence. The growth of social and economic problems, and regional conflicts in nearby states such as Tajikistan and Afghanistan, are leading to intensification of destructive migration processes. The migration-related yearly decrease in population reached its peak in 1993, when it was estimated at 121 thousand people. The year 2000 was marked by another splash in numbers of people who wanted to abandon the country. According to the Department for Migration of Kyrgyz republic, the number of people who left the country in the period of time between 1990-2001 estimates at 450 thousand. It is a fairly big figure for a country with the population of 4,8 million.

Until approximately mid-2000, the biggest ethnic group after the Kyrgyz was Russian. However, the large exodus of ethnic Russians (it is estimated that 62% have left) meant that their share in the Kyrgyz population dropped from 21,1 % in 1990 to 12% presently. This has put Russians in third place, behind the Uzbeks, estimated at 13% of the population of the country.

At the bottom of this issue lays not only the hard socio-economic situation, but also the absence of career perspectives for ethnic minorities. Currently, there is a dominance of people of Kyrgyz ethnicity in state agencies and public administrative sector of the republic. The number of non-Kyrgyz holding positions in the state apparatus is quickly decreasing. The introduction of examinations in the Kyrgyz language for government officials became an engine to eliminate access of the non-Kyrgyz-speaking population to government and state bodies.

One of the peculiarities of the demographic situation of Kyrgyzstan is that the majority of Russian migrants are not those dwelling in the capital city of Bishkek and its surroundings, the Chui Oblast. As a result of the vast immigration of the Russian population from Kyrgyzstan, there were not only quantitative but also qualitative changes in the structure of labor resources of the republic. The workers who had left and many others leaving were typically involved in fields that require high qualifications.

In general, migration led to a deterioration of the level and structure of the labor potential of the republic, as huge amounts of financial resources and time are needed for the restoration of the intellectual and cultural human potential. The helplessness of the government in checking this process brought a misbalance in the economic and cultural developments in various regions of the country – a misbalance that continues to grow.

The government of Kyrgyzstan tried to reestablish stability and reduce the exodus of the Russian population, but its steps showed little success. In 1998 the Federal Migration Service of the Russian Federation opened an office in Kyrgyzstan, which is there to regulate migration streams between the two countries. Its head, Vasiliy Ostapchuk, admits that the migration situation in Kyrgyzstan has recently accelerated. “Migration in Kyrgyzstan has noticeably gotten younger.  If in the first part of the 1990s mostly people of older generation went to Russia to reunite with their relatives and children, then nowadays citizens born in 1960s and 1970s leave.  By profession they are mostly drivers, builders, engineers or technical workers, teachers, and medical staff.  All in all, they are those, whose labor is not demanded in Kyrgyzstan.”

According to independent analysts, Russia needs a large annual stream of immigrants in order to check the decrease of its population. That’s why effective mechanisms are created for the stimulation of departure of Russian population from the “near abroad”.

In the beginning of 2001, Russian president Vladimir Putin signed the decree “On agencies of the Ministry of federal, national and migration politics affairs of the Russian Federation abroad”, in accordance with which branches of the Federal Migration Service in Armenia, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Latvia receive the status of second embassies abroad.  Experts see the reason of this in the kind of reorganization in that these countries differ in increased level of migration activity.  During 3 years of work of the Federal Migration Service at the Embassy of Russian Federation in Kyrgyz Republic about 250 thousand people turned to this agency with different problems and questions. Lawyer Natalya Ablova thinks that “Autumn 2001 may be marked by the beginning of an unprecedented wave of migration of Russians from Kyrgyzstan. An unfavorable demographic situation in Russia, where the level of deaths exceeds the level of births since 1992, can contribute to this.”  The population of Russia was reduced by 768 thousand people in 1999.

Kyrgyz authorities are trying to stop the demographic crisis in their own republic with the help of only declarative methods, but it does not entail any positive results.  Call for patriotic feelings and unsupported promises are a very weak stimuli for the citizens, who are trying to choose the place to live.

By Nadezhda Romanchuk and Nasiba Hudaibergenova, students at the department of International and Comparative Politics, American University in Kyrgyzstan.