Ethnic Migrations of the 1990s from and to the Successor States of the Former Soviet Union: ‘Repatriation’ or Privileged Migration?

Ethnic Russians who move to the Russian Federation, ethnic Ukrainians who move to Ukraine, ethnic Germans who move to Germany, former Soviet citizens of Polish, Finnish, Greek or Latvian origin who move to Poland, Finland, Greece and Latvia and Jews who move to Israel are not, in theory, ‘immigrants’. Because of the ethnic or sometimes ethno-cultural or even ethno-religious tie they have with the receiving country, defined as their ‘homeland’ of origin, they are not usually considered as foreigners, but as ‘return’ migrants or ‘repatriates’. The countries affected by this phenomenon do not all use the same words to describe it. Russian authorities, for example, use the term ‘forced migrants’ or even ‘refugees’ to refer to the ‘return’ of ethnic Russians to Russia.1 Israeli authorities use the term ‘immigrants’ in connection with the term aliya. Despite different terminology in all the cases, it is a ‘return’ migration of members of an ethnic group to the ‘home’ country or a ‘return’ over generations.