The Russian Ark Is Officially Under Construction

Editor's Note: For Bitcoiners and Fintech/DeFi entrepreneurs pondering emigration to Russia, please see our ESW Eurasia Editor Stanislav Krapivnik's companion article to this one, published yesterday (Saturday, August 24, 2024) on the recently legislated changes to Russian law on cryptocurrencies and mining cryptocurrencies.

-- James Smith

Editor-in-Chief and Publisher, ExitStrategy.World

August 25, 2024

After literally decades of pressure, many failed and even sabotaged projects, a major change has finally come to the Russian migration system.

The Failures of the Russian Migration System Since the 1990s

After the initial 1990s and early 2000s waves of post-Soviet ethnic Russians relocating after they woke up in foreign countries when the USSR dissolved (what President Putin famously referred to as a great tragedy in his often deliberately misquoted 2005 speech), the system served no purpose--but to fill the ranks of low wage laborers in Russian restaurant kitchens, warehouses and construction sites.

However, not every low-wage laborer was in fact low wage, and in many cases foreigners began to dominate in certain low to medium skilled professions (not unlike in the US, where the trades in many cities have come to be dominated by Latino migrants legal or otherwise). There is no doubt that importing millions of people from Central Asia created problems in Russian society, while doing little to address the overall low birth rate-fueled crisis of post-Soviet demographics. Neither many of the Central Asians nor native born Russians were satisfied with the status quo, as the price has grown via social conflicts, all fueled by corruption in OFMS (the Federal Migration Service).

The State Wants to Avoid the Formation of Central Asian and Caucasian Migrant Enclaves

Allow me to expand on that last point. The corruption in OFMS stems from the sale of Russian citizenship, work visas and residency by various local office directors. The buyers have been well- organized, mostly Central Asian and 'persons of Caucasian nationality' diaspora organizations throughout the Russian Federation. This in turn has allowed many people to come in, primarily from Central Asia, and not always to work. Once a man gets his citizenship, he quickly brings in his entire family via chain migration. These often extended families would than start to sit on the economy, draining the benefits system designed for Russian citizens. Additionally, they would fail to Russify, often failing to learn the Russian language beyond minimal proficiency, and would start to form ethnic enclaves within neighborhoods if not entire cities.

Conflicts with the locals would ensue, and those same diasporas would then use the inducement of bribes--backed by threats of violence against the local cops--to make sure their members were let off or given ultra-light sentences for serious crimes. In cases of murder, many Central Asian criminal migrants were able to arrange for their friends or relatives through a bribe an easy release on their own recognizance, then escape to their home nations. Of course, such cases of criminal impunity would occasionally boil over into vigilante revolts demanding mob justice. But for the most part, a lid has been kept on such ethnic tensions by the local authorities.

Editor's note highlighted in bold: We should note here, anticipating the predictable cries of racism from NAFO and other (themselves racist against Russians, Chinese and pro-Russian Africans) Westoid trolls who will strip the above sentences out of context as some sort of anti-Central Asian or Muslim tirade (when all we mean is that good fences with our Central Asian friends make for good neighbors), that Russia simply does not fit into Western categories of 'diversity'.

That is, Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI), or just DIE off already, whitey as it more accurately should be called, does not exist in the Russian Federation, which as the name implies, is a multi-national federation of peoples living and working together in their homelands, many of them (particularly the Uralic Northern Eurasians such as the Komi-Nenets and Mari, or the native Siberians whose ancestors hunted the woolies mammoths now preserved in permafrost and crossed the Bering Straits into Alaska) from time immemorial. These tribes and peoples are proud of their great grandfathers and grandfathers who stormed Berlin in the Great Patriotic War, and proud of their husbands, sons and brothers fighting for Russia in the SMO today.

Thus, Russia offers the world, in addition to her vast natural and energy resources plus the world's greatest wheat breadbasket, a 21st century vision of authentic human biodiversity, without the Slavic ethnic core of the country--constitutionally defined as the state-forming people of the RF--apologizing for their existence. There is of course, a small and culturally assimilated African rather than Afro-American origins black Russian community concentrated in Moscow. All of this is opposed to Clown world's 'People of Color' claims (a meaningless category) as a euphemism for let's-gang-up-on-or-guilt-whites (while ignoring or wrist slapping crimes committed by certain demographic groups) with the fake diversity white depopulation and replacement agenda of the globalist Anglos-American and EUrofascist vassal regimes.

The Threat of Post-SMO Outside Provocation/Funding of Ethnic Tensions Has Hastened Positive Government Action

All of the ethnic tensions fueled by illegal or semi-legal bribed migration mentioned above were coming to a head, once the Special Military Operation began in February 2022. The local diasporas, perhaps with nudges from the CIA and MI6 promising big payouts via their proxy gloves in the security services of Ukraine (SBU/GUR), started getting emboldened. The number of conflicts, assaults on ethnic Russians by persons of migrant origin nearly doubled within a year. Driven by arrogant beliefs that Russian males were dying on the front and they could soon own everything, even when they are less than 10% of the population, has had several counter effects.

First, the citizens, veteran groups and various others have started pushing back, forming “dryzhinas”, that is "friendships"…which is what Russian warbands have been called for centuries. These volunteer bands started patrolling the streets of their cities and satellite towns. In Orenburg, the church and societal elders held an Orthodox procession with the Holy Cross through the city, with tens of thousands of laity accompanied by the clergy attending. After this peaceful show of social force, before local journalists, many activists stated that unless the authorities stepped up, they would no longer hold their youth back from taking justice into their own hands. To make this understood, the crowd did not only consist of Russian Slavs but of all nationalities residing in Orenburg. There are many Russian citizens, for example, of ethnic Armenian or Alan/Ossetian background with reason to fear Muslim Central Asian or Azeri migrant gangs.

Russia Sets Real Quotas and Enforces the Rule of Law Against OFMS Bribe Takers

Thankfully, the federal government has heard these rumblings and outbursts and has started taking positive actions. First, they took action with more than just the past token crackdowns on bribe takers and deportations. Second, as a benefit, the Kremlin and Duma are pushing OFMS to finally take up an immigration policy with a direction that is actually pro-Russian, that works toward a demographically Russian future--not just focused on the immediate demands of certain employers for cheap labor. The recent Ukrainian-backed terrorist attacks such as the Crocus City atrocity only pumped adrenaline into the people demanding these decisions.

Amongst the post-Soviet taboos that have fallen away, is the fear of angering Russian-allied Central Asian governments by actually setting and enforcing migration quotas. The Ministry of International Affairs had often found itself blocking previous efforts, but has since stepped aside. If there is a surplus of unemployed Russian-speaking Central Asian men in these fraternal ex-Soviet nations who cannot fit under the migration quota in Russia, then let these men go work in and bring their wives to a friendly China--where there are plenty of jobs.

The first actions taken were to remove the monies for children of immigrants from Central Asia, who came not out of love of Russia or a desire to integrate, but desiring the per-child payments. Then we saw real investigations and arrests of current and past Ministry of Immigration directors who were caught red-handed selling Russian citizenships and the revocation of those citizenships. Post Crocus and the arrests of various support cells, over 30 individuals in total, strict controls on new legal migrants and mass deportations of illegals with five-year bans on re-entry.

Russian Military Service Provision of Naturalization Weeds Out the Wrong Sort of Migrants

The decisive blow came with the Military Service provision being actually enforced. By law, all new, able-bodied male citizens under the age of 50 must register with their local military recruitment office within two months of receiving their Russian passports for a possible call up to duty. Of course, most of these new paper-only citizens just ignored the law--until now.

Before the Special Military Operation, the State looked the other way. Now the draft registry dodgers are being found out and are either facing revocation of citizenship and permanent deportation, a summons to service, even with the limited mobilization Russia has had since early 2023. Around thirty thousand recently naturalized migrants are now serving in the Russian Army. Tens of thousands who didn’t register or ignored the draft summons had their citizenships revoked for failure to register or appear when summoned.

Bringing in the Ukrainians Who Want to Join Russia

In parallel to this, Russia has been reforming its immigration politics. From the start of the SMO, those Ukrainian citizens who were beyond the Russian lines of advance and wanted to become Russian citizens could apply within Russia for automatic residency and six months later, receive their expedited citizenship. Over three million prior Ukrainian passport holders have done just that, coming over the Polish-Belarussian and then Russian borders. As the NATO countries are seeking to oust their Ukrainian refugees and force the men to go fight and die for Zelensky's wartime dictatorship, more Ukrainians are fleeing to Russia. A not insignificant percentage of POWs who chose to live by calling 'Volga' on radio channel 149.200 and raising their hands to be led into safe captivity, have requested that Russia grant them asylum. They have no intention of being thrown back into the NATO-backed meatgrinder and are trying to get their wives and children the hell out of Ukraine to safety in Russia.

Including the four (re)annexed territories of Novorossiya, Russia has gained about 8 million new citizens over the past 2.5 years. However, this is obviously not enough to make up for the demographic collapse of the 1990s and resulting low birth rates among women born in that and the following decade. The potential was there only awaiting a more defined “who or what type of people do we want”.

The New Type of Migrant Welcomed to Russia in the Presidential Decree: Western Dissidents and Christians

During the 2010s, especially after the Anglo-American-German backed coup in Kiev, Russia started to define itself not as a part of Europe "from Lisbon to Vladivostok" as it had in disastrous Gorbachev and Yeltsin years, but as something else. The search for a 'Russian idea' was accelerated by the 08/08/08 proxy war fought with an American-puppet regime occupied Georgia. The German-speaking Teutonophile Putin, after the Minsk 1 and 2 agreements were routinely violated by a NATO-backed Poroshenko government preparing for all-out war to destroy the pro-Russian Donetsk and Lugansk Donbass Republics, became disgusted by one bad faith betrayal after another from Russia's 'sworn partners' in Berlin and Paris.

Thanks to philanthropists such as US-sanctioned Orthodox Christian businessman Konstantin Malofeev and pamphleteers such as Alexander Dugin, Russian opposition rose up against an increasingly anti-Christian, if not openly Satanic Western world. Russia's Republic of Chechnya under Ramzan Kadyrov added an Islamic voice to this Orthodox Christian condemnation of Western decadence and moral insanity, with Russian servicemen hunting ISIS terrorists allied with the Shi'a and Allawi 'Axis of Resistance' in Syria. This all built up in the years before the SMO, before the in-your-face televised Satanism of the recent Eurovision song competition or opening ceremonies of the Paris Olympics.

With the onset of the SMO, a new type of migration quietly expanded from a trickle to a small creek, flowing from the West to the East. Thanks to President Vladimir Putin emphasizing modern Russia's roots in the Russian Empire as a traditional Christian country with a fecund population of large families with strong values rooted in the Orthodox Church, more Westerners have started moving here. Many hailed from rural and often large religious Christian families, some of them were converts to Orthodox Christianity, while a lesser number were Roman Catholics. These types of people had previously found it impossible to obtain refugee status in the Russian Federation, but one oblast after another started assisting them. With time, the possibility arose that some governors might even compete with each other to see who could lure the most hard-working Western families.

Various channels on YouTube or Rumble also started popping up, showing how these families had settled into Russia and the issues they faced in learning Russian and assimilating. Some of the most watched of these YouTube channels showed how much Russians--especially babushkas-- loved seeing their large families of children on the streets, and despite the vicious Russophobia in the West, there was no hostility but in fact warmth and understanding from the Russian strangers they met on their daily errands. Most importantly, almost none of these brave families reneged on their commitment to Russia and returned to the US, Canada, Great Britain or Australia.

Now, after a lot of struggles by various members of the State Duma including MP Dmitry Kuznetsov, as well as a former political prisoner in the US, Maria Butina, the federal government has finally found the will to make a stand and make a declaration to the world. To that end, President Putin signed a decree that allows foreigners from a select list of nations to apply for temporary residency--the first step for obtaining citizenship, without needing to pass through the limited quota system or obtaining a work visa, being married to a Russian citizen, or being the parent or child of a Russian citizen, and even without being a carrier of the Russian language (a test that requires a relatively advanced level of fluency). The new status also does not require the applicant to have previously applied for fleeing political or religious persecution asylum. What is required of each and every adult is to be from the list of neo-(il)liberal Western nations and to respect Russian values which are quoted in the decree as:

Traditional values include life, dignity, human rights and freedoms, patriotism, civic consciousness, service to the Fatherland and responsibility for its destiny, high moral ideals, strong families, productive labor, the primacy of the spiritual over corporeal, humanism, charity, justice, collectivism, mutual assistance and mutual respect, historical memory and the continuity of generations, as well as the unity of Russia's peoples.

Within the next thirty days, the Ministry of International Affairs will publish a concrete list of said nations of the (il)liberal dysfunction.

Additionally, the Ministry of Migration has a month to setup the procedures and documents needed. Now, a bit of bad news: from personal experience with OFMS, they will be late, they will set up some insanely complicated or dysfunctional procedure. Then after several months or half year of their feet-dragging, the complaints will reach up to the Duma and to the Presidential circles. At this point, there will be a review and OFMS will be forced to revise and solidify their procedures.

So for those who have it in their hearts and minds to seek Russia as their 21st century place of refuge, do not despair. The Russian Ark is surely being built, and the mighty vessel will stand as the Biblical floodwaters of anarcho-tyranny and despair rush into the post-Western nations. However, be prepared even if you arrive here with great enthusiasm, for several months' wait, before everything is working more or less the way it should.