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ON THE MIGRATION PROCESSES IN THE REPUBLIC OF DAGHESTAN
Sergei ILIASHENKO
Sergei Iliashenko, Chairman of the Daghestan State Statistics Board (Makhachkala, Russian Federation)
Migration flows have economic, social, political, and demographic reasons. World experience shows that when people change their place of residence it significantly alters the demographic situation, which in turn influences not only standards of living and longevity, but also the number of people looking for a better lot in life and where they go to find it.
During the last century these processes in Daghestan were affected by urbanization and agrarian overpopulation. For example, at the beginning of the century, this territory was part of the overall Russian economic system, but after the revolution it found itself under different political, economic, and geographic conditions of social production, which determined a new stage in transforming the socioeconomic and agrarian resource potential of this part of Russia.
The traditional way of life in the village began to flounder as early as the end of the 19th century, when peasants began to move around in search of seasonal work. Caused by a shortage of arable land, this kind of activity became a very characteristic phenomenon in the mountainous areas. In 1897, there were 55,000 seasonal laborers in Daghestan, and in 1914, they constituted half of the able-bodied men. In so doing, the mountainous regions accounted for more than 80% of all migrants.
When new contemporary elements of productive forces were brought to Daghestan, this was in keeping with the efforts to industrialize and carry out mass collectivization of Russia’s “backward” environs. At the first stage of development, this policy made it possible to employ significant masses of the republic’s most abundant resource—labor. Nevertheless, in order to implement the ideas of industrialization, eliminate illiteracy, and develop health care, qualified personnel were recruited to this Soviet autonomy from other regions of the Soviet Union, particularly from Russia. But the natural increase in the able-bodied population objectively made it possible for people to leave the villages en masse. The labor market could not expand fast enough to keep up with this process. Despite active urbanization, the percentage of urban residents had increased to only 29.6% by 1959 and to 39.8% by 2001. The cities have still not been able to completely stir the rural migrants into their melting pots, since the mentality of these people changes slowly. Since the 1960s, many representatives of the indigenous population began to leave the republic, moving along traditional migrant routes. What is more, as national personnel became qualified, the need for such specialists from other areas of the Soviet Union declined, and in the 1970s, members of the non-indigenous population began to leave the republic. And representatives of the indigenous population, who left the republic, also settled all over the……………………
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