Kennan Institute Director Blair Ruble delivered a major speech on urban diversity in an era of large-scale migration in Yekaterinburg (September 12) and Moscow (September 19). The Moscow speech was delivered at a conference cosponsored by the Kennan Institute and the Gorbachev Foundation.

Russia is the second largest net recipient of migrants in the world after the United States. Migrants gravitate towards major job centers in Russia such as Moscow and St. Petersburg, and according to some estimates, approximately 50 percent of the population of Rostov-na-Donu consists of migrants. Other major cities in Russia, such as Kazan, are minority Russian (43 percent).

“If diversity is becoming a normal state of affairs in the Russian city,” Ruble told his audiences, “then Russia becomes another part of the contemporary world that is confronting very serious challenges of diversity; and you need to think collectively about what that means.”

The issue of managing population diversity and migration is gaining increased attention in Russia. President Dmitry Medvedev addressed a major conference in Yaroslavl’ on September 8 about the challenges of managing diversity and population movements, noting that phenomenon is not limited to a handful of large gateway cities, but is a trend that touches the United States, Europe, and Russia alike.

For more information on the conference held at the Gorbachev Foundation, please click here.

Please see the PDF below, titled “Meeting the Challenges of Urban Diversity in an Age of Large Scale Migration,” for the full text of Ruble's speech.