Barbara A. Anderson Brian D. Silver Population Redistribution and the Ethnic Balance in Transcaucasia No. 95-330 Research Report April 1995 Barbara A. Anderson is Professor of Sociology and Research Associate at the University of Michigan Population Studies Center, Ann Arbor, Michigan. Brian D. Silver is Professor and Chair of the Department of Political Science at Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan. Acknowledgments: The authors would like to thank Kathleen Dowley and Nate Silver for research assistance and Barry Stein for bibliographic materials. Research for this paper was supported in part by NICHD Grant Nos. RO1 HD-19915 and P30 HD-10003. The paper is planned for publication in Ronald Suny, ed., National and Social Change inTranscaucasia (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press). Abstract Among the important long-term changes in the populations of Transcaucasia that give evidence of social relations among ethnic groups even during the period of Soviet control of the region was the reduction in the ethnic heterogeneity of the region and of the constituent republics (now countries). We examine evidence of these trends, both in terms of the outmigration of Russians and others from the region and in terms of the cross-migration of the major Transcaucasian nationalities before the massive flows of refugees began in the late 1980s. Three main factors led to this long-term reduction in ethnic heterogeneity in the Transcaucasus: high fertility rates of the indigenous populations, especially of the Armenians and Azerbaijanis; emigration from Transcaucasia by members of non-Transcaucasian nationalities, primarily by Russians; and migration by members of Transcaucasian nationalities from neighboring Transcaucasian republics to their own republics. While these migration trends were probably driven in part by conditions in the overall labor market of the Soviet Union, they seem also to have been strongly affected by the social climate, local policies, and interethnic attitudes. In short, a trend toward indigenization was clear long before the upsurge of violence in the region. However, especially beginning in 1988 the pace of indigenization within Transcaucasia increased dramatically in connection with a communal conflict that resulted in major refugee flows. Data sources: The primary data for this essay come from the Soviet censuses of 1926, 1959, 1970, 1979, and 1989. The titular nationalities of the three Transcaucasian republics together comprised only five percent of the population of the Soviet Union in 1989.1 This figure understates the importance of Transcaucasia to the Soviet Union, and it certainly does not reflect the importance of Transcaucasia to Russian and Soviet historical development. Transcaucasia has been less important because of the size of its population or its economic contribution than because of its strategic location and its linkages to Russia and the Middle East. The strategic location and historical ties of the Transcaucasus also help to justify our focus on population distribution and ethnic mixing. From a demographic perspective, numerical dominance is a vital factor in the relations among ethnic groups; it is both a consequence and a cause of ethnic antipathies and alliances. Although it is common to observe that the dramatic political developments that led to the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991 were largely unanticipated at the beginning of perestroika in 1986, in the case of Transcaucasia there was evidence from basic long-term demographic trends to suggest the possibility of large changes and intensified ethnic conflict. In a book review published in the journal Sotsiologicheskie issledovaniia [Sociological Studies] in January 1988, Ia. I. Rubin criticized Brian Silver for his explanation of the observed trends in migration in Transcaucasia between 1970 and 1979. Writing in an earlier edition of this monograph, Silver had concluded: In the absence of a primary investigation of the motives of migrants, we can only speculate about the motives for the cross-migration of Armenians and Azeris. One plausible explanation is that the historic antipathy between members of the two groups has crystallized in recent years to encourage mutual avoidance and resettlement. Despite cultural policies in the Transcaucasian republics that have been aimed at reducing ethnic tension . an unfavorable cultural, administrative, or work environment for Armenians in Azerbaijan and for Azeris in Armenia may have encouraged resettlement to their official homelands. Alternatively, perhaps the cross-migration in Transcaucasia has another, less nationalistically tinged explanation. Namely, the very rapid rate of urbanization of Armenia in recent years, which has advanced that republic's level of urbanization ahead of the USSR as a whole, may have created significant opportunities for urban Armenians in Georgia and Azerbaijan to move out of those republics to Armenia. .2 1 Sodruzhestva Nezavisimykh Gosudarstv, Statisticheskii komitet, Itogi vsesoiuznoi perepisi naseleniia 1989 goda. Tom VII: Natsional'nyi sostav naseleniia SSSR [Results of the 1989 all-union census of population, Volume 7: Nationality composition of the Population of the USSR] (Moscow: 1993). 2 Brian D. Silver, "Population Redistribution and the Ethnic Balance in Transcaucasia," in Ronald G. Suny, Ed., Nationalism and Social Change in Transcaucasia (Ann Arbor, 1983): 277-278. 1 Rubin commented on Silver's argument as follows: B. Silver sees the causes [of the resettlement of Armenians and Azerbaijanis from neighboring republics to their own republics] in "historically formed antipathies," in the still existing mutual hostility of Caucasian peoples, which "became aggravated to such a degree that they sought to flee from one another." The farfetched and tendentious character of such an explanation is partly exposed by the sovietologist himself. It is possible, he confesses, that the cause is the rapid urbanization of Armenia, the desire of people to take on an urban way of life.3 Rubin's comment was published in January 1988. The outbreak of violence between Azerbaijanis and Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh, Sumgait, and elsewhere occurred in February 1988, and was followed in that and later years by a large-scale departure of Armenians from Azerbaijan and of Azerbaijanis from Armenia. Rubin's comments were made at a time when official doctrine of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union had declared that fundamental antagonisms among nationalities had been liquidated, even if differences between nationalities remained. It was difficult to gather systematic information about popular and elite attitudes at that time. However, using demographic data we saw patterns of population change in the region that provided indirect evidence of antagonism. If this evidence from the period 1959-1979 could not have been used by itself to predict the outbreak of interethnic violence in 1988 and later, it nonetheless revealed a lot about fundamental relations between nationalities in Transcaucasia. Among the important long-term changes in the populations of Transcaucasia that give evidence of social relations among ethnic groups even during the period of Soviet control of the region was the reduction in the ethnic heterogeneity of the region and of the constituent republics (now countries). We shall examine evidence of these trends, both in terms of the outmigration of Russians and others from the region and in terms of the cross-migration of the major Transcaucasian nationalities before the massive flows of refugees began in the late 1980s. Three main factors led to this long-term reduction in ethnic heterogeneity in the Transcaucasus: high fertility rates of the indigenous populations, especially of the Armenians and Azerbaijanis; emigration from Transcaucasia by members of non-Transcaucasian nationalities, primarily by Russians; and migration by members of Transcaucasian nationalities from neighboring Transcaucasian republics to their own republics. 3 Ia. I. Rubin, book review in Sotsiologicheskie issledovaniia, No. 1 (January-February, 1988): 131-132. 2 While these migration trends were probably driven in part by conditions in the overall labor market of the Soviet Union,4 they seem also to have been strongly affected by the social climate, local policies, and interethnic attitudes. In short, a trend toward indigenization was clear long before the upsurge of violence in the region. However, especially beginning in 1988 the pace of indigenization within Transcaucasia increased dramatically in connection with a communal conflict that resulted in major refugee flows. Sources of Population Data: 1959–1989 The main data sources for this paper are the Soviet censuses of 1959, 1970, 1979, and 1989. Some data also are drawn from the 1926 census. Data related to changes since 1989 are more sparse and less systematic. In our analysis for the period 1959-1989, we do not have direct information on migration patterns by ethnic group. Published data on migration from the former Soviet Union omitted cases of rural-rural migration. Moreover, very little information was published on migration by nationality. Hence, we can only infer net migration by comparing the population increase by nationality in a region with what might be expected based on the rate of increase in the population of that nationality in the Soviet Union as a whole. Another factor to consider is that of emigration from the Soviet Union (including from the region of the former Soviet Union). We do not