Since the ethnic conflict in Baku at the end of January 1990 produced the first mass inflow into Russia of internally displaced people (40,000 mainly Armenians and Russians), post-Soviet Russia has been coming to terms with a new social group in its midst – ‘refugees’. Following the break up of the Soviet Union, however, periodic influxes of those in flight from ethnic and military conflict have been supplemented by a steady flow of another new social group – Russian-speaking forced migrants – and the growing tide of returnees has elicited concern about potential social and political tension within Russia itself. Although suggestions that all, or most, of the 25.3 million ethnic Russians living beyond the borders of Russia in the former Soviet republics at the time of the 1989 census are likely to return to Russia over the coming years are alarmist, equally misleading are official figures which indicate that, since the beginning of formal registration of refugees and forced migrants in July 1992, just 784,014 have been registered by the Federal Migration Service of Russia (FMS). It is widely accepted that between two-thirds and three-quarters of forced migrants and refugees entering Russia are simply not registered as such. Estimates of actual numbers already having returned to Russia, therefore, range between 2.5 million and 6 million.

Forced migration between the former constituent republics of the USSR appears ungendered. Published Federal Migration Service data on refugees and forced migrants includes gender as a category only in figures providing a sex-age breakdown of those registered, and only one academic study published to date in Russia has taken gender to be a variable worthy of note in current migratory processes.