Russian diaspora

Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois Russian Cemetery near Paris, the foremost necropolis of the White émigrés

A significant ethnic Russian emigration took place in the wake of the Old Believer schism in the 17th century (for example, the Lipovans, who migrated southwards around 1700). Later ethnic Russian communities, such as the Doukhobors (who emigrated to the Transcaucasus from 1841 and onwards to Canada from 1899), also emigrated as religious dissidents fleeing centrist authority. One of the religious minorities that had significant effect on emigration from Russia was the Russian Jewish Population.

From the 1820s to the 1920s, Russian Jews underwent waves of mass migration west spanned roughly a century and totaled around 2.5 million people. In the eleven years leading up to 1910, one of every seven Jews in Russia had left the country. Jews in particular were threatened in Russia at this time by widespread intolerance and subsequent pogroms and threatened violence against them. Many Jews in Russia and other Eastern European countries decided that emigrating to Europe and the Americas where tolerance of Jews was growing or already established was necessary for their own safety as tensions in Russia grew.[2]

The Russo-Japanese War, World War I, and the Russian Revolution that became a civil war happened in quick succession from 1904 through 1923 with some overlap and heightened the strain on Russia and particularly the men expected to participate in military service. A major reason for young men specifically to emigrate out of Russia was to avoid forced service in the Russian army.[2]

In the nineteenth century, Emigration from the Soviet Union is often broken down into three "waves" (волны) of emigration. The waves are the "First Wave", or "White Wave", which left during the Russian Revolution of 1917 and then the Russian Civil War; the "Second Wave", which emigrated during and after World War II; and the "Third Wave", which emigrated in the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s.

A sizable wave of ethnic Russians emigrated in the wake of the October Revolution of 1917 and the Russian Civil War of 1917-1922. They became known collectively as the White émigrés. That emigration is also referred to as the "first wave" even though previous emigrations had taken place, as it was comprised the first emigrants to have left in the wake of the Communist Revolution, and because it exhibited a heavily-political character.

A smaller group of Russians, often referred to by Russians as the "second wave" of Russian emigration, left during World War II. They were refugees, Soviet POWs, eastern workers, or surviving veterans of the Russian Liberation Army and other anticommunist armed units that had served under the German command and evaded forced repatriation. In the immediate postwar period, the largest Russian communities in the emigration settled in Germany, Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia.

Emigres who left after the death of Stalin but before perestroika, are often grouped into a "third wave". The emigres were mostly Jews, Armenians, Germans, and other peoples who resided outside the former borders of the Russian Empire but now found themselves inside the Soviet Union. Most left in the 1970s.

In the early 1990s, Russia experienced one of the most dramatic periods in its history. As a result, the former administrative Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic of the Soviet Union became a separate sovereign state. The fall of the Soviet Union resulted in an upsurge of international migrations to Russia, which overwhelmingly involve population movements between Russia and other post-Soviet states.[3]

States in which Russian is an official, semi-official, and working language.

Some 20 to 30 million ethnic Russians are estimated to live outside the bounds of the Russian Federation (depending on the definition of "ethnicity"). Official census data often considers only nationality. The number of native speakers of the Russian language who reside outside of the Russian Federation is estimated as close to 30 million by SIL Ethnologue.[4]

Former Soviet Union

Country	ethnic Russians
Ukraine	8,300,000 (2001)[5]
Kazakhstan	3,619,002 (2017)[6]
Uzbekistan	640,000
Belarus	800,000[7]
Kyrgyzstan	400,000[8][9]
Latvia	570,000[10]
Moldova	370,000 (2004)[11]
Estonia	310,000[12]
Turkmenistan	300,000[13]
Lithuania	180,000[14]
Azerbaijan	140,000[15][16]
Tajikistan	68,200[17]
Georgia	26,586[18][19]
Armenia	11,911[20]

Former Warsaw Pact

Country	ethnic Russians
Romania	30,000[21]
Bulgaria	15,595[22]
Poland	13,000[23]

Outside former Soviet Union or Warsaw Pact

Country	ethnic Russians
United States	3,100,000[24]
Germany	1,213,000[25]
Israel	1,000,000[26]
Canada	550,520[27]
France	200,000 to 500,000 [28]
Argentina	350,000 [29]
Brazil	340,000[30]
Italy	120,000 (2006)[31]
Finland	78,400 (2015)[32]
Spain	70,927 (2016)[33]
Australia	67,550[34]
United Arab Emirates	56,600[35]
Cuba	50,200[35]
United Kingdom	35,000 (2013)[36]
Venezuela	34,600[37]
Austria	30,249[38]
Sweden	20,930[39]
Belgium	20,000[40]
China	15,600[41]
Hong Kong	5,000[42]
Norway	13,914[43]
New Zealand	10,235[44]
Qatar	5,000[45]
Singapore	4,500[46]
Serbia	3,290[47]

Former USSR

Ethnic Russians in former Soviet Union states according to the most recent census

Main article: Ethnic Russians in post-Soviet states

Today the largest ethnic Russian diasporas outside of Russia exist in former Soviet states such as Ukraine (about 8 million), Kazakhstan (3,644,529 / 20.61%) 2016,[48] Belarus (about 1.2 million), Latvia (about 620,000), Uzbekistan (about 650, 000)[49] and Kyrgyzstan (about 600,000).[50]

The situation faced by ethnic Russian diasporas varied widely. In Belarus, there was no perceivable change in status, but in Estonia and Latvia,[51] they were labelled foreigners or non-citizens if none of their ancestors had been a citizen of those countries before the Soviet occupation and if they did not request Russian citizenship while it was available.

Other

Russian Orthodox Church in Belgrade, Serbia

Finland borders Russia directly (Finland was an autonomous Russian Grand Duchy between 1809 and 1917 but not part of the Soviet Union, which came about in 1922) and has 31,000 Russian citizens, which amounts to 0.56% of the population,[58] and 80,000 (1.5%) speak Russian as their mother tongue.

• Russian language in post-Soviet states

• Russia Abroad: A comprehensive guide to Russian Emigration after 1917 Biographical databases. Photoarchive. Research results accompanied by original documents, paper extracts.
• Largest Russian-Ukrainian settlement support network outside of xUSSR - 300.000 members

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Russian diaspora.