Immigration and Refugees in the Soviet Union

[jake williams]

Two sort of related issues.

First - there's all kinds of stories about how everyone wanted to get out of the USSR and how there were people with shotguns keeping them in. And of course no one actually tried to get in.

I'm quite sure that there's at least some truth to this, but I want to know to what extent it's just propaganda.

Second - there were certainly some people who did want to go in. The world's a miserable place and whatever horrors might have existed there, there were worse.

So I want to ask - what policy did the Soviet Union have in regards to immigrants and refugees and such? How were these people treated? Were they welcomed? If only for propaganda purposes I'd think they would be, but I just don't know and I've never heard about it. Of course there are longstanding racist tendencies in Russia, and especially with Stalin and all that, deeply nationalist ones.

But does anyone know the story here?

[spartan]

But does anyone know the story here?

Well there was a story about a British teacher and his family (Which was not so long ago made into a film with Catherine Tate) who moved to East Germany to teach English.

Apparently when they got to the East German border, the border guards couldnt believe that anyone would want to come in to East Germany (Especially when so many East Germans were trying to leave East Germany and often getting killed for it).

The disbelief continued even after they had settled down in East Germany, as the Stasi thought that they must of been western spies (You can just imagine them saying "Who would want to live here except western spies?") and placed them under surveillance.

I think that they returned to Britain when the Berlin wall and East Germany fell.

[BIG BROTHER]

well during the great depression in the US there actually a lot of people who decided to migrate to the USSR.

[jake williams]

well during the great depression in the US there actually a lot of people who decided to migrate to the USSR.
Who? How many? What did they do when they got there? And maybe what I'm most interested in, how were they treated?

[BIG BROTHER]

Who? How many? What did they do when they got there? And maybe what I'm most interested in, how were they treated?

sorry to dissapoint you comrade, but I learned that a year ago and the video were I saw that barely gave any details. I can only guess that they probably did pretty good, because otherwise the video wouldn't have hessetated another oportunity to portray communism as evil.

[Digitalism]

sorry to dissapoint you comrade, but I learned that a year ago and the video were I saw that barely gave any details. I can only guess that they probably did pretty good, because otherwise the video wouldn't have hessetated another oportunity to portray communism as evil.

Oh this is good, we need to hear more about this. First, can you please provide us with the video, no matter the details it provides.

[BIG BROTHER]

Oh this is good, we need to hear more about this. First, can you please provide us with the video, no matter the details it provides.

Well the video belong to a serie made by the history channel called something like "American history" or "American century" something like that.

[Hiero]

Well I am not sure about immigration of families and large groups of people, though the USSR had a program for international students. People from 3rd world nations could come to the USSR to get education, the Lumumba University is most prominent institution where this program occured. Considering how important education is to get a job outside manual labour in the 3rd world, I would image lots of people would have tried to get to the USSR for eduction. Though I don't know alot on how the program worked, if the USSR scouted for applicants or people aplied at the Soviet embassies.

[Digitalism]

Well I am not sure about immigration of families and large groups of people, though the USSR had a program for international students. People from 3rd world nations could come to the USSR to get education, the Lumumba University is most prominent institution where this program occured. Considering how important education is to get a job outside manual labour in the 3rd world, I would image lots of people would have tried to get to the USSR for eduction. Though I don't know alot on how the program worked, if the USSR scouted for applicants or people aplied at the Soviet embassies.

I don't know the specifics either, but I can confirm that people from around the world actually came to Moscow to study, pretty much all socialist "affilates" came over, I know for a fact that Chinese came to study in VGIK, which was the world's first ever film school. Also some people from Africa, India, etc. you name it. Cubans of course as well.

[jake williams]

I know a South African woman (she's my neighbour but she's basically my second mom), from the ANC, who did a year or two of schooling in Moscow.