Multiculturalism and Immigration in Post-Soviet Russia

This paper addresses some social and psychological issues concerning multiculturalism and immigration in post-Soviet Russia, which is one of the most multicultural societies in the world. The paper begins by describing the current cultural and immigrant diversity in Russia, and then provides a short description of Russian immigrants and the social and psychological problems that immigrants and the larger society face. We present the conceptual framework and findings from empirical studies that examine the reciprocal acculturation and intercultural relations between migrants and members of the larger society. We analyze these studies with respect to their relevance to three hypotheses that have been advanced for examining intercultural relations: the multiculturalism hypothesis; the integration hypothesis; and contact hypothesis. Findings of the studies showed that measures of security, identity, perceived threat/discrimination have a significant relationship with ethnic tolerance, mutual attitudes, acculturation strategies and expectations, and the well-being and life satisfaction of both immigrants and members of the larger society. The results of these studies support all three hypotheses in both groups. The authors concluded that the efforts to improve relations between members of the larger society and immigrants should be directed at enhancing the basic sense of security and at developing programs that increase multicultural attitudes, ethnocultural competence, and tolerance between both groups.