Natives of the former Soviet Union countries in contemporary Russia

The article analyzes the role of the natives of former republics of the USSR in the Russian population. Despite the fact that Russia is second only to the United States by the number of foreign-born in its population, only a small part of them are real international migrants. Among 11 million people not more than a third came to Russia after collapse of the Soviet Union and they are not repatriates and members of ethnic groups traditionally resident in Russia. Revealed are not only scale of resettlement (relocation), but also migrant stock (number of migrants) who remain to live in place where they settled for a long time. So the vast majority of immigrants from Belarus, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Ukraine, Abkhazia and South Ossetia live in Russia for more than 10 years continuously, and it is difficult to distinguish them from the locals. Besides that, the article reveales features of the transformation of major socio-demographic characteristics ethnicity, age structure, level of education.