Posted on 03/21/2009 12:28:07 PM PDT by anniegetyourgun
VLADIVOSTOK, Russia — Vasily Reutov had never set foot in Russia until a few months ago, but the moment he did, he knew he had finally made it home.
His ancestors, members of an ascetic offshoot of Russian Orthodoxy known as Old Believers, fled this region in the 1920s after the Communist Party violently suppressed religion. They settled in cloistered villages in South America that they turned into Little Russias, as if by preserving the ways of the past, they would somehow, someday, be able to return.
Now, with Russia itself beckoning and sturdier than before, that time has come.
The government is trying to head off the country’s severe population decline by luring back Russians who live abroad as well as their descendants. Mr. Reutov and several dozen other members of his religious community from Uruguay have become among the most striking examples of this policy.
Moscow has spent $300 million in the past two years to get the repatriation program started, and officials estimated that more than 25 million people were eligible, many of them ethnic Russians who found themselves living in former Soviet republics after the Soviet collapse in 1991.
But the government is not limiting itself to Russia’s neighbors, sending emissaries around the world to sell the program. One even went to Brazil last month to meet with residents of several countries who, like Mr. Reutov, are Old Believers, whose followers have some similarities in lifestyle to the Amish. Diaspora Old Believer communities exist worldwide, including in Alaska and Oregon.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Remember too that Russia has a growing Muslim problem....to the point that the Russian army is predicted to be taken over by them.
http://www.danielpipes.org/blog/2005/08/predicting-a-majority-muslim-russia.html
Russia has some of the highest abortion rates in the world..
Anyone who would voluntarily go back to Russia is a sucker.
If it were a better place to live, they would not have to beg.
I recall there is an Old Believers group in Erie, Pennsylvania.
And that would explain why they want the “old believers” back. They don’t abort.
Do you think Mexico can try this?
If it were a better place to live, Russians would have more kids. It's not like they're running out of room.
Population as of 1/09 is 141,900,000. Pretty pathestic. Abortion and mass killing of their population for one reason or another. Why would anyone who left want to go back? Go back to what?
Imagine old ladies trudging to a well for water (in the middle of the city full of dreary hi rise apartments with no working elevators...)
Peasants digging potatoes out of the ground with sticks...
Cowherds...full employment beats building fenced pastures
Old ladies walking 6 miles to sit by the side of a highway to try and sell a handful of eggs
People living crammed together 2-3 generations in 1 room apartments or rickety hovels
Orphanages full of kids whose parents can’ feed them or are too drunk or drugged to feed them... 10 yr olds standing outside smoking.
Hotel lobbies with flashy redheaded and blonde hookers- and frail 13 yr old girls - looking to sell themselves for one night to a rich tourist from China or North Korea
Frazzled women doctors social workers teachers bureaucrats working for $100 a month when they get paid which is never assured (in the city we never did see any men working except as pothole fillers...too much time drinking)
People buying their clothing at open air flea markets
Our Russian hosts proud of their “supermarket” which was the size of a 7-11 and had armed guards at the door
And the flashy nouveau rich with their new cars, arrogant teenagers, and luxurious brick dachas in the forest
a child we adopted there was his mother’s 2d live birth——of 9 pregnancies
There are many Old Believers in Alaska. It’s Russian history makes it an attractive destination for people who just want to worship in peace. Perhaps the new administration in Washington has set of alarm bells in the Motherland. It wouldn’t surprise me.
Russians occupiers in Abkhazia and South Ossetia go home to Russia where you belong!
Who’s gonna make them?
Cold War 2 will do to Russia what the Cold War did Putin's beloved EVIL EMPIRE.
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