PSCRP-BESA Reports No 178 (January 17, 2026)
By Alexander Shpunt
The task of regulating legal labor migration by the end of the first quarter of the new century has turned into one of the most powerful configurators of domestic political processes for all countries of the so-called “golden billion,” including Russia. So far, researchers can only state that none of the countries whose experience serves as a reference point for all of “old Europe”—neither the United States, nor Germany, nor the United Kingdom or France—has an effective answer to what is undoubtedly the key domestic political challenge: how to resolve the problem of shrinking labor resources in an aging Western civilization while at the same time preserving Western identity in the face of a wave of labor migrants carrying an entirely different ethical, religious, and cultural code.
Russia, too, is searching for such an answer. The vast post-Soviet space creates a particular specificity for this political process. The Russian authorities are well aware of the negative experience of France, which failed to cope with regulating the flow of migrants from francophone countries of North, Central, and West Africa that poured into the metropole after dozens of states gained independence—irreversibly altering the domestic political, social, and cultural landscape of the Fifth Republic.
Observing this “erosion of Frenchness,” Russia is tightening the rules of legal labor migration. In October 2025, President Vladimir Putin approved a new Concept of Russia’s Migration Policy for 2026–2030, which consolidated these disparate measures as part of state policy. However, tightening the rules of legal labor migration deprives moving to Russia for work of its attractiveness for potential workers. By 2025, the labor shortage is estimated by the Analytical Center under the Government of the Russian Federation at 3.8–4 million people. At the same time, structural imbalances in the labor market are already leading to a paradoxical situation: unemployment coexists with an acute shortage of personnel. According to the Ministry of Labor, the number of vacancies exceeds the number of officially registered unemployed by a factor of 1.7, as follows from the Accounts Chamber’s report on execution of the federal budget for January–June. This gap continues to widen.
A new and somewhat unexpected trend in rule-making on this issue is a return to the practice of attracting labor migrants from countries of the “far abroad,” a term traditionally used in Russia to denote Asian and African countries outside the borders of the former USSR. In this context, a detailed feature in the government-run Rossiyskaya Gazeta is of interest, which we invite readers to review on their own. And these are not merely plans. According to Russia’s Ministry of Internal Affairs, in 2024 more than 170,000 work permits were issued to foreigners from visa-required countries.
The main argument of proponents of recruiting foreign labor from the “far abroad” is that, in the view of this group of parliamentary deputies and government officials, such migrants “will work and then leave.” The wager is placed on the assumption that migrants from these states do not share with Russian residents common Soviet social skills—language, everyday consumer culture, behavioral norms. As supporters of this policy in government circles and the expert community point out, such migrants will find it harder to entrench themselves in Russia as a permanent population, which, in turn, will help protect Russian identity from erosion.
With this study, we would like to remind advocates of attracting labor resources from the “far abroad” that Russia has already had such an experience—and it led to exactly the opposite result. The country has formed the largest permanent diaspora of citizens whose ethnic group never lived either on the territory of the USSR or on that of the Russian Empire: Russian Vietnamese.
Like any tectonic social phenomenon, the emergence of “Russian Vietnam” has both positive and negative consequences, which we will attempt to demonstrate in this study.
The Vietnamese diaspora in Russia represents a unique phenomenon of the post-Soviet space, emerging at the intersection of political alliances, economic needs, and migration strategies. As part of the broader context of socialist cooperation between the USSR and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (SRV), this diaspora evolved from temporary educational and labor flows into a stable ethnic community. An analysis of its formation sheds light on the mechanisms by which organized migration transforms into permanent settlement, the role of intergovernmental agreements, and the impact of economic crises. Drawing on a synthesis of data from academic sources, official documents, and international reports, this brief study reconstructs the stages of the diaspora’s emergence, its size, settlement patterns, and socio-economic profile. Within the limits of a concise format, we will also attempt to show the systemic conflicts that have formed around the “Russian Vietnamese” and how they project onto Russian society as a whole.
First stage: educational migration (mid-1950s – late 1970s)
The history of Vietnamese migration to the USSR/Russia begins in the mid-1950s, when the USSR started receiving a limited number of students—primarily war orphans and children of the communist nomenklatura—for higher education and vocational training. In the 1960s and 1970s, the educational flow expanded, but the number of Vietnamese residing in the USSR remained small until the early 1980s, since the primary purpose of these programs was to train personnel “for Vietnam,” not resettlement. During the Soviet period, thousands of Vietnamese received higher professional education in regions of Russia, and many graduates who returned later occupied leading positions in the state apparatus and economy of the SRV.
Some Vietnamese graduates remained in the USSR—through continued study, academic careers, or employment—forming small but stable community nuclei in major university and industrial centers.
These “student” and “engineering” colonies became the first social footholds for subsequent mass labor migration and diaspora building. Overall, from the 1950s until 1991, around 30,000 (by other estimates, approximately 50,000) Vietnamese citizens studied at Soviet universities, technical schools, and vocational colleges. By the early 1970s, more than 7,000 Vietnamese young men and women had been sent to the USSR for education and advanced training.
Despite this substantial pool of graduates, there was virtually no permanent Vietnamese population in the USSR during this period: students, as a rule, had no right to permanent residence and were required to return home after graduation. Student migration was strictly organized, elite, and temporary in nature; most graduates returned to Vietnam and took positions in the state apparatus, education, and industry of the SRV.
After the reunification of Vietnam (1975), the country definitively oriented itself toward the USSR as its main political and economic partner; in 1978, the SRV joined the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA), thereby institutionalizing its integration into the socialist economic space under Soviet leadership. In November 1978, the Soviet Union and Vietnam concluded a 25-year Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation, which provided not only for military, but also for broad economic and personnel cooperation.
By the end of the 1970s, three interrelated preconditions had emerged for the start of large-scale organized export of labor from Vietnam to the USSR and Eastern European countries:
- a chronic labor shortage in a number of sectors of the Soviet economy;
- postwar economic crisis and unemployment in Vietnam, exacerbated by the consequences of war, collectivization, and external blockade;
- CMEA policies that stimulated division of labor and the involvement of “junior” socialist partners in the supply of both resources and labor.
Second stage: organized export of labor (1981–1991)
The transition to organized labor recruitment was marked by the signing, on April 2, 1981, in Moscow, of an intergovernmental Agreement on the dispatch and reception of SRV citizens for the purpose of vocational training and employment at enterprises of the USSR. The goals of the agreement were twofold: to cover labor shortages at Soviet enterprises in a number of regions and, simultaneously, to deepen the USSR’s political and economic influence over the Vietnamese authorities.
An analysis of the agreement’s text and archival materials indicates that SRV citizens aged 18–35 were admitted for work, and those aged 17–35 for training, subject to medical fitness. Up to 20% of the earnings of Vietnamese workers under the agreement were transferred to support families and to “participate in the construction of socialism and the defense of the Motherland” in Vietnam, giving the agreement a clearly politico-ideological character.
The USSR assumed a significant share of expenses: medical examinations (including dispatch of Soviet doctors to Vietnam), centralized transportation, Russian-language training, and accommodation in dormitories; the migrants themselves paid for food and local transportation. Registration with internal affairs bodies at the place of residence was to be completed within three days upon petition by the enterprise administration; individual appearances by each worker were not required, as documents were submitted by the group leader. Movement beyond the locality of residence was restricted and controlled by internal affairs bodies. These provisions effectively enshrined standards of the Soviet “organized recruitment” practice, whose main element was a high degree of migrants’ dependence on the internal leadership of the quasi-community and on both states—the Soviet and the Vietnamese.
By the end of 1990, more than 100,000 Vietnamese workers were already employed in Russia (the RSFSR). In 1989, the newspaper Arguments and Facts reported that Vietnamese were working at 910 enterprises in 70 regions of the USSR, confirming the wide geography of settlement and employment. The main sectors of employment included construction, mechanization, textiles and garment production, light industry, agriculture, healthcare, and education.
Within Vietnam, labor migration was regarded as a privilege for people from “priority” categories: families of the fallen and war veterans, war invalids, former servicemen, representatives of ethnic minorities, and cadre workers with good references. Thus, by the late 1980s, a hundred-thousand-strong body of Vietnamese contract workers had formed in the USSR, distributed across dozens of regions and sectors, with a clearly institutionalized but tightly controlled status.
At the same time, it is important to note that the stay of Vietnamese citizens was formalized as “vocational training” and work under fixed-term labor contracts, after which they were obliged to return home.
This is precisely the principle that today’s Russian practices of attracting labor resources from the “far abroad” declare.
Already in the early 1980s, some Vietnamese workers, using access to sewing equipment and market shortages, organized semi-underground production of denim clothing that competed in price with imported jeans; these products were sold through the Soviet fartsovka (illegal trading and distribution networks), often with the tacit consent of local authorities, although such practices were formally illegal. These practices laid the foundation for the subsequent entrepreneurial specialization of Vietnamese in Russia — primarily in light industry and clothing trade — and shifted “Russian Vietnamese” from the social role of almost rightless hired workers to that of rooted entrepreneurs, albeit in the semi-legal or even illegal sector.
A decisive motive emerged for Vietnamese arrivals to build their future in Russia. It was precisely this change in social roles that became the bifurcation point that completely altered the vector of Vietnamese presence in Russia.
Transitional stage: the collapse of the USSR and the fate of contract workers (late 1980s – first half of the 1990s)
The collapse of the socialist bloc and the transition to a market economy led to the winding down of state programs for importing Vietnamese labor in all Eastern European countries, including the USSR/Russia.
Reports in international and Soviet press of the late 1980s–early 1990s (including Associated Press and the L.A. Times) recorded plans by the authorities of the USSR and Eastern European countries to prematurely terminate contracts and massively abandon the labor of tens of thousands of Vietnamese workers amid economic difficulties, from a compilation with references to international and Soviet press reports.
At the same time, a significant share of students and workers did not return—either remaining in the USSR/Russia and other Eastern European countries, or soon returning there again after encountering unemployment and low living standards in Vietnam during the initial phase of the Doi Moi reforms. This group of those who stayed and those who returned formed the basis of Vietnamese diaspora networks in Eastern Europe and Russia, which were subsequently reproduced through chain migration from the same regions of Vietnam (primarily northern and north-central provinces).
Thus, by the early 1990s, a significant portion of the approximately 100,000 Vietnamese contract workers who had worked in the RSFSR transformed from temporary labor into the embryo of permanent ethnic communities—through refusal of repatriation, repeat migration, and family consolidation.
The destruction of late-Soviet state mechanisms made the process of naturalization of such Vietnamese as permanent residents of the Soviet Union relatively simple from a bureaucratic standpoint. An important factor was the interest of all parties: local authorities found diligent and skilled Vietnamese workers convenient; the “gray” Vietnamese business sector needed support from compatriots; the emerging Soviet organized crime world sought access to contacts in Southeast Asia.
The last organized groups of Vietnamese workers arrived in the USSR as late as 1989; by 1994, recruitment under the old agreements had been completely terminated; by early 1996, the contracts of the last “wave” of Vietnamese workers expired.
After 1991, the mass of former industrial workers flowed into small entrepreneurship and market trade: shuttle trading (chelnoki), transportation of goods between Russia, Vietnam, and third countries; opening of mini-ateliers and sewing workshops producing clothing, footwear, soft toys, etc.; trading at spontaneous and later organized markets (in Moscow—Cherkizovsky, “Sadovod,” and others).
Such forms of employment—semi-criminal or criminal in essence, though outside the sphere of serious crimes—combined with the semi-legal legal status of “Russian Vietnamese” in Russia, formed a trend toward the overall criminalization of this social group.
Post-Soviet legal framework and the third stage: spontaneous and irregular migration (1990s–2000s)
On August 14, 2003, an Agreement on the temporary labor activity of citizens of the Russian Federation in the SRV and citizens of the SRV in the Russian Federation was signed. It made it possible to legalize a significant portion of Vietnamese who had arrived under the 1981 agreement, recognizing their stay as lawful provided that documents were completed, and for the first time enshrined the right of Vietnamese to independently choose an employer in the Russian Federation.
At the same time, all agreements in the sphere of labor migration were based on the short-term nature of employment (work permits were usually issued for one year with annual renewal), which made a short legal cycle economically disadvantageous and pushed some migrants toward settling “in the shadows.” By this point, most “Russian Vietnamese” had already developed a way of life and employment in Russia—either through legalization as citizens of the Russian Federation or within the shadow sector. Agreement No. 2008079 was a forced response to an already formed legal vacuum, although it was presented as having purely economic significance.
Field research in Moscow’s Vietnamese migrant environment (2013–2016) shows that after 1990 new migrants—while the community was rapidly growing, drawing in relatives and neighbors—mostly entered Russia on tourist or student visas and then remained, transitioning to irregular status; legalization was carried out through paid intermediary networks.
Overall, the foregoing shows that the foundation of the Vietnamese diaspora in Russia in the new century consisted of three groups:
- former contract workers who did not return to Vietnam and “retrained” as traders, seamstresses, and small entrepreneurs;
- graduates of Soviet/Russian universities who remained in the country after their studies, often also turning to entrepreneurship or becoming translators, intermediaries, or specialists in joint ventures;
- new migrants of the 1990s–2000s who arrived in post-Soviet Russia mainly via illegal or semi-legal routes.
These groups were closely interconnected through hometown and family networks, which determined subsequent chain migration from specific Vietnamese provinces to particular Russian cities and regions.
Studies of post-Soviet urban markets record the presence of “Vietnamese markets” as stable urban objects/local economies (for example, the case of Magnitogorsk — historical dynamics, boundaries, infrastructure).
This corresponds to descriptions in works on Vietnamese migration to the Russian Federation, where trade (including market trade) appears as an important adaptation strategy in the context of the collapse of previous labor contracts and weak institutional support.
Taken together, this entrenched them as a long-term resident but legally vulnerable community—a typical feature of a “diaspora without citizenship” in migration studies terminology.
Size and settlement of the diaspora
Estimates for the Soviet and early post-Soviet period indicate that by the end of 1990 about 100,000 Vietnamese workers were employed in Russia (the RSFSR) under organized programs. However, even then the number of Vietnamese permanently residing in Russia was 32,200 people in 1990, significantly less than the number of contract workers, but clearly indicating the process of consolidation of the Vietnamese population of Russia as permanent. This is especially noteworthy given that the very character of the intergovernmental agreement of April 2, 1981 was explicitly and precisely directed against granting “Russian Vietnamese” the status of a permanent resident group.
In this regard, the discrepancies between Russian and Vietnamese official statistics are very illustrative.
The 2002 All-Russian Population Census recorded 26,205 people who indicated their nationality as “Vietnamese” (the 72nd largest ethnic group). The 2010 census produced an even lower figure—13,954 people identifying as Vietnamese (0.01% of the population that declared nationality); the largest concentrations were in Moscow, Bashkortostan, Moscow and Tula regions, and Khabarovsk and Stavropol territories.
At the same time, the Vietnamese Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 2007 estimated the number of Vietnamese citizens in Russia at 80,000–100,000 people, while a 2008 report by the International Organization for Migration (IOM) recorded 69,076 Vietnamese in Russia (excluding irregular migrants and shuttle traders).
The discrepancy is explained quite simply. Population censuses register declared affiliation with “Vietnamese,” which, under conditions of legal uncertainty of the community, only one in ten of its members can afford. Data from the Vietnamese ministry reflect the fact of the passport holder’s presence in Russia, which has a precise procedural context.
Thus, we can say that only one in ten members of the community can openly classify themselves as “Russian Vietnamese.” This is an important conclusion that largely explains why a mass and economically influential community, including in criminal business, does not seek political representation.
A respected Russian scholar, V. M. Mazyrin, gives an even higher estimate. Based on IOM expert assessments in 2004, Mazyrin estimated the total size of the Vietnamese community in Russia at up to 150,000 people, emphasizing that official statistics do not cover those residing illegally or semi-legally. Mazyrin’s figures are used in many publications by scholars in Russia, the West, and Israel.
Social profile and current state of the diaspora
Origin and age structure. The overwhelming majority of Vietnamese in Russia originate from the northern and north-central provinces of Vietnam, where overpopulation and limited employment opportunities are traditionally high; this is a legacy of Soviet selection practices and subsequent chain migration. About 90% of Vietnamese migrants in Russia are of working age, with men accounting for around 63%, which is typical for labor migration.
Key factors of diaspora resilience. The social capital of graduates of Soviet universities: networks of engineer-translators facilitated the adaptation of workers in the 1980s and remain a human-resource base for joint projects (oil, machine-building, energy). Later, the diaspora also formed institutional mechanisms: the effective work of SRV diplomatic structures (embassy, business associations) during market crises—for example, the creation of a relief headquarters after the closure of the Cherkizovsky market in 2009.
In the 1990s–2000s, public organizations of Vietnamese citizens were established in many regions (for example, regional societies in Primorsky Krai, Bashkortostan, and others), often interacting with the Society of Friendship with Vietnam and regional societies of Russian-Vietnamese friendship. At the federal level, structures began to emerge claiming the role of all-Russian representation of the Vietnamese diaspora, participating in contacts with the SRV embassy and Russian authorities (they are mentioned in academic literature, although their personal composition and institutional landscape are still forming).
Today’s map of integration and conflict
The above is not merely a historical excursus. By the beginning of the second quarter of the 21st century, “Russian Vietnam” has turned into a unique social mechanism within Russia.
Mass scale: a hundred-thousand-strong population group, nine out of ten of whose members are in the politically active working-age bracket—the largest diaspora in Russia among ethnic groups that historically never lived in the Russian Empire (Chinese lived in the Far East—ed.).
Entrepreneurial: forced by circumstances, “Russian Vietnam” is far more involved in business activity (especially at the level of small and medium-sized enterprises) than any other Russian diaspora.
Oriented beyond the USSR framework: only Vietnamese and Chinese, in their communications—both personal and business—go beyond the framework of the former Soviet Union.
Positively perceived at the local level: the reasons for the fact that, unlike attitudes toward Caucasians, migrants from Central Asia, and Chinese, the level of xenophobic sentiment toward Vietnamese recorded by sociologists is noticeably lower require a separate study.
At the same time, “Russian Vietnam” is by no means a quiet harbor.
The academic study by L. A. Hoang, Vietnamese Migrants in Russia: Mobility in Times of Uncertainty (2020) documents the existence of “black” workshops (xưởng may đen) with round-the-clock labor, hidden dormitories, and monthly payments of “tribute” to corrupt inspectors.
“Vietnamese migrants, as natives of a backward agrarian country, have a corresponding mindset, harmful habits, and mores characteristic of small-scale handicraft production. They found themselves in Russia—a more civilized, industrially developed country that has undergone a change of political system. Here, after the collapse of the USSR during the period of perestroika, social differentiation grew and other social contradictions intensified,” writes Nguyen Canh Toan of the Vietnam Academy of Social Sciences, and we concur with his conclusions.
Ryazantsev et al. (2022) note that the economic position of Vietnamese migrants in Russia is characterized by cyclical “booms and busts” driven by sharp changes in migration and trade regulation, anti-immigrant campaigns, and the overall level of corruption. Life in the shadows (“shadow economy”) limits migrants’ social activity and makes them dependent on “exploitative market regimes” and “opportunistic criminals” confident in their impunity due to the illegal status of Vietnamese migrants.
It is too early to draw final conclusions in the history of “Russian Vietnam.” The elevation of the issue of attracting labor migrants from the “far abroad” to the list of priorities of the Russian authorities makes Vietnam an extremely attractive source of a new migration flow that has not yet manifested itself. This new flow will enter into resonant relations with the already established diaspora of “Russian Vietnamese.”
At present, it would be wrong to make any definitive forecasts. But we will attempt one. Namely, the idea that new Vietnamese migrants, after working in Russia, will all return to Vietnam—the half-century-long history of the creation and strengthening of the Russian Vietnamese diaspora demonstrates the opposite trend.
Alexander Shpunt is an Israeli and Russian researcher and expert in the theory and practice of information and analytical work in the field of politics and resides in Haifa. Since 2016 he has served as a professor at the National Research University “Moscow Higher School of Economics. In 1999–2011 he also served as the executive director of the “Effective Policy Foundation”, the largest think tank in the RF at that time, and in 2011 founded and headed the Institute of Political Analysis Tools, specializing in systems for monitoring political behavior.