Assyrians in Russia number 14,000 according to the 2002 Russian census.

History

Assyrians came to

Russia Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a List of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia, Northern Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the ...

and the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...

in three main waves: *The first wave was after the

Treaty of Turkmenchay The Treaty of Turkmenchay ( fa, عهدنامه ترکمنچای; russian: Туркманчайский договор) was an agreement between Qajar Iran and the Russian Empire, which concluded the Russo-Persian War (1826–28). It was second o ...

in 1828, that delineated a border between

and

Persia Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also called Persia, is a country located in Western Asia. It is bordered by Iraq and Turkey to the west, by Azerbaijan and Armenia to the northwest, by the Caspian Sea and Turkmeni ...

. Many Assyrians found themselves suddenly under Russian sovereignty and thousands of relatives crossed the border to join them. *The second wave was a result of the repression and violence during and after

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

. *The third wave came after

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

, when Moscow unsuccessfully tried to establish a satellite state in Iranian Kurdistan. Soviet troops withdrew in 1946, and left the Assyrians exposed to exactly the same kind of retaliation that they had suffered from the

Turks Turk or Turks may refer to: Communities and ethnic groups * Turkic peoples, a collection of ethnic groups who speak Turkic languages * Turkish people, or the Turks, a Turkic ethnic group and nation * Turkish citizen, a citizen of the Republic o ...

30 years earlier. Again, many Assyrians found refuge in the Soviet Union, this time mainly in the cities. From 1937 to 1959, the Assyrian population in USSR grew by 587.3%. The Soviets in the thirties oppressed the Assyrians' religion and persecuted religious and other leaders. In recent years, the Assyrians have tended to assimilate, but their cultural and ethnic identity, strengthened through centuries of hardships, found new expression under

Glasnost ''Glasnost'' (; russian: link=no, гласность, ) has several general and specific meanings – a policy of maximum openness in the activities of state institutions and freedom of information, the inadmissibility of hushing up problems, ...

Current situation

According to the 2002 Russian census there were 14,000 Assyrians in Russia. 13,300 people (95% of all Assyrians) spoke

Syriac Syriac may refer to: *Syriac language, an ancient dialect of Middle Aramaic *Sureth, one of the modern dialects of Syriac spoken in the Nineveh Plains region * Syriac alphabet ** Syriac (Unicode block) ** Syriac Supplement * Neo-Aramaic languages a ...

as native language.

References

{{Immigration to Russia Ethnic groups in Russia

Assyrian ethnic groups