On March 25, the conference “The settlement of the Russian Far East: past experience – present problems – solutions for the future” was held in the House of Russia Abroad, named in honor of Alexander Solzhenitsyn.
The event was attended by representatives of the associated departments: the Main Directorate for Migration Affairs of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia, Rossotrudnichestvo, the Ministry for Development of the Russian Far East and Arctic, the Presidential Council for Civil Society and Human Rights, the Agency for Capital Development in the Far East, the Federal Agency for Ethnic Affairs, the Ministry of Labor, academics from Moscow State University, the Moscow State Institute of International Relations, the National Research University – Higher School of Economics, the Pacific Ocean Institute of the Geography of the Far Eastern Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Diaspora and Integration, practicing lawyers and human rights advocates. The participants recommend using the historical experience of the Russians in land development for settling the emptying Far East. Recommendations were sent to the associated ministries and departments.
The conference was attended by metropolitan Korniliy, who greeted the audience at the beginning of the event. The metropolitan noted in his speech that in different periods of history, many Old-believers had to leave their homeland. Today their descendants live abroad, continuing to preserve the faith of their ancestors and the memory of their historic homeland. In recent years, the government is making an effort to assist those descendants who would like to return to Russia, by facilitating with the process of obtaining citizenship and providing land. Despite this assistance, compatriots are still faced with difficulties, which the Russian Orthodox Old-believers Church greatly hopes will be resolved in the near future.
