Changing Lifestyles : Russians Deserting Muslim Republics : ‘We are afraid of Muslims--the veil,’ confesses one. Civil disturbances and threats add to the outflow.

Russian pensioner Gennady Olkhovoy squatted on his heels among the cardboard boxes that held memories from the 40 years he spent here as a student, coal miner and father, helping build up the old Soviet republic of Tajikistan.

“We’ve been like this for two years. The children have already left,” said Olkhovoy, whose apartment doubles as a center for Russian emigrants fleeing the uncertainty and conflict sweeping the southern Muslim belt of the former Soviet empire.

On his wall were photographs of a snowbound Russian steppe south of Moscow where his and another 1,000 Russian families from the Tajik capital of Dushanbe hope to settle.

He unfolded a meticulously drawn architect’s plan of the model town they want to create. “We are just waiting to build our new houses before we go, but it’s very hard to find building materials, and we’ve only set up the builders’ accommodations so far,” said Olkhovoy, 59. “In the Soviet Union, everything was planned,” he added wryly. “The problem has always been project realization.”

While there are no precise figures, community leaders say that between one-third and one-half of the nearly 1.1 million former Russian residents have already left the most unsettled of the six Muslim republics--Tajikistan and Azerbaijan. Many have left even more stable republics like Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.

In those four republics, Russians made up 8% to 13% of the population. In outlying Kyrgyzstan, the figure was 26%, and in Kazakhstan, 41%. But in all the republics, Russians dominated the cities. Now they feel increasingly insecure as Muslims take power and become the majority.

“We are afraid of Muslims--the veil,” said Tatyana, a Russian hotel receptionist in Azerbaijan whose fears of an outbreak of Islamic fundamentalism in that Transcaucasian nation are probably exaggerated. “I understand the Azerbaijanis’ need to govern themselves, but it is not for me. Baku (the capital) used to be so cosmopolitan.”

The first to leave have been the wealthy--typically the old Communist elite. More and more of the most ambitious and well-qualified are applying to the new U.S. embassies in the region for permission to go to America, diplomats say.

But even a move to a Russian city requires good contacts to find a job and a house, and plenty of cash to finance the move. The alternative is a harsh, relatively primitive new life in a Russian village.

Raising the money to move is hard, especially since Russians tend to hold the kind of fixed-salary, urban jobs that have been worst hit by the collapse of the ruble and the Soviet system.

Yuri Ogniev, the 45-year-old deputy chairman of the Tajikistan Emigration Society, said apartments in Dushanbe have dropped to 20% of their previous real value.

The cost of rail-freight containers to take furniture to new homes in Russia now varies from day to day, but it is usually about 70,000 rubles--around two years’ salary for most people, Ogniev added.

“The financial effect is worse than having a fire in your house,” he said. Nevertheless, he estimated that only half of the original 300,000 Russians remain in Dushanbe, the city that has undergone the most rapid emigration. Ogniev said another 40,000 people are on his lists waiting for a Russian region to accept them.

The flight from the Muslim republics began in earnest three years ago. In Tajikistan, it was triggered by a law making Tajik the official language. As in other republics, only 20-30% of Russians bothered to learn the local tongue, according to estimates by Russian residents in Dushanbe.

More Russians left after civil disturbances in February, 1990, killed 25 people and injured 96 more. The rioting was related to conflicts among Tajik political factions, and most of the casualties were Tajik. But Russians were nevertheless terrified by the crowds of Tajiks prowling the streets, and they defended their apartment blocks with crowbars and ironwork torn from the children’s playgrounds in the yard.

A third wave of emigration was set off when ex-Soviet army units intervened during more political demonstrations last April and May and there were warnings that local Russians would pay the price of any further shows of force.

“When things are destabilized, you feel you have to go. Even when you go to buy bread, they make you feel like they are now on top,” said Alec Kafarsky, a researcher at a formerly secret Tajik institute testing medicines on animals.

Kafarsky, who was born and raised in the Muslim south, voiced a paradox felt by many Russians in similar circumstances. His breath heavy with vodka, he said he identifies with Tajikistan and knows nobody in Russia. “Most of my Russian friends have gone, but my best friend is a Tajik. I really feel more at home here,” he said.

In Azerbaijan, some Russians felt sufficiently loyal to their adopted homeland to undertake dangerous missions such as piloting helicopters to aid Azerbaijani civilians caught up in the war with Armenia.

Some emigrants have even returned to Turkmenistan, despite fears that the apparent stability there could quickly give way to anti-Russian nationalism and worries about a semi-secret new rule that reportedly reserves top jobs for ethnic Turkmen.

In a downtown park in the Turkmen capital, Russian manager Larisa Timofeyeva runs an obviously successful pizza restaurant and discotheque and said she is going to try to hang on. “I like the Turkmen. They are all polite,” she commented. “I tried to live back in Russia, but they were all drunkards. Society works better here.”

Most of the new national governments are now trying to strip decades worth of imposed Russian cultural influences from their societies, emphasizing instead their own history, customs, and language.

But they have different attitudes toward their Russian and other minorities.

In Kyrgyzstan, home to 80 nationalities, the new leadership has founded special institutes and schools in an attempt to keep everyone happy. In Turkmenistan, Russian newspapers run hopeful “Let’s learn Turkmen” columns. In chaotic Tajikistan, the problem is being ignored. In Azerbaijan, the most anti-Moscow state, a Russian translation will not even appear on its new foreign press accreditation.

All want to promote a new national identity. But they face a dilemma as they seek to prop up their wrecked economies. While in the past local people could rise to be local factory managers and party bosses, Russians often formed the bulk of urban skilled workers.

Most secretaries in the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry, for instance, are Russians. In Turkmenistan, ethnic Russians dominate the nascent private business sector. In Tajikistan, they made the hospitals run.

“We reckon 15% of the work force of our new town will be doctors,” said Olkhovoy, the pensioned-off Russian coal miner. “Since we will be building in the countryside anyway, we will probably make a big sanatorium . . . but I think they will have real difficulties here. The only Russians left are those on low salaries, the pensioners, workers and widows.”

BACKGROUND

Russians started arriving in Central Asia in large numbers in the 18th and 19th Centuries, when the czars were annexing the region. Under a program called Russification, the Muslim faith and local languages and cultures were suppressed. After the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, Soviet leader V. I. Lenin gave more freedom to local cultures. But the Communists also attacked Islam and gave top political jobs to their own people, mostly Slavs.