Moscow has been active in forging relationships with Russian-speaking expat communities in Latin America. Cementing Russia’s ties with compatriots will prove an important part of the visit that the speaker of the Russian Parliament’s upper house Sergei Mironov will pay to Argentina and Uruguay from the 12th through the 17th of this month.
Argentina is known to be a country of immigrants, a country boasting Latin America’s biggest Russian expat community. It is, perhaps, symbolic that a delegation of Russian Senators are paying a visit to Buenos Aires at a time when Russia is celebrating its state holiday, Russia Day.
In the early 20th century every 20th Argentinean was an immigrant from the Russian Empire. The immigrants ranged from the descendants of the Foreign Minister of the 19th century Russia Alexander Gorchakov and the Volkonsky Princes to sailors from the battleship Potemkin. In South America almost half a million residents are of Russian origin.
Migration grew wide-scale in the late 19th century, followed by several more waves of immigration. True, the so-called white immigrants (the people who unsuccessfully fought Bolsheviks in Russia and were eventually compelled to emigrate) felt ambiguously about the Soviet Union, but deep in their hearts they were always drawn to their Fatherland. Small wonder that now that Russia’s prestige has markedly grown in recent years, the descendants of those immigrants seek to learn more about life in Russia.
This is what the chairperson of the Russian Committee of Cooperation with Latin American Nations Marina Vassilyeva said about it in an interview with the Voice of Russia. Today, Marina Vassilyeva says, the descendants of Russian immigrants in Latin America have come to think better of Russia, for various reasons. They are closely following the developments in their historical homeland, but, unfortunately, the information they get is clearly insufficient. Russian compatriots have been actively advancing the idea of launching economic cooperation with their historical homeland. I believe this holds quite a potential, specifically, for setting up joint ventures, Marina Vassilyeva says.
Russian immigrants that have moved to Argentina and Uruguay from the modern-day Russia acquire an increasingly prominent public and political role in these countries. Notably, Russian is officially taught at secondary schools in the Uruguayan city of San-Javier, where residents of Russian origin make up more than a half of the overall population.
Uruguay has become an adoptive country for several dozen thousands of people who moved here from Russia in the 19th century. The Russian immigrants’ contribution to Uruguay’s economy is quite obvious. When Russians first arrived in Uruguay in search of a better life, the locals were predominantly engaged in animal husbandry.
But the newcomers began to immediately bring new land into cultivation, sowing it with agricultural crops, specifically, with sunflowers, - a plant that Uruguayans had known nothing of before. At first the local residents laughed at Russians’ planting flowers in the fields, but eventually they came to realize that they were wrong. Now San-Javier celebrates the holiday of the sunflower in early April. Russians provided the native Uruguayans with honey, because they started developing apiculture.
In short, it is safe to claim that Argentina’s and Uruguay’s traditional exports, well known around the world, are of Russian origin.
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