This is already the case de facto. One out of 7 Tajik citizens works as a Gastarbeiter in Russia. Number of Armenians living as workers and their families in Russia: 1.8 million. Number of Armenians in Armenia: Under 3 million. Georgians living in Russia send several times more money home to their families each year than Georgia gets in foreign aid (and 10% of Georgian foreign trade is sales of one brand of mineral water, inside Russia). Immigrants and gastarbeitery from other former Soviet republics, largely illegal, as well as from China and Vietnam, do most of the the shitwork in Russia. Russian workers complain about them lowering wages all the time.
That said, I agree with the rest of what you wrote. Incidentally, if you call Ukraine "the Ukraine" to a Ukrainian nationalist, you will probably wind up with a black eye.
Grant Lee <grantlee at iinet.net.au> wrote:
Even Turkey is a long way from being admitted; I recall that Morocco applied for EC membership about 15 years ago and was quickly dismissed as "not European". Chris has already said that the probability of a new community of ex-Soviet states is not strong, because of fears of Russian dominance, and my guess is that Russia's chances of being admitted to the EU are also not good, because Russia's population, GDP and domestic politics would, overnight, totally change the character of the EU. Even membership for Ukraine alone would increase the EU's population by 13% and would necessitate a dramatic re-working of policies which are fundamental to the EU (i.e./e.g. witness the angst that the structure of Poland's agriculture caused prior to its accession).
Grant.
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