The borders between the Soviet republics never acted as barriers to migration, fulfilling only an administrative function. Soviet migration policy focused mainly on internal migration, for the purpose of redistributing the labor force. Millions of people moved between the Soviet republics as the state attempted to regulate internal migration primarily by stimulating resettlement to sparsely populated regions with considerable deposits of natural resources, including to northern and far-eastern Russia and to Kazakhstan.
Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, migration policy in the region underwent serious transformation. The newly independent post-Soviet states began setting up their own institutions to regulate migration and citizenship, and it soon became clear that Russian immigration law needed reform.
