Russians_in_Sweden
There are 22,774 people born in Russia who currently live in Sweden. Russian immigrant women in Sweden were the most highly educated immigrants in Sweden as of 2009.[1]
The Russian Orthodox Church in Sweden have parishes in the cities of Gothenburg, Stockholm, Västerås, Uppsala, Karlstad, Umeå and Luleå, where many Russian first and second generation immigrants live. Most of them arrived in Sweden in the 1920s after the Russian Civil War. During World War II, the Polish resistance movement organized escapes of some Russian prisoners of war who fled from German POW camps in German-occupied Poland to Sweden by sea.[2] Another small wave came after World War II. An increasing number of Russians and others from the former Soviet Union have moved to Sweden since the 1990s, with more than 900 per year receiving Swedish citizenship since 2011.[3] A majority of Russians in Sweden are Russian women who have married Swedish men.[4]
In the Swedish news media, a Russian-Swedish perspective is sometimes given by Lioudmila Siegel, who is the chairperson of the Russian National Association (Swedish: Ryska riksförbundet). During the Russian presidential election in 2012, she identified herself as a supporter of President Vladimir Putin and she rejected accusations of election fraud.[5]
The Russian National Association has close connections to the Russian embassy in Stockholm, and regularly arranges events together with it.[6] It organised an exhibition about Russian women in Sweden called "The Russian Bride – An Ordinary Woman", which examined mail-order brides.[7] The Russian National Association was founded on 18 October 2003. In 2008 the National Association consisted of 20 local associations. In 2009 it joined SIOS, the Cooperation Group for Ethnic Associations in Sweden.[8]
