Azerbaijanis in Russia

Azerbaijanis in Russia or Russian Azerbaijanis (Azerbaijani: Rusiya azərbaycanlıları (Latin), Русија азәрбајҹанлылары (Cyrillic); Russian: Азербайджанцы в России, Azerbajdzhantsy v Rossii) are people of Azeri descent in Russia. These may be either ethnic Azeris residents in the country or recent immigrants who profess Azeri ancestry.

Aside from the large Azeri community native to Russia's Dagestan Republic, the majority of Azeris in Russia are fairly recent immigrants. Azeris started settling in Russia (with the exception of Dagestan) around the late nineteenth century, but their migration intensified after World War II, and especially after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. According to the 2010 All-Russian Population Census, there are 603,070 Azeris residing in Russia, however the actual numbers may be much higher due to the arrival of guest workers in the post-Soviet era. The estimated total Azeri population of Russia as of 2002 might have reached as many as 3,000,000 people,^[4] with more than one and half million of them living in Moscow, though in the following decade there was a tendency for many Azeris to move back to Azerbaijan.^[5] The majority of post-1991 ethnic Azeri migrants have come to Russia from rural Azerbaijan, Georgia and Armenia. Today most provinces of Russia have more or less significant Azeri communities, the biggest ones, according to official numbers, residing in Dagestan, Moscow, Khanty–Mansi, Krasnoyarsk, Rostov-on-the-Don, Saratov, Sverdlovsk, Samara, Stavropol, etc.^[6]