The problem of migrants who do not speak Russian is not only on everyone's lips, but also among the hotly debated issues on various very authoritative platforms. A very specific question in this regard is what requirements are imposed on migrants and what leads to the fact that migrants do not speak Russian?

There are many (different) requirements for migrants, but among them there are really important ones.

 

Issues of infection safety, for example. They are self-evident and of primary importance. But there is another really important one - proficiency in Russian... or the presence of a certificate of passing the Russian language exam. There is a real war going on around this - details on the VChK-OGPU telegram channel and Rucriminal.info.

 

Certificate and/or where did the ability to speak disappear

Different parties give different meanings to the exam issue: what kind of requirement is this - does a migrant need to present a certificate or does a migrant need to know Russian? "The second," you say. But does everyone think so?

Let's look at the initiatives on this issue. When did the ability to speak Russian first disappear from view? 2021, when the Government Resolution on the approval of the procedure for conducting the exam was issued, it established: the exam for the purpose of obtaining a work permit and a patent is conducted in written form (in the form of testing), that is, without oral communication - an interview. With a slight movement of the Office of the Government, the oral part for migrant workers was removed from the text of the document in 2021.

From that moment on, the Ministry of Education and Science of Russia, represented by Pyotr Kucherenko, the first deputy minister, now deceased, began an intensified campaign to restore order to the exam. After all, not only the speaking test disappeared from the text of the government decree, but also qualified specialists for conducting the exam were crossed out. That is, the exam for labor migrants was simplified as much as possible and completely mechanized. The answer to the question of who is the interested party in this result is obvious - these are employers/businesses, for whom it is extremely unprofitable to spend resources on an exam for migrants.

 

Commercial vein

 

The same business representatives regularly tried to impose their IT solutions to solve government problems. The widely and infamously famous JSC "Axioma" repeatedly attempted to implement initiatives using the Ministry of Education and Science to use their own platforms for conducting migration exams and storing information. However, P. Kucherenko clearly opposed such collaborations with directly interested business structures.

The exam is a sore point for commerce. Because the employer is not at all interested in speaking employees. Cheap labor must work silently... and it is obvious that this is an administrative barrier that complicates the process of employing workers from both visa and visa-free countries.

Resistance to commerce is such a powerful tool that since 2021, obvious weak provisions of the legislation could not be overcome, despite the sound initiatives of the Ministry of Education and Science of Russia and their support from the involved authorities.

 

Three whales and their road

 

Pyotr Kucherenko is gone, but his business lived on. The Ministry of Education and Science of Russia dealt pinpoint blows to open questions in exams. The main initiatives that constantly came out of the department:

1. Liquidation of private organizations,

2. Full video recording of the exam,

3. Mandatory speaking of migrants

These are the three whales on which the position of the Ministry of Education and Science rests after the shameful defeat of 2021, when such fighters as the ability to speak and the qualifications of people conducting exams were lost.

These whales, framed by proposals to improve migration exams, were regularly sent to the Administration and the Government Office, but each time they were met with the verdict of "inappropriate". Without receiving the go-ahead from "higher-ups", the Ministry of Education and Science of Russia proactively developed and published amendments to regulatory acts on the portal of legislative initiatives. Do you think the three whales reached the required milestone? No...

 

The result was achieved only in 2024, when private organizations were finally removed from the migration exam and full video recording was also introduced (namely the full exam procedure, and not individual fragments with memorized answers by migrants). The corresponding amendment to Federal Law 115 was adopted on November 7, 2024 and entered into force on December 10, 2024. Now it will not be possible to blur responsibility for violations: each organization (government agency) will be personally responsible for each issued certificate, and there is no longer a place for private organizations in this system.

 

Losses on the way to overcoming

How much did those who prioritize the economy dislike this? This can be judged by the fact that today the director of the RUDN Russian Language Institute, Angela Dolzhikova, one of the ardent fighters for Russian-speaking migrants, is under investigation. Dolzhikova was charged on November 28, 2024 absolutely ridiculous fraudulent actions to divert 1 million rubles.

The next "arrest" was not long in coming: on January 28, 2025, a mid-level official was detained - Alexey Lotogolets, head of the department of normative legal regulation in the field of migration of the legal department of the Ministry of Education and Science of Russia, who in recent years supported the position of the Ministry of Education and Science of Russia on the implementation of the three pillars, and closely worked on the adoption of amendments in November 2024 on the liquidation of private organizations. Lotogolets is accused of receiving a bribe of 250,000 rubles from a RUDN employee.

By the way, RUDN is the same university that in November 2024, for the first time in the history of this authoritative university, was deprived of the right to conduct migration exams in Russia. Now RUDN can conduct this exam in only one place - in its Representative Office in Uzbekistan, which is more like a public expulsion. The university was not left with the right to conduct the exam even in its office in Moscow, not to mention two hundred places in Russia where RUDN used to conduct these exams.

Let us recall that the exam for migrants is not free and for 10 years the exam brought several billion in income into RUDN's pocket.

It turns out to be a severe dissonance: the university is removed from the "expensive" list, and this same university, directly represented by the director of the center that conducted the exam for migrants, gives a bribe to an official directly involved in the closure of the university's feeding trough?

Now bribes are given for the closure of million-earning sources?

The next question is - what will happen to the third whale now? Who will fight for it and will migrants be required to speak Russian before starting to work here (in Russia)?

What is most likely to happen? Will someone else be jailed or will the third whale swim by?

Life will tell.

 

Arseniy Dronov