 There are up to one million Germans in the former Soviet Union, mostly in a band from southwestern Russia and the Volga valley, through Omsk and Altai Krai (597,212 Germans in Russia, 2002 Russian census) to Kazakhstan (353,441 Germans in Kazakhstan, 1999 Kazakhstan census).Germany admitted approximately 1.63 million ethnic Germans from the former Soviet Union between 1990 and 1999.These "Auslandsdeutsche", as they are now generally known, have been streaming out of the former Eastern Bloc since the early 1990s.