They face deadly threats from Russian skinheads and try to avoid making eye contact with gun-totting police.
But the impoverished men from Tajikistan still line up weekly by the thousands at a desolate station here hoping to grab a train to Russia on their way to often illegal and dangerous work.
"I go to Russia with one goal - to earn some money. This is the only way to save my six children from hunger, misery and disease," said Davlat, an unemployed 38-year-old from the Pyandzh district that sits just above the loose and volatile border with Afghanistan.
The poorest republic in the former Soviet Union - having survived five years of civil war and a famine brought on by drought and mismanagement - Tajikistan is nestled in the soaring mountains of Central Asia and overrun by the Afghan drug trade.
The predominantly Muslim country has almost no natural resources and seems to lie far off the geopolitical map. The minimum monthly pay here is about two dollars and 80 percent of the 6.3 million population lives in poverty, as it is defined by Tajik authorities.
So the men flee by the hundreds of thousands every year, even while knowing that the Tajik president has officially protested to Moscow that some 600 of the nation's citizens have been killed in Russia over the past three years.
In one of the highest-profile incidents, a group of skinheads attacked a Tajik family in Russia's second city of Saint Petersburg in February, stabbing to death a nine-year-old girl and seriously wounding her father and 11-year-old cousin.
The attack came amid a wave of strikes against ethnic minorities in Russia, with diplomats from Asian and African republics appealing to the Russian foreign ministry for help.
Experts estimate that up to a million Tajiks travel to Russia for work every year, mostly for hard and low-paying jobs in construction or agriculture. Many lack proper documents and take on jobs frowned on by the locals.
Russia has deported nearly 1,000 immigrants over the past 18 months despite Tajikistan's protests - and authorities in Moscow believe many of them keep coming back.
Meanwhile the Tajik labour ministry estimates that the constant drain of working people has cost the Tajik economy 15 billion dollars over the past decade - or about half of the country's gross domestic production. Still, some find a silver lining amid an exodus that has broken families and led to deaths at the hands of Russia's ultranationalist youths.
Some observers here say Tajikistan would have no way of surviving without these men fighting their way into the Russian workforce, since most send the money back home.
"Several years ago, this migration was qualified as a negative phenomenon, but now it is considered as good for the prosperity of our economy and their families," said Tajik social scientist Rashid Gani said. Seasonal workforce "became an important factor in Russo-Tajik relations," having "assumed an economic, political and social importance," Gani said.
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