Bloomberg March 16, 2022 “Russia’s Brain Drain Becomes a Stampede for the Exits”
“The country’s best and brightest see no future as long as their president is obsessed with the past.” By Leonid Bershidsky
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Summary by 2244®
Image from imrussia.org April 07, 2015
Neighboring states like Kyrgyszstan are asking their governments “to start creating jobs and setting up temporary housing for the information technology professionals who are arriving daily from Russia.” Reportedly an “estimated…200,000 Russians fled in the first 10 days of the invasion-to Armenia, Georgia, Israel, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkey-any country that admits Russians visa-free.” Unlike the millions that are leaving Ukraine, these Russians are relatively well-to-do “with lots to lose” but either “want nothing to do with Putin’s sham-imperial project”...[or]...cannot imagine living under the Soviet-style autarky to which Western sanctions have doomed Russia.” Such an exodus is not unusual and followed the dissolution of USSR in 1992, a time that was “marked by conflict and hyperinflation” leading to “1.2 million people” exiting, and after “the annexation of Crimea” in 2014. Reliable numbers from Russia aren’t available but according to a 2019 Atlantic Council report, the “Putin Exodus” since 2000 was estimated at “1.6 million and 2 million.” These emigres have left “in the hope of finding freedom and intellectual opportunity.” “The Ukraine invasion [in their minds]…laid waste to any remnant of hope.”
Those that have departed recently can’t deny being Russian and “they’re already feeling the anti-Russian sentiment Putin has inflamed.” Some pundits and politicians in America are fueling this resentment of new emigres with the tacit idea being that these individuals are essentially “complicit with the Putin regime” as “they’ve waited too long to leave.” Regardless, their new homelands will benefit from the skills they’ll bring like writing “code and essays, playing music, [and] staffing labs.” Making matters worse, many students and academics still in the country have “signed anti-war petitions” and can’t realistically be “available to the regime.” The author of the article, Leonid Bershidsky-who left in 2014 with his wife and two children, closes with the assurance that the brain drain will reverse after “the Putin edifice falls apart,” and “then it will be time for another attempt to bring Russia to its senses.”
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