Russia’s Brain Drain
Intellectuals are fleeing as Soviet-style censorship returns.
Two stories in the major press provide a glimpse inside Russia.
WSJ (“Fleeing Putin, Thousands of Educated Russians Are Moving Abroad“):
Hundreds of thousands of professional workers, many of them young, have left Russia since its invasion of Ukraine, accelerating an exodus of business talent and further threatening an economy targeted by Western sanctions.
Those leaving the country include tech workers, scientists, bankers and doctors, according to surveys, economists and interviews with emigrants. They are departing for countries including Georgia, Armenia and Turkey. More are expected to follow.
A mid-March survey by OK Russians, a nonprofit helping people leave the country, estimated that around 300,000 workers had departed since the war started in late February. While precise counts of the number of people leaving Russia aren’t available, some economists have reached similar conclusions about the scale of the outflow. Around 500,000 people left Russia in 2020, according to Rosstat, Russia’s statistics agency.
“The people who are either leaving or planning to leave are highly educated and generally young,” said Elina Ribakova, deputy chief economist at the Institute of International Finance. “This is your most productive part of the labor force that is disappearing.”
The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, a top regional development bank, expects the Russian economy to contract 10% this year.
It added that people leaving Russia, coupled with reduced investment and trade, would result in lower long-term productivity growth. Spending on information technology is expected to drop sharply.
While Russia has encouraged dissenters to leave, it has also acted to stem the outflow of professional workers. President Vladimir Putin signed in March a decree granting a waiver from military conscription to people employed in the tech sector. Russian authorities are also offering tax breaks, cheaper loans and preferential mortgages to entice tech workers to stay.
While this is being framed as a reaction to the Ukraine invasion, it’s a longstanding trend that’s taken off:
I can’t help but think it’s at least tangentially related to this WaPo story (“Russian students are turning in teachers who don’t back the war“):
When Irina Gen’s students in western Russia asked why a European sports competition had barred them from attending, the 55-year-old teacher let loose with a tirade against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“So long as Russia doesn’t behave itself in a civilized way, this will go on forever,” she fumed, adding that she endorsed the European ban. Russia “wanted to get to Kyiv, to overthrow Zelensky and the government. This is a sovereign state,” she said. “There’s a sovereign government there.”
Little did she know that her students were recording her outburst and that a copy would make its way to law enforcement, who opened a criminal investigation March 30 under a new national law banning false information about the military.
Gen is one of at least four teachers recently turned in by students or parents for antiwar speech, in some of the starkest examples of the government’s quest to identify and punish individuals who criticize the invasion.
It’s a campaign with dark Soviet echoes, inspired last month by President Vladimir Putin, who praised Russians for their ability to identify “scum and traitors” and “spit them out like a fly.”
“I am convinced that this natural and necessary self-cleansing of society will only strengthen our country,” Putin said March 16 in a televised speech, accusing the West of wanting to use a “fifth column” to destroy Russia.
In the last several weeks, a list of “traitors and enemies” has cropped up online, published by the Committee for the Protection of National Interests, a shadowy group claiming a duty to expose public figures who support “anti-Russian” sanctions and political pressure.
The regional government of Kaliningrad sent text messages to local residents urging them to report “provocateurs and scammers” who were undermining the “special operation in Ukraine,” according to the Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta. And a string of activists, journalists and opposition politicians have found the word “traitor” and vile graffiti painted on their front doors.
“After a rather significant period of freedom … fear has returned to Russian society, and informants have become more active against those who express disagreement with the authorities,” said Nikita Petrov, a longtime historian at the human-rights group Memorial, which a Moscow court abolished in December after years of government pressure on the group.
War opponents can easily run afoul of the law given the new censorship rules. Recent additions to the criminal code make it illegal to discredit the armed forces or to spread “fake” information about the military — which in practice means anything contradicting official government reports.
The cases of children informing on teachers recall the young Soviet folk hero Pavlik Morozov, who, legend had it, betrayed his father to the authorities for anti-Soviet activity. Generations of Soviet children were encouraged to be like Pavlik, to show loyalty to the state above all else.
That’s not exactly a climate hospitable to thinking people.
…and cue up, “The Russian State educated these people and they cannot leave until they have repaid our investment in them!”, in 3…2…1
Where are they all going? What are they doing when they get there?
@Michael Cain:
Where are they all going?
Anywhere they can.
Lots making it out overland to Finland, others getting to the ‘Stans, then trying to get out from there to anywhere else.
@Michael Cain:
From what I’ve read, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Turkey. Those are places that they can still get flights to. Whether the plan is to stay there, ? Those in northwest Russia are reportedly traveling by land to the Baltic states and Finland. I suspect the goal for many is to reach western Europe and North America, though I suspect that they would have a more welcoming reception in countries in central Asia and Africa. Those would benefit from the talent influx.
In the same vein: The Putin Generation is Fleeing Putin’s Russia
Can we be certain among all these fleeing Russians, Vlad hasn’t snuck in GRU or FSB types to carry out chemical weapons attacks on unsuspecting targets? What vetting is being done and how thorough is it?
The expression “eating seed corn” comes to mind.
@Kathy:
If the FSB (or more likely GRU) wanted to that and the FSB/GRU was competent, they’d probably get them out on false papers as, say Kazakh nationals, or whatever.
I found this long article on The Bulwark from LTG Hertling to be quite good and well worth the read. Compares the Russian and Ukrainian armies from a training and preparation perspective.
I Commanded U.S. Army Europe. Here’s What I Saw in the Russian and Ukrainian Armies.
A couple of quotes:
That last sentence jumped out at me. I think I wrote a few months back that when I attended Air Force Officer Training School in 1980, we sat through a presentation about Soviet armed forces called something like: “Are These Guys Ten-Feet Tall?” Short answer was no. And it laid into the corruption of the military, the government, and society. The Brezhnev era.
What was true then is true today. Provides some hope.
The war in Ukraine has been very good for the West.
Russia will never fully recover, their demographic picture is already alarming, they’re losing their largest oil and gas market, their weapons manufacturers look second rate, their supposedly terrifying cyber force hasn’t even whimpered, and their military has been exposed as incompetent and corrupt. Now, they’re suffering an accelerated brain drain, and if the early stories are true and Finland and Sweden are joining NATO, Putin just managed to create a 1300 kilometer long border with NATO. St. Petersburg will be just 100 miles from NATO tanks.
Vladimir Putin is the gift that keeps on giving.
@Scott: It’s good to know there are some constants in history. Like the Russian military carrying on the concept of a Potemkin village.
@Kathy: “Can we be certain among all these fleeing Russians, Vlad hasn’t snuck in GRU or FSB types to carry out chemical weapons attacks on unsuspecting targets? What vetting is being done and how thorough is it?”
It’s really hard to stop that, when moving from a more closed to a more open society.
@Kathy:
@Barry:
Over the last month, European countries, the US, Canada and Mexico have declared hundreds of suspected Russian intelligence assets persona non grata. These a people that over decades have developed sources and knowledge of where to look for secrets. It will be at least a decade to recreate that network, if the host countries allow Russia to back fill those positions.
By far most of these spies were attached to the embassy, consulates and various trade and economic development groups. Sending even a hundred agents out with the new diaspora, won’t make much difference because they will not have an official capacity to probe for loose lips.
@Kathy: GRU has plenty of officers serving in Russian embassies around the world.
I mentioned when the invasion of Ukraine began that I knew of some US companies with tech workers based in Russia. One of those companies has offered to relocate any Russian employees to other countries. I can’t imagine that this is widespread, but I was surprised that a US company made an offer like that, it’s going to cost them a lot of money. Not sure how the visas etc. would work, but apparently the company is going to handle all of that.
@Sleeping Dog: Yes, many of those officers have been PNG’ed. But I’m equally certain that there are some who remain, and also there are likely many overseas under non-official cover.
We probably don’t want all of those folks to go back to Russia, as there are probably some who are feeding us info.
A lot of my Russian friends saw the writing on the wall a LOOOONG time ago and vamoosed out of Russia in the early 2000s.
What’s crazy is that Russia has managed also to demolish what used to be a damn good science and technology education/research system. There used to be a large number of brilliant Soviet scientists who believed in communism as opposed to capitalism. What do they have now? An education system where rich students bribe their professors for higher grades or get Daddy’s mafia to threaten them. How does anyone think Russia will be able to stay at the cutting edge of anything from now on, especially when anyone with a brain gets the hell out of Dodge as quickly as possible? Putin will have Potemkin laboratories with Potemkin engineers. And Potemkin airplanes that will fall out of the sky. I used to admire Soviet scientists. The greats, like Lev Landau. Now? The only ones we hear of are the ones who have already moved abroad.
That’s the trouble with corruption: it kills all systems.
@Jen:
In an article I saw, by and large, they are allowing the station chiefs and their staff to stay. Yes, there are assets that have no official capacity. In the last day or so, I saw headline that the FBI arrested a woman who they claim is a Russian agent.
Could the West trade these Russians with the Putin-brained Glenn Greenwald, Matt Taibbi, and Andrew Sullivan?
@DK: Putin’s delusional, but not enough to want them.