Paul
Goble
Staunton, April 7 – The domestic
consequences of Moscow’s Crimean policy combined with Russia’s weakening
economic prospects will drive ever more young Russians to seek work and
possibly permanent residence abroad, an “exodus” that will hurt the country far
more than any of the sanctions announced so far, according to Yevgeny
Gontmakher.
In today’s “Moskovsky komsomolets,”
the economist and commentator points out that the economies of Europe not to
mention of China are recovering while Russia likely faces a recession,
especially given the falling price for oil and declining exports of gas (mk.ru/specprojects/free-theme/article/2014/04/07/1010173-ishod-predskazuem.html).
As a result, new
jobs are opening up in Europe at precisely the time they are disappearing in
Russia, Gontmakher says, and this pattern has serious consequences for Russia because
young and highly educated Russians are the most likely to be willing to take
advantage of opportunities elsewhere.
Moreover, such Russians will have
particular opportunities in Europe because of the aging of the population and
depopulation there, something that will lead to “the appearance of new
opportunities for migrants to Europe from less developed countries, including
Russia.”
According to a Levada Center poll taken
in 2013, 22 percent of Russians have thought about moving abroad either for a
long period of time or forever. With
regard to young people, that figure is much higher. Among actual as opposed to potential
emigrants, “approximately 46 percent of those leaving Russia consist of people
between the ages of 20 and 35.”
These are the
people who could make the greatest contribution to Russia’s transformation into
a contemporary state and society and even put it “among the leaders of the
civilized world,” Gontmakher continues.
“Current events connected with
Ukraine of course are changing this picture,” he suggests. The outburst of “patriotism
and pride in Russia” undoubtedly will reduce the number of those who want to go
abroad. “But for how long? As the Russian proverb has it, ‘a fish seeks
where it is deeper, and a man where it is better.”
“If the situation with regard to
employment and incomes become worse, if a period of ideological cleansing will
come, then far from everyone will be satisfied by words about the greatness of
the country,” Gontmakher continues.
Those Moscow propagandists who
insist that Russian civilization “has always put the spiritual over the
material,” he says, should consider how those in the Russian Federation who are
living in poverty or without prospects actually feel day after day, even if
they participate in patriotic explosions. If the propagandists believe their
own words, they should give up their “astronomical” salaries and benefits.
The propagandists may be right that
fewer will want to leave even under conditions of economic hardship given the
new patriotism, Gontmakher says. But
what if even 10 percent of young people still do? “Is that a lot or a little?”
These are still going to be the
younger people with the greatest prospects for making a contribution to the
future of Russia’s scientific and business communities. “Without them,” Russia will suffer in its “intellectual
and economic development.” And the West, “judging by everything, is ready to
take them in.”
Moscow should take note of the fact
that the West may be introducing restrictions on visas for some members of the
elite but it is simplifying visa procedures for ordinary Russians. The West’s
calculation is obvious: “Let them see how daily life is organized there” and
they will go home and change it in their own country.
Gontmakher recalls that “after the
end of the Great Fatherland War, Stalin launched a campaign against ‘rootless
cosmopolitans’ and ‘idolators of everything foreign’ only because millions of
Soviet soldiers had seen how even half-destroyed Europe was living.” Is the
Kremlin about to do the same now?
The economist expresses his
conviction that “very soon, if nothing in Russia changes,” far more young
Russians will be leaving the country, a conclusion that anyone who looks at
messages on social networks will come to.
And young Russians have another
option besides the West: China. Many
Russians are already working there, receiving high pay and having opportunities
for advancement that they don’t have at home.
That will hit the Russian Far East especially hard because while China
is booming, that Russian region is “stagnating.”
Economic sanctions of the kind the West
has introduced so far in response to Crimea aren’t likely to achieve their goals,
but even in the Kremlin, it is understood that if the West attracts to it young
and capable Russian specialists, that will have an enormous and negative impact
on the country.
According to Gontmakher, “it will be
possible to oppose this only if our country, while preserving its uniqueness,
begins to return to the European path of development,” the path of development
that Vladimir Putin once supported but now appears to oppose. The costs of that
opposition, if the best and the brightest young Russians leave, will be very
high indeed.
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