Paul
Goble
Staunton, February 4 – The exodus
from Russia of Central Asian gastarbeiters and even the recent decline in the
number of Ukrainians who fled to Russia last year after the start of the
conflict there have attracted a great deal of attention, but outflow, this of
people from Western countries, has attracted much less even though it may prove
more important.
According to an investigation by RBK
journalists Stepan Opalyev and Elena Myazina, this exodus has been partially
obscured by the inflow of Ukrainians. But beginning from January of last year, “at
a minimum, half a million citizens of European countries (excluding the former
USSR states but including the Baltics), North America, Australia and New
Zealand left Russia” (top.rbc.ru/society/04/02/2015/54d0c05e9a7947df123f23e1).
Russia’s Federal Migration Service
(FMS) notes that the number of such people in Russia in January 2014 was 1.73
million but only 1.23 million in January 2015 and reports that three quarters
of that half million did so in the second half of last year after hostilities
in Ukraine began.
Germans, Americans and British
subjects formed the largest number of those departing, with 98,000, 79,000, and
69,000 exiting respectively. In percentage terms, the largest departures were
the Norwegians, 48 percent of whom left, the Swedes, 47 percent of whom left,
the Spanish, 41 percent, the Finns, 39 percent, and the Danes, 38 percent.
The two journalists note that
Latvian non-citizens, most of whom are Russian speakers, came to Russia in
large numbers in the first half of 2014 boosting their number by 782 but then
left in the second half by only slightly fewer, 560, leaving that group in
Russia up by 222 for the year as a whole.
Artur Shamilov, head of the Top
Contact company, said that the departure of these people is having an impact on
Russian companies, but he told the RBK journalists that their departure had
been triggered not only by the geopolitical crisis but also by “the increasing
qualifications of Russian managers who are gradually replacing the foreign
specialists,” a trend since 2008.
But Konstantin Kalachev, a Moscow
political analyst, told the journalists that people from developed countries
have ceased to view Russia as a country with prospects even though they,
because most are paid in dollars or euros, have actually benefitted from the
ruble’s devaluation.
He said that what is happening is
that Western firms are winding up their operations in Russia because of
sanctions and the new East-West tensions, developments that he says “foreigners
feel more than Russians.” And he notes that some in the top elite are even
pleased with the departure of such people because that opens the way for
Russian managers.
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