Paul
Goble
Staunton, July 2 – For the first
time since the 1990s, the number of Jews emigrating from Russia to Israel has
gone up dramatically, doubling between 2013 and 2014 to 4685. But this new wave
is different from its predecessors in that its members are younger, better
educated, and almost exclusively from Moscow.
Moreover, this new group is
convinced that they have no future in Russia because “after Putin, there will be
some other Putin,” a dramatic change in expectations compared to how many Jews
and others felt in the 1990s when they were pessimistic about Russia in the
short term but optimistic in the longer run (ehorussia.com/new/node/11131).
The emigration of Jews from Russia
is only a small part of the total number of Russian citizens who are leaving
for permanent residence abroad, a figure that is also increasing. In the first
nine months of 2014, 203,659 people left, compared to 120,756 who departed
during the corresponding period of a year earlier.
Officials of Israel’s absorption
ministry view this year as a turning point given that the number of Jews from
Russian seeking to obtain Israeli citizenship is two and a half times greater
than for any year since the end of the 1990s. And they also see dramatic
changes in the composition of this flow.
Ekho Rossii interviewed several of
those who have moved to Israel. Their comments say a great deal about broader
processes in the Russian Federation.
Dramatist Mikhail Kaluzhny said he had wanted to leave in 1991 but
decided against it until finishing his university coursework.
Then on graduation, he said, he
delayed going because “all the most interestsing” developments where occurring then
in Russia. “Why leave?” But “now,” Kaluzhny said, he had made the decision to
leave because the surrounding political, emotional and everyday environment had
alienated him and left him with little hope for Russia.
He said that his departure was “directly
connected with politics.” First of all, he visited the Maidan in Kyiv and
recognized that no such protest was ever likely to happen in Russia. T Then the
Russian government blocked foreign grants which were critical to the operation
of his profession.
Finally, “after Crimea,” he said,
his family was driven by “a desire to distance itself” from all this, above all
from the [Russian] government.”
Officials in Israel say that those
new repatriants “especially from Russia” are taking Israeli citizenship not so
much out of a great love for Israel but rather because they are angry or
fearful about conditions in the country in which they had been living. Such
repatriants are on average “younger, healthier, and smarter” than those who
came earlier.
At the end of the 1990s, “two thirds
of the repatriation were from the periphery, from very small cities. But the
current Aliya to judge by the structure of the last three years consists of
people from two major cities, Moscow and St. Petersburg.” We observe” Israeli
experts say, that the current wave largely consists of the creative
intelligentsia.
Vladimir Yakovlev is a
representative of this group. The founder of the “Kommersant” publishing house
and the “Snob” portal, he arrived in Israel seven months ago; but he said that
he feels himself completely at home because “my circle of contacts here almost
completely corresponds with what it was in Moscow.”
“We llive in one apartment building
with friends from Moscow. I meet people onteh street whom I constantly met in
Moscow … This isn’t a matter of every second person but every first.” Those who
are leaving now, he said are doing so because “they are afraid to be where they
would like to live.”
According to Yakovlev, the reason so
many find they cannot stay in Russia is that “there is no generally accepted
and understood system of values” in that country. “This means that there is no common
security, no common social guarantees, no striving for culture and education,
not even a striving for work. There is none of this.”
As a result of the failure of Russia’s
rulers to articulate such a set of values in the 1990s, life in that country
has become a kind of “Russian roulette.” Everyday you fear that something you
don’t expect will happen to you – and even when it doesn’t, you live with the
fear that it will.
The people who are leaving Russia
now, Yakovlev continues, “are the young intellectual elite of the country. For any
civilized country, the young intellectual elite is the highest value which
exists because it is the future of the country.” But Russia doesn’t care about
it and thus is fated to become “a giant raw materials supplier” to others.
That has always been true in Russia,
he said, only the methods of repression against the intellectual elite have
changed. Stalin shot them. Brezhnev “marginalized them.” Putin “is driving the
intellectual elite out of the country.”
And many of them are landing in Israeli which is more than happy to
receive them.
Kaluzhny seconded that view: “Out
compatriots in their majority are unfortunately a guarantee that after this
Putin there will be another Putin. The level of aggression and force which
makes Putin Putin isn’t changing … I am not certain that the situation in Russia
will ever change significantly.”
That is
why people are leaving. They can imagine that there will arise “in Riga,
Berlin, Tel Aviv or Montenegro some kind of intensive cnetrs of Russian
cultural life which perhaps will not be important sources of inspiration for
hundreds of thousands of people. But for hundreds and thousands, they will be.”
No comments:
Post a Comment