Paul Goble
Staunton,
February 22 – John
Herbst and Sergey Yerofeyev of the Atlantic Council have prepared a 64-page
report on The Putin Exodus (in Russian) that focuses on the brain drain
that the departure of as many as two million people from the Russian Federation
since Vladimir Putin came to power (publications.atlanticcouncil.org/putinskiy-iskhod/putinskiy-iskhod.pdf).
It is an important study that makes
the point that “human capital is leaving Russia” in order to life and work in
places where they can feel free and better use their talents,” The New Times says
in a summary published today (newtimes.ru/articles/detail/177425). As a result, Russia is suffering one of the most
serious brain drains of any country in the world.
The report describes the ways in
which highly educated Russians who are often doing relatively well
professionally in Russia nonetheless seek to live abroad rather than under
Putin and suggests that many of them might return once the Kremlin leader
passes from the scene and Russia may become more free.
All that is true and the
documentation Herbst and Yerofeyev provide is welcome. But in three important respects, it understates
the significance of the Russian emigration at present. First, by fitting the
Russian flow into the general literature on brain drains in general, it
understates the political nature of those who are fleeing Putin’s rule.
Second, it does not focus on the enormous
diversity, professional, social and ethnic, of this diaspora. The two million include
not only Russians but the nations of the North Caucasus who have been repressed
even more than the dominant nation and who remain in close touch with their
communities at home via Internet.
And third, it does not focus on the
political organizations of the emigres ranging from Russian nationalists to liberal
democrats to ethnic activists of all kinds.
This variety resembles more the flight of some two million people from
Bolshevik rule in the years of the Russian Civil War.
All three of these things call out
for more attention than they have received so far not only because this
emigration in its diversity may be the future of Russian but also because its
members provide important sources of insight into what is going on outside of the
usual circles Western diplomats and scholars focus on.
One could give dozens of examples of
this from Chechens in Europe to Jews in Israel to Russians of various kinds in
places across the planet. To give just one example of how diverse and interesting
this emigration (and not just brain drain) is, consider the following Facebook
post today by Vadim Shtepa, the Karelian regionalist who now lives in Tallinn.
He writes: “You know how Russian
emigres differ from one another in the Baltic countries/ In Lithuania, there live
liberal imperialists. They dream of replacing a bad Kremlin tsar with a good
one. But the Moscow empire in their view must beyond question be preserved” (facebook.com/vadim.shtepa/posts/2270231753027802).
“In
Latvia,” Shtepa continues, “lives Russian nationalist Dimitry Savvin who wants
to replace the Russian empire with ‘a Russian nation state … “And only in
Estonia lives two rock-and-roll scoundrels – Artemy Troitsky and Vadim
Shtepa. They want to destroy this empire
down to its foundations.”
This
emigration awaits its historians. In the meantime, all who follow what goes on
in Russia need also to focus on what goes in in these various émigré centers just
as Western scholars two and three generations ago learned much of what they
knew about Russia under the Bolsheviks by reading and studying under those who
fled that tyranny.
The
time to do so has come again, and the two million people from within the
current borders of the Russian Federation can provide insights every bit as
important as those who fled communism in the past.
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