Putin Generation Doesn’t Want to Work for the State but Rather to Live Abroad, New HeadHunter Poll Finds

Paul Goble

            Staunton, July 5 – A new poll conducted by the HeadHunter portal finds that 41 percent of those between the ages of 14 and 22, Russians who have grown up entirely under Vladimir Putin, want to work for international corporations so that they can leave the country at the first opportunity.

            Only 19 percent of young Russians want to enter government service, half as many as in 2016, the last time HeadHunter did a survey of this type.  “Such a catastrophic level of escapism, commentator Anton Chablin says, “the country has never known before: an entire generation doesn’t connect its future with its native country (svpressa.ru/society/article/237334/).

                Seventeen percent say they dream of becoming freelancers, and only five percent are ready to work in the educational system, and even fewer. As Chablin notes, these findings undercut the stereotype that young people want to join the bureaucracy.  In fact, young Russians have a negative view of the bureaucracy, believing that it offers only low pay and high stress. 

            Other new surveys, he says, confirm this potentially unsettling conclusion (vedomosti.ru/management/articles/2019/07/02/805537-pochemu-molodezh). And the attitudes toward state service and about emigration are increasingly linked as economic conditions in Russia deteriorate.

            “It is extremely indicative,” the commentator says, “that from the beginning of the economic crisis, the outflow of citizens has sharply increased: Over the last five year, 1.7 million have emigrated, of which almost 280,000 have moved to countries” beyond the borders of what was the USSR. 

            Twenty-four thousand have gone to Germany, 8,000 to the US, and 5,000 each to Estonia and Israel. The actual numbers, of course, are much higher. Russian government statistics understate the outflow both because of a desire not to offend the Kremlin and because of the way in which emigres are counted.

            Putin’s press secretary Dmitry Peskov has dismissed the number wanting to leave according to earlier surveys as “not so big.” It is very much an open question whether he would do the same to the latest findings showing that four out of every ten young Russians now wants to live abroad.