Russians Abroad Today No More Likely to Return Voluntarily than DPs who Fought Being Returned to USSR after World War II

            Staunton, Oct. 26 – Unless there are radical changes in Russia itself, Moscow will succeed in attracting back 500,000 Russians from abroad over the next eight years, Novyye izvestiya says. And the Russian government has admitted as much by assigning the task of getting them to not just to Russian diplomats but to officers of the interior ministry.

            In an unsigned article, it lists the some of the most obvious reasons for that conclusion (newizv.ru/article/general/26-10-2021/rodina-zhdet-no-ne-ochen-pochemu-ne-udastsya-vernut-500-tysyach-russkih-emigrantov). These include:

·         According to the World Bank, more than 11 million people have left the Russian Federation. “If one excludes pensioners, this is 10 percent of the working-age population.”

·         The outflow of capital this year alone is nearly 80 billion US dollars, far above the 50 billion predicted.

·         Russian business is dying not growing and employment opportunities especially for the educated are limited. And the share of small businesses in the Russian economy is much smaller than in other countries.

·         Mortality is high and rising.

·         Nearly half of Russians between 15 and 23 – 44 percent – want to move abroad.

·         “The brain drain from Russia has become catastrophic,” with approximately 100,000 highly trained specialists and scholars leaving in recent years.

·         And the prospects for Russian in the future are much worse than for other countries.

“This list could be extended at will,” Novyye izvestiya says, “but even if one doesn’t, it is absolutely obvious that there are no bases for the return of 500,000 emigres to the Russian Federation.” And seeking to achieve this voluntarily will be no more successful that Soviet efforts to get DPs to return after World War II.