If Putin is Forced to Block Emigration, His Regime’s Demise will be Approaching, Inozemtsev Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Aug.21 – The main factor that distinguishes Russian reality now and that of the last years of Soviet power is the openness of borders that allows citizens of the Russian Federation to move abroad, Vladislav Inozemtsev says. If Putin is forced to end that arrangement to ensure he has enough troops and to stop the brain drain, his regime will be in deep trouble.

            According to the Russian commentator, “the most important reason for the collapse of the USSR was that Soviet citizens couldn’t leave the country in massive numbers.” Those who wanted change in their lives and thus had to work for it at home rather than seek it abroad (moscowtimes.ru/2024/08/21/postsovetskaya-dilemma-zakrit-granitsu-ili-smiritsya-s-utechkoi-mozgov-i-begstvom-rekrutov-a139914).

            Insufficient attention has been given to the relationship between the right to leave and political change, Inozemtsev suggests. Because people have been able to leave Russia and other post-Soviet states since 1991, “nowhere have protests generated by economic discontent had significant consequences” on political arrangements.

            As long as exit is possible, “economic difficulties have been viewed as something to which an individual response can and should be sought” in particular by leaving the country “while political challenges” require remaining and coming up with “a collective response” to put pressure on the regimes.

“The behavior of Russians in recent years has not gone beyond this pattern,” the economist and political commentator continues. “The worsening relations with the West during the war signaled the inevitable emergence of economic difficulties and led to the first wartime wave of emigration.” A second was “provoked by mobilization, but the exodus continues.

That means that if the Russian economy slows or even slides into a crisis, “the response will not be mass protests but the sale of existing assets and attempts to leave the counry precisely by those groups most inclined to be angered by that course of developments, Inozemtsev stresses.

Consequently, the Kremlin “should not be afraid of a recession as that will ensure political stability for the time being … at least as long as the borders are kept open.” But keeping them open “will not be easy” as the outflow of labor and potential draftees is likely to continue and make it hard for the regime to carry out its policies.

Since Putin came to power, some 4.5 million people have left Russia; and 70 percent of the most recent wave consists of cities with populations of more than 500,000, Inozemtsev says, precisely the people on whom the Russian economy relies. But had those people not been allowed to leave, there would have been more protests and Putin’s support would be less.

“’Tightening the screws’ and reducing the standard of living are only possible if there is the opportunity for individuals to exit from the paradise under construction,” Inozemtsev says. “If that is eliminated, then the instability of the system will increase radically,” as happened in the late 1980s.

The Kremlin appears to know this and had kept the borders open, but “it may happen that the authorities will have to take extreme measures,” including closing the borders. But if it does so, then “the end of the regime will be very close,” the commentator concludes.