Russian Scholars Emigrating at Rate as High as in First Post-Soviet Years, HSE Study Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 25 – Despite the president of the Russian Academy of Sciences having declared that Russian scholars who left in 2022 are now returning in large numbers and that the threat of a brain drain has passed (technosuveren.ru/glava-ran-process-utechki-mozgov-iz-rossii-priostanovilsja/), a new Higher School of Economics study reaches the opposite conclusion.

            According to new research by researchers at Moscow’s HSE as reported by the Accent portal, “the emigration of Russian scholars has now reached a level comparable to that in the period of the disintegration of the USSR” with the country losing approximately 0.8 percent of its researchers each year (akcent.site/eksklyuziv/41229).

            The HSE study says that there has been a significant slowing in the number leaving since 2022 when many fled in horror at Putin’s expanded invasion of Ukraine, but it concludes that the flight of leading Russian scholars has not been reversed and that the country is already paying a heavy price for this.

            In reporting this investigation on the Accent portal, Artyom Goryainov says that the HSE says that this “brain drain” is harming both the Russian academic community and the economy of Rusia as a whole and is calling for immediate steps to “hold the best minds” inside the country. But what should be done, he says, “even the HSE researches don’t know.”