According to UN data, the number of people from Russia who have moved abroad for permanent residence has already exceeded 10 million people.
Russians emigrate abroad not only temporarily for work, but also move permanently to live abroad. To which countries do Russians go, what makes them succumb to "suitcase mood" – these questions were investigated by "Russkaya Germaniya".
In search of a new homeland
Almost every ten years in Russia's history, one can observe an outflow of population to foreign shores. Between 1880 and 1914, two million Jews emigrated from the Russian Empire in an attempt to escape pogroms. Then came the Russian Revolution, which expelled 1.4 million people, including the intellectual elite – writers Ivan Bunin, Vladimir Nabokov, helicopter designer Igor Sikorsky, composer Sergei Rachmaninoff, microbiologist and ecologist Sergei Vinogradsky, geologist Valerian Agafonov, and others.
There is no reliable statistics on migration during the early Soviet Union: demographic statistics were more propaganda than science then. But three major waves of emigration are commonly considered. During World War II, between 700,000 and 1 million people left the country – mostly anti-communists, Soviet prisoners of war, or draft dodgers. Several decades later, 2 million Jews fled to settle in the West, mainly in Israel and the United States.
Then, with the weakening of border controls in the late 1980s, people began to move across Russia's border in both directions. Thus, 3 million ethnic Russians returned from former Soviet republics, while at the same time 700,000 ethnic Russians and 300,000 Soviet Jews left the country, and the total number of Jewish emigrants after the collapse of the Soviet bloc exceeded 1 million.
Initially, migration was driven by ideology, but after the collapse of the USSR, even more people began to leave their homeland and head to the West to support their families (so-called "sausage" emigrants). Russian officials and oligarchs were also not averse to sending their children abroad, where they studied and subsequently stayed to work.
The arrival of President Putin led to a decline in emigration rates – there were quite obvious reasons for this: rising living standards and political stability. In addition, intensive labor migration from former Soviet republics began to Russia, and their numbers exceeded the number of emigrating ethnic Russians. According to data from the analytical organization Stratfor, after a peak in 2000, the number of Russian emigrants decreased from about 146,000 to just 32,000 in 2009 – despite the economic crisis.
But since 2012, the situation has changed in the opposite direction. The number of Russians leaving the country has been steadily growing: from almost 37,000 in 2011 to 350,000 in 2015. According to a June report by the company Stratfor, a new wave of emigration began in 2011, when the parliamentary elections were widely considered unfair, and Putin announced that he would return for a third term. These events sparked protests, which the Kremlin suppressed and continues to suppress to this day with the help of tough policies and restrictions.
The authorities, on the one hand, do not want to change anything, frozen in the state of the end of Putin's second term; on the other hand, they are tightening the screws, clearly showing that they intend to fight. More and more and more surprising laws are being passed, such as the law on foreign agents or the Yarovaya anti-terrorism law, along with the National Guard and the fight against the "fifth column." All political discussions are reduced to the phrase "There is Putin – there is Russia!" This systemic degradation of the public sphere, when all non-governmental initiatives and organizations are slowly but surely being rolled under the asphalt – from the closure of RBC to attempts to seize the originally grassroots "Immortal Regiment" by raiding – drives active citizens to foreign shores.
Other reasons why people prefer to choose another country as their homeland are two wars – Ukraine and Syria, which have resulted in direct military intervention at least in areas where Russians live and increased tension in Russia's Islamic regions.
Another factor is the economic crisis, which began before the fall in oil prices and the imposition of sanctions. Without systemic reforms, the Russian economy faces at best stagnation, but no one is discussing systemic reforms under the current political leadership. Some do not want to listen to Medvedev's "there is no money, but you hang in there," so they go abroad for the opportunity not to live on credit and not to pay half their salary for renting a room.
New political migrants?
These harsh measures have forced a number of political activists, human rights defenders, environmentalists, journalists, scientists, and entrepreneurs (along with their businesses) to leave the country. Many activists in 2011–2012 moved to Lithuania. Many of them had criminal cases opened against them, received threats, and could not carry out their professional activities, and they had to emigrate – sometimes not in a simple way. For example, civil activist Daniil Konstantinov, initially without any visa, made his way to Lithuania via Thailand and Georgia.
Also left were the founder of VimpelCom Dmitry Zimin, opposition activist Garry Kasparov, former vice-rector of the Higher School of Economics Konstantin Sonin, and journalist Leonid Bershidsky. More and more companies have also begun to seek foreign residency: the founder of VKontakte moved his business to the United Arab Emirates, and the seventh largest Russian internet provider Game Insight moved to Lithuania.
According to data from the organization Stratfor, emigration increased from 2014 amid tense relations with the West over Ukraine – especially in the months when an airliner was shot down over Ukraine and Russia annexed Crimea. The Russian government was little concerned that Russia was facing times of "brain drain" and the flight of the intelligentsia.
“We Are Not Needed”
Besides the so-called “creative class,” ordinary people are also leaving – in search of a better life. In particular, wealthy professionals in their fields – sailors, engineers, cooks and bakers, various managers, directors, and executives. According to Rosstat, for work abroad, Russians prefer European countries – they account for over 30%. Traditionally, Germany, Malta, and Greece, as well as the USA, are especially popular. Sailors who go to work on ships under foreign flags most often find jobs in offshore countries – Cyprus, the Bahamas, Antigua and Barbuda, Liberia, Malta, the Marshall Islands.
Furthermore, recently there has been a trend of many Russians moving abroad for permanent residence. According to the UN, the number of people from Russia living abroad exceeds 10.6 million. According to data from the Levada Center, the number of those who want to move to another country is much larger than in the grim and hopeless 1990s, despite growing nationalism and patriotic sentiment in Russia. True, wanting does not mean leaving: not everyone can afford an expensive move.
In one interview with Radio Liberty, a sociologist and employee of the Levada Center notes that the feeling “we are not needed” is evenly spread across all population groups. This “we are not needed” breaks through even more strongly in conversations of ordinary people without higher education. “Those people who were forced to leave a large factory to work at an auto repair shop, sell in a kiosk, or do something else that, by Soviet standards, was considered dishonorable activity – they have a heavy feeling that they are not needed by their homeland. Those who make these tanks, perhaps strategically meaningless, have a sense of mission, but those who change tires at a tire shop do not have this sense of mission; that is, they earn money for their children – and that’s it. Soviet and post-Soviet people are used to living for something big. The existing ideological system has failed to provide this feeling.”
Policy of Unfreedom
The damage from the loss of highly skilled workers will not be long in coming – so say analysts from the Stratfor center. Russian education and healthcare will be in a state of stagnation, innovative companies and projects will settle outside Russia, and private entrepreneurship in the country will shrink. In its June report, Stratfor says that “Russia is already depressingly behind the global average in terms of funds allocated to research and development, but the loss of the people behind this activity will accelerate this trend. As a result, Russians will continue to depend on state-owned enterprises and revenues from energy exports to stay afloat, making the entire country vulnerable to external shocks, such as changes in oil prices.”
The Kremlin partially understands that “brain drain” will lead to nothing good. For two years, scientists were incentivized to stay in Russia, promising to pay them a grant of $428 million per year for their developments, but it is unclear who got how much and whether it was paid. The Skolkovo innovation center was opened in the Moscow suburbs, which was supposed to become Russia’s Silicon Valley, where about 850 enterprises, technology companies, and startups could be located. Although the center is not yet fully built, more than 100 companies are already working there. However, American and European investors no longer want to invest in the project’s development, given the new “Iron Curtain” between Russia and the West.
The Government of the Russian Federation is trying to stop capital flight by influencing large investors, for example, VTB, to invest in Russia rather than abroad. Current Russian anti-offshore laws require citizens and firms to inform tax authorities about all foreign trade transactions, and government officials cannot have foreign bank accounts or own property abroad. Citizens’ foreign accounts are also monitored – when opening an account abroad, one must notify the Federal Tax Service of the Russian Federation.
However, such harsh measures are unlikely to encourage people and companies to stay in Russia. According to sociologist Igor Eidman, author of the books “Social Internet Revolution” and “Putin’s New National Idea,” a person in Russia is inherently unfree, and therefore deprived of conditions for creative self-realization. “Vladimir Putin, like a thrifty serf owner who cherishes especially valuable peasants, is indignant that foreign funds are ‘vacuuming out’ young talents from Russia. But he cannot offer the ‘creative class’ the most important thing – economic and spiritual freedom. Therefore, his serf innovators flee to countries more comfortable for them.”
Fortunately for the Kremlin, not everyone leaves – with an imaginary sparkling Paris and the slogan “Time to get out!” Anthropologists say there are two types of nations: those that change themselves rather than reality, and those that change reality rather than themselves. Everyone chooses their own type – and in just the past year, 350 thousand people chose to leave and change themselves to fit another country that instills in them hope for a successful future.