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The Putin Exodus: The New Russian Brain Drain
- baybal2 8y agoMini-AMA, anybody? For me myself, left as an exchange student 12 years ago. Been back for a few months after being kicked out of Canada in 2016, almost got robbed the first time I went out late. Back in 2007, it was very certain that the country was bordering on turning North Korea any day. As somebody faring from a more or less privileged background, my parents heard of credible rumour of Kremlin looking up to "quick, clean war," and that was the last straw for them. I saw tons and tons other far-easterners from Russia in China, Vietnam, Malaysia, South Korea. Some leave for jobs, some move permanently. Back in nineties, there were mostly engineers leaving for plumpy jobs in Chinese state companies, but in this wave I see far more regular people.
- doombolt 8y agoI'm not planning to leave Russia just yet, due to being a Russian nationalist with a family, but I can sure answer any questions. The trend (or rather, reversal of previous trend) surely exists. Upd: HN, the place where you get downvotes by agreeing to answer some questions. That's why I stopped coming.
- skilled 8y agoThis might be unrelated (slightly), but how is Russia coping with things like LGBT? And how has the 'work life' changed in the last 20 years? Basically, since the Internet became a thing. Can you tell a distinct difference?
- doombolt 8y agoI don't really know any LGBT in person so it's hard to say. I think nobody will bother you if you stay clandestine. I guess the public opinion in this area is shitty but it is universal quality of public opinion in Russia. I was on internet before my first job so ot is hard to say. It's a mixed bag. There are jobs which are bureaucratic hell (especially in large Soviet-survivor companies outside large cities), there are jobs which pay peanuts and productivity is non-existent (government sector), but then there's modern economy with nice offices, passable atmosphere and fine work-life balance. If you're not in IT and not splurging on natural resources wealth somehow, the pay is low.
- saiya-jin 8y agoAs for LGBT - once the society is truly free, tons of people come forward with it. You would be surprised how many around you would fall into this category. I could witness this trend in 3 different countries as it unfolded. Another thing is, since this 'freedom' for LGBT is relatively very new, most of them experienced very troubled childhood/puberty. It must have been very hard to fit in, not disappoint parents etc. yet feeling so out of place compared to rest of the crowd. Russia as a nation would benefit greatly from such an openness in long term, but I can't see it happening anytime soon. Been there once (Elbrus), generally common folks are really nice, but this soviet mindset of fuck-it-all-lets-drink-some-vodka (and other like that) are bane of a modern free Russian society. One of examples how just having a lot of smart people isn't enough if there is enough negative things to counter-balance it. World moved to greener pastures, but Russia still seems like stuck in 1991.
- iaml 8y agoOn the first part, they don't. It's pretty common to hate on any kind of lgbt even amongst more educated slices of population like it people.
- EugeneOZ 8y agoIt is a real risk for your life to be "open gay" in Russia. Sometimes your father can kill you just to "wash out the shame" from the family. Sometimes government can take back adopted child if parents are gay. Russia is a wild country in a lot of aspects, and this one is the most wild.
- inn_shopper 8y ago> how is Russia coping with things like LGBT Well, some Russian region (Chechnya) opened a concentration camp for them. So you can get an idea.
- michaelscott 8y agoFrom your insider's perspective, what's the probable cause/s for this happening? I'm guessing it's because there are better opportunities for a person's career in nearby Europe? And if there is stagnation in job development, is it because of the government's running of the country or are there other factors at play?
- doombolt 8y agoThe atmosphere is totally unhealthy, wages stagnate or fall for most of workers, and there is no optimism for the future. In some areas Russia still becomes a better place to live, but if you compare it to Europe proper it still lacks in so many ways and the gap is not closing anytime soon, if not getting wider. And the only news which come is about new restrictions on public life and political free speech. As my colleague said to me 5 years back, "all of my canaries are now dead"
- csdvrx 8y ago> As my colleague said to me 5 years back, "all of my canaries are now dead" Your colleague should not keep his canaries in a mine in Siberia! Joke aside, thanks for your comment, sorry for the downvotes, and good luck to you
- ohaideredevs 8y ago1. What makes you stay? 2. Were you one of the people who gave Putya credit for fighting corruption and dreamed that he would invest in small business and education, but then those hopes and dreams were crushed?
- doombolt 8y ago1. I have a family and I enjoy living in a place where Russian is spoken primarily and Russian culture is dominant. 2. Maybe I was like that before 2008 or so. Didn't make a difference either way.
- sevensor 8y agoYou call yourself a nationalist -- is patriotism or love of country one of your reasons for staying?
- doombolt 8y agoDefinitely. I am more concerned with Russian people and our culture, though, than with loyality to a country as a regime plus set of borders. If there was other Russian state, like Taiwan is for China, I think I'd jump ship and go for it. There isn't. Upd: HN throttles me so have to answer here: Even before 2014, Ukraine put their bet on propelling Ukrainian language and culture. Which from my perspective put them in the same ballpark as Czechia or Croatia. Surely, most people in Ukraine still speak Russian but their culture is 2nd class citizen. Belarus is a small and boring dictatorship. They're either going the way of Ukraine or, as rumors go, get annexed by Russia. Back to square one. But otherwise it could be an option. As for placing interests of Russia above my own: aren't we all do it sometimes in any country? Actually this is a trick question since Russians as a nation way overspent on loyalty to regimes in XX century.
- jcranmer 8y ago> If there was other Russian state, like Taiwan is for China, I think I'd jump ship and go for it. There isn't. Are Belarus and Ukraine too distinct from Russia to you? I realize that historically, these were part of Ruthenia and then Lithuania (and Poland-Lithuania), but ethnographically, they are still part of the Rus cultural spectrum like Novgorod and Muscovy were and unlike, say, Kazakhstan or Georgia.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- dsfyu404ed 8y ago>Upd: HN, the place where you get downvotes by agreeing to answer some questions. That's why I stopped coming. I think you might have meant "Russian national" instead of "Russian nationalist". Calling ones self a nationalist around here is highly unpopular because that term is loaded with negative connotations for left leaning upper middle class Americans that mostly make up HN. You say "nationalist" and people think of someone that stands for everything that's the opposite of they do and then they down-vote.
- wolfgke 8y agoTo me, as a German, doombolt calling himself a Russian nationalist is no signal for downvoting, but rather a signal that the answers that he will give could be from a pro-Russian perspective - so only ask if you are sufficiently open-minded to hear answers that might change your mind or are outside your echo chamber.
- sdwa 8y ago> left leaning upper middle class Americans No, if there's a negative reaction to nationalism, there's more to it than that. Nationalism gave us two world wars, a number of civil wars and a few genocides in the 20th century. Nationalism is repugnant to many who are right wing and/or not upper middle class.
- nicwilson 8y ago> Upd: HN, the place where you get downvotes by agreeing to answer some questions. That's why I stopped coming. That may be because you wrote Russian nationalist (a person with strong patriotic feelings), when you possibly meant Russian national (a citizen of a particular country).
- EugeneOZ 8y agoI was happy to downvote a russian nationalist. I have no regrets that you will not come back. Продолжай подмахивать Путлеру.
- danmaz74 8y ago"... nationalist" sounds to me like somebody who wants to impose the power of their nation on other nations. I suppose that's why you got downvoted (I didn't).
- nine_k 8y agoA nationalist is someone who holds the well-being of their nation as a high-priority thing. This does not necessarily make a nationalist an enemy of other nations: nationalists are usually preoccupied with the well-being of their own nation, and just want other nations peacefully mind their business. This is how a nationalist can strongly oppose a nation's current government, when the government is not caring for the nation's prosperity (in the nationalist's eyes). Most liberation movements across the world were and are openly nationalist.
- atemerev 8y agoAm Russian, a software engineering consultant, currently living in Switzerland, do not plan to come back to Russia if I can help it, conditions there are rapidly deteriorating (more socially than economically), especially since 2014. Currently doing some work to reverse the damage that Russian government did to social media and information sharing in general.
- sam_lowry_ 8y agoWhat work, exactly?
- atemerev 8y agoA real time network analysis and "tainting" engine, allowing to map bot and sockpuppet account networks and trace the originators of disinformation, currently at the prototype stage (Twitter-only, only simple tracing and tainting propagator algorithms work).
- sevensor 8y agoDo you have family who remain? If so, how do they view your life abroad?
- atemerev 8y agoI do. They are more or less apolitical and supportive; but I am very lucky that this is the case. I know many families who has been irreversibly split and their members do not talk to each other due to political conflicts.
- smoyer 8y agoShouldn't we also be asking U.S. citizens whether they're considering leaving due to Trump's presidency?
- krapp 8y agoWell... unlike with Russia, Americans could actually vote Trump out if they wanted to.
- scottlocklin 8y agoTrump aside, the US has steadily become more authoritarian and insane since 2001, and the main argument for staying is you might not find anything better outside of the imperial center. Both political parties are basically "banks, looting and eternal war" parties who don't care about ordinary people, and who use political wedge issues, sexual politics and paranoid propaganda to divide the people. Outside of the upper middle class "money spigot" cities most of American HN readers lives in, you see widespread social and physical decay. Nobody is doing anything about it. Most people don't even notice, because they're drugged to the gills and obsessed with what the propaganda tells them about the dangers posed by their fellow countrymen and various invaders and imaginary bugaboos, such as the whole "Muh Russia" conspiracy theory touted in most of the mass media, or the "AI apocalypse" nonsense the Davos types are presently selling us to excuse not fixing bridges and the opioid epidemic. Arguments for staying: high rate of pay I guess. Also, maybe some people enjoy living this way. I don't!
- ohaideredevs 8y agoThat's kind of a convincing argument.
- iaml 8y agoWell, if we are talking about IT specialists, it's becoming really worrisome that if you don't leave now you 1) won't be able to in the future 2) won't have the same work environment you are used to inside the country. For context, recent attempt at blocking telegram resulted in blanket bans of hosters networks like aws and digitalocean, some of those include IT sites. None of those have been lifted since btw. Now there is also talk of intranet isolation which a lot of people think has nothing to do with external threats, but instead is intended to control and block more of the resources for russian people. It is common knowledge that every provider is required to install government sanction devices(сорм) that route traffic through itself. Yeah and they started requiring vpn providers to block the sites they ask them to, or get blocked themselves.
- rwz 8y agoAm Russian, software engineer, left ~8 years ago, currently in US (Seattle) on a greencard. Not planning on coming back, or even visiting for what it's worth. In all these 8 years been to Russia once for a week.
- EugeneOZ 8y agoActually Putin just raised the temp a little (because it's became dangerous to live in Russia if you don't like Putin), but this process was predictable and unstoppable: almost every country in the world has better quality of life, climate and level of culture. Don't be fooled with Dostoyevsky and Chaikovsky legacy - these times are gone and people who had read more than 1 book of Dostoevsky or can name at least one work of Chaikovsky - they are pretty rare, around 0.01% of population. If you have good education - it's a reason to hate you. If you can't afford good education but read a lot of books - it's a reason to hate you even more. And I'm talking not about hatred from kids - adult, grown up people sincerely HATE anybody who loves ANY kind of culture. Books, dancing, music - anything. So when internet removed the borders, it was just question of time when "brains" will start "draining".
- senderista 8y agoDoesn’t sound so different from the US.
- EugeneOZ 8y agoheh. Do you live in US? If you do (and only if you do), will it be risky for your life, health or freedom to write tweet "I hate POTUS"? Is there a 100% guarantee that you will be beaten by police if you dare enough to show your political disagreement with the president on the street? If no - you're living in a VERY different country. I'm not fan of US, but comparison of US and Russia is a really ridiculous thing.
- AnimalMuppet 8y agoI live in the US. I would expect that if I went downtown on a street corner tonight and started screaming "#$%@% the president", I would get some dark looks, and perhaps some covert signs of approval. The police might show up, but if they did, it would be because I was disturbing the peace, not for the content of what I said. I haven't actually tried the experiment, so I could be under-estimating what the reaction would be. But, yeah, I agree. People who equate the two countries don't get it. That said, doombolt quoted a colleague as saying "all of my canaries are now dead". Well, most of mine are still alive, but they don't look too healthy...
- empath75 8y agoJust for context, the Atlantic council is a think tank created to support nato and the American-European alliance in general, so take this with the appropriate numbers of grains of salt.
- scottlocklin 8y agoOr for a more aggressive line "you know how the US has been agitating for war with Russia for the last decade or so? Well, you can partially blame these guys." Also, speaking of foreign interference: https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/support/supporters https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/support/supporters
- simonh 8y agoSo Russia annexes Crimea and sends troops into Eastern Ukrain and Georgian territory, even shooting down an airliner, and it's the US agitating for war. Really? Or maybe those were proportionate, even restrained responses to warmongering activities by the US, such as.... er... the Obama attempt at a diplomatic 'reset' with Russia perhaps? Maybe it was scrapping the Bush era defence shield plan that pushed them over the edge, or maybe cancelling sanctions against the Russian arms export agency was the last straw. In fact this is probably literally true. If there's anything we've learned about Putin, it's that cutting him slack just gives him more rope with which to hang you later.
- scottlocklin 8y agoThe US fomented a coup in Ukraine, an effort the Atlantic Council was deeply involved in, and the east of Ukraine has historically always been a part of Russia. We're presently overtly looting the place 3 ways to Christmas; something you'd know if we had a media system which allowed people to notice. FWIIW I've been in Crimea before the annexation, and my informal poll is those people wanted to be part of Russia (they tried to secede from Ukraine in 95). Wake me up when Russia foments a coup in Canada and the US annexes Vancouver or whatever. Russian government isn't nice, but the US and Nato have done nothing but make the situation worse, and justify Russian repression.
- jatsign 8y agoThis is the problem with regimes that value ideology above all else. The most fiercely partisan to the ideology, whether or not they truly believe in it, rise to the top, regardless of actual talent. Anyone who is more pragmatic is forced out. And those with desirable skills will have an easier time leaving.
- sam_lowry_ 8y agoThere's a dinstinct lack of ideology is contemporary Russia.
- jatsign 8y agoSometimes an ideology is just a rationalized cult of personality.
- EugeneOZ 8y agoYou are wrong. There is a pretty bold ideology in Russia: Putin is a god-blessed King, Orthodox Christianity is more important than any kind of science.
- sam_lowry_ 8y agoIdeology none believes in should be called differently.
- nine_k 8y agoMaybe it's just your observation bias. Try talking to some blue-collar people in a provincial town.
- postsantum 8y agoChurch attendance is hovering around 4% and the absolute majority are old women. While a lot of people consider themselves "culturally christian", religion doesn't play a significant role in common people's lives
- cat199 8y agocurious timing (e.g. Mueller report), only a few months ago these 'brain draining' expatriates were mainly present to influence local elections: https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/new-atlanticist/congress-should-explain-how-dark-russian-money-infiltrates-western-democracies https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/new-atlanticist/congre...
- sdwa 8y agoThe article you have linked says nothing of the sort.
- gameswithgo 8y agocurious timing is the laziest of arguments. for any thing that happens there are always present a few dozen interesting coincidences.
- cat199 8y agounless you are dealing with a politically minded ngo. timing is everything.
- dsabanin 8y agoI’m part if that immigration wave, as well as my brother and a friend. Thankfully there was an opportunity to do that since we all worked in IT and employed for the same company that we helped to build remotely. The political climate and economic instability, combined with knowledge of historical precedents makes me believe that Russian people’s future is very dim, as is their past over the whole life of that troubled country. When we immigrated in 2012, I already had a son and as a father I couldn’t find it conscionable to state. I didn’t want to be someone who decided to stay in Germany of 1935.
- johnchristopher 8y ago> I didn’t want to be someone who decided to stay in Germany of 1935. What are you referring to exactly ?
- EugeneOZ 8y agoIt's obvious that border will be closed soon and people will have no choice to support Putin's regime or not. Right now russian government is trying to create own "internet", separated from the global net, control every call/sms on the phones and every bit of traffic. Law about the "fake news" started today: if some person wrote a commentary (or post/article) about the people from the government (or their friends) and content was negative, then this person will be charged with fee. If you think that somebody is going to check that news are real or not - you have no idea about "laws" in russia :)
- loriverkutya 8y agoLet me help you: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1935_in_Germany https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1935_in_Germany
- johnchristopher 8y agoOh, thanks. Now I totally see which aspects of 1935 in Germany parent has in mind when thinking about contemporary Russia. I can see how Sarah Kirsch's birth was a foretelling sign for things to come. Totally helping, totally awesome.
- Tade0 8y agoI know a Russian national who moved from Moscow to Warsaw and, for the time being, is not planning on returning. The reasons are not political though. Even though her salary effectively halved, she says her quality of life generally improved, because: 1. The weather is better. 2. The food is better. 3. People are nicer. Which caught me off guard somewhat because Poland is not really known for any of these things. Hell, for the exactly same reasons I spend a considerable fraction of the year in Italy instead of Warsaw where I'm based.
- Grue3 8y agoAs someone who is currently living in Russia (not voluntarily, I was born there and still haven't managed to get out), I can see the results of the brain drain myself. I'm currently trying to hire a Python programmer for the company I work at, and the quality of the candidates I have to interview is absolutely dire. Even though the pay for this position is really good. I'm pretty sure anyone half-decent has left the country already.
- brunkerhart 8y agoJust out of curiosity, what salary you compare with when saying it's really good? Salary is not the only motivator. What is the size of your company? How it is rated as an employer?
- csomar 8y agoAnyone think this report might be biased? They picked immigrants who have settled in San Fransisco, New York, London and Berlin. These are alpha cities that attract the best talent and requires considerable effort from the individual to thrive there. They do have the number of immigrants per country. But it is very possible that the people who ended up in, say, Rural Colorado, don't have the same profiles as those the survey picked.
- lostmsu 8y agoI have moved in 2012. Happened after getting arrested without charges twice during peaceful protests. The elections in 2011-2012 were undoubtedly faked to a major degree. But these years most people in Russia praise Khuylo for the victory in fratricidal war with Ukraine.