Farewell motherland !
Last 25th February, Mikhail Gorbachev, the last soviet leader, criticized a new Russia with what he called a ‘depraved' elite, and where according to him political life resumes itself to be an ‘imitation', and saying be ‘ashamed' of his country. While current president Medvedev advocates the modernization of Russia, M. Gorbachev estimates one of the main obstacles, Russian brain drain, could be explain by the democratic shortcomings. Indeed, a strong intellectual dynamic might exert a leverage effect on the modernization process, and might open the pondering-space and dialog sphere currently reserved for a powerful ruling elite.
Russia faced its most important « brain drain » in the middle of the 1990s. Scientific research in Russia was beset by structural problems, in terms of human resources. Three major problems had appeared: the ageing of researchers, the obsolescence of laboratories and of research material, and the rift within scientific community (between flourishing laboratories and scientists in precarious situation). When the iron curtain collapsed and the system got bogged down, many researchers took a chance and left their country.
The Russian laureates of the Nobel Prize
As a for instance, we can mention the 2010 laureates of the Nobel Prize in Physics, Andrei Geim and Konstantin Novoselov. The two men were born in Russia and studied in Moscow. Geim is now 51 and has not worked in Russia since the early 90s. He has since obtained Dutch nationality. Novoselov is the youngest Russian-born to receive the Nobel Prize. However, he possesses a British passport.
Nevertheless, emigration of Russian researchers, has recently converted itself in a so-called «brain circulation” :talented youth comes back after graduation abroad as explained it the journalist Grigory Pasko in Russia's Brain Drain. Despite all that, returns have not been proven to be systematic and current figures remain alarming for authorities. According to official data, 440 000 persons have left Russia these last 5 years and about 100 000 persons leave the country per year according to the Demographic Research Institute in Moscow.
Why leave Russia ?
“This is a country with no future here … politics are polluted by mafiotized practice. There is nothing left we could believe in” whispered me Andrei Andreevich, a young worker, phone adviser in informatics in Saint-Petersburg. Valeria Vell, a 20 years-old girl dreams of finishing her studies in France, and her friend Yuri confesses he wants to live in Australia one day. For them, those countries represent hope of a better life. The desire of exile is not only a luxury concern for researchers and intellectuals, but may also affect the middle-class. Moscow billionaires' opulence cannot hide needs and wants of an entire population, which extends from Vladivostok to Murmansk.
//Auteur
