Most of the Russian mass media published information from the Bloomberg publication that up to 45% of Russians who left in 2022 returned to the Russian Federation. The data of Alfa Bank are cited, whose experts estimated that almost 1.1 million people left Russia in 2022, the country lost about 1.5% of its entire workforce. Vyacheslav Kartamyshev, head of Moscow-based relocation company Finion, told Bloomberg that approximately 40-45% of those who left in 2022 have already returned to Russia.
“Workers who returned to their homeland make up only 0.3% of the total number of employees in Russia, but they help Russia survive the sanctions and have achieved good economic indicators.” – emphasizes the agency.
Bloomberg Economics estimates that return migration is likely to add between one-fifth and one-third to Russia’s GDP growth of 3.6% in 2023.
The Russians who left said that “the world has literally rallied against them”. – sociologist from the Social Foresight Group Hanna Kuleshova told the agency with reference to an interview with Russian immigrants. “They came back feeling resentful and feeling that “Putin is not so wrong anymore”, she noted.
In February 2022, the Russian middle class experienced a shock – the mobilization campaign had not yet begun, but the very fact of the war, which the vast majority of it categorically did not support, caused many Russians to want to leave the Motherland. In fact, the size of emigration in 2022 can be compared with post-revolutionary emigration. Then, let me remind you, Nansen’s passport is a refugee passport, which was received by approximately 800,000 refugees from Russia.
Undoubtedly, Putin’s policy could become the strongest factor in the war. Not just qualified specialists left the country, the best professionals who expected to be able to successfully find work in other countries. However, the reality turned out to be completely different: except for those Russians who fell under Israeli law “About the return”, and could claim Israeli citizenship, everyone else found themselves in a role “poor relative was taken care of”. And not at all because these people do not know how to work and are not professionals. Quite the opposite.
The fact is that the rules of the free market have long since played no role in the politics of most Western countries. At one time, the Russian anti-Bolshevik emigration faced the problem of unemployment and hunger, but the reason was simple – the vast majority of Russian emigrants were soldiers, officers, politicians and public figures. Merchants and entrepreneurs without capital and equipment, people of a creative profession whose working language was Russian, were not needed by many in Paris, Berlin, Prague or Belgrade. It is no accident that the “new French” mostly began to work either on the assembly line “Renault”, or taxi drivers. And the global economic crisis, first of all, hit emigrants, including Russian ones. But at that time, the laws of the free market were also in force in European countries. Not only them, of course, but the market played its role. Today, the laws of the market in Europe play a role “an old servant in an aristocratic house”. All are ruled by the bureaucracy – today’s aristocrats.
During the Cold War, there was a special international Western organization that exclusively dealt with sanctions against the USSR. But even its presence did not prevent the USSR from purchasing particularly precise and important machines and systems abroad. Although there were, of course, serious problems. But today the picture is completely different. Today, everything is ultimately ruled by the bureaucracy, so actually the sanctions apply only to those areas that are subject to bureaucratic control. Sanctions are very dangerous for democracies such as Israel, and quite illusory for totalitarian and dictatorial regimes, especially if they have enough cash.
During the Second World War, while developing one or another strategy for the fight against Hitler, the Allies gathered experts, entrepreneurs, developed mechanisms to counter the Third Reich, which was painful for them. Lists of critical export goods were drawn up, without which the Wehrmacht could not fight. And this strategy was successful.
At the moment, sanctions against Russia are exclusively bureaucratic in nature – a tick for Western public opinion. Any informal supply systems, even if they are very expensive for the Russian budget, leave the entire system of sanctions with no problem. Even so, let the thieving suppliers get rich on the full program. Russia’s budget and Putin personally are all the same. Unfortunately, the current system of sanctions should not stop Russia, but prove the effectiveness of the bureaucratic machine. As you know, even the first, very inefficient steam engines of the beginning of the era of steam engines, had an efficiency much higher than the bureaucratic system of modern Europe. This system is dangerous only to those who follow only legal paths. And for those who wanted to sneer at the laws, this system cannot do anything.
In order to understand the meaning of this thesis, you just need to pay attention to economic processes. The main real sanction against Russia is a sharp drop in energy prices. At one time, Ronald Reagan dealt a devastating blow to the USSR in this way: he got the Arab countries to sharply increase oil production, and world prices fell. At the same time, the USSR found itself at a broken trough – one of the main reasons why the USSR did not bet on a representative “old party guard”, and on the young Mykhailo Gorbachev. In the famous book “Victory” (it is on the Internet) it is described how the first members of the Reagan administration personally agreed with the Arab sheikhs about this merciless attack on the USSR.
There are other mechanisms operating in the world today, but if the Biden administration were to put aside its gigantic “green” plans and continue the production of oil and gas in the United States, as during the time of Donald Trump (I am not even touching on the option of increasing this production), then Putin simply would not there would be enough money for the war. But “war for ecology” of the Biden administration has opened up to Putin the widest possibilities of endless hostilities.
Sure, Russia sacrifices its thieves from time to time, but the payoff in this game for thieves is so high that they’re willing to take the risk, especially since it’s not that big. Instead of long discussions in Ramstein, which weapons should be supplied to Ukraine (absolutely bureaucratized and not the least related to real supplies), Western countries should have developed a system of real sanctions and “road map” opposition to Russia. But no one is going to do this, there is not even a single center of opposition to Putin.
When the British supported Poland after the attack of the Third Reich in September 1939, well aware of the need for some center of opposition to Hitler, they established a Polish government-in-exile in London. In fact, his powers were not very large, but it was important for Poland that there was a legitimate anti-Nazi government throughout the years of occupation.
It was asked to create, after Putin’s attack on Ukraine, the Russian Government in exile, which could become a coordination center for all emigrants, be a representative of their interests in national governments, as well as a partner of Ukraine in the fight against Russia. Of course, there was a certain lack of trust both among the emigrants themselves and in the governments of the Western countries towards those or other persons who could become members of this government in exile. However, there are never perfect solutions and perfect politicians in politics – there are only optimal options.
To what extent were the countries of the West and the USA, in particular, ready for such a course of events? It is very difficult to answer this question: the bureaucratic institutions of Europe and the USA are very weakly prepared for real critical actions. Bureaucracy does not like critical actions at all – because they require exactly what it does not tolerate: initiative, personal responsibility, actions, not slogans and appeals. However, this issue today has an exclusively academic character due to the position of the Ukrainian elite.
From the moment when the first pressure of the Russian offensive was repulsed thanks to the courage of the Ukrainians, it was Ukrainian “elite” made a bet on transforming the war from a war for freedom into a war of national liberation. Both at the level of diplomats and at the level of propaganda inside the country, the slogan was voiced: “We are not at war with Putin, but with Russia!”. Hence the inverse correspondence: any citizen of Russia is an enemy of Ukraine! Whether he supported Putin’s attack or not, whether he stayed in Russia or fled from it – he is still an enemy!
Ukraine could become an ideal place for the Russian Government-in-Exile to reside, the brains and capital of the Russian middle class and its financial tycoons could work for Ukraine to fight Putin. But this did not happen, because the Ukrainian elite saw in the middle class of Russia their competitor, more dangerous than Putin.
Stories with sanctions against Putin’s oligarchs generally resemble a tragifarce. If these sanctions were adopted BEFORE the attack, when the role of the liberal-oligarchic wing of Putin’s government was even slightly significant, then it would make sense. But when the war began, the oligarchs and liberals completely and finally lost their power, and sanctions against them are still the same bureaucratic tick. I remember this endless process in Israel, when a Russian oligarch wanted to give money to a charitable organization that deals with the burial of Jews in Israel, and the banks refused to transfer this money. Because of sanctions against Russian oligarchs. The question of how this will help stop Putin’s aggression has completely disappeared from consciousness: there is a bureaucratic procedure – everything else does not matter.
In 2022, Putin’s aggression was a pure and absolute adventure. People fled the country, it seemed that Putin’s regime was about to fall. In this sense, Prigozhin’s putsch is very revealing – Putin has almost no real mechanisms of power left, but over time the situation began to change. The bureaucratic method of war with Putin is not just flawed – it strengthens him infinitely. The demagoguery and impotence of Western politicians clearly show the West’s inability to really confront Putin. And the crowds of Russians, rushing in search of a way out, spontaneously lean towards him.
Today, more than ever, the issue of a real, rather than bureaucratic, confrontation with Putin is becoming more relevant. However, trying to get the Russians on their side would help Ukraine win this war. The more we look for enemies instead of allies, the more enemies we will have.
Leonid Shtekel
