(New York) It is not known exactly how many Russians have left their country since the start of the war in Ukraine. This number seems to be over a million for some, lower for others. But the numbers themselves may matter less than the scale of those who fled in droves. They are among the most educated Russian population: writers, computer scientists, journalists, film directors, musicians, academics, actors, etc.
Posted at 1:00 p.m.
Some leave because they have no choice. Journalists who have criticized the war, such as Yevgenia Albats, editor-in-chief of The New Timeshad to flee to avoid arrest for spreading fake news or for being “foreign agents”. Others leave the country because they find life under Putin’s regime unbearable.
Olga Smirnova, prima ballerina of the Bolshoi Ballet, has settled in Amsterdam. She said she “never thought” she would be “ashamed of Russia”, but that the war prevented her from staying in her country. Hundreds of thousands of young men have fled to forestall President Vladimir Putin’s recent “partial mobilization” rather than risk being sent to fight in a war they never wanted.
PHOTO ALEXANDER ZEMLIANICHENKO, ASSOCIATED PRESS ARCHIVES
Dmitry Muratov, editor of the Russian independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta and co-winner of the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize
A friend of mine in Moscow told me that the people who had a chance to leave and took it now outnumber those who chose to stay. But important personalities who oppose Putin’s war are still there for all sorts of reasons: they don’t want to abandon their families, they don’t have the possibility of continuing to work elsewhere, they want to bear witness to what is passes through their country. Freelance journalist Dmitry Muratov swore: “We will continue to work here until the cold barrel of a gun touches the warm skin of our foreheads. »
Such choices are never easy. In other times and other countries, such as Nazi Germany or Communist China, people faced a similar dilemma. By leaving, you risk becoming useless in your own country, while being undesirable if you migrate abroad. If you stay, you risk ending up in prison, or worse.
Those who leave are often branded cowards or traitors, while the remaining dissidents are caught in the crossfire between foreign powers and their own government. Russians who love their country but hate war are in the same position as German patriots who hated the Nazis. They have very few friends.
The moralizing postures of lecturers are commonplace in both camps, when it comes to leaving or staying in one’s country. Those who are safe outside the country, protected from the brutality of war and dictatorship, often insist that those who remain must demonstrate their opposition to the government. At a conference in Riga, former world chess champion and political activist Garry Kasparov said Russians who want to be “on the right side of history should pack their bags and leave the country”. Those who remain, he said, “are part of the war machine.”
Thomas Mann, the most famous German writer of his time, fled Nazi Germany as soon as Hitler came to power in 1933. With a Jewish wife and views that would have led to his arrest, he didn’t have the choice. His ferocious attacks on Hitler’s regime were broadcast during the war on radio by the BBC. After the war, Mann claimed that all Germans were corrupted by Nazi crimes. He believed that writers who chose to lay low were also corrupt.
This sparked a backlash from writers such as Frank Thiess, who was not a Nazi, but chose to stay in Germany. It was he who coined the term “inner emigration” for intellectuals who chose to isolate themselves to avoid trouble. People like Mann, Thiess claimed, were cowards, who had turned their backs on their suffering countrymen.
Thiess went further and claimed that those who stayed showed more courage. He expressed the views of many Germans who stayed and never quite forgave those who left, such as Thomas Mann or movie star Marlene Dietrich.
The bitter divide between people who should have been on the same side but made different existential choices is one of the triumphs of oppressive regimes. This cleavage further weakens the possibility of opposition.
The exodus of the crème de la crème of Russians could prove to be a boon for Western scientific, artistic and academic institutions. Moreover, it will certainly hurt Russia’s long-term economic prospects. But Putin probably doesn’t care much, as long as he can stay in power.
Those Russians who remain in their country will suffer the long-term consequences of Putin’s militarism, perhaps even more than the Ukrainians who bear the brunt of war today. In the words of Ilya Kolmanovsky, that famous biologist and science journalist who eventually left Russia because of the war, “in time people will understand that Putin’s invasion was also an attack on Russia.”