The report assesses both scale and roots of the outward migration from the Russian Federation at the time Putin’s Russia turns into an aggressive authoritarian state. Analyzing both the open sources and the data collected during a study of Russian diaspora in EU member states, conducted in April 2024 on behalf of the Center for Analysis and Strategies in Europe (CASE) by the team of researchers associated with the University of Nicosia, (all the findings and methodology of the research are available at CASE website),the authors argue that Russians who had recently left their country possess significant human capital that may be used almost exclusively in Europe or the Americas, since both numerous historical experience and recent cases of integrating the Russians into non-Western societies proof they rarely became successful.
The authors make a clear distinction between the classic “emigration” and the current condition of those Russians who had left their country, which they themselves prefer to call “relocation”: those relocated are more active and flexible than emigrants have traditionally been; they are now in a position allowing the European authorities to determine the ways and means of their admission, but at the same time most of them possess financial resources and competencies facilitating their future integration into European societies. Studying the Russian diasporas developed in some post-Soviet and Central European nations, the authors depict their positive economic influence on host societies and, using Cyprus as a case study, emphasize how significant it may be even for a developed European country if its authorities pursue a balanced policy aimed on admission and integration of the “relocants”. Assessing the state of Russian diasporas in Poland, Germany, and France, they conclude that this strategy can be used by other EU member states.
The report emphasizes that the massive exodus of educated and self-made Russians presents a serious challenge to Putin’s regime, comparable in its significance to the effect of Western economic sanctions imposed on Russia. Unlike the current sanction policies, which often backfire on Europeans, abetment of Russians’ departure from their country can deliver noticeable economic benefits to the united Europe by creating a broad community of Russians who perceive Europe and the West in general as a close and appreciative ally rather than as an enemy, making little distinction between the Putin regime and the decent Russian people who became its hostages.
Russia is a very atypical European nation. For centuries, it expanded in the same way as Western European nation-states did. First, it domesticated vast and sparsely populated territories of Siberia through settler colonization; later, relying on its military superiority, it established its dominance over parts of the “global south” in the Caucasus and Central Asia 1.
1 — CA. Abalov and V. Inozemcev, Beskonečnaâ imperiâ: Rossiâ v poiskah sebâ [Infinite Empire: Russia in Search of Itself], Moscow: Alpina Publisher, 2021, pp. 125-199.
However, without dividing their vast possessions into metropolis, colonies and protectorates, the masters of both Muscovy and Russia preferred to treat the expansion of their empire as “internal colonization” 2. Such an approach explains why the very concept of international migration, which had deeply transformed communities on both sides of the Atlantic from the start of the 16th century onwards, did not seem to exist for Russia for rather a long time; on the contrary, until the mid-19th century, the Russian empire remained the only European country experiencing an influx of population from other European states.
2 — V. Klûčevskij, “Kurs russkoj istorii” [The Course of Russian History] in V. Klûčevskij (eds.), Cočineniâ v 9 tomah [Tsochinenie in 9 Volumes], Moscow: Thought, Vol. 1, 1987, p. 50; A. Etkind, Internal Colonization: Russia’s Imperial Experience, Cambridge: Polity, 2011.
One may talk about the first waves of exodus only concerning the last third of the 19th century – but even in this case, the migrations differed radically from the emigration from other European countries like the United Kingdom (UK), the German principalities, or Italy since it was mainly people of Western European ancestry who had left at that time (in particular, up to 2.2 million people originating from Germany and Austria-Hungary) 3, as well as those belonging to people who suffered from discrimination (2.5 million Jews) 4 or even extermination (according to some estimates, up to 1 million Circassians). The emigration of ethnic Russians was a rare phenomenon (which might be explained by numerous obstacles to leaving the country and by the prospects of forced deprivation of citizenship if one decided to stay abroad for more than five years) and did not have much influence on Russian society at that time. We would even argue that the uniqueness of Russian emigration consists precisely in the fact that it did not start until emigration from the larger Western European countries was almost over – in the late 1910s and early 1920s.
3 — P. Polân, “Èmigraciâ: kto i kogda v HH veke pokidal Rossiû” [Emigration: Who and When in the Twentieth Century Left Russia] in P. Polân and O. Glezer (eds.), Rossiâ i eë regiony v HH veke: territoriâ, rasselenie, migracii [Russia and Its Regions in the XXth Century: Territory, Settlement, Migrations], Moscow: OGI, 2005.4 — R. Landau. The Nazi Holocaust: Its History and Meaning, London/New York: I.B. Tauris, 2016, p. 61.
However, over the next hundred years, Russia took a kind of revenge for the initial “somnolence,” expelling three gigantic waves of immigrants – between 1918 and 1923, in 1988-1998, and then the one that started in 2012-2014 and continues to this day, intensifying after the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine. The total demographic losses from these exoduses are estimated by researchers at between 4 and 11 million people, and if the “unwilling” emigration resulting from the collapse of the Soviet Union is added, the total number of people belonging to the “Russian world” living outside the Russian Federation might be estimated at close to 37 million, of whom at least 4 million reside in European Union (EU) member states 5. The driving force for those three waves of migration differed: the first consisted of those whom the Bolshevik government declared as “class enemies” and later arbitrarily deprived of Soviet citizenship in 1922; the second wave was caused predominantly by economic and social factors (including the repatriation of Germans and Jews from the Soviet Union); the third, we strongly believe, was fueled by both ideological and economic circumstances, and therefore cannot be adequately compared to any of the previous ones.
5 — V. Inozemtsev, Nesovremennaâ strana: Rossiâ v mire XXI veka [A Non-modern Country: Russia in the World of the XXIst Century], Moscow: Alpina Publishers, 2018, p. 253
A lot of books and articles depict and explain the development of pro-emigration sentiment in Russian society since 2012 and assess the scale and routes of departure, as well as the creation of various Russian associations and organizations outside Russia. Huge attention is paid to the political dimension of the emerging diaspora, which many authors consider to be the sprouting of a democratic and European Russia, capable of playing a significant role in transforming Russia into a modern Western state after the demise of Putin’s dictatorship. While not rejecting completely such an approach, we soberly assess the composition of Russian migrants of the last decade and believe that the vast majority of them, although they left the country due to the discrepancy between its current course and their vision of a fair and open society, are not activists or politicians, but are driven by the search for a professional career, a quiet place to live and a country in which their children can be raised without being influenced by the culture of hatred created in today’s Russia. We would identify as “fighters against the regime” not more than around four to five thousand people out of close to one million of those who quit the Russian Federation in recent years. We should note that European countries are actively trying to assist them. Since the start of the war in February 2022, EU nations have issued more than four thousand refugee permits, while Germany alone produced up to three thousand “humanitarian” visas, not only clearing the way for permanent residence in the EU but also providing financial support and services facilitating integration into the new societies. However, the share of approved asylum applications for the Russians is still less than 20% compared, for example, to 97% for Palestinians.
Much less attention is paid to those Russians who left their homeland without facing immediate threats to their safety – to professionals whose activities became difficult or impossible due to the new rules imposed by the regime; members of the ethnic, religious and sexual groups that have become targets of defamation and incitement to hatred by the authorities; scientists and artists, whose self-expression in today’s Russia has been continuously curtailed. All these people are part of the modern globalized community, they share basic Western values, are well educated, have proven themselves to be independent and entrepreneurial personalities, and most of them are relatively wealthy even by European standards. They, it seems to us, have good chances of integrating into European societies and can contribute to their dynamics without undermining their foundations. However, these people face profound difficulties since they are often associated with “Putin’s Russia” and become the subject of sweeping accusations of crimes its regime has committed. The purpose of our report is to highlight the benefits and opportunities that a change in attitude towards the “Russian Europeans” opens up for modern Europe.