How Vladimir Putin Is Squandering Russia’s Future.
In the great Soviet tradition, Putin wastes his elites.
Crowds of Russians are fleeing their country. The invasion of Ukraine triggered a wave of departures in February, the announcement of conscription in September 2022 another one. Nearly a million men, women, and children have already left the country. They are not only taking with them their memories and hopes, but also bits of their country's future.
Those who leave often have well-made heads. Engineers, programmers, and researchers have, more than others, the financial means to leave, the chances of arriving well - and the desire to escape repression that risks targeting them in particular.
Of course, they are individuals like any others. Men are born and remain free and equal in rights, and social distinctions can only be based on common utility. But one only has to look at the history of the world's most powerful companies to see that some change the world more than others.
Apple would never have existed without the stubborn creativity of Steve Jobs (whose father was a Syrian immigrant). Nor Google without the meeting at the Stanford University of Larry Page and Sergei Brin (whose parents were born in the Soviet Union, we'll come back to that).
The hunt for “the enemies of the people”
In doing so, Russia is following a tradition that dates back more than a century, revived by the populism of the 21st century: the hunt for elites. The 1917 Revolution did not just send ruined aristocrats out of Moscow. Soon after, Lenin created forced labor camps to re-educate not only criminals but also political prisoners.
Stalin developed these hells on a large scale, soon to be run by a “main camp administration” better known by its Russian acronym gulag. At least 11 million men and women passed through these 474 camps, which were dismantled after the death of the mustachioed dictator in 1953 - or even double that number, according to some estimates.
Among these prisoners were many “enemies of the people,” according to a terminology borrowed from Robespierre and later adopted by Mao Zedong. Intellectuals, professors, scientists, business leaders, and engineers, are all suspected of counter-revolutionary activities. According to an official Soviet report of 1954, nearly 4 million “enemies of the people” were detected by the authorities between 1921 and 1953, of whom 2.4 million were sent to the Gulag, 800,000 were exiled to colonies and 600,000 were executed.
The repression then took other forms, less violent but just as implacable. Critics of the regime were denounced as parasites, thrown out of their jobs, and even sent to psychiatric hospitals. The physicist Andrei Sakharov, considered the father of the Soviet H-bomb, was, for example, exiled to Gorky where he was deprived of all contact with his scientific colleagues.
Other renowned scientists are allowed, in small doses, to leave the country. This was the case of Mikhail and Eugenia Brin, two brilliant Jewish mathematicians from Moscow who were tired of the anti-Semitism to which they and their six-year-old son were constantly subjected. In 1979, they finally obtain an exit visa and leave for America. Where their little Sergei, who will soon meet Larry Page, will grow up...
Two economists, Gerhard Toews (New Economic School in Moscow) and Pierre-Louis Vezina (King's College in London), have captured the echo of the formidable potential of which the USSR was thus deprived. Their starting point is the fact that after the dismantling of the camps, many former prisoners made their lives on the spot because they no longer had any roots elsewhere. The writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn testifies to this in his “Gulag Archipelago”: “It was the only place in the entire Soviet Union where no one could accuse us of being intruders.”
Sixty years later, the regions where the camps with the highest proportions of "enemies of the people" were located have become more prosperous regions. Wages are higher ... and the lighting is brighter at night. The former prisoners passed on their intellectual and cultural capital to their children and grandchildren.
Already the Huguenots
The Russian power shows an impressive continuity in the sacrifice of skills. And this continuity could well explain the impotence of the country in the advanced industries. The USSR had certainly sent the first man into space but it never succeeded in building an aeronautical industry. Unlike China, which is developing its first airliner, the C919, step by step.
Russia is not the only one in this case. Throughout its history, France has also shown a certain talent in this field. The Huguenots who fled France in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries played a major role in the rise of Dutch finance, English printing, and Prussian industry, which later founded the German manufacturing power.
More recently, France failed to retain the Brin family, who had passed through Paris after leaving Moscow. Mikhail's French colleagues had achieved a real feat by finding him a contract at the Institute of Advanced Scientific Studies. But his wife was left without a job, and she went on to work at NASA for a long time.
Attracting talent, not chasing it, is one of the keys to success. Europe, which is reluctant to give visas to Russians, should remember this.
Some reading
What Would NATO Do If Putin Used Nuclear Weapons? The Former CIA Director Assures That It Would Eliminate Russian Forces in Ukraine. America could not stand by and do nothing.
Putin’s Power Is Cracking, and the Kremlin’s Propaganda Can No Longer Keep the People in the Lie. In history, we have rarely seen an authoritarian regime survive a humiliating military defeat.
The 4 Main Lessons That Vladimir Putin Teaches Us (Despite Himself) After 7 Months of War in Ukraine. In the end, Putin will perish for having despised the West, but also and especially his people.
With Bitcoin and Cryptocurrencies, Vladimir Putin Wants to Follow the Same Path As Other Dictators. Use for the benefit of Russia to counter the sanctions, but certainly not to help the people.
India Is Beginning to Lose Patience and Is Urging Vladimir Putin to End the War in Ukraine. The worst thing for New Delhi would be a Russia so weakened and isolated that it would become subservient to China, India’s rival.