Moscow -

The Russian Academy of Sciences continues to sound the alarm about the sharp acceleration in the emigration of scientists and other specialists with higher education, and the exacerbation of the phenomenon of "brain drain" from the country and its reaching record and dangerous levels, which reached a new level following the unprecedented package of sanctions in terms of size, shape and sectors. It was taken by the Western system against Moscow because of the war in Ukraine.

While Russian economists express a “small” reservation that the problem of “brain drain” is not the most acute for Russia now, Russian academics and scientists insist that the country will not be able to develop and grow without innovation and creativity, which - in their opinion - is impossible. Without the appropriate "human capital", as well as the effects on the "health" of the Russian economy.

According to the Scientific Secretary of the Russian Academy of Sciences Nikolai Dolgoshkin, from 2014 to the present year, about 70,000 highly qualified research scientists and specialists have left Russia, a cumulative increase of 5 times what was the case in 2012.

According to him, this pace has begun to appear clearly since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, pointing out that "Russia is the only developed country in the world in which the number of scientists has been declining for several decades in a row."

Expensive

According to Dolgoshkin, each scientist who leaves the country costs the Russian economy an average of 300-400 thousand dollars.

In addition, this amount does not include profit lost due to the departure of the owners of potentially profitable discoveries and innovations, etc.

In general, the loss of the Russian economy due to the migration of human capital amounts to tens of billions of dollars annually.

State statistics confirm these conclusions.

According to the Federal Statistics Service Rosstat, in 2012 about 14,000 people with higher education emigrated from Russia, including 234 doctoral holders and scientists.

Six years later, in 2018, the number of professionals with university degrees leaving 68.7 thousand.

contrast

However, these official figures are only the tip of the iceberg, as indicated by an article by demographic expert Alexei Raksha, who worked until July last year as a consultant to the Demographic Accounts Department of the Population and Health Statistics Department at the authority. He says that according to the data of the countries to which Russians leave, The number of those who left for permanent residence is several times higher than the official number of departures, according to local data, with a difference of about 5 to 7 times.

Raksha explains that besides the country's international isolation, the brain drain may become Russia's most realistic long-term problem.

Brain leakage is defined as the migration of highly skilled professionals to developed countries;

In search of better living conditions, higher wages, access to advanced technologies and a stable political system.

According to the "Haber" website, which specializes in publishing analytical articles and ideas related to information technology, business and the Internet, 33% of Russian IT professionals in March 2022 are looking for work in foreign companies, with the possibility of moving.

Scientific Training Center in Moscow (Anatolia)

because of war

As for the Russian Border and Immigration Service, it announced, in turn, that nearly 4 million Russians left the country in the first quarter of this year, an influx equivalent to almost twice what it was last year, and it was recorded against the background of the "Russian special military operation" announced by President Vladimir Putin is in Ukraine, but the department's data did not mention the percentage of specialists among those mentioned.

Of course, the phrase “4 million left” should not be read as 4 million IT professionals, since among them there are many other professions, and many of them simply returned home again.

However, the gap remains clear in the real number of immigrant brains, in addition to the fact that the phenomenon itself exists, especially taking into account that in 1990 Russia was a leader in the number of scientists in the world, before the number of these decreased by 65% ​​last year, with 70,000 of them leave the country.

As for the widespread newspaper "RBC", it refers to the departure of a large part of Russian scientists to the post-Soviet countries.

Among the destinations that are popular with them: Turkey, Egypt, a number of Arab Gulf countries and Asian countries (India and Indonesia), but the United States of America was not in the forefront, after it was - along with the United Kingdom and Germany - the most popular destinations for Russian competencies.

product of chaos

The phenomenon of "brain drain" began to emerge clearly with the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early nineties of the last century, and was initially linked to the mass emigration of intellectuals (scientists, engineers, etc.), and the main factor behind it was the deep crisis that affected the local science sector, and the chaos that accompanied the country's transition to A market economy, opening borders and allowing freedom of movement, accompanied by reduced spending on research and academic studies.

In this context, the data of the Central Archives Department indicates that the budget for spending on research and science development decreased between 1985 and 1995 by 15-18 times.

Currently, in addition to the tangible impact of Western sanctions and the accompanying foreign companies and organizations leaving Russia, and the acceleration of the process of cutting foreign representation in relations with Russian companies, including technological and financial companies, the state of dissatisfaction among highly qualified scientists and specialists and the reluctance of many of them to leave country;

It also goes back to factors that existed before the series of Western sanctions.

The Russian President (center) visits a scientific research center in St. Petersburg (Reuters)

extra dimensions

A study prepared by the Moscow Institute of International Relations indicates that despite the importance of brain drain, forms of "migration" - such as the leakage of ideas - that are not accompanied by a physical movement of the minds that generate them, have also become a new challenge.

The study states that foreign institutions take advantage of this loophole and offer grant programs and build "bridges of cooperation" with Russian scientists that allow them to cover their expenses.

And she continues that Russia loses annually as a result of this "cooperation" between 3 and 4 billion dollars, because manufacturers of intellectual and scientific products are unable to sell them, and as a result, they usually resort to the services of European and American intermediaries.

academic famine

Among other things, "smart migration" has also exacerbated labor shortages in industries that require highly skilled experts.

For example, the total number of workers in the sciences sector in Russia between 2013 and 2020 decreased by 35.5 thousand people.

As a result, during the past three years, Russia has fallen from fourth to sixth place in the world in terms of the number of researchers, and this trend is contrary to the goals of the National Science Support Project, which requires an increase in their number by 35 thousand people by 2024.

Visa bait

International affairs researcher Dmitry Babich says that the United States of America continues to try to prevent the development of high technologies in Russia, while at the same time improving its economy by using special tactics to deprive Russia of its top scientists with the help of visa “bait”.

Babich explains - in an interview with Al Jazeera Net - that Washington continues to facilitate the transfer of the best Russian specialists with experience in the communications sector, space technology, cybersecurity, nuclear engineering, artificial intelligence, space technology and other specialized scientific fields to the United States, which is the same strategy that the United States tested in the era Soviet.

Hence the computational conclusion reached by the Institute for Statistical Research and Knowledge Economics of the Higher School of Economics, which indicates that although advanced production technologies developed in Russia almost doubled in 10 years from 864 to 1620, and that in 2019, 34,000 patents were issued, nearly 4,000 more than in 2010, the total number of applications for them during this period, however, decreased by 10%.

At the bottom of the list

At the same time, Russia's global share in terms of research output is only 0.9%.

For comparison, the share of China - the world leader in this standard - reached 40.4% of all patents, followed by the United States of America (15.9%), Japan (13.8%), South Korea (7.6%) and Germany (5.4%).

In addition, the total number of participants in research and inventions decreased by 7.3% during the last ten years, that is, to 682.5 thousand people, while the number of published research has almost tripled, from 40.7 thousand to 115.9 thousand.

Thus, Russia's contribution to the global flow of publications increased from 1.6 percent to 3.5 percent, according to the institute's 2021 data.

to retreat

At the same time, Russian authors are cited less than the world average (3.5 times versus 6.2 times).

In terms of the number of articles cited in official scientific publications, Russia ranks 12th between Spain and South Korea (73,400), China tops the list with 540,000 articles, and the United States of America with 461,000 articles, according to a study published last year by the Kommersant newspaper. Economic.

According to the study, domestic expenditures on research and development in the country's economy over the past ten years amounted to 1.13 trillion rubles (about $230 billion), or 1.03% of GDP.

This number has decreased compared to 2010, when the ratio was 1.13%.

alert

Faced with these challenges, Russia has taken a package of measures to curb the country's "brain drain" in the information technology sector.

In March, the government announced measures to support employees of IT companies, including obtaining a preferential mortgage, deferring military service, and exempting all Russian IT companies from inspections and paying income tax for three years.

The government has also drawn up a roadmap for implementing urgent measures that allow for a balance in the conditions of international competition, provide support to Russian researchers and inventors, by reducing the expenses of information technology companies, regulating and supporting demand for Russian IT products and supporting the marketing of Russian hardware and software systems.

This comes after foreign IT companies began to leave the Russian market against the backdrop of Western sanctions that were imposed after Moscow announced on February 24 the launch of the military operation in Ukraine.

On March 5, the American software companies “IBM” and “Adobe” announced the termination of sales of products and services in Russia, one day after the American information technology company “Microsoft” made the decision. Himself.