Do Russians overwhelmingly support Vladmir Putin and his aggressive war on Ukraine? Opinion surveys suggest they do, and while I take polling in authoritarian dictatorships with a massive helping of salt - the alternative isn’t “I oppose the war” so much as “murder me and my family with radioactive poison” - it saddens me to say that a combination of highly controlled and increasingly aggressive state propaganda, appeals to Russian nationalism and an us-against-the-world mentality, and nostalgia for Russia’s empire and superpower status mean Putin almost certainly does have a clear majority of his subjects on his side.
Of course, even if 81% of Russians support the war, that still leaves millions who do not. These people skew younger, more educated, and more likely to be working in high-tech industries.
And they’re voting with their feet while it’s still possible:
Western attention is focused on the millions of refugees who have fled Ukraine since the Russian assault began on Feb. 24. But Russia is also in the midst of an emigration wave that is upending its spheres of arts and journalism, and especially the world of tech.
The Russian Association for Electronic Communications told the lower house of Russia’s parliament last month that 50,000 to 70,000 tech workers have fled the country, with 100,000 more expected to leave over the next month — for a total of about 10 percent of the sector’s workforce. Ok Russians, a new nonprofit group helping emigres, used a sampling of data from neighboring nations and social media surveys to estimate that nearly 300,000 Russians overall had left since the war began.
Mitya Aleshkovskiy, co-founder of Ok Russians, said some of those leaving are opposition activists, artists and journalists — people whom President Vladimir Putin is probably happy to see go, and whose departure could reduce active dissent within Russia. But nearly half of those leaving hail from tech — a highly transient, globally in-demand workforce that includes many who fear Russia’s global isolation, newly adverse business climate and near-total authoritarianism.
[…]
Interviews with logistics firms and tech workers themselves suggest they are overrepresented in the outflow because they rank among the few workers in Russia who can easily leave. International remote work, especially in the pandemic age, was already common in the sector, while foreign demand for their skills makes them good candidates for work visas outside Russia.
Many are also younger, recent university graduates who faced risks if they stayed.
“I thought I could be sent to war in the Ukraine,” said Maxim Nemkevich, a product manager at a major Russian IT firm who fled to Turkey in March after being asked by his university, where he was a consultant, to fill out a form with the “skills” he could offer the military.
This story includes an interview with one Russian high-tech emigrant who fled to Latvia, where people have some very good historical reasons for at least mistrusting and even downright hating Russians. But he says his new Latvian neighbors have actually been quite friendly and understanding:
His mother back home fretted that everyone in Latvia — a former Soviet republic that is now a member of the European Union and NATO, and whose government is fiercely anti-Putin — would “hate Russians.” But instead, Telitchenko said, he and his family have found a warm reception among a people who lived under Moscow’s yoke in Soviet times.
“The Latvians understand,” he said.
I think this is exactly the right attitude. While I stand with Ukraine in its fight against Russian domination, and support strong sanctions against Russia, its leaders and its oligarchs, I am very uneasy with a pervasive Russo-phobia indulged in by many Westerners - disproportionately the ones who will normally condemn prejudice against people based on their nationality, curiously enough. Deep down, everyone needs someone to hate.
If Russians want out, we should be doing everything possible to get them out. The Biden Administration gets this:
President Joe Biden wants Congress to expedite visas for Russian scientists eager to leave their country in the midst of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, an effort to accelerate a brain drain already underway and further deprive President Vladimir Putin of some of Russia’s top talent.
An administration proposal sent to Capitol Hill as part of a larger package requesting $33 billion in spending on the war would suspend for four years the requirement that scientists applying for H1-B visas have a sponsoring employer, eliminating one of the biggest obstacles for many seeking to come to the United States.
The measure would apply only to Russian citizens with master’s or doctoral degrees in science or engineering fields such as artificial intelligence, nuclear engineering or quantum physics. Administration officials argued that such a move would have dual advantages — costing Russia while benefiting America.
The next Twitter could very well be founded by a Russian who escaped to the United States. Nevertheless, I think this is a good idea.
Naomi Judd, who joined her daughter Wynonna in one of the most successful country music duos of the eighties (and whose other daughter Ashley became a major movie star in the oughts) died at age 76 this past weekend.
Unfortunately, the family’s official statement strongly implies the cause of death:
In recent years, Naomi Judd had been open about her struggles with depression:
While Judd in some instances said she had struggled with her mental health her entire life, she often cited the close of The Judds' "Last Encore" tour in 2012 as when things got particularly dark.
In her 2016 memoir, "River of Time: My Descent into Depression and How I Emerged with Hope," Judd said her depression was at its worst after the tour, when suppressed memories of a childhood molestation re-emerged.
"I never dealt with all the stuff that happened to me, so it came out sideways, as depression and anxiety. Depression is partly genetic, and I have it on both sides of my family," Judd said in a 2017 essay for NBC News.
Judd said she was immobilized during her depression as her muscles atrophied from lack of movement. An elevator was installed in her home to help her traverse the floors of the house.
Eventually, Judd was diagnosed with treatment-resistant severe depression, she said in an interview with ABC’s “Good Morning America.”
“Treatment-resistant because they tried me on every single thing they had in their arsenal. It really felt like, if I live through this, I want someone to be able to see that they can survive,” she said.
Naomi was open about her struggles, but many others - probably most others - keep quiet about it. And even when they appear successful on the outside, you just don’t know what they’re really going through.
If you’re hurting, seek help. I did.
"The next Twitter could very well be founded by a Russian who escaped to the United States."
I was 100% with you up until that point. Then you went and ruined it for me.
Just kidding! Mostly. I think.