The Rise of Russian Emigration

Russians are leaving the country in search of a better life- says Expert of the Committee of Civil Initiatives (OIG), Alexei Kudrin, when analyzing the official statistics on emigrants from Russia.

Experts point out that, according to Rosstat, in 2014 – 310.5 thousand people left the country; in 2015 – 353,000. But, in their view, the real figure is three to four times higher and, they say, since the early 1990s more than 4.5 million people have left the country.

Among the most popular destination countries are Israel, Germany and the United States.

According to Russian statistics, since the beginning of the 90s, more than 150 thousand Russians have moved to Israel, about 750 thousand to Germany and around 110 thousand to the US.

A steady stream of emigrants is also leaving for Australia, the UK, Spain, Italy, Canada, Finland and France. Annually, from 300 to 700 thousand Russians are leaving their country of birth.

In the period from 2002 to 2011 the country saw more than 93 thousand people with higher education leave, of which 640 were candidates of science and more than 250 doctors of sciences.

The regions seeing the highest outflow are those with a relatively high standards of living, such as the St. Petersburg and Moscow regions, where there is the lowest unemployment rate in the country. OIG experts indicate that this fact shows the exhaustion of opportunities to improve the quality of life in the country.

Emigration primarily targets educated, energetic and motivated youth to change their quality of life. Such youth tend to be least satisfied with the situation in the economy and the social sphere, often seeing little to no possibility to change the situation for the better, the OIG explains.

Dimitri Dolaberidze