A Diaspora Is A Terrible Thing to Waste
Only Russians can change their leadership. Why not give them some help?
Three times is a charm, the old line goes. Unless you’re a Russian.
The flight from Vladimir Putin’s increasingly repressive regime includes much of Russia’s future, from its technological brainpower to its writers, artists, journalists and critics whose forbearers have distinguished Russian science, arts, letters and culture for generations.
They are Russia’s third diaspora in a century, following on the heels of the outflow that fled the Bolsheviks after the revolution and civil war in the 1920s, and the emigration to the West when the Soviet Union fell. They comprise Russians who have had enough of Putin, his war in Ukraine, and its consequences.
Their loss to Russia will exact a high cost, as did the departure of the Russian talent that peopled Europe in the 1920s and 1930s. The expatriates also represent knowledge and voices that understand those who remain behind as well as how to speak to them.
Click on the link below for my latest column, published today on Project Syndicate, that puts this latest diaspora in historical context and also examines the opportunity it represents.
https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/russian-diaspora-influencing-developments-under-putin-by-kent-harrington-2022-07
Russia’s third diaspora is a unique resource. Who better to communicate to their countrymen the crime as well as tragedy of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and what its continuing pursuit holds in store.