Repatriation

There was a report on NPR this morning about a program Putin's government is putting in place to entice Russians living abroad to repatriate back to Russia. They are trying to reverse the brain drain of the nineties, the Russians are saying, and get some of the professional talent back. Fair enough – I have no doubt that the outflow of talent was enormous; it was only to be expected. What the report left unmentioned, however, is that there is little question that Putin has another motive.

Being able to boast of a success in convincing educated people to return to live in Russia would be an enormous PR coup for his government. It is obvious that the backbone of Putin's program is restoring Russia to its former glory of Soviet days, i.e. he wants it to be both respected and feared by other nations. Instilling fear will be attempted with the inevitable rearmament and an increasingly aggressive military stance, paid for with profits from selling oil at record-high prices. That's a topic for another day. Earning respect, however, requires either doing something actually worthy of it – something most governments, and especially one run by a former KGB agent, want to avoid if at all possible – or it requires massive propaganda. And the repatriation program is a small piece in that propaganda machine. Its success would enable Putin to say, “Look – intelligent, educated people are coming back voluntarily. This means Russia is once again a great place to live and work. The problems that originally drove these people out have been solved. We are a great country once again!”

What the NPR report also did not cover is the fact that there is a precedent for this in Russian history – a similar program was launched, on Stalin's orders, after WWII. It is portrayed with chilling realism in Régis Wargnier's East-West. At the time, the program was aimed primarily at Russian ex-pats living in France. Tugging at the heartstrings of a generation that genuinely and sincerely loved Russian culture, language and history, and remembered life in pre-Bolshevik Russia first-hand (but knew little of the Bolshevik version), Stalin implored them to come help rebuild their beloved country that fought so heroically in the war and sacrificed so much for the good of mankind. Most of those who were naïve enough to return, and in many cases their non-Russian spouses, were never heard from again. I grant that it is unlikely that the Russians returning today would be faced with a complete relinquishing of control of their lives the way their predecessors in the late 1940s were, but the motivation on the part of the government – take advantage of human weakness and sentiment, entice by deception, and get some cheap talent and free publicity out of the deal – is fundamentally the same.

Possibly a more vexing question is that of the motivation on the part of the participants. That's a book-length topic. One potential returnee's statement quoted on in the NPR report, however, was truly frightening. An academic and a Jew, he spoke excellent English though he settled in Germany after leaving one of the most anti-semitic societies in the world (Germany is eternally responsible for keeping a hawk eye on its anti-semitism thanks to WWII. Russia, having fought on the righteous side, gets a pass when it continues to let anti-semitism thrive). Of the many problems Russians face on the daily basis, he chose to cite three – intense anti-Western sentiment, rampant corruption and low life expectancy. Yet, he said, it may be better to live to sixty and enjoy life than live to eighty or ninety doing some random job, and he is considering returning. What do you say to that? It makes me hang my head in despair, Russian style.