How Will Mass Exodus Affect Russia’s Political Future?

The partial mobilization announced by Vladimir Putin on September 21 has led to serious demographic and social changes, the consequences of which have yet to be assessed. According to official statements, as many as 318,000 Russian men have already been called to the war with Ukraine. Unofficial data indicate that this number is even higher — from 500,000 to a million people. Against the backdrop of these events, men (sometimes with their families) began to leave the country en masse already in September. They fled to Turkey, Georgia, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, as well as to Finland and Norway. Even exotic routes, such as Mongolia, have emerged. The exact number of those who left is unknown, but Kazakhstan alone says more than 200,000 Russians have entered the country since the announcement of mobilization. Georgia is experiencing an economic boom; experts claim that the Georgian economy will grow by 10% after 100,000 emigrants from Russia arrive in the country. According to various estimates, mobilization and emigration “took away” from 700,000 to a million citizens from Russia.

This is the second largest wave of emigration from Russia since 1917–1922. Just as 100 years ago, today these people are also fleeing war.

The most important and serious consequence of emigration is the flight of intellectual, independent, free-thinking people who, before the war with Ukraine, were in opposition to Putin’s regime. Among them are many anti-war activists, journalists, bloggers, political scientists, academics, and IT specialists. Among them is the author of this article, who left Russia in August 2022.

It was these people who formulated the agenda for the anti-war part of Russian society. It was they who were responsible (as many thought) for developing an alternative strategy for the country’s future.

Many of them now continue their work abroad. However, as we know from history, emigrant politicians have never been trusted or popular in Russia.

Vladimir Lenin, who returned to Russia from Switzerland in April 1917 and came to power a few months later, is one of the few exceptions. The political success that Lenin achieved in November 1917 was due to a coincidence of many factors (the first among them being the Revolution) and has never been repeated in modern Russian history.

Even the return to Russia in 1994 of the publicist and Nobel laureate Alexander Solzhenitsyn, despite his great fame in the world, went virtually unnoticed. He failed to become a sacred figure and the “conscience of the nation.” The writer never took the place of “the ruler of thoughts” of Russian society and expressed the interests of the majority of Russians. Therefore, despite the highest professionalism and leadership qualities (in which I would like to believe) of today’s opposition leaders working abroad, it is highly unlikely that one day they will be able to drive an Abrams tank through Red Square in Moscow. Few of them will be in demand in post-Putin Russia.

The future of Russia will be decided by its people. And here we come to an important conclusion. Quantitative changes in Russian society as a result of 2022 war in Ukraine and emigration will very soon be transformed into qualitative changes. Intellectual, educated, and creative groups of society will be the first to be hit. To this should be added the country’s own military losses during the conflict with Ukraine. According to the most conservative estimates, irrecoverable losses, including deserters and missing persons, are up to 100,000 people. Many deserters have also managed to emigrate, and there are volunteers and NGOs in Russia who help such people cross the border. The loss of such a significant number of young and active men cannot but affect Russian society as a whole and its political future.

The Russian government has already repeatedly and publicly stated that it is even happy about the forced emigration of men who do not want to fight in Ukraine. For example, the speaker of the State Duma, Vyacheslav Volodin, previously called the citizens who left Russia traitors.

“Anyone who wanted to wait out this time, go to a warm country, and from there look at it all, he must understand — he is a traitor.”

Thus, as a result of the mobilization, mainly citizens loyal to the regime and those who are “not interested in politics” remain in the country. This is an ideal environment for political adventurers of all stripes and outright criminals striving for power. The example of Yevgeny Prigozhin and Ramzan Kadyrov, two of Putin’s most prominent hardliners, is the best proof of this.

The positioning of Prigozhin and Kadyrov as possible successors to Putin, who is losing the war, seems to be an extremely dangerous trend. There are no forces in today’s Russia that can stop them. Unless, of course, Putin himself has not thought of doing it before.

Since a large proportion of young and politically active citizens have left the country, society will become even more susceptible to indoctrination and propaganda. Political diversity, already lacking, will gradually become a thing of the past.

In the next few months we will witness a “coarsening” of politics, the appearance of new radical figures, against which the current Kremlin masters may seem harmless democrats and liberals. However, this classification has long been inapplicable to Russian politics. The radical nationalist agenda will dominate, and the clear preponderance will be on the side of the leftist-radical (National-Bolshevik) forces. There are no real right-wing forces in Russian politics today, just as there are none in Ukrainian politics (but unfortunately few people are aware of this). The right-wing forces in Russia were marginalized long ago, and not without the government’s participation. And those who are mistakenly called “imperialists” are in fact one of the modern versions of the National Bolsheviks. Populism, conspiracy thinking, the desire to find simple solutions and simple explanations for complex problems will become the mainstream of Russian politics in the near future.

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