Russian Academic Diaspora: Its Scale, Dynamics, Structural Characteristics, and Ties to the RF

Abstract

Russia’s worsening relations with the West and the proliferation of negative trends in the country’s development are raising serious questions related to scale, dynamics, territorial patterns, and structural characteristics of the Russian intellectual migration flow. Equally important are the degree of the Russian intellectual diaspora’s heterogeneity, the character and intensity of its attitudes toward the RF, and the major forms of its activities. Previous Russian policies toward its elite diaspora were both inconsistent and ineffective. In particular, policy goals should aim neither at limiting the intellectual migration flow nor at seeking the elite migrants’ massive repatriation to Russia. Rather, they should be limited in scale and aimed at an effective inclusion of Russian science into the international academic networks as well as the formation of Russian elite diasporas abroad.