The Ukraine
invasion has triggered migration flows from two
countries — not just one. Putin’s war has created a huge Ukrainian refugee
crisis, but it is also triggering an exodus from his own country: a flight of disaffected,
highly trained Russian talent.

The
latter presents the US and her Western allies with an extraordinary strategic opportunity.
America and Europe should actively welcome in Russia’s finest — millions of them,
if possible — before we lose the chance.

The Ukrainians who are fleeing west to escape to the Russian army’s carnage and terror are mainly ordinary women and children. But the new migration out of Russia is very different. These are mainly of younger middle-class Russians, appalled by Putin’s war and alarmed by the dark new turn of events in their homeland.

These men and women are arriving daily in Istanbul, Helskini, Tbilisi, Yerevan, and the Baltic countries: wherever visa regulations permit their entry on a one-way ticket out. Numbers on this outflow from Russia are still iffy, but the totals are already sizeable. The University of Chicago’s Konstantin Sonin guesstimates that 200,000 Russians fled their country in just the first 10 days of the war alone. But the tally is steadily growing, and a report yesterday suggested that 50,000 to 70,000 of them are IT workers.

It
would be a mistake — a serious blunder — for Western leaders to ignore these émigrés,
dismissing them as products of conflict. Rather, it is in our common Western
interest to welcome them, and to encourage more to leave. A mass movement of
highly trained manpower out of Russia and into the West — if allowed to take
place — will strengthen and enrich America and her allies, even as it
undermines the foundations of national power for the Kremlin.

The men
and women choosing to leave Russia today are not at all “typical,” randomly
selected Russians. They tend to be highly educated — usually with university
degrees, or more. Many have technical backgrounds — in science, computing,
engineering, and math. Most of them speak English, often with impressive
fluency.

Moreover,
these émigrés consider themselves part of a common civilization they share with
us. They generally regard themselves as what Russians call “humanists,” what we
might call “European liberals.” They shrink from oppressive Great Russian
nationalism. They want no part of the Kremlin’s adventures. There are millions
more very much like them, still residing within Russia, but without a true home.

Even
before the Ukraine invasion, opportunities for this stratum of professionals
were already unnaturally limited and constricted, thanks to the stifling
“business climate” in Putin’s petro-kleptocracy. Now — given the prospect of
severe and indefinite Western sanctions — the economic outlook for Russia’s
intelligentsia has become that much more miserable. And the war also promises
to usher in a whole new wave of internal repression and strictures to erase any
hint of domestic opposition to Putin’s absolute authority.

No matter
the course of the Ukraine war, growing numbers of highly cultivated and
talented Russians will want to make their way abroad to start a new life. We
should not only tolerate this prospective wave of immigration, but
enthusiastically abet it with generous visa and asylum policies — remember the
case of Albert Einstein fleeing Nazi Germany — to welcome them to the free
world.

Do not
forget: Receiving countries in the West have benefitted palpably from previous
waves of migration from Russia and its Soviet predecessor.

In Israel, the migrants who arrived after the Cold War provided much of the scientific and technological know-how for the high-tech, “start-up nation” boom. In the US, Soviet and Russian émigrés famously upgraded American university math departments and research labs — but the Fields Medals and patent awards were only the pinnacle of broader and greater contributions to knowledge creation, material advance, and prosperity generation. Recent Soviet and Russian waves of educated émigrés have thrived in Europe (and the rest of the OECD) as well — their migration all the more opportune given the shrinking workforces in many of these countries.

There is every reason to expect that the next wave of high-skill, high-talent migrants from Russia will likewise integrate and achieve when it arrives in the West.

A
Russian talent exodus will confer not only economic benefits on the West, but
strategic ones. Putin’s pool of talented manpower is limited, and relatively
fixed. The greater the scale of the talent losses, the higher those ultimate
costs for the Kremlin.

We
cannot know whether the Kremlin will countenance such an exodus, or for how
long. So there is a certain urgency to this matter. Details can be settled in
due course — what must be settled now is the determination and resolve to take
in Russian talent. There will be a time for these émigrés to compete for
placement — and to be competed over. But the chance to resettle this promising
population may prove fleeting — and they will not be the only losers if we fail
to seize it.

Nicholas Eberstadt holds the Henry Wendt Chair in Political Economy at the American Enterprise Institute

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