[asats]

Most of the brightest ones have left the country, so I do wonder if it might result in being a net positive for the world, moving a million brightest people from a decaying autocracy into the functional countries with good management, potential investors and a culture of innovation.

Russian culture in Russia might be done for though, at least for a while.

[qzw]

>> Most of the brightest ones have left the country

I feel like that needs to be qualified? Maybe ages 20-40 and of a certain social-economic class can leave fairly easily, but it’s gotta be much harder to leave if you’re too young, too old, too poor, have too few connections, or have aged parents, young children, etc.

[asats]

Well, that's what I mean, a million of the 20-40 age group of a certain socioeconomic class, with relevant skills, a lot of ambition and not many dependents. Those are the exact group to start new things and do a lot of good, and my point was that maybe the world is better off with them in the more productive countries vs even the pre-war Russia.

[ghostwriter]

You’re conflating a group of pro-western enterprise software developers - with little to no adulthood responsibilities aside their work, due to their age - with a group of the brightest folks.

[asats]

Software developers make up maybe a third of that wave, if that. There's also artists, scientists, teachers, journalists, political activists and all kinds of other folks that simply don't see the future in the country. A lot of them are families with kids, so it's often not the lack of responsibilities but a higher willingness to take the risk.

[ghostwriter]

Political activists and journalists are hardly the brightest group of people either, so you’re just assigning the opposition group that you prefer to align with, with a token of “the brightest” because it makes you feel good about it. How about you look at the rest of the society who couldn’t or weren’t willing to leave the country and who still run projects in Russia despite the sanctions. Are they not the brightest because they work and associate their career within - let’s say for the sake of the argument - Rosatom? That’s just one hard science sector of the vast energy industry of the country, for starters.

[asats]

There's lot of smart people left, that's no doubt, but there is an obvious filter that the ones left behind are on average less risk taking, more conservative, often older, often the ones with the national motto of "от нас ничего не зависит/there's nothing I can do", and the next google or the next scientific breakthrough is much more likely to come out of the young risk taking ones now living in a functional country and not from the aging engineers living in a dictatorship and working at a bureaucratic rosatom making "up to $720 a month" (actual number, I looked up their open engineering vacancies).

[ivan_gammel]

People who left the country are not just software developers. We have seen the exodus of musicians, scientists etc, which after some very painful decision process just packed their things and took next flight anywhere. Many took their families.

[ghostwriter]

Software engineers were a simple example of the conflation point. Those who left and those who’re the brightest aren’t the same group.

[lostmsu]

As a MSU CS alumni I can tell you, it is pretty clear the brighter, the more likely to leave.

Among my peers most left, even the ones that used to be relatively pro Puilo for whatever reasons.

[ivan_gammel]

The groups are indeed not identical but what matters is that their intersection is big.

[hdjjhhvvhga]

> pro-western

What does being pro- or anti-West has to do with the topic? There are many Russian expats in Germany who openly manifest their support for Putin's war on the streets of Berlin. You can be anti-Western and at the same time pragmatically leave Russia to avoid draft and being killed for basically no reason.

[ghostwriter]

That’s a fair point. I was trying to exemplify the conflation point between two groups with the assigned traits (“the brightest” vs “rest of them”) with bringing my own selection of people everyone would clearly disagree with to be a valid representation.

[q1w2]

For those that cannot afford going to the West, others have migrated to Turkey, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Armenia, etc..

[yostrovs]

In many ways, Russian culture has been preserved better outside of Russia than inside. Russians have had a tendency over last few hundred years to absorb other cultures rapidly, thus changing their own. French, Italian, English, now American. Watching Russian TV now by someone who left in the 1990s is quite strange because almost every other word is taken from English, while a different word was used in Russian 30 years ago.

[thriftwy]

I wonder if there are any specific examples of Russian culture that are preserved outside Russia but lost inside Russia.

Russia 30 years ago was a failed and miserable state with corresponding words choice. In the modern Russia not many actual people watch TV.

[asats]

The russian old believers in Brazil is the first example that comes to mind https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17-3EGQ1aAw

[thriftwy]

The preservation of rural everyday culture, dress and habits is a nice thing, but Russians in general are an urbanized nation whose culture is in books, music sheets and moving pictures.

I doubt that Latin American Old Believers produce, or even retain, much of these.

[yostrovs]

You're referring to Soviet culture mostly, particularly in regards to film.

[yostrovs]

Russian food, language, and religion are better preserved by Russian communities outside Russia. Immigrants that left in 1990s as adults speak purer Russian than TV news people.

[ivan_gammel]

“Preserved” in the original state, like in museum - yes. Russian communities outside Russia rarely contributed anything new to it. Russian culture actively developed in last 30 years, against all odds and efforts of the state, which coincidentally wanted to freeze it or roll back in time too.

Russian language indeed borrowed a few words, but this is not a bad thing, it’s a common reflection of Zeitgeist that happened to the language before.

[yostrovs]

Russians outside Russia for the last 100 years have contributed literature, music, movies, and helped to introduce Russian cultural aspects to the West. In the past 30 years this only accelerated. Even before this war there were huge numbers of Russian intellectuals, artists, etc living in the West, but contributing to Russian culture.

[ivan_gammel]

I’ve been reading a lot of books in Russian, watched lots of movies and attended a lot of contemporary art exhibitions in Moscow and St.Petersburg. I’m struggling to find any traces of such contribution of emigrant communities in the last 30 years (well, maybe Akunin or Sorokin?). There are a few names from Soviet times, but they represent a fraction of what’s been happening and emigrants usually reflect on the past.