How each of us affects the brain drain from the country
Most of all, young people want to emigrate: last year, 44% of Russians aged 15-29 expressed such a desire, American researchers found. The number of those wishing to leave Russia last year reached a record for the last decade …
In a sense, World War III is in full swing. Countries are fighting for bright minds, because intelligence is the most valuable resource in the modern world. In the old days, they drove away livestock, robbed warehouses, and took prisoners. Today food is plentiful, robots are about to go to work. Society needs those who improve weapons and train neural networks, not collectors of silver and marten skins. This is a matter of well-being and national security.
But highly educated people are leaving Russia. According to demographer Yulia Florinskaya, 40% of emigrants leaving the country a year have a higher education. How to keep them and what can every ordinary Russian do for this?
Will raising salaries help?
The brain drain from Russia has doubled in recent years [1]. The number of highly qualified specialists who emigrated increased from 20 thousand in 2013 to 44 thousand in 2016, the RAS figures.
In fact, the number of those who left is even greater, since the statistics of Rosstat takes into account [2] only those who are removed from registration. The rest are not included in the number of emigrants. According to the documents, these people are registered in Russia, but in fact they live in other countries. Among them, for example, contract scientists. Migration to Russia does not compensate for the brain drain. Less educated people come to the country than they leave.
Most of all, young people want to emigrate: last year 44% of Russians aged 15-29 expressed such a desire, American researchers have found [3]. The number of those wishing to leave Russia reached a record in the last decade last year.
“Many of my acquaintances are thinking about moving to another country,” says Sergey Gunkov, a graduate of the Aerospace Institute of Orenburg State University, who has developed software to increase labor productivity at manufacturing enterprises. The unusualness of his solution is that one and the same computer program can be applied at an enterprise of any industry represented in the Orenburg region. The work was financed by the regional government, but this did not increase the chances of finding a suitable job in his hometown. Gunkov is thinking about Peter.
“In Orenburg, salaries are small,” he explains. “After graduating from university, you can get a job at a factory and receive 15 thousand rubles a month. If they still take it, because there are few jobs in our specialty. Half of the salary will immediately have to be paid for the apartment. So you strive for development in order to work without worrying about money.
Gunkov's opinion is confirmed by the data of the Orenburg sociological center "Public Opinion": the main reasons why the Orenburg youth want to change their place of residence are difficulties in finding a job in their specialty and low salaries in the region. It turns out that the only question is to ensure the financial well-being of intellectuals, and they will stay? In this case, you can exhale: the Cabinet is taking urgent measures to solve the problem. At the beginning of 2019, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said [4] that the government will allocate almost 5.3 billion rubles to raise salaries for researchers.
Moreover, the average salary of scientific workers in Russia has already grown. In the first six months of last year, it increased by 1.7% compared to the same period last year, according to the Institute for Statistical Studies and Economics of Knowledge of the Higher School of Economics [5].
However, the number of scientific workers against the background of salary increases, oddly enough, decreased by 10.6%.
Highly skilled Russians continue to leave the country. The measures taken to contain them are not much more effective than the research of medieval alchemists. To raise salaries? To reform the RAS? Or maybe put a plantain to a sore spot? Today, an accurate understanding of the psychological background of the processes taking place in the country is required, which is just what is lacking.
Money is not the main thing
Salaries should not be beggarly, but money is not the main motivation for knowledge workers - this becomes clear at Yuri Burlan's training "System-Vector Psychology". Depending on the innate properties, a person strives for realization in different spheres of life: he wants to start a family, build a house, travel. This requires wealth. But the desire to learn, to invent is at a higher level in the hierarchy of desires than the passion for enrichment.
“As a person close to science, I look at money last,” says Sergei Akimov, senior lecturer of the Department of UITS of the Aerospace Institute of OSU. - They interest me, of course, but yachts with a private jet are not needed. The first step is the project. What's the problem? If the project requires the purchase of equipment, then you will have to figure out about the money. More money means more time to think about science, rather than about taking tutoring to make ends meet. Not everything is about salary. A close friend of mine, who defended his dissertation on statistics in Orenburg and moved to work in Canada, once hinted that our salary is the same, “only mine is in dollars, yours is in rubles,” but I don’t think that for him it was when something important. Bureaucracy was a burden for him. In addition, at the University of Toronto, he was immediately given access to a supercomputer reserved especially for him, and equipment that is not in Orenburg and is unlikely to appear soon.
A graduate of the Institute of Informatics and Telecommunications of the Siberian State Agrarian University named after V. I. Reshetneva Denis Turkov from Igarka - a city beyond the Arctic Circle, so cut off from civilization by the endless taiga that its inhabitants call Krasnoyarsk the mainland.
- Germany is a country of such large corporations as BMW, Bosch, Siemens, METRO. Now they are going through the painful process of digital transformation - completely changing the way they work. I wanted to participate in this, get experience in these conditions, - he explains his desire to emigrate. - There are companies in Russia that work in this format, but you can count them on the fingers of one hand: Mail.ru Group, Yandex, VKontakte, Badoo.
Turkov currently works in Berlin at Spryker GmbH, which develops modular software products - tools with which clients implement their own projects. For example, a project to create a "smart" refrigerator that orders missing products from a supermarket. Every day, new challenges and interesting acquaintances - Berlin turned out to be the perfect city to practice new skills and feed inspiration.
- I consider myself a cosmopolitan. The idea is that it doesn't matter where you live as long as you can bring something good to this world.
And yet Denis, having gained new experience, dreams of returning to Moscow, where he lived for several years before moving to Germany. There he is much more comfortable, including financially: the ratio of income and expenses is optimal.
Personal happiness or patriotism?
To solve the problem of intelligence drain, it is not enough to find out what guides knowledge workers when thinking about emigration. It is necessary to diagnose what psychological problems in society are pushing even the most patriotic to leave their homeland.
“My son once said to me: sell an idea to Japan, they will tear it off with arms and legs,” says Alexander Andreev from Orenburg. - I can not. Patriot.
Pilot Alexander Andreev is unsuccessfully trying to get funding from state charitable foundations to create a prototype of his new invention - a rotary detonation internal combustion engine. The patented principle will increase the efficiency of the unit several times. So far, all funds have been refused.
Similar difficulties are faced not only by private inventors, but also by large scientific communities. At the transport faculty of Orenburg State University, many copyright certificates and patents for inventions useful for the development of the transport sector are not in demand. Former dean of the faculty, Konstantin Shchurin, in an interview with the Orenburg University newspaper, mentioned the loss of the management vertical in the transport sector as a problem. In the 1990s, the Orenburgavtotrans association operated in the Orenburg region, with which the OSU signed a cooperation agreement. From him the university received orders for scientific research. Now this is entrusted to private enterprises, for which profit is a priority. Private traders, as a rule, are not interested in the implementation of developments "from outside", as they do not want to wait until the project pays off.
And this despite the fact that the Soviet Union had a whole network of sectoral ministries and institutes that linked science and production. There is no peace under the olives, but in the USSR the society was coordinated. After its collapse, people were offered new landmarks.
There are many good things in the transition to a new stage of social development. And everything would be fine, if not for hidden psychological contradictions.
People have received unprecedented opportunities for moving around the world, they can choose where to realize themselves as much as possible. Religions and ideologies that involve serving God or an idea have been replaced by belief in personal happiness. These are the characteristic features of the era of consumption, the transition to which was natural and inevitable.
The outlook of Russians has also changed, which is illustrated by opinion polls. In the 90s, researchers found out the emigration intentions of students from leading Moscow universities. Of these, 8% regarded the departure of emigrant scientists as a betrayal of the country in which they were educated. The majority of the surveyed students (82%) characterized the brain drain as a natural process caused by the lack of demand for their creative potential, underestimation of their work by society. Such data are provided by researchers Igor Ushkalov and Irina Malakha [6].
The youth has become different. The researchers draw attention to the fact that the factors that limited the brain drain in the past are now blurred, because in the USSR people left the country less often, not only because of legal barriers. They were held back by ideological attitudes. Patriotism, faith in the progressiveness of Soviet society, the power of the state and its leading role in the world were valued. This does not mean that the Soviet people could neglect self-realization, did not want to be treated in well-equipped hospitals and send their children to safe schools. The point is in the special mentality of our compatriots.
The mental values of Russians are opposite to the values of the consumption era. As a result, the transition to it in Russia was more painful than in other countries. It is typical for us to help others, so the socialist system was perceived as natural. The people who made up the creative nucleus of society in the USSR did not work for themselves - for the Motherland. The public had priority over the personal for them. And in the nineties the country was doomed to survival according to the animal principle: every man for himself. Society has dramatically lost coherence, including at the level of government. The people were disoriented. In the pursuit of happiness, everyone was left alone before choosing a suitable path.
Which way to turn in order to get satisfaction from life? Not everyone succeeds in solving this problem correctly, because desires are the domain of the unconscious. People don't always know what they want. For example, they strive for money, but in fact, for everything on which they can spend it, in contrast to true capitalists who do not spend their income, but accumulate it in bank accounts. Mental contradictions with the values of the consumer era also arose from a disrespectful attitude towards knowledge workers. It has become much more prestigious to get rich dramatically than to pore over the scientific development that is significant for society for years. There are fewer and fewer patriots, and the country's intellectual potential is routinely and routinely plundered.
How each of us increases the hole in the common boat
Another problem deserves special mention: the Russians have not yet learned to understand what the law and the protection of private property are.
The concept of intellectual property is not peculiar to us. Why pay for music, film or software when you can download it for free? In the USSR, everything was created by collective labor and was considered the public domain, therefore, there was no difference between our own and someone else's.
So sociologists confirm [7]: only 22% of Internet users in Russia are sure that Internet users should pay for the content they consume, while 52% hold the opposite opinion. These are the results of a poll conducted by the Public Opinion Fund in the country three years ago.
If everyone can use the results of someone else's labor at their own discretion and for free, then why work conscientiously? They will take them away anyway.
The law is the protection of property, including intellectual property. It must be respected. Labor insecurity is one of the psychological reasons for the drain of intelligence from the country. Even the slightest danger of loss or informational background, indicating that ideas can be stolen, can become an obstacle to self-realization.
- Ideas theft - they constantly scare me, - says Sergey Akimov. - I have not personally met, but you are still afraid. Especially when you write to an international magazine. Do you think that now the article will not be accepted, and then it will be published under someone else's name. You never know. Especially if it is not some kind of publication, but a conference, that is, some other university has held a conference. Who knows, maybe this is not a conference, but just a collection of articles, then you will receive an answer that the article will not be published and will be stolen.
Let's start with ourselves
People are closely interconnected and influence each other. More than it seems. This can be seen especially clearly in modern digital realities - an anonymous user posts a video on the network about abuses of an official, and in the field on the same day "heads fly". The more intelligent people understand the psychological reasons for the current events and their role in them, the more chances there are to guarantee Russia from disintegration.
To start with yourself means to deal with your own desires, to separate the true from the imposed, to take care of the health of society, having learned to realize your talents in it as much as possible, to understand the special Russian character …
The intellectual power of the country is in the hands of everyone.
If you want to reverse a destructive tendency, you can start with a simple action. Answer the question - how do you feel about someone else's intellectual work? Do you download programs "lying around" on the Internet?
Links to used sources
1. Work for authority. From the report of the Chief Scientific Secretary of the Presidium of the RAS, Academician of the RAS Nikolai Dolgushkin // Search. 2018. No. 14.
URL: https://www.poisknews.ru/magazine/34762/ (date of access: 09.11.2019).
2. Nikita Mkrtchyan, Yulia Florinskaya Skilled migration in Russia: balance of losses and acquisitions // Economic development of Russia. 2018. No. 2.
URL: https://cyberleninka.ru/article/n/kvalifitsirovannaya-migratsiya-v-rossii-balans-poter-i-priobreteniy (date of access: 09.11.2019).
3. Neli Esipova, Julie Ray // Record 20% of Russians Say They Would Like to Leave Russia. // Gallup. 2019.
url: https://news.gallup.com/poll/248249/record-russians-say-leave-russia.aspx?g_source=link_NEWSV9&g_medium=TOPIC&g_campaign=item_&g_content=Record%252020%2525%2520%25%25 2520They% 2520Would% 2520Like% 2520to% 2520Leave% 2520Russi (date accessed: 09.11.2019).
4. Opening remarks by Dmitry Medvedev. Meeting of the Government on April 4, 2019 // Government of the Russian Federation. 2019.
URL: https://government.ru/news/36268/ (date of access: 09.11.2019).
5. Svetlana Martynova, Irina Tarasenko Average monthly gross wages of employees of scientific organizations by job title: January – June 2018.
URL: https://issek.hse.ru/press/223616625.html (date of access: 09.11.2019).
6. Igor Ushkalov, Irina Malakha "Brain drain" as a global phenomenon and its features in Russia // Sociology of Science. 2000.
URL: https://ecsocman.hse.ru/data/860/013/1220/015. OUSHKALOV.pdf (date of access: 09.11.2019).
7. On the practices of Internet users and the "anti-piracy" law // "TeleFOM" - a telephone survey of citizens of the Russian Federation 18 years and older. 2013.
URL: https://fom.ru/posts/11096 (date of access: 09.11.2019).
