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By Richard Lourie
(The Moscow Times) Cafe Henri on Bedford Street in New York's Greenwich Village is a little place known for its French fare -- oeuf dur mayonnaise, crepes, cafe au lait served in a bowl. But nearly all the waitresses are from Russia, Belarus or Ukraine. In the context of Russia's history in the last century, it's a good sign of course that young people are free to roam around the world, to work and study in foreign lands. At the very least, it is one of the forces that help inoculate a society against isolationism, xenophobia and jingoism.
Russia has to worry about "youth leakage" along with "brain drain" and intermittent bouts of capital flight. The latter was quite high in 2004, legal capital flight coming out at $7.9 billion. This figure of course includes successful acquisitions like the Chelsea Football Club or Rouge Steel, which are more a sign of globalization than a symptom of lack of confidence in the Russian economy.
The brain drain is a different story. Fewer people are emigrating now, but they're said to be among the best and brightest. In the 15 years since the collapse of the Soviet Union, 500,000 scientists have left the country. That number has been reduced thanks to improvements in the Russian economy. It has also been offset by the return of some emigres from Israel motivated by the fear of terrorism and a sense of second-class citizenship. The tide was also stemmed by the efforts of such organizations as the MacArthur Foundation, which is giving nearly $22 million to Russian public and private educational institutions. The idea is both to keep students in Russia and to keep university people from being lured into business.
There are still many good reasons for bright young Russians to consider leaving the country. Fear of the draft was magnified by the recent horrors at the Chelyabinsk Armor Academy. Besides, leaving one's country for an extended period or permanently is no longer as daunting as it was even 20 years ago. There are now established networks -- like the one that gets the girls jobs at the Cafe Henri. Staying in touch with home by e-mail or phone is cheap and easy, and you can buy pelmeni in any good-sized American city and watch Russian TV on cable or the web.
Education, along with energy security and infectious diseases, are the three topics Russia has chosen for its G8 summit this summer. Education really needs to be very high on Russia's agenda. Russia has a double opportunity right now -- to become a free society and to diversify its economy so that it does more than sell gas, oil and other commodities. One of the few voices calling for a knowledge-based economy is Mikhail Khodorkovsky's and is little heard from Chita. If Russia fails to diversify and tap into its human capital, its talent pool, the country will be in dangerous straits by mid-century when the gas and oil resources begin to run down. And it's then that the "Yugoslavization" of the country President Vladimir Putin says he fears could well occur.
Education is unsexy. It tends to provide a non-controversial feel-good issue about which people can agree and not feel greatly obliged to act. But Russia needs to exploit its intellectual resources, which have the added advantage of being renewable. If Putin is wise and patriotic he will devote a significant portion of the remainder of his presidency to education and to making the Russian economy knowledge-based. And he should see to it that his much-discussed successor does the same.
Richard Lourie is the author of "The Autobiography of Joseph Stalin" and "Sakharov: A Biography."
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