At least 2,500 scientists are reported to have left Russia since the start of the war in Ukraine in February 2022 and the number of published scientific papers has collapsed. This comes as the result of isolation due to sanctions, visa restrictions and state paranoia. Novaya Gazeta Europe (NGE) reports on the outcome of a survey of the international ORCID database, which lists more than 20 million scientists globally. Registration in ORCID is mandatory for publishing employees of large Russian universities.
The data indicates more than 130,000 scientists resident in Russia in October 2023. The share of these changing their residence from Russia to a foreign country was practically unchanged from 2012 to 2021, but jumped to 30% in 2022.
NGE estimates that, based on the trendlines, around 2,500 scientists have emigrated since 2022. The number of foreign scientists choosing to come to Russia has also dropped by over two-thirds.
Many of the emigrants are likely to be younger people, as older, more established scientists face more professional and personal difficulties from emigration. Younger men are also more likely to be subjected to mobilisation and have a bigger incentive to leave Russia. According to one university professional interviewed by NGE, “the best are trying to leave immediately after completing their bachelor’s, master’s and postgraduate studies.” Unlike IT workers, scientists are not exempted from being mobilised to fight in Ukraine.
While most emigrating Russian scientists left for the US, Germany and the UK before the war, since February 2023 other destinations have been preferred, in particular Uzbekistan, Armenia, Kyrgyzstan and the UAE with a 300% growth in Russian scientific immigration. The top three destinations are now Germany, the US and Israel – which has had a 175% increase. However, Russian scientific immigration to the UK, France and the US has fallen by more than 20%.
The impact on Russian science is already visible, with a sharp fall in the number and quality of published papers. The share of global science attributed to Russia has fallen from 2-3% to only 1-2%. Russian participation in international scientific conferences has shrunk. The collapse has been particularly noticeable in the proportion of academic conference papers with a Russia-affiliated author. Around 35,000 had at least one Russia-based author in 2021 but this dropped to about 20,000 in 2022 and only about 11,000 in 2023. One publication, the UK-based Journal of Physics: Conference Series, illustrates this trend starkly: papers by Russian authors presented in the series fell from nearly 6,000 in 2021 to only 106 by November 2023, despite Russia traditionally being a leader in physics research.
The reasons for this are not hard to find. Scientists are often physically unable to attend conferences due to visa restrictions and bans on direct flights between Russia and the West. Russian scientists were also removed from international collaborative programmes.
Russian scientists report a growing atmosphere of fear and paranoia at home, as well as a shortage of equipment and scientific supplies due to sanctions. Contact and collaboration with foreigners is regarded with increasing suspicion by the authorities. In some instances, distinguished scientists working on hypersonics and quantum technology have been charged with treason and illegally sharing information in a number of high-profile cases, even though they are said to have had official permission to collaborate.
The impact on Russian science is likely to last for decades. The losses are not all one way, however, as Russia’s withdrawal from the global scientific community is likely to hinder collective efforts on issues such as climate change.
https://twitter.com/ChrisO_wiki/status/1748262503736299600
https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2024/01/18/utechka-vysokoi-stepeni
Comment: The Russian Academy of Science and the Soviet Academy of Science before that were always top notch institutions in my opinion. When the Soviet union first fell apart, it was members of the Academy of Science who immediately stepped in to keep the wheels of government and society turning. That didn’t last long. The old communist apparatchiki very quickly returned to shove aside the far too idealistic scientists. I had a front row seat to all that.
I also had a front row seat to the exodus of scientists from Russia and the rest of the former Soviet Union in the aftermath of the breakup. Somewhere I have a copy of the open letter published by the Academy of Science calling for Western science institutes and universities to take in their scientists so that they can continue their research and eventually return home once Russia and the other new states get back on their feet. I thought it was a brilliant move. Germany was crawling with Russian scientists. In certain institutes like the Max Planck Institute in Garching, Russian became the dominant language in some labs. It was a golden time to be a HUMINT case officer. And we definitely took advantage of the situation.
The present exodus doesn’t seem to be as extreme as the one in the early 1990s, but I’m sure it has the potential to be another golden age for Western HUMINT.
Note for F&L: I figured you might appreciate the weird-ass, AI generated image of fleeing Russian scientists.
TTG
One of Zelensky’s former top staff defected to the US:
https://patriots.win/p/17s5oyhofL/-one-of-zelinskys-former-top-aid/c
A lot of smart people try to leave a country at war or try to get out of it like most of our old geezers to include Trump and Biden.
….”since February 2023 other destinations have been preferred, in particular Uzbekistan, Armenia, Kyrgyzstan and the UAE”….
Joint projects would account for a lot of those.
A little off topic, but not too much.
On 16 January, Emmanuel Todd published a new book.
Before going any further, it’s worth clarifying who this very important figure on the French scene is.
After a good education in the French school system, he obtained a doctorate in history at Trinity College, Cambridge. He admires British culture and society. He has family in the USA. He is discreet about his Jewish roots, but long ago he declared that if he ever had a hard time in France, he would flee to the USA.
He is a virtuoso at analysing family structures around the world, and no less virtuoso at making the most of statistics (economic and others). He also pays close attention to religion as a social phenomenon. He calls himself a historian of the long term. He is a free spirit with encyclopaedic knowledge who draws on foreign sources, especially English-language academic sources.
In 1976, at the age of 23, he tackled Soviet statistics. We know that these statistics were falsified. Yes, but not all of them. In particular, the statistics on birth rates and infant mortality and others on suicide and life expectancy were left uncorrected. Already catastrophic, they were all pointing in the wrong direction.
He concluded, along with other criteria on family structure and internal geopolitics, that the USSR and its East-European glacis were on the verge of extinction. His book was entitled ‘The Final Downfall. Essay on the Breakdown of the Soviet Sphere’. 14 years ahead of its time, not bad.
His many books are more anthropological than purely historical studies. He was sometimes wrong, but his predictions were often borne out.
Of course, he is not without a sense of humour. Here’s an example. He describes the USA, UK and France as liberal democracies. ‘Democratic’ because of free elections and majority rule. ‘Liberal’ because of absolute respect for minorities. Among these minorities, the smallest is that representing the Rich (rich, very rich, ultra-rich). They are psychologically fragile, plagued by uncertainty and always under attack from outside. For a long time now, all governments have been doing their utmost to favour this threatened group. Given the continuing increase in its wealth, the success of this positive discrimination has been resounding. In the long term, governments have achieved their only success.
His blind spot is military matters seen from a strategic angle. In his defence, the results of the war were already foreseeable even before the operations began. This observation enabled him to declare the German (1914 and 1939) and Japanese (1941) leaders mad and stupid. He carefully analysed the self-destructive impulses at work in the past and still at work today. In this research, he goes far upstream. He will use the notion of collective suicide in this book.
Unlike so many French intellectuals, he does not drown his readers in abstract generalities. He always remains grounded in reality, pragmatic and concrete.
From book to book, I admire him greatly, that’s obvious. He can be irritating, sometimes exasperating, but always stimulating!
So the book.
Too long to summarise such a dense text. I haven’t finished reading it yet, but he gave a peripheral conclusion in an interview on TV:
“Russia will not win this war. The West, Nato and the EU will lose it completely. Ukraine? –What Ukraine?”
The journalist who provoked this outburst was stunned.
The outcome of the Ukrainian affair is not the subject of the book. The real subject is the West’s slow self-destruction. Financialisation – making money out of money – is the tool of this downhill slide. The Rich ethnic group is in a state of secession. It has lost sense of community and patriotism. It would be of no consequence if they stopped being held up as an example.
One last personal word. When it comes to states, nothing is ever settled. Destiny moves like a slow pendulum, once up, once down. In its long history, France has accumulated a great many defeats; defeats on the battlefield that only involve its military forces, but also radical defeats, as in 1940, that show the country’s inadequacy to the contingencies of the times. And I’m not forgetting the self-inflicted destruction wrought by civil wars seasoned with treason. Yet France is still here, having made peace with its bitter enemies and own devils.
I’m sure in the future, there will be people for whom land and industry are a country’s true economic assets, but only if they carry on working on concrete things, encompassing society as a whole. Some builders for the future.
Will we witness this inevitable rise?
France likely never wins another battle / war but it has had more military victories than any other country.
France wins the most battles with 1,115, followed by Britain with 1,105 and the United States with 833 victories. According to historian Niall Ferguson, France is the most successful military power in history. It participated in 50 of the 125 major European wars that have been fought since 1495; more than any other European state.
Niall Ferguson is way too kind.
As a rule of thumb, we won a lot of battles, not all of them. And we lost a lot of wars. Again not all of them, thank God.
Yeah, battles, wars…it’s very subjective depending on what side one supports. End of the day the battles / wars never end. Afghanistan has a good track record right now. Nobody knows how to defeat them. Not Russia, not the US. They are found a niche seasonally attacking for decades as long as you get out of their country and allow them to live in dirt houses with no windows in peace the war will end.
babelthuap,
The French were victims of chevauchée a few more times than others, often at the hands of “perfidious Albion”. Now it’s “immigration is our strength”.
d74,
I ask this respectfully, but what about the collapse of the climate? It is happening at a remarkable speed if you put it in geologic time. I predict worldwide panic will begin very soon, probably within three years.
Three years to start panicking?
It could well be…
But you’ve got to stay calm. I’m getting to be an old fart and for at least 30 years we’ve been promised a worldwide calamity no further away than the corner of the street.
In the end, it was just a molehill.
Will the next one be bigger? Maybe it will.
Having confidence in our own ability to overcome difficulties can help. That’s what we’re made for.
This is utter bullshit written either out of ignorance or to maliciously to create a flashy headline. The decline in conference participation (and subsequently in conference papers) has nothing to do with science and everything to do with financial sanction against Russia. To put it simply, conference attendance requires payments to the conference organizer (registration fee), travel, hotels etc. Without conference attendance there is no conference paper. We cut of Russia’s financial system and ceased air travel to Russia. Russians have no way of paying for anything in the West and so they can’t attend.
Laughably, the author points to a “remarkable” decline in Russian attendance of UK physics conferences by citing publications in UK-based Journal of Physics: Conference Series from 6000 to 106. Well, no shit, UK has some of the toughest Russian financial and travel restrictions, it’s amazing that any Russians are able to attend UK conferences.
Real indicator would have been to look at the research papers, not conference papers, but I suspect that decline in those is much smaller. Research papers in peer-reviewed journals are mostly free to publish, so don’t require financial transactions and are not subject to sanctions. The reality is that Russian science was likely not affected much by war, Losing 2.5K scientists out of 140K over 2 years is not much, probably slightly higher than normal level of scientific emigration from Russia.
voislav,
“Real indicator would have been to look at the research papers, not conference papers, but I suspect that decline in those is much smaller.”
That’s exactly what the Novaya Gazeta Europe article looks at in their analysis of the international ORCID database. the publication of research papers in Russia has declined dramatically since the start of the invasion.
With my limited understanding of Russian, it seems to me they report Russia dropping from 8th place with 129K publications in 2021 to 11th place with 110.5K publications. So a 15% drop, much smaller than the 70% drop for conference papers and not what I would call dramatic.
But, ORCID catalogues both research and conference papers. You already quote conference papers declined by 15K from 2021 to 2022, so that’s most of that 18.5K difference. So the drop in research papers is a few percent, rather than 15% implied.
This is what I would expect. Research publications have a long lag, it takes 6-12 month from manuscript submission to official publication. Typically, publication occurs 2-3 years after the experiments are completed and data is collected. So research papers wouldn’t show much of a drop for a few years because that’s how long it takes to empty the pipeline. I am still publishing data collected in early 2000’s, so sometimes there is quite a long lag 🙂
I appreciate the coverage of the scientific matters here, but in this case I see a narrative supported by cherry picked data rather than fact-based conclusions.
I do appreciate it TTG. My AI bots however are carefully trained to adhere to high standards of realism concerning flight and escape, while maintaining an understated attitude regarding matters of location.
http://tinyurl.com/3excfvf4
Once again a masterpiece. 😉 One of the best really.
Good observation regarding the 1990’s breakup and present day and this brings up a meta-issue for me.
Winning the Cold War and watching the USSR fall apart was exhilarating, so much so that politicians in the west, along with govt institutions have been looking for their next hit. It started w/Clinton, metastasized with GWB, and Obama was the only one paused w/the JCPOA. Obama, who is renounced as a weakling, still destroyed Libya and funded the near total extinction of Syria. Funny that a President who only destroyed one country on his watch is considered an appeaser … anyway my point is as follows.
I’ve noticed that the same pattern of stories that were actually true in the 90’s are now repeating themselves now. This is yet another reason I do not trust our MSM, they like to repeat narratives.
For the record, the liberation of eastern Europe was a good thing. Reagan argued a simple point, that those countries had a sovereign right to choose their own govts. Also, I loved Bush Sr, another mostly, reasonable person. I hate seeing what has happened since then.
Interesting when the history of the US shows anything but the concept of nations having a right to choose their own governments. How many governments have we helped to overthrow, or attempted to overthrow?
The best known would be the democratically elected government in Iran. We helped overthrow that government, installed a pro Western monarch there. This lead directly to the Islamic Revolution. The law of unintended consequences shown perfectly.
What Reagan really mean is “countries have a sovereign right to chose their own governments, as long as the US agrees with their choice. If not, the US reserves the right to do everything they can to remove said governments.”
That AI image of fleeing scientists makes me think they are airborne for Persia.
In addition to science, Russian music, literature, art and medicine has suffered under Kremlin leadership. No matter whether that leadership was Tsars or Bolsheviks or those in power now. All tended to eat their children. Metaphorically of course, I’m not saying they were actual cannibals.
Read a book many years ago on the plight of Russian scientists. Can’t recall the author. The storyline was that in pure science they were excellent. But for political, ideological or religious reasons applied science in Russia was poor. Although I’ll probably get a lot of pushback on that statement.
That book was about Stalin and the scientists. Stalin had a lot of foibles, one of which was about. “vernalisation” – this was peddled by one Lysenko, and it set back Russian agriculture for generations.
Did Stalin have similar flat earth fantasies about nuclear engineering and Aviation sciences? Not so much.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism
https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/30316225
Walrus –
No, I’ve never read that one. The one I’m trying to recall was not specifically focused on Stalin’s scientists. It also covered science in Russia back to the time of Peter the Great and also during the years after the fall of the Soviet Union. The author IIRC was a US chemist who spent time in Russia during the occasional thaws in the Cold War and also after 1991.
Regarding aviation & flat earth theories: Stalin tortured Sergei Korolev, the father of the Soviet Space Program, and sent him to the Gulag for seven or eight years. Stalin did the same with many other aerospace scientists and engineers including Valentin Glushko. And Stalin had Kleymyanov, the head of the Soviet rocket institute, murdered. Oops should that have read “executed”?
You may be right about nuclear engineering. Or not. Kremlin control of physics was tight. Probability theory and random variation were judged as false premises not conforming to Communist dialectical materialism. I cannot imagine any engineering firm or manufacturing center without that data needed to analyze materials, tolerances, process control, quality, reliability, risk etc. 19th Century cottage industry perhaps?
BTW does your book by Simon Ings also cover Stalin’s murder of astronomers, executed because Sunspot Research was dubbed un-Marxist? Does it cover the geologists, paleontologists, medical doctors, psychiatrists, psychologists, physiologists, linguists, meteorologists, university professors, etc who were imprisoned or murdered during his Great Purge? Does it speak about the earlier Shakhty Trials?
Probably not. The saddest thing about those times were that the true communist believers actually believed they must be guilty because the party could do no wrong.
Many of the early Bolsheviki were exactly the same type of uneducated criminal scum that were the core of the Nazi party. Beria was one of the. exceptions. These animals believed communism was a new scientific theory that would save the world and killing twenty million people in support of this noble cause was therefore OK. The green parties believe the same – they call it “degrowth”
Walrus –
The early Bolsheviki were prime targets of Stalin’s Great Purge. And he murdered many of them even before that in his rise to power. He started wiping out opposition to his leadership after Lenin died in ’24.
The Greens are infinitesimal compared to Stalin’s T-Rex.
A book worth its weight in anti-Russianism:
“East minus West equals zero” by Werner Keller, an otherwise honourable man. (1961)
Theme: the imperial Russians and then the Soviets didn’t invent anything. Nothing in art, culture, technology or science. They stole everything from the West.
d74,
I have far too many beautiful lacquer boxes from Fedoskino, Khuloi and Palekh to believe that kind of claptrap. I’ve also listened to too many symphonies, ballets and read too many great Russian books to believe that.
d74,
I suggest you read The Master and Margarita.
James,
Just a reminder that it is not d74 who thinks Russia lacking in artistic and scientific accomplishments. It is Werner Keller in his book who is making that claim.
Right TTG.
I’m not the one saying it, not at all.
I also really enjoy Russian literature.
But what I meant by quoting this book is the risk of saying anything out of uncontrolled anti-Russianism. Russia-bashing is not the right approach. It can be dangerous. Something like know your enemy is preferable.
My apologies, d74. Your point is well taken.
Walrus –
Found that book I mentioned. Title ‘Lonely Ideas, Can Russia Compete?’ from MIT Press. Written by Loren Graham. Looking up his biography now, he is a Chemical Engineer who also has a doctorate in History. Plus, he was a participant in one of the first academic exchange programs between the United States and the USSR, studying at Moscow University in 1960-61. Was given a medal by the Russian Academy of Science. Has a dozen or so books on Russia and Russian science. Including one on the re-emergence of Lysenkoism in modern day Russia. My biology 101 professor will be turning over in her grave, I can still hear her admonitions to me about the false but alluring appeal of Lamarck’s theory on L’influence des Circonstances.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17756294-lonely-ideas?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=Lwvhrmazzm&rank=1
Russia sure has a lot of technical accomplishments for a country that has been bleeding applied science technology for hundreds of years.
Christian J Chuba,
Russian science has been superb. The USSR Academy of Science system has a lot to do with that. I worked cooperatively with them during Y2K preparation. They were impressively practical and inventive. I targeted them for years as a HUMINT case officer. They impressed me then, too, even as they bled scientists. BTW, the bleeding lasts a few years at a time, not hundreds of years.
Agreed. They have a first class space program and advanced submarine fleet that is better than anything in the EU. I was actually expressing skepticism at the assertion that Russian science has been floundering since the time of the Tsars. I should have made that clear.
If Russian sciences have been floundering for hundreds of years then they would not have these things.
A little musical interlude:
https://youtu.be/xX4t4XLZjXM
Watch Valery Gergiev literally work up a sweat by jumping up and down at the podium.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valery_Gergiev
One day they will be good draft dodgers, like the ones Jimmy Carter pardoned.
The US had well over a half a million draft dodgers in Vietnam. Not many were convicted, almost none big picture but a lot of people dodge being conscripted when it starts getting hot. Shout out to western media for burying facts when discussing draft dodgers and defectors of Russia and absolutely Ukraine.
Russia and Ukraine can still do conscription but I seriously doubt any western country could pull it off today, especially not the US. If the plan is to backfill the ranks with no loyalty illegal aliens everyone at the Pentagon needs a drug test. A mercenary military figures out real quick who has the actual power.
We would need to spend a couple months on remedial education and pt to get a number of those people ready for basic.
I’ll advocate again for universal conscription, everyone in. But not just in and to the front… We need remedial education, we need machinists, engineers, technicians, doctors and nurses… We need solidarity and national goals. We need a house cleaning, but I don’t blame the kids. Out of all of that the state will be repaid in productive jobs, greatful citizens and a military that cannot be tested on pain of certain death – not a bad trade for a few years national service in repayment. “Maybe I’m a Dreamer…” bs
Cobo,
“the state will be repaid ” that doesn’t come across as the state being our servant but as it being our master.
Fred
States rule; they don’t serve – never have, never will. Those that rule well hold the loyalty of their subjects; those that don’t fail. Arnold Toynbee did an excellent job defining this in his epic “A Study of History,” which I have only read the abridged version.
Basially, once the citizens/occupants of a nation lose respect for their ruling elite, they become susceptible to the influence of external foes. This internal proletariat… “Toynbee developed his concept of an “internal proletariat” and an “external proletariat” to describe quite different opposition groups within and outside the frontiers of a civilization. These groups, however, find themselves bound to the fate of the civilization. During its decline and disintegration, they are increasingly disenfranchised or alienated, and thus lose their immediate sense of loyalty or of obligation.”
cobo,
“once the citizens/occupants of a nation lose respect for their ruling elite, ”
Very British aristocrat of him to look down at all peons that way. The people ‘susceptible to the influence of external foes’ are all the ones trying to be European because they really want to be aristocrats themselves. We’ve always had them, starting with all the ones that wanted Washington to be King. It’s why “Hamilton” is so popular with that set.
What is clear to me is that there was a hostility
between Jews and Russians in both Russia and the Soviet Union.
This extended into the academic realm.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisemitism_in_Soviet_mathematics
See, in particular, my hero, Igor Shafarevich:
https://maa.org/press/maa-reviews/the-vexing-case-of-igor-shafarevich-a-russian-political-thinker
Russophobia – Shafarevich, Igor R_.pdf – isidore.co https://isidore.co/CalibreLibrary/Shafarevich,%20Igor%20R_/Russophobia%20(4693)/Russophobia%20-%20Shafarevich,%20Igor%20R_.pdf
This is serious, respectable mathematical conversation.
There are those who want to demonize conservative Russians.
I deplore those.
Keith Harbaugh
229 Years Together and counting. The historic hostility between Jews and Russians, especially the one-sided nature of it which Wikipedia documents, is shocking. Thank goodness no hostility exists between Jews and Americans.
That Shafarevich article looks really interesting, I have printed it and added it to my reading list.
Shafarevich’s “Russophobia” essay
is also available from a U.S. government source:
JPRS Report, Soviet Union: Political Affairs. – DTIC https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/ADA335121.pdf
That’s probably a better (safer) source.
TTG – you wrote:
“The old communist apparatchiki very quickly returned to shove aside the far too idealistic scientists”
The guys who shoved them aside were people like Boris Berezovsky who the Russians called “New Russians” … to distinguish them from “the old communist apparatchiki”. No doubt one of your colleagues was Berezovsky handler. Its a shame that Berezovsky “killed himself” after he outlived his usefulness. It’s a rough game, intelligence.
James,
It was a lot of the younger KGB types who started infiltrating the Russian deep state soon after the fall of the USSR. They weren’t true believers of communism, but of power and order. The Russian squints told me all about it.
Do these Russian scientists fabricate results like Harvard’s finest?
https://www.wsj.com/health/dana-farber-harvard-retractions-corrections-ceo-laurie-glimcher-935636f5