At least as a carcass, at least as a stuffed animal?

The topic of emigration was relevant to me in the late 80s and early 90s. At this time, my parents’ friends were constantly leaving somewhere, giving those who remained behind a bunch of junk, saying goodbye forever, the parents themselves were discussing where they should emigrate, there were some OVIRs, anticipation of some calls and some general nervousness. Life in Russia was perceived as something temporary, and therefore no one tried to improve it in any way, either globally or in detail (“why hang a shelf in the bathroom if we are leaving soon?”)

But then everything somehow settled down. By the beginning of the new century, everyone who wanted to leave had already left. Everyone who wanted to return has already returned. Moving from one country to another has not disappeared, but attitudes have changed: emigration has ceased to be an end in itself. Classmates went to the USA because they were offered an interesting job, relatives went to Montenegro because it was warmer there. No civic position, no pathos. If they get bored, they’ll come to visit, if they don’t like it in another country, they’ll come back, it would be something to make a fuss about.

Lately, friendly kitchens have started talking about emigration again. I thought that this was some kind of local distortion around me: the topic of moving to another city comes up, and, by analogy, the topic of moving to another country - there is no difference now, except that you have to learn the language. But the other day, VTsIOM published an amazing survey: according to their data, 21% of residents want to leave Russia. Moreover, in 1991 such people were 16%, and in 2008 - only 9%.

Well, really, every fifth is a huge number. There are 142 million people in Russia. It turns out that 28.5 million want to leave. Let's say, a third - 9.5 million - will move from words to action, about one and a half million of them will be disappointed and return, but in the meantime a new generation will grow up who wants to leave. What happened in the country since 2008 that made another 12% of citizens want to leave? That is, it is clear that there are a bunch of possible reasons for leaving - from the army to low salaries in most interesting professions, but why has the number of potential emigrants increased so suddenly?

All those things that I personally don’t like really happened in the last three years, but they are completely unrepresentative for me; it’s unlikely that all of them together were significant for at least a thousand people. And the main thing is that I actually want to live in Russia, and therefore I don’t draw the conclusion from them that “I need to leave,” I have some other logical chains. The popular science program “Progress” has closed, which means you shouldn’t get so attached to your work, it will be very bad later. The court in the Novgorod case issued an absurd verdict - you cannot have children unless you have money for a 24-hour nanny. An acquaintance of mine was detained by police officers for drunkenness in a public place and beaten to death in the police station - well, I’ll drink at home, but in general this is a theory of probability: someone dies from an earthquake, and someone from law enforcement agencies, well, that’s it bad luck.

The last example seems to me the most revealing - I really perceive some amazing initiatives of the Russian legislative, executive and judicial authorities as some kind of natural disaster like a tsunami, I do not have a civic position that tells me that I need to somehow fight them. I grew up here, I feel comfortable here, but the authorities just need to stay out of sight if possible.

Perhaps people who still wanted to leave in the last three years also have accumulated some such stories, but I don’t care. I strongly doubt that the financial crisis played any significant role in the increase in the number of potential emigrants - it is not only low-income people who want to leave. Most likely, the reasons are ideological. And, by the way, this fact is indirectly confirmed by the fact that among those who want to leave there are relatively many Internet users. I also learned about the Novgorod case from it.

Perhaps, since 2008, there have simply been more users of social networks in the country, and, accordingly, the amount of daily negative information about real and imaginary dangers has increased many times over? How many people would be concerned about juvenile justice, dispersal of rallies, 94-FZ or paid school education if there were no blogs?

I propose a new slogan for the patriotic movement “ours”, or whoever is there now instead of them: “Cut off the Internet to your neighbor - save Russia.”