In the starting position

Funny plot: I imagine that the same survey is conducted with us in the early 80s, with Brezhnev or Andropov. The dissident sociologists secretly move the science forward or Yuri Vladimirovich himself wishes, in accordance with the directive he set out, to better find out the country in which we live. And here underground sociologists or Chekists, having pretended to be sociologists, interview citizens.

In all republics, they are interviewed, allied and autonomous, so that the sample, speaking of the scientific language, was representative. They call on the phone or go into apartments, scaring people with immodest issues: in Moscow and in Narva, in Donetsk and in Lugansk, in Bukhara and Grozny. Do you want to, they say, leave the USSR or do not want, but maybe you think about it?

Of course, frightened respondents send them to hell, hanging with a roar. Or, if researchers in civilian clothes are accompanied by a local policeman, competently and adamantly fill all the cells of the questionnaire with negative answers. There are no fools, and no one wants to leave anywhere. Crazy truth -like lovers or refuseniks, on which curious people could also run into the expense. This is an insignificant minority, within the framework of a statistical error.

In short, such a survey in the USSR had to inevitably fail. And only from the denunciations of the informants, summarizing the councils, the same Andropov could make up some idea of ​​the scale of the all -Union hunting for a change of places. Otherwise, in no way.

Meanwhile, it was then, in late Soviet times, the number of people who want to break free should be measured by record numbers. For the borders were locked only on this side, which in itself gave rise to a hidden protest and craving for traveling in the Soviet man. And there, behind the iron curtain, fugitives and emigrants were waiting.

Moreover, this concerned not only the Jews and the Germans, and every non -return, famous or unknown to anyone, knew that he would be accepted, equipped, and would not be given back. In the era of the Cold War, each of those who left or escaped became a lively confirmation of the moral rightness of the West in confrontation with Moscow, and the price of victory was so great that the new crowds of emigrants eager for a historical homeland, mainly in the USA, the State Department, exchanged for American grain. The Americans saved some Soviet citizens, fed others, and it was clear that the humanistic idea prevailed over the communist.

Gorbi released his peoples on all four sides, people threw to the west, and then it turned out that the West was not rubber. Slowly but steadily the reverse process went. As a result, today the Russian borders are open, I don’t want to go, but barriers, congestion and quotas were formed on the other side. Comfortable emigration for Russian -speaking, providing for a large social package, free language courses and other miracles of integration, is not canceled everywhere, but is furnished with a number of difficult conditions. That is, Putin, unlike Brezhnev, with both hands for people to fall from Russia, and with the help of the latest laws is ready to push the doubters, but the West has long been scrupulous during the selection.

The fugitives are in demand with money, and quite large. People who are able to invest hundreds of thousands of foreign currency grandmas into the American or European economy from the very beginning. A separate line is Jews who request Israeli citizenship, but in Russia not only Jews live and not all of them want to repatriate. Many are striving for Germany, but there now the word "refugee" is more likely to be associated with the word "Syrian". What is quite understandable: in Syria there is an endless massacre and half a million victims, and in the Russian Federation the world and, so to speak, democracy. In this sense, the new Cold War of Russia with the West has not even begun. Tourists are allowed there, and potential emigrants are not expected with open arms.

That is why the results of the survey conducted by the Levada Center are not that they cause distrust, as if people were asked in a closed country, but need to be clarified. No, the Russians today are unlikely to be afraid of denunciations, communicating with sociologists, although it is possible that individual citizens show reasonable caution. However, here are the "thinking" (7%) and sometimes "thinking" about departure (16%) could easily be transferred to the category of dreaming of those who dream, if all of them, as in the years of stagnation, knew exactly that in the West they would expect guaranteed reception and help. If the prospect of many years of visa is not looming. If you didn’t have to learn someone else's language in advance, and for my money. If political asylum people who are saving from repressions were received by automatic, as before. But as before it is almost never. But it happens in a completely different way, as with Alexander Dolmatov , and it is impossible to forget about this tragedy.

In the USSR, the decided to leave played the lottery: they will release or force him to sit in refusal, losing status, work, money, selling things. Today is another lottery: they will take it or will not take it, and where often there is no chance and people just have nowhere to go. But, in comparison with the emigrants of stagnant years, which were thrown out of the country, having forever deprived of citizenship and robbing at customs, the current departure is not losing almost anything.

He can always return: for good or for a couple of weeks, or live in two countries. So a considerable one in total, a 25% figure of an emigration against the background of what is happening in the country still seems underestimated. I think that many would not have thought much if they had funds as those who had long been happy with their presence by Florida, London, Berlin. But the vast majority of citizens of the poor Putin Russia does not have money for moving and normal life abroad. Therefore, they do not think. About yourself. They think about children, and children themselves know how to think, there are more and more of them in the West, arriving there in different ways, and this is not emigration at all. I would like to call it an outcome, and I want to believe that there will be no end to the outcome.