Chronicles of ruin: due to the war in Ukraine and the wave of obscurantism in Russia, Russian science is losing thousands of scientists

The war in Ukraine dealt a powerful blow to Russian science: the number of scientists who left and are leaving Russia is estimated to be in the thousands. The most powerful Moscow universities suffered the most from the “brain drain”: HSE, Moscow State University, MIPT. Scientists leaving Russia go not only to the USA and Germany, but also to the southeast: to China, the UAE, Israel, as well as to Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Armenia, where scientific emigration was previously very low or non-existent. A more complete picture of the “flow” of science will be visible from the statistics of affiliations in publications in international scientific journals after several years. However, a significant reduction in such publications by Russian authors (by almost a quarter) was already demonstrated by data from 2022. As a result of the war and the wave of military obscurantism and isolationism that is observed in Russia today, in the next two to three years the country will completely lose the scientific potential that it managed to build up during the very successful 2010s for Russian science.

The number of scientists who left and are leaving Russia after the start of the war is measured in the thousands. Thus, according to Novaya Gazeta Europe , based on an analysis of the ORCID database, which combines information on 20 million scientists around the world, at least 2,500 researchers and higher education teachers could have left Russia over the past two years.

According to Novaya Gazeta estimates, from 2012 to 2021, about 10% of Russian scientists registered with ORCID changed their affiliation from Russian to foreign annually; in 2022 this figure was 30%. The publication managed to identify 600 scientists who changed their place of work from Russian to foreign, that is, left Russia. Considering that, as a rule, users change information in their ORCID profile with a time lag, and extrapolating the trend, Novaya data analysts estimated the total size of the flow since the beginning of the war at 1,600 people. To this they added those who changed their country of residence in ORCID without indicating a new place of work, and those who deleted a record of Russian employment in the database, and thus obtained the final figure.

The complexity of such calculations is determined primarily by the question of who is classified as a scientist: should we talk about researchers and university teachers in general or only about people with high publishing and international scientific activity. Thus, one of the scientists who left, now an employee of Charles University in Prague, Dmitry Dubrovsky, estimates the exodus of scientists and university teachers at 2-3% of their total number, that is, 7-8 thousand people. These figures seem plausible or even underestimated if we consider the broad definition of workers in science and higher education. The current wave of Russian emigration has reached, according to Re: Russia estimates , 700–800 thousand people and has a very high educational profile. According to a survey conducted in March 2022 by the OutRush project, 80% of relocants had a higher education or scientific degree, 14% worked in the field of education and science before leaving. While the figures for early March emigration cannot be extrapolated to the entire migration wave, the estimate of Dubrovsky, who believes that scientists and higher education teachers make up about 1–2% of the adult part of the new emigration, looks minimal.

Some ideas about the scale of the flow of scientists of a very high scientific profile are given by calculations by the current employee of the University of Wisconsin Mikhail Sokolov , made on the basis of data on bonuses to HSE employees for publications in foreign peer-reviewed journals, that is, to Russian scientists integrated into world science. According to these estimates, about 30% of the 855 people who received such allowances left the country. (A significant proportion of them, however, are humanists, who are traditionally much more politicized than natural scientists.)

According to Novaya Gazeta, about 23% of losses occurred at Moscow universities, including 10% at HSE, 5% at Moscow State University, 4% at Skolkovo and 3% at MIPT. Also, 3% each falls on St. Petersburg University and the St. Petersburg Institute of Precision Mechanics and Optics.

The presence of records in ORCID about a new place of work also makes it possible to assess the geography of migration of Russian scientists (keeping in mind that these data reflect only a part of the real population of those who left). The leader in accepting scientists in this sample was Germany (15% of those who left), ahead of the traditional champion in “absorption of foreign brains” - the USA (11%). And the most impressive leap was made by Israel (7% instead of the pre-war 2.5%). However, this is explained more by the conditions of aliyah than by the attitudes of the Israeli authorities or the attractiveness of its scientific environment. The main beneficiaries of the flight of scientists from war and military obscurantism were China and Kazakhstan, as well as Uzbekistan, Armenia, Kyrgyzstan and the UAE - countries that before the war Russian scientists usually did not consider as a possible place of work. At the same time, notes Dmitry Dubrovsky, while some countries benefit from attracting Russian scientists, others - the Baltic countries and some countries of Eastern Europe - on the contrary, hinder the flow of scientists and scientists from Russia.

However, the scale of the “military” “brain drain” will become finally clear in a few years, when data on affiliations in scientific publications appears, Novaya Gazeta Europe rightly notes. Moreover, these changes will reflect two factors: the real relocation of scientists and the growth of obscurantism and isolationism of the remaining scientific community in the country. The HSE Institute for Statistical Research and Economics of Knowledge reported in December monitoring that the publication activity of Russian scientists, which doubled in the pre-war decade - from 1.9 to 3.9% of publications in all publications indexed by the Scopus system - decreased by a quarter in 2022 (up to 3%), returning to the 2015 level. According to estimates by Science/Business , based on data from the same Scopus, the number of publications following conferences with the participation of at least one author with Russian affiliation fell from 35 thousand in 2021 to 20 thousand in 2022 and 10.6 thousand . for November 2023.

The ongoing political persecution of scientists in Russia ( they are monitored, in particular, by the T-Option project ) and the growing spy mania, isolationism and obscurantism leave no doubt that the flow of Russian science abroad will continue, but will be largely regulated by those opportunities which Western universities and scientific programs will provide Russian scientists with. However, if these opportunities are limited, the flow of scientists will continue towards China and other Asian countries. Over the next two or three years, Russia will lose the scientific potential that it managed to build up during the very productive 2010s for Russian science.