Please join the Russia and Eurasia Program at The Fletcher School for a conversation with Ambassador John Herbst and Dr. Sergei Erofeev about their new report The Putin Exodus: The New Russian Brain Drain (2019). Attendance is by registration only on Eventbrite.

Human capital is fleeing Russia. Since President Vladimir Putin’s ascent to the presidency, between 1.6 and 2 million Russians – out of a total population of 145 million – have left for Western democracies. This emigration sped up with Putin’s return as president in 2012, followed by a weakening economy and growing repressions. It soon began to look like a politically driven brain drain, causing increasing concern among Russian and international observers. In this pioneering study, the Council’s Eurasia Center offers a clear analysis of the Putin Exodus and its implications for Russia and the West. The study examines the patterns and drivers of Russian emigration to the West since 2000 based on the findings from focused interviews and surveys with new Russian émigrés in four key cities in the United States and Europe.

John Herbst is the director of the Eurasia Center at the Atlantic Council. Ambassador Herbst served for thirty-one years as a foreign service officer in the U.S. Department of State, retiring at the rank of career minister. He was the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine from 2003 to 2006. Prior to his ambassadorship in Ukraine, he was the U.S. ambassador to Uzbekistan from 2000 to 2003. Ambassador Herbst previously served as U.S. consul general in Jerusalem; principal deputy to the ambassador-at-large for the Newly Independent States; director of the Office of Independent States and Commonwealth Affairs; director of regional affairs in the Near East Bureau; and at the embassies in Tel Aviv, Moscow, and Saudi Arabia. He most recently served as director of the Center for Complex Operations at the National Defense University. He has received two Presidential Distinguished Service Awards, the Secretary of State’s Career Achievement Award, the State Department’s Distinguished Honor Award, and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Distinguished Civilian Service Award. Ambassador Herbst’s writings on stability operations, Central Asia, Ukraine, and Russia are widely published.

Sergei Erofeev is currently a lecturer at Rutgers University in New Jersey. He has been involved in the internationalization of universities in Russia since the early 1990s. Previously, Dr. Erofeev has served as a vice-rector for international affairs at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow, the dean of international programs at the European University at Saint Petersburg, and the director of the Center for Sociology of Culture at Kazan Federal University in Russia. He has also been a Hubert H. Humphrey fellow at the University of Washington. Prior to his career in academia, Dr. Erofeev was a concert pianist and has worked in the area of the sociology of the arts.