Kommersant
Brain drain lags behind migrant labor inflow
Opinion polls taken last summer may have shown that one in five Russians wants to emigrate, but new research shows that, over the past decade, the number of immigrants exceeded that of those leaving Russia by 1.3 million.
FinExpertiza, a Russian audit and consultancy group, dismissed concerns over an exodus from Russia after analyzing migration data collected by the state statistics service, Rosstat, covering the past decade.
At the same time, national pollster VTsIOM reported in June 2011 that 21% of survey respondents said they would like to reside abroad permanently, a 16% rise from 1991.
“This growing ‘Wanderlust’ does not mean that people are really leaving Russia. ‘Would like to emigrate’ is not the same as ‘leaving’,” explained FinExpertiza CEO Agvan Mikaelyan. At the same time, he added, this report does not include “qualitative data” – the education level, occupation or social status of immigrants or émigrés.
Most analysts admit that official statistics have always shown a migration surplus. “No one is panicking about Russians leaving. Immigration declined slightly due to difficulties with getting Russian citizenship but there is still a surplus,” said Nikita Mkrtchyan from the Higher School of Economics’ Demography Institute. At the same time, he added, Rosstat cannot take into account those moving abroad who do not sell their property or cancel their residence registration. Therefore, the real emigration figure is three times the official one.
A comparative demographic analysis of the Russian regions suggests that the 2010 population exceeded its 2001 level only in 12 out of 83 regions. Among those, there are only five where growth was based on both low natural decline and immigration. As many as 43 regions showed population outflow.
Analysts note the usual internal migration to regions offering a higher quality of life. Chukotka and the Magadan Region in Russia’s Far East have lost 18% and 15% of their populations in the past decade. But it is the 33 regions that showed considerable outflow together with natural population decline that concern experts most. “We risk simply losing some regions altogether in terms of civilized development,” Mikaelyan said.
Immigrants account for almost 10% of the population in the most attractive regions such as the obvious leaders, the Moscow (9.08%) and Leningrad (7.2%) Regions, and the Belgorod Region (6.7%). Moscow, the multi-million megalopolis, ranks second after the Moscow Region in terms of the number of immigrants, and fourth in terms of immigrant population percentage, 5.37%, the FinExpertiza report noted, suggesting that immigrants still prefer the Moscow Region to the capital. “It is one of the best developed regions with a high capacity for immigration, and it is easier to get a residence permit there,” the analysts said.
Vedomosti
Russians file election fraud suits
Russians are starting to file lawsuits demanding that the election results be invalidated. Last Friday, lawyer Dmitry Chyorny, a Yabloko observer at Electoral District 1680, filed a suit demanding that the court order a recount or invalidate that district’s results. He cites numerous violations, saying that the location of the two ballot boxes precluded them both being watched simultaneously and that a neat pile of voting papers was later found in one of them. When the polls closed, all commission members sorted and counted the ballot papers simultaneously, further preventing observers from monitoring them. But the worst part is that the figures in the final count differ from official data published on the Moscow City Election Committee’s website, according to which United Russia received not 721 votes, as Chyorny claims, but 200 more, increasing its share from 43% to 55%. Commission members were not invited to recount the papers. Chyorny said he was a volunteer observer at that district and has filed the lawsuit on his own initiative. He also attended the election fraud protest meeting in Moscow’s Bolotnaya Square on December 10.
A similar suit was filed on Tuesday by Dmitry Surnin, editor-in-chief of the district newspaper Moi Rayon, who acted as observer at Electoral District 701. As in the above case, the initial count of United Russia votes, 24%, ultimately grew to 51%. Surnin said he has filed a lawsuit because “it looks like the parties are in no hurry to contest the election results. As a citizen, I want to be sure that this crime – vote theft – will not go unpunished.”
Muscovite Maxim Petronevich and 10 of his neighbors have filed a lawsuit demanding that prosecutors investigate presumed election fraud at Electoral District 1723, where ten people voted for the opposition party Yabloko, but the final count shows only five pro-Yabloko votes and no spoiled ballots. Petronevich says that he only learned about it by chance after talking with his neighbors and acquaintances. “When I was filing the lawsuit, I saw that they already have a thick file on the elections,” he said.
Yabloko and the Communist Party said they planned to contest the election results, but neither has so far filed a lawsuit. Processing information and making conclusions takes time, a Yabloko representative said. The Moscow City Election Committee declined to comment. Earlier it refused to postpone the vote approval and to order a recount at the request of Yabloko, which indicated a gap between the official count and the information gathered by observers in 60 electoral districts.
Protests against the election results are spontaneous, political analyst Alexander Kynev said. They are a result of public outrage, not an organized movement. The parties are not coordinating it but are moving in its wake.
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