this is a good read: Russia's educated people are fleeing the Putin regime by the 100,000s

[uhnope]

At least 300,000 just in the two years after Putin started his latest "term" in office, and that is an underestimate
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/07/24/russia-putin-emigration-idUSL6N0PI4TH20140724

Disenchanted with Putin, some Russians vote with their feet

* Five times more emigrating in Putin's third term, state statistics show

* Some middle-class Russians lose hope in reforms, see rosier future elsewhere

* With Putin's ratings at six-year high, critics no longer feel at home

* Russia's middle-class increasingly made up of bureaucrats, study says

* Majority approve of Putin's annexation of Crimea, management of Ukraine crisis

MOSCOW, July 24 (Reuters) - Most of Vladimir Paley's clients want him to dig up their family history with one goal in mind: making a case to obtain foreign citizenship and leave Russia. Six months ago the soft-spoken genealogist had few such requests, but this month he hired an assistant to help him with the flow of would-be émigrés. Most just want a better life, with some seeking more political freedom than under President Vladimir Putin and others keen to escape an economy that has been hit by Western sanctions over the Ukraine crisis and is on the verge of recession.

"They are people who have already made money and are now scared to lose it," Paley said. Putin's popularity is soaring in Russia over the annexation of Crimea from Ukraine despite pressure from Western leaders over what they say is his support for rebels they accuse of shooting down a Malaysian airliner in east Ukraine.

But thousands of people from the minority in Russia who disagree with his policies are voting with their feet. "I don't share the opinion of 90 percent of the country: I feel like a foreigner here now so why not leave?" said Tatiana Konkova, a Russian literature teacher and singer, giving her last concert in Moscow this month. She is trying to sell her home in the Moscow suburbs and move with her seven-year-old son to Georgia, a former Soviet state where she hopes to work as many people speak Russian. The number of Russians emigrating in the last two years was some five times higher than in the two before Putin began a new six-year term in May 2012, official figures show.

Russia's statistics service Rosstat data shows 186,382 moved abroad in 2013 and 122,751 in 2012, compared to 36,774 in 2011 and 33,578 in 2010.

But experts say the real number is much higher. "The official statistics on migration are very low," said Mikhail Gorshkov, director of the Russian Academy of Sciences' Institute of Sociology (ISRAS), a state-funded body. "It's a wake up call for our politicians when someone wants to leave their home country: What is missing for him?"

Read more http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/07/24/russia-putin-emigration-idUSL6N0PI4TH20140724

[fasttense]

1. Hmm, it makes me wonder how much of this "fleeing" is because of Putin and how much

is because of wealth.

"They are people who have already made money and are now scared to lose it."

Let's face it, if you are overflowing with riches from your slightly shady and possibly illegal "capitalist" ventures the best places to be is either the US or England. There wealth is god and as long as you have it, you will very likely never go to jail.

Just look how wealth spins our elections.

[uhnope]

2. um...no

the shady mega-rich capitalist oligarchs are Putin's buddies, by and large.
The people leaving are the educated middle-class, the intellectuals.

Do you actually think wealth is god more in the US or UK than in Russia? In the US we put people like Allen Stanford in prison; in Putin's Russia, whistleblowers on the oligarchs are the ones thrown into prison and left to rot or be killed there, like Sergei Magnitsky
www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergei_Magnitsky

[fasttense]

3. Well it seems that Russia is just as corrupted a capitalist system as the US, no better, no worse.

Some oligarchs get caught like Mikhail Khodorkovsky and go to prison but many more are ignored. It's the same here in the US. They jail a few just for show like Stanford and Martha Stewart and then pretend the rest of the banksters and thieves aren't doing the exact same thing.

Sorry to read about Sergei Magnitsky. He sounded like a good man who got murdered for proposing to tell the truth just like Michael Connell.

Seems to me that our current capitalist system is NOT working anywhere. It is corrupted to the bone in almost in every instance. Perhaps it's NOT Putin or Obama or the RepubliCONS. Perhaps it is the system itself.

[geek tragedy]

4. When there is no hope for the future those that

can escape will.