COMPATRIOTS SHALL NOT RETURN
Kommersant, Russia
June 28 2006
Isolationist idea of "returning the compatriots" should be juxtaposed
to the idea of Big Russia President Putin urged the Ministry of Foreign
Affairs to work with Russians living abroad "on a higher and more
substantial level." This task is much more important and ambitious
than earlier promoted program of returning expatriates to Russia.
The idea of "returning the compatriots" is certainly more advantageous
for Russia’s domestic policy. The return of fellow countrymen is
seen as the unification of Russian nation and the general rise of
the country. Yet, the practical impact of the program of returning
will be insignificant. There are no more compatriots to return from
former Soviet republics, and not many would be willing to come back
from non-CIS countries. The program is rather image-oriented. Its
political popularity is the echo of isolationist ideology. For Russia’s
strategic interests, it would be better not to return compatriots,
but, strangely enough, to leave them abroad.
Russia does not have more or less exact data on the total number
of Russian emigrants of all waves, which alone tells much of its
attitude to Russian diaspora. According to Alexander Chepurin, head of
Foreign Affairs Ministry department for work with compatriots, Russian
diaspora amounts to 25-30 million people. According to the Center of
Demography and Human Ecology, some 20 million Russians live in CIS
and Baltic countries. So, 5-10 million live far abroad. The data of
US Bureau of Census for 2000 showed that 3 million people indicated
they are of Russian descent, and 706,000 people put down Russian as
the language they speak at home. President of the American University
in Moscow Eduard Lozansky, estimated that if linguistic proficiency
is the criterion, then Russian diaspora can reach 3-6 million people.
Despite such a big diaspora, Russia is practically indifferent to it,
and does not work with it. Meanwhile, a diaspora can play a very
significant role for the developing counties of the modern global
world. It may become a source of influence, a mechanism of building
relations, a bridge for technology import.
The economy of many countries relies greatly on the emigrants. Thus,
India received $21.7 billion through money transfers in 2005. World
Bank estimated that Russia received only $1.81 billion, which is very
little even compared to such countries as Serbia ($4.1 billion) and
Brazil ($3.6 billion). Many countries directly borrow from emigrants.
In the 1950s, Israel issued sovereign bonds for Jewish diaspora
in the U.S. and collected nearly $50 million. Later, China, India,
Pakistan, and other countries successfully obtained state loans from
their diasporas.
However, Evgeny Kuznetsov and Charles Sabel of World Bank believe the
influx of expatriates’ money is the least effective way of using fellow
countrymen who live abroad. They name Armenia as a bad example, where
nearly 3.5 million Armenians lived in 1990, and almost the same number
of Armenians lived abroad. The diaspora was organized well, it had
enough intellectuals and businessmen, but this did not help Armenia
to begin rapid modernization. One of the reasons is that Armenian
government regarded foreign Armenian elite as their competitors,
and was interested only in money influx, but did not want to involve
the diaspora into the life of Armenia.
China, on the contrary, is a good example. Researchers from World
Bank write that Chinese authorities managed to link the country to
global network of value added formation with the help of diaspora.
Foreign companies, owned by Chinese expatriates, joined into world
process of goods production in the course of many years of their
existence in the conditions of global economy. When Deng Xiaoping
proclaimed open-door policy in 1978, emigrants’ companies began
purchasing assets in China, move part of their productions there,
etc. Thus China established connections between itself and global
economy.
In a similar way, the success of Indian diaspora in Silicon Valley
and its connections in the U.S. attracted many foreign orders to
Indian IT-companies. It is notable that India did not need to draw
highly educated migrants back to their homeland. On the contrary,
migrants served India best being abroad.
The success of such strategies shows that a country should not isolate
itself from the outer world in the conditions of globalization. It
should not either regard its emigrants as casts-off, or try to make
them return. Russians in Russia and abroad should be regarded as
members of Big Russia, the borders of which in global economy exceed
its national frontiers.