Generation Exile
Newsweek's notes that Russia's Generation Exile, a tide of businessmen, lawyers, accountants, and bankers, have fled their country after being robbed and threatened by Russia's corrupt law-enforcement officials.
The economic impact of the brain drain is startling. In the decade since Vladimir Putin first came to power, Russia fell from 52nd to 63rd on the World Economic Forum's Global Competitiveness Index, despite massive oil-funded state spending and an ambitious sounding modernization program.
At the heart of the problem is an unholy alliance between Russian law enforcement and the criminal world. Instead of enforcing the law, a large chunk of Russia's police, secret police, and government bureaucrats spend their energies on looking out for vulnerable businesses that can be targeted for a corporate raid. The pattern was established in 2003 when the Kremlin dismembered YUKOS and jailed Mikhail Khodorkovsky, and a slew of executives and lawyers based on dubious evidence. A lawyer connected to YUKOS said: "Russian bureaucrats figured, if Putin can do it, so can we."
Last year President Dmitry Medvedev warned Russia's bureaucrats to "stop terrorizing business" and blasted Russia's culture of "legal nihilism." He also recently legislated an amnesty for economic crimes. But Newsweek comments that his bold speeches against corruption are largely ignored, in a system still dominated by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. With so many exiles in London, New York, and Tel Aviv, Russia joins the ranks of countries like Iran, Cuba, Syria, and North Korea, whose best talent prefers to make a future outside their native land. The publication concludes that Generation Exile holds a stark mirror to the reality of Russia - which for all Putin's talk of greatness has little chance of success if it's losing its most talented people.