Why Liberals Leaving Russia

 

I mentioned it before that emigrants from any certain country often do not represent majority opinion of the said countries. Liberalism in a classical sense often struggle in Russia in face of authoritarian Putinism, but among emigrants from Russia it's the most dominant ideology by a wide margin. The reason for that is Putin's regime deliberate effort to drive as many liberals from Russia as possible.

Putin is self-conscious enough to understand that liberals are the biggest and likely only threat to his power. All other social groups can be placated. Patriots who care about Russia's superpower status could be placated with military parades and occasional jabs against the West. Conservatives who do not mind being a second-class citizen under Putinist elite are very much needed by these elites to serve them in various capacities. Women can be won with occasional shirtless photo or a shot with bikers. Finally old and disconnected from the internet people can be brainwashed with tightly controlled TV propaganda.

That leaves out the liberals. The kind that supports and espouse western values. The go and criticize authoritarianism, lack of democracy and secretly plot a revolution, similar to Euromaidan. To make matters worse they all concentrated in the capital, where Putin and his elite themselves live. Putin may be winning national elections by huge margins, but in Moscow government he struggles to keep majority, using dubious pseudo-independents of My Moscow to prop numbers of his United Russia. 

Putin cannot win liberals because he and his elite does not want to relinquish their de-facto above-law privileged status. However, he is too cautious and cunning to simply do nothing in carefree believe that liberals would not be able to do anything about it. 

Instead, he wants as many as possible liberals out of the country. It's safer that way. To that end he pushes liberals to emigrate to the western liberal countries they so like. Many, me included, did just that. Putin war in Ukraine gives liberals all the more reasons to flee.

Unlike liberals all other demographics are very unlikely to emigrate for various reasons. Putinist elite hires conservatives to serve them in various capacities, so they have no reasons to go anywhere. Patriots who are often violently abuse everyone they perceive non-patriotic enough are afraid to be harassed by foreign patriots if they go overseas, they do assume such people exist in the West. Finally, still disconnected from the net are often unable to speak English, making their functioning in non-Russophone country problematic.

In addition to liberals there only two other types of Russian migrants. One is women, who travel West irrespectively of political views to either find husband, make money or both. Because of the above they wander around in search for a man. The other are sons of Russian elites. The elites are self-conscious enough to understand dangers of Russian society and want to keep their children somewhere safe. Kids of the elites are often given a lot of money by their parents and tend to splurge cash on entertainment left and right. 

The elite children and women are typically more visible than liberals, who often avoid displaying any outward Russianness due to not liking the country they left at all. However, if you find a migrant Russian who has no large sums of money to spend, not is a woman, looking for a husband, most likely they are Putin hating liberal who do not want to remember about Russia at all.