Episode Details

Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a quiet exodus has reshaped the Caucasus. In Georgia, thousands of young, highly educated Russians—engineers, journalists, artists—have rebuilt fragments of the civil society they left behind, forming charities, cultural spaces, and activist networks in exile. In this episode, we explore how guilt, opposition to war, and a desire to dismantle imperial ideas are shaping this diaspora, and why historians see echoes of Russia’s earlier intellectual flight. As the country loses a generation of talent and its émigrés experiment with building a values-based, borderless community, the story asks whether a nation can survive when its future is being imagined somewhere else.

https://www.economist.com/international/2022/08/09/much-of-russias-intellectual-elite-has-fled-the-country