Russian human capital flight

[Rakesh Bhandari]

Though I am not affiliated with the institution in my email address, I
have been able to strike up some conversations with the post docs here in
the sciences. While  the Indian students seem hardly decided
about whether they will return home, the students from Russia in
particular seem pretty convinced that there is no going back; they see no
future at all. So they hang on to these rather low paying  post docs,
supplying the labor cheap  just as funding in the pure sciences takes hits
due to the end of the Cold War. Cold War funding has produced an excess
of scientists for whom there is no longer any demand and they now find
themselves competing (ironically enough) with the Russians and other
Eastern Europeans for these $30,000 short term post-docs. It's a bad
situation (a lot of uncertainty and unemployment), and I have already met
one Indian chap who chucked it to become a financial consultant at
McKinsey. At any rate, the mass exodus of scientific talent from Russia,
intent on never returning, may prove as, if not more,  devastating than
the capital flight. 
best, rakesh