At least 400 people fled Russia in September last year after it was enacted the partial mobilization order. Others had already fled since February when Putin's army launched a "Special Operation" and invaded Ukraine.
Russia: thousands of people fleeing
There is no exact figure of number of people fleeing, but it has to get close to one million. They fled not to be sent to war, but also out of fear of arrests and repression since many are either human rights activists or are simply journalists and intellectuals and only for this reason dangerous for the regime.
An exodus which is depriving the country of the best energies and which is compared to that of 100 years ago, when the most cultured Russians, the so-called "intelligentsia", left the country to escape from civil war and because they did not want to live according to the laws of October Revolution.
"Russia against the Russians": the book by Zoja Svetova
I new exiles they go anywhere where a Russian entry visa is not required: in the former USSR countries, Kazakhstan, Armenia, Latvia in primis, but also Turkey, Israel, South Africa and even Sri Lanka. But above all, the vast majority go to Georgia. Thirty thousand in a very few weeks. They choose Georgia because the Russians love it very much and are loved by it. Because many have friends in those parts and therefore it is easy to stay there for a while without experiencing the inevitable sense of uprooting.
And it is here, in Tbilisi, so that Zoya Svetova, an independent Russian journalist, has come to tell their stories and give them their voice back. It came out first a podcast, fastest way to disseminate experiences. Then those stories were collected in a book, translated into Italian by Castelvecchio, which could not have had a more effective title: “Russia against the Russians. Exile, prison, war: life in Putin's time".
It contains seven stories, three of them are more closely related to the exodus; the other four are those of people humiliated by Russian (not) justice and held innocent in prison. An interview with the author of Roberto Saviano makes the volume even more precious.
Svetova, daughter of dissidents with opposition to the regimes in her blood
Zoya Svetova is a note human rights activist, journalist of Novaja Gazeta, one of the first newspapers to be closed by Putin, the one for which Anna Politkovskaja wrote, killed for her investigations in Chechnya, and whose director, Andrej Muratov, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2021 .
It's in his veins opposition to the regimes Zoja Svetova, daughter of dissidents and political prisoners in the Soviet era, granddaughter of the first dean of the history faculty of Moscow University, shot by Stalin in 1937. She remained in Moscow, but three of the four children, all three journalists , are among those who fled to Tbilisi.
For the chapter "Exodus”, the witnesses are Sasha Lavut, a sixteen-year-old blogger, son of the poetess Zhenja Lavut and of the director and film producer, Evgenij Gindilis; Anna Mongajt, 44, presenter of the TV channel "Dozhd", author of the program "Women from above"; the actress Marija Shalaeva, 41, and the director Vladimir Mirzoev, who returned to the country after 1989 and was once again on the run. We focus on the first two stories, that of Sasha and that of Anna.
The young blogger, Sasha Lavut
Just 16-year-old blogger Sasha Lavut is the first exile whom Zoja meets in Tbilisi. He left Moscow on March 4, 2022, Zoja met him on the 20th.
Political activist, blogger, he immediately understood, as soon as the Special Operation began, that he would have to leave. And indeed he does just less than a month after the invasion of Ukraine.
The hardest thing for an exile, he tells Zoja, is to pack a suitcase. What books to bring for example? In the end he will bring five: a collection of poems and translations of Grigory Dashevsky bought from him, and two collections of his poetess mother, a collection of poems by Mandelstam and finally "The Hero of Our Time" by Lermontov. She had added a box with little jewels and photos of her closest friends.
At passport control in Russia the fear had been great. But then everything had been quite simple, neither in Armenia nor in Georgia do we need visas.
At the beginning it was difficult to get along with the Georgians, many speak Russian, but not all. And then the Russians are considered a bit of invaders (Abkhazia, Georgian region is always under their power) and a bit of snobbish brothers. Now Sasha resumed studying. She attends the 9th class at the end of which she will have a partial diploma. Which will allow him to continue his studies and obtain a diploma at European level. Had he stayed in Moscow his plan was for him before the exodus enroll in political science since he intended to deal with and write about politics. Now, she who knows. As soon as a passage opens wants to return to Moscow. He misses his city a lot: for example the tram 39 which connects the university with the Cistye Prudy (the pond of the "Maestro and Margherita" ed. ), your favorite bars; and he misses evenings with friends in the "Bermuda triangle", i.e. between Cistye and Kuskaja and Sucharevskaja stations.
What he feels now is a great deal of resentment. And he says that young Russians all feel this way about power. Because their understanding of the past, present and future has been taken away from them, and when you don't understand what will become of your future, resentment arises.
The TV presenter, Anna Mongajt
Anna Mongajt left Russia on 3 March. It defines itself a luxury refugee, as the journalists who fled from Moscow call each other. He recounts how he had lived with an ever-growing sense of danger the weeks before he left. Until “Dozhd”'s website was shut down, he was accused of spreading false news related to extremism. It was time to leave.
The night before departure he hadn't slept a wink expecting to be arrested at any moment. She hadn't found tickets for all 4 of the family, her, her husband and their two children aged 13 and 5. And she leaves first on her own. After a couple of days the others would leave. The only possible destination is Baku, Azerbaijan.
The next day he had flown to Tbilisi via Dubai. Quite easy albeit with a five hour wait. For some it was even a question of flying to Ulan Bator, in Mongolia, and then reaching Yerevan and Tbilisi. Why are they in Georgia too? Georgia is an understandable choice, he explains, there is a Russian-speaking environment, where many Russians have friends and is a country they really love.
So it's easy to stay there for a while without feeling uprooted. The day the rest of the family left Anna had gone haywire: it had been proclaimed lo state of emergency and she feared that her husband would not be able to leave.
In hindsight, and after Putin defined the internal opposition the fifth column of enemies, he will understand that no one would have tried to hold back the dissidents: they could have left, indeed it was better that way. Which makes Putin's dictatorship different from that of the Soviets, who locked up opponents in borders or in gulags.
Anna hadn't said goodbye to her “Dozhd” colleagues until their last day of work: she didn't want to consider it a farewell. As for her suitcase, she had it all wrong: too many summer things, high heels. The first thing she buys from H & M is a fur tracksuit: she is cold in Tbilisi, though not as cold as in Moscow.
His life is broken, he says, but had no alternative: Putin's Russia looks to the past and not to the future.
