ABSTRACT
Nothing in recent experience has prepared the states of the former Soviet Union for seeing scientists, trained at public expense, exercise the freedom to work abroad. But when viewed in a wider context, the typical presentation of the problem faced by Russia in particular appears to be distorted. Emigration of highly skilled personnel is by no means solely a Third World phenomenon. For Russia to now be confronted with the problem might be viewed as an instance of normalization in an era when scientific interactions have come increasingly internationalized.
Policymakers will be faced with the problem of determining whether the initial surge of emigration among skilled professionals is a harbinger of a permanent tendency or merely the necessary outflow for the technical cadre to come into equilibrium. Further, it is possible that emigration of certain types may afford many benefits over the short and long term. Employing policies directed only 821to deal with the apparent “problem” by restricting outflows by administrative means would prove to be the most likely to precipitate precisely the disaster such measures are intended to avoid.
