Several Russia scholars underscored the importance of supporting Russia’s new emigre community in a USIP public forum last week on Putin’s suppression of Russian civil society — his regime’s shutdown of independent citizens’ institutions from environmental or human rights groups to independent news media and even Russia’s long-influential soldiers’ mothers committees.

With so many Russian activist citizens imprisoned or exiled, “we need to save those who are capable to start rebuilding Russia,” notably its civil society and foundations for democratic governance, “the minute it will become possible,” said Yevgenia Albats, the exiled, longtime editor of the independent Novoye Vremya (New Times) website. A vital step is to build international pressure to protect lives of imprisoned Russians such as anti-corruption campaigner Alexei Navalny and journalist Vladimir Kara Murza, she said. Another is to help “those million Russians who left Russia” rather than support Putin’s war or risk conscription into it.

The largest new emigre populations are in Russia’s neighboring former Soviet republics, notably Kazakhstan and Georgia. Others stay for now in Serbia, Israel, Thailand and other countries. Many of these exiles, while highly skilled and employable, lack visas or other documents that could let them settle and work in Europe, the United States or other large economies, Albats noted. She urged governments to create a system similar to the international “Nansen passports” issued to Russians who fled the Bolshevik Revolution after 1917.

Albats apologized, both personally and on behalf of Russia’s democratic opposition movement, that “because of our failure” to prevent Putin’s seizure of dictatorial power, he was able to commit a criminal invasion of Ukraine. But she urged international public opinion and institutions to halt a widespread stigmatization of Russians. Quoting imprisoned Russian journalist Ilya Yashin, she said: “We are not a nation of thieves and killers. We are a nation that’s been taken hostage by thieves and killers.”

Russia scholar Angela Stent underscored that such stigmatization only strengthens Putin: “Unfortunately, the fact that Russians have been ‘cancelled’ for different reasons in different parts of the West” has buttressed Putin’s propaganda narrative to Russians that “the West is out to get them,” she said. Stent, a longtime Georgetown University professor and now a senior advisor to USIP, discussed the disintegration of Russia’s civil society in an interview. She noted vital policy steps to preserve foundations for a more democratic, law-abiding Russia after Putin:

Russians and Russia experts have sketched what seems like a now virtually complete disintegration of Russian civil society. What does that mean for Russia’s near future, amid this war — and for the inevitable period after Putin’s reign?

I think it means for the duration of the war, because of all the very repressive laws that Putin has introduced since beginning the war, that Russia’s civil society will be mute. Any act of the mildest criticism is punished by jail time. As we discussed at the Institute, there’s a huge split between those who’ve left Russia and are still part of Russian civil society in exile and are quite vocal, and those Russians who remain in the country.

When the war is over, it depends how the war ends and whether Putin is still in power. … If someone else were in power and decided it would be better not to have such a repressive system, I think you could see a revival of Russian civil society. In our discussion, analogies were made to the Soviet period when, in the Stalinist era, civil society was repressed. And it was pretty much suppressed after Stalin and then suddenly under Gorbachev it started to reassert itself and was quite vibrant in the 1990s and in the 2000s until about 2012, when Putin came back to the Kremlin again. But that [any revival] would depend on what the power structure is once the war is over.

For the United States, Europeans and others who hope for a more democratic Russia someday, what can they do now to help preserve foundations for a future Russian rebuilding of its civil society? Does opportunity exist in this new, million-strong exile community of relatively young, educated Russians who apparently don’t want to live in a Russia of Putin’s design?

Definitely, the first thing that the United States and our allies should be doing — that we are doing but we should be doing more — is to support these Russians who’ve left and who want a very different Russia. They’ve formed various committees to think about what kind of country they would want. I think the United States should try to provide more opportunities for them to live and work here. Currently, it’s very difficult for them to get into Europe. The U.S. and its allies should build consistent and structured interactions with them.

It would be preferable to maintain contacts with Russian civil society in Russia, but this is really impossible at the moment. Even the Russian opposition representatives outside the country say they cannot readily keep in regular contact with Russians who remain there. The U.S. government probably could do more to counter Russian propaganda [in Russia] about what’s happening in the war, even despite the very limited opportunities, given the Putin government’s control of media and interference with independent sources of information.

Professor, what do you see if we step back and widen our frame a bit? Surely, the future evolutions of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus will remain mutually influential. Each has a diaspora that seems significant, whether in numbers or potential influence now or in the future in their homelands. Do opportunities lie perhaps in dialogue, relationships and peacebuilding among these diaspora communities?

I think it would be very important to encourage dialogue between Russians and Ukrainians when the war is over. Understandably, this war has turned many Ukrainians passionately against Russia. They are even wary of meeting Russians who oppose Putin and who are in exile. At this point, it’s very hard to have meetings these days among Ukrainians and Russians in the diaspora. Looking forward, it would be very useful to encourage Ukrainians and Russians who are opposed to Putin to meet in structured dialogues and at least begin a dialogue.

The U.S. and Europeans should also continue to interact with Belarusians who are in exile, including in the European Humanities University in Vilnius, where Belarusians in exile study.