CAN'T HAVE A CLASH OF CULTURES WHEN THERE IS ONLY ONE:

There are many reasons why tech workers are leaving. Programmers are facing a lack of job security as multinational firms either scale back or withdraw services from the Russian market due to sanctions. The government is cracking down on media and internet access, creating a more insular information environment. And companies like Cogent, which shepherds large swaths of the world's internet traffic, are unplugging from Russian clients, decreasing the country's overall connectivity speed.

Grid spoke with one IT professional who fled the country with his wife, also a tech worker, because of the lack of clarity about what was going to happen in Russia. The man asked for anonymity over fears about his safety and the Russian government's accelerating efforts to stop people from leaving.

Meanwhile, news outlets have identified planes full of tech workers leaving Russia and border guards aggressively questioning people trying to cross into neighboring countries by land.

"It does seem like these experiences are increasingly common," said Konaev. "Especially flight to these post-Soviet republics that have big Russian populations [and] are reachable by land. Armenia being one, along with Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. They're increasingly becoming the destination and not necessarily because of the attraction of the tech sectors. But because people are under duress."

Ronald Suny, a professor of history and political science at the University of Michigan who has spent years studying Russia, said that people there now are worried about Putin walling off the country from the rest of the world, Soviet-style. That is particularly true of younger people (who are generally more technologically adept) who didn't grow up with censorship or the same kind of geopolitical walls their parents did, he said.

"'We're going backwards,'" Suny said of the sentiment he's been hearing. "'The walls are being built again. We've been thrown out of the family of nations.' This is the kind of rhetoric. The dominant emotion is despair."

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