According to rough estimates by non-official resources, about one million people have left Russia since the beginning of the special military operation in Ukraine in late February of 2022. Most of them went to the former Soviet Union countries of Armenia and Georgia that have set their political paths into the West. Some Russian politicians called those ones cowards and sought political and financial retribution.

His working contract allowed him to relocate into a certain Balkan country last spring. He is a Russian citizen, my acquaintance; chasing freedom was the guy’s excuse for going abroad.

The Cambridge Dictionary defines freedom as the condition or right of being able or allowed to do whatever you want to, without being controlled or limited; freedom of speech going as an example.

The RSF (Reporters Without Borders) reports Russia’s position in the World Press Freedom Index has lowered from 155 as of last year to 164, out of 180. The figure is calculated as the average of a number of indicators. Russia’s RSF page also says that 23 journalists (subject to updates) are currently under arrest.

A few politicians are behind bars as well. More and more people or organizations dealing with LGBTQ issues are put on the “foreign agents” list. Many musicians who have publicly expressed their points of view on the conflict are no longer welcome and risk facing financial and social consequences. There are also attempts to apply such consequences to the people who work remotely from abroad for companies located in Russia, with the intention of cutting them off or imposing high taxation on their incomes.

“I think it was in the year 2021 when I first had this idea of finding a job in Europe and moving there. The conflict in Ukraine actually accelerated its materialization; the circumstances pushed me to think and act a way faster than I had thought I would earlier. It’s been a few months since I unpacked my things in my new place and honestly I have no regrets about my decision – here I feel much safer.

A strange feeling like I was an émigré in the 1920s gets over me. Nothing seems to have changed much over the course of a hundred years as I listen to a course of audio lectures about the Great October Socialist Revolution on Arzamas academy.”

Among first-wave Russian émigrés cast upon foreign lands during the unrest of the Russian Revolution and Russian Civil War were statesmen and politicians, priests and theologians, generals and officers, sociologists and philosophers, architects and scientists, writers and artists, who took away a great amount of the intellectual wealth of the Red Empire. Later some of them would share their experience in autobiographies and novels such as White Guard by Mikhail Bulgakov, Cursed Days by Ivan Bunin, and Glory by Vladimir Nabokov.

“It is safe that I feel here, one of the essentials that a human being needs as they need food and the roof above their heads.

Only by having them can you keep on functioning normally and allow yourself to think of some sublime and sophisticated things; it gives you the option of working and studying as a free person. When you escape this propagandists’ bubble and quit reading the news feed in search of another twisted piece of writing, you shift the focus of your life onto something real, and it helps you a great deal to live a normal life and do your everyday chores without any background thoughts and fears for what may happen tomorrow. I believe that the pursuit of being in a place where it is comfortable and safe is worth pursuing when the opportunity comes.”

The countries that once were the Soviet territories respond to the conflict in Ukraine most fiercely. The former satellites of the USSR have their own memories of the last few decades and proactively demonstrate strong protest, which seems to involve breaking political, economical, and cultural relationships not only with the Russian authorities, but its citizens as well, by banning common travel and creating a negative image of all Russian people. As there is less and less room for neutrality, more and more countries have to make difficult choices: Finland joins NATO, Sweden is a few steps from becoming another member of the alliance. In late April Albania terminated its visa agreement with Russia, which means Russian citizens travelling to the Balkan country require a visa effective immediately.

“In terms of attitude towards Russians, I gave of course some thoughts to this, especially when leaving Russia in the beginning, and when asked about how Russians are treated abroad, I draw a parallel with how LGBT people, especially in conservative societies where they can risk facing aggression on the grounds of their belonging to a social group, are treated.

I know that I want to be in a place with developed institutions, advanced forms of democracy, and freedom of choice. It is where people will assess me not by some parameters of the society I came from, but by what I do, what I say, my views on certain issues, and what’s important, whether my actions speak just as loud as my words.”

For many of those who left the country, going back to Russia under the current circumstances is not an option. It is a fear of losing what that they once chased – freedom.