Russia no longer exports emigrants, but a new cohort of Global Russians
Russophobia in the West has long been enabled by once-Soviet immigrants, who needed constant reinforcement of their justification for emigrating: they hated the place they left behind, and embraced the one in which they arrived. Today’s Russians travel and live all over the world, but they remain connected to their homeland. They refuse to “take sides” against Russia, and instead become the targets of Russophobia themselves. For years, émigrés were the main source of the most prevalent anti-Soviet, and then anti-Russian, myths. Emigration from the Soviet Union was one-way. On exit, you were stripped of your Soviet citizenship, and lost all meaningful contact with friends and family that remained behind. Whatever real memories you did have of the place were subject to constant conditioning and adjustment - be it through the recitation of the facts in your own asylum application, or absorption of the stereotypes that already existed in the place where you arrived. The fact that most emig