Putin's failed experiment to lure anti-woke Americans to Russia
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'He's needing money,' she said, adding that he had to give the unit 10,000 rubles ($125) for supplies.
The Huffmans have been living in what Russian media
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Another American, Chantelle Hare, explained why her family moved to Russia from Texas in
The trickle of American emigres calls to mind the larger migration during the 1930s, when hundreds of Americans traveled to the then-young Soviet Union, either to find work or to escape virulent racism in the United States. While there is no reliable, comprehensive account of how those emigrants fared in the self-styed 'workers' paradise,'
Many Americans found work in the USSR's explosive factory boom of the early
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Still others, disenchanted, tried to return to the United States, with mixed results. When I posted
a query on a Facebook site for former Moscow diplomats earlier this week, a retired consular officer answered: 'I was in Moscow 1992-94 and saw a half-dozen of these American citizens come into the consular section to reclaim their citizenship. They were an interesting group. One older gentleman I remember had been living in a town in the Urals and still had a Chicago accent, although he struggled with getting English words out.'
The Depression-era US-to-USSR emigres inspired few imitators. It seems hard to believe that history won't repeat itself with the Huffmans, the Hares, and their disaffected compatriots. The Russians have a saying, 'Khorosho tam, gde as nye,' meaning: 'Things are great, where we are not.'
The grass is always greener, until you are standing on the lawn in question.
Alex Beam's column appears regularly in the Globe. Follow him
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