When I was leaving Russia in 2019 and decided to stop returning in 2021 – a year before the war started – I did it for personal reasons.
All my childhood, I hated living in Russia. I hated the cold, the bitterness, the grey buildings, the angry people, and the Soviet rhetoric that kept being pushed down people’s brains even though it was time to move on to something else.
I saw no future for myself there, and I wanted something bigger.
So I left.
Still, in the back of my mind, I thought: if I ever wanted to return, I’d be able to. I thought I’d be able to visit my family, walk around the streets of Moscow like a tourist, and enjoy the beautiful northern summers where I grew up and where everything smells familiar.
Over the past several years, I moved between three countries, married (to a Ukrainian, by the irony of faith), and settled in London. Life in Russia now seems distant and surreal. I still read the news but generally feel I’ve emigrated. And no matter how much content I consume, I have no idea what Russia is like anymore because I have lost touch with it.
I became one of those standing in line at a Russian deli in London who emigrated in the late 1980s and pretended they understood what it’s like to live there forty years since.
They don’t.
And neither do I.
The country of my youth used to be a grim and cold and hard place to live in. It was a place of conspicuous consumption as a religion and stupid, pointless rules that nobody followed. The way to break into “people” (as Russians say) – to make money and become successful – was to lie, cheat, steal, or somehow find a way to make money on bizarre things, like selling paperclips and construction nails.
It was a place without ideology, mission, or a system of values. While Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova, and other post-Soviet countries moved forward, Russia kept looking over its shoulder, reminiscing about the past.
But that was it.
Syria, the Chechen war, and Crimea in 2014 – all of these things aside – life in Russia used to be a theatre performance of democracy. Today, that theatre is over.
People say Russia has always been a dictatorship, but that’s not true. It was an authoritative regime, of course, but Putin had a silent contract with his people: if they kept within the lines, he would make them rich.
Many took the bargain.
When I look at Russia today through the prism of The New York Times, I see a different Russia.
I see a place where Putin and his cronies violently took over and an absolute dictatorship with no facade or pretending. I see Z-signs, and I see the monopoly of the state media saying things like, “We should nuke Ukraine and then the rest of Europe.”
Suddenly, I see a place with a mission and system of values and ideology.
Of pure and hardcore fascism.
This doesn’t mean that all people who live in Russia are fascists. It simply means that after all those years of uncertainty, Russia suddenly found a way to construct its central narrative. That narrative, combined with the letter Z – that looks very much like the Nazi svastika and has roughly the same purpose – is pure evil. It’s being pushed through all mainstream media to make it seem like Russians support it.
In reality, though, only a tiny minority of turbo patriots – people who think Putin should nuke Ukraine and wear Z-symbols on their clothes – support the war. But neither does this mean that Russia is full of opposition.
As we now see, the West hoped that two things would happen in 2022: the sanctions would work, and the Russians would overthrow the government. None of these things happened.
The opposite happened: Russia’s economy, bolstered by the Kremlin’s reserves and in the absence of virtually all western brands, oddly found a new equilibrium. The few people who went to protest the war were imprisoned.
If anything worked in Russia in 2022, it’s repressions.
Most Russians fall somewhere in the middle of the curve. They are neither for nor against the regime. They are neither fascists who want to nuke Ukraine nor liberals who wish to free Navanly.
Instead, with the lack of opportunity or desire to leave their country, they fall into a state of utter apathy and paralysis and fear, enslaved by the regime, repeating the state propaganda verbatim.
They don’t know what to think, so they say things like “nothing is one-sided”, or “Ukraine also has problems”, or “the US needs this war to destabilize Russia!” not because they genuinely believe this crap but because they don’t know what to believe.
They are neither for the war nor against it. They are for themselves.
When you live in a country that will imprison you for so much as liking a Facebook post, you’ll think twice about saying anything out-of-the-ordinary.
As Keith Gessen wrote in his recent New Yorker essay, “When the Russians started bombing Ukraine, Kolya went to buy some chairs.”
The whole world waited for a shortcut to ending the war in 2022 – peace negotiations, Russians overthrowing Putin, NATO taking part in the war – but none of that happened.
It’s pretty clear now: this war won’t be ended with a shortcut. It must be won on the battlefield. And it must be won by Ukrainians.
(Who are, at this writing, single-handedly defending the entire world from Russia. Just so that we’re clear on that.)
My point here is that I lost all hope regarding Russia.
Over the past twelve months, the young and smart ones left. They currently have a hard time figuring out what to do with themselves with their Russian diplomas and CVs. I talk to these people, many of whom are my friends, and I try to help them adapt to the new realities.
The ones who couldn’t leave stayed and buried their heads in the sand, pretending the war doesn't exist. I have family in Russia and get pushback whenever I try to bring up the topic of war.
And I get it. I truly do.
After all, they are there, and I am here.
But recently, it dawned on me that I am one of those who have immigrated and escaped an authoritarian regime to start a new life in a free country. You read about people like that in the US and UK books. My kids will – hopefully! – tell stories at school of how their father left Russia and came to the UK with almost nothing and built a life for himself here. (Though I sure hope my kids won’t feel the need to justify their existence through overachievement simply because I did it.)
Still, the reality is that the country I grew up in is not there anymore. It was overtaken by an ageing botox client of a dictator who is doing horrible things to the people of Ukraine. (Rumour has it, he wants to do the same thing to Moldova.)
Do I miss Russia? Sometimes.
Do I want to walk around Moscow in the summer and smell the all-too-familiar warm and dusty smell of its streets? Yes, I do.
Still, one year on, and emotions aside, it’s pretty straightforward: there’s no going back because there’s nothing to return to. This war united Ukrainians like nothing before. Their country is suffering, but they have a country. Russians? They got robbed of a nation.
When this is over, Ukraine will be rebuilt (with reparations from Russia and help from the West) and prosper. What happens to Russia after the war is a big question.
But as of now, life goes on. One Russian writer said it best. “War is not just death. It’s also a life of sorts.”
What do we want to do about it?