The Great American Exodus: From Red Square to Red States and Back Again

How America’s ideological refugees have found sanctuary in Russia across nearly a century—first fleeing conservatism, now fleeing progressivism

East and West, the ongoing romance

In the summer of 2024, the Hare family from Canada made headlines when Russia granted them temporary refugee status. Their story seemed almost surreal: North Americans fleeing to Putin’s Russia, citing persecution for their conservative Christian values. But this narrative of Americans seeking sanctuary in Russia isn’t new—it’s simply the latest chapter in a nearly century-long pattern of ideological migration between these two nations.

What makes this moment so fascinating isn’t just that Americans are moving to Russia, but that they’re doing so for precisely the opposite reasons their predecessors did in the 1930s and 1940s. Where once African American workers and leftist intellectuals fled to the Soviet Union seeking progressive ideals, today’s migrants are evangelical families and conservative traditionalists fleeing what they perceive as America’s progressive overreach.

The First Wave: Seeking the Promise of Equality

The 1930s marked the beginning of a remarkable migration of African Americans to the Soviet Union. Langston Hughes, Paul Robeson, Claude McKay, and other prominent Black intellectuals and artists traveled to what they hoped would be a “raceless” society. But it wasn’t just the famous who made this journey. Ordinary workers like Robert Robinson, a skilled engineer and the only person of color among Ford’s recruits when the company sold assembly lines to the USSR, represented hundreds of African Americans who saw the Soviet Union as an escape from Jim Crow America.

An extraordinary account of a unique experience

A perfect complement to the previous mentioned book by Robinson

The appeal was obvious: while America enforced racial segregation and economic inequality, the Soviet Union marketed itself as a workers’ paradise free from capitalist exploitation and racial prejudice. For Black Americans facing lynching, disenfranchisement, and systematic exclusion from economic opportunity, Stalin’s Russia offered something their own country denied them—the promise of dignity and equality.

The Communist Party USA actively recruited African Americans, promoting the Soviet Union as a beacon of racial progress. Soviet propaganda featured Black Americans prominently, showcasing them as proof of socialism’s superiority over capitalist racism. The message was clear: America had failed its Black citizens, but the Soviet Union welcomed them with open arms.

The Historical Irony

The cruel irony, of course, was that many of these migrants discovered that Soviet reality rarely matched Soviet promise. The raceless society they sought often proved to be another form of inequality, with different but equally oppressive systems of control. Some, like Robert Robinson, found themselves trapped for decades, unable to leave even when they wanted to return home.

Yet their migration represented something profound about American society: the persistent gap between American ideals and American reality. These were Americans who believed so deeply in the principles of equality and justice that they were willing to abandon their homeland when it failed to live up to those principles.

The Contemporary Reversal

Fast-forward to 2024, and we see a mirror image of this migration pattern. Conservative American families are now fleeing to Russia, but this time they’re running from what they perceive as America’s excessive progressivism rather than its conservatism. Vladimir Putin has skillfully positioned Russia as a sanctuary for “traditional values,” signing decrees that allow foreign citizens to apply for temporary residency if they share “traditional Russian spiritual and moral values.”

The Hare family’s story exemplifies this new wave. They claim persecution for their conservative Christian beliefs, citing concerns about LGBTQ+ rights, vaccination mandates, and progressive education policies. Where their 1930s predecessors fled American conservatism for Soviet progressivism, today’s migrants flee American progressivism for Russian conservatism.

This reversal reveals Putin’s geopolitical genius. Where Stalin marketed the Soviet Union as progressive and egalitarian, Putin markets Russia as traditional and spiritually pure. Both leaders understood that America’s internal tensions create opportunities for rival powers to position themselves as havens for disaffected Americans.

The Persistent American Paradox

What remains constant across both waves is the underlying American paradox: the country’s inability to reconcile its competing visions of itself. The 1930s migrants fled an America that failed to live up to its egalitarian promises. Today’s migrants flee an America that they believe has abandoned its traditional foundations.

Both groups represent Americans who became so disillusioned with their country’s direction that they were willing to project their ideals onto foreign lands rather than work to realize them at home. This pattern suggests something deeper about American political culture—its tendency toward extremes, its difficulty finding middle ground, and its citizens’ willingness to seek elsewhere what they cannot find domestically.

The destinations may have swapped political poles, but the underlying dynamic remains the same: Americans fleeing to Russia when they perceive their homeland as fundamentally at odds with their values.

The Broader Implications

This historical parallel illuminates several troubling aspects of contemporary American politics. First, it reveals how foreign powers can exploit American internal divisions for their own strategic purposes. Putin’s embrace of conservative American refugees serves the same propaganda function that Stalin’s embrace of African American migrants once did—it allows a rival power to position itself as more aligned with American values than America itself.

Second, it highlights the extent to which American political discourse has become polarized. When citizens feel compelled to seek refuge in authoritarian states rather than engage in democratic processes at home, it suggests a breakdown in the social contract that binds diverse populations together.

Finally, it raises questions about the sustainability of American democracy when significant portions of the population view their fellow citizens as existential threats rather than fellow Americans with different perspectives.

A Nation in Search of Itself

The irony of Americans fleeing to Russia—first as progressives, now as conservatives—reveals a nation perpetually in search of its authentic self. Both waves of migration represent Americans who believed so deeply in their vision of what America should be that they were willing to abandon it when it failed to match that vision.

Perhaps the real lesson isn’t about Russia at all, but about America’s ongoing struggle to live up to its own ideals while remaining true to its diverse population. The fact that Americans continue to seek elsewhere what they cannot find at home suggests that the American experiment in democratic pluralism remains very much a work in progress.

The great American exodus to Russia—in both directions—serves as a mirror reflecting our nation’s deepest tensions and unresolved contradictions. Until America can reconcile its competing visions of itself, its citizens will continue to seek refuge in foreign lands that promise to deliver what their homeland cannot or will not provide.

The question isn’t whether America will continue to produce ideological refugees, but whether it will ever develop the capacity to welcome them home.