“Tears of the Runaways: Who and Why Longs for Russia, and What Do Heteronormative Privileges Have to Do With It?

Russian migrants miss their homeland. It has not even been a year since the start of the war, and many who left have already begun to yearn for birch trees and telogreikas. This is despite the fact that the majority left Russia immediately after the September mobilization. On the one hand, I understand exactly what those who have left Russia miss, but on the other hand, it is completely incomprehensible. As an experienced emigrant, I know a thing or two about nostalgia, and I am therefore wary of this feeling.

When I left Tashkent at 18, I really missed my hometown at first. Sometimes I wanted to go home so badly that I even thought — did I make a mistake?

But every time I came back, it took just a week to understand that I did everything right. The city seemed to be in the same place — the houses, the streets, the smells — but the nostalgia didn’t go away. Because there was nothing left to really miss. Friends scattered, contexts changed, and I myself became a different person. Nothing in common with the old life. I took a walk, smelled the air, and then what? Some phantom pains.

Then I realized that a nostalgic emigrant misses not his homeland, but the happy time he spent there. Someone misses childhood…