So the expats are leaving Russia. The very same Westerners who packed their bags for Moscow with dreams of ‘traditional values’, a sturdy patriarch at the helm and a society untainted by wokeness. And now they are running back to the very decadence they so loudly condemned. The British consulate is swamped. The flights are full. The irony is so thick you could cut it with a samurai sword.
Let us pause to savour the spectacle. These were the people who lectured us on the moral superiority of Putin's Russia, who sneered at our ‘degenerate’ liberal democracies, who argued that the West had lost its soul. They bought the whole mythology: the strongman, the Orthodox piety, the family values, the great conservative restoration. And now, confronted with the reality of a war, an economy in tatters, and a state that treats dissent as treason, they are crying for mummy.
What did they expect? That Russia would be a theme park for reactionary fantasies? That they could enjoy the perks of authoritarian stability without the smell of burning villages and the arrests of journalists? They wanted the aesthetics of empire without the cost. They wanted the moral certainty without the fear. They were tourists in a tragedy.
This is the third act of a farce that began with the fall of the Soviet Union. First came the post-Soviet chaos, then the oil-fuelled authoritarian consolidation, and now the imperial implosion. Each phase attracted a different breed of Western fellow traveller. The first wave were the free-marketeers, who saw Russia as a wild frontier for capitalism. The second were the nationalists, who saw it as a bastion of white Christian civilisation. Now they are all fleeing, like rats from a listing ship.
But let us not pretend this is merely a geopolitical story. It is a parable of intellectual decadence. The Western left has its own delusions about Russia, of course, but it is the right that has been most shamelessly duped. They created an imaginary Russia, a mirror of their own resentments, and then fell in love with the reflection. Now the mirror is cracked, and they are bleeding.
The lesson is ancient: you cannot outsource your moral identity to a foreign despot. Whether it is Mussolini, Franco, or Putin, the pattern is always the same. The strongman promises order and tradition, but delivers only power. The foreign admirers are always the last to see the truth, because they are not the ones being beaten or exiled or killed. They can leave. And so they do.
What remains is the question for the rest of us. Will we learn from this comedy of errors? Or will we find new idols, new mirages, new strongmen to worship from a safe distance? The expats are going home, but the temptation remains. The Fall of Rome, as ever, is a story we cannot stop telling ourselves.
For now, let us mock them gently. They came to Russia to escape the decadence of the West, only to discover that the West was inside them all along. They wanted to be hard men in a hard country. Instead, they are soft men on a hard flight home. Welcome back to the degenerative West, gentlemen. Your latte is waiting.
