Why You Should Ignore the Kremlin Propaganda Enticing You to Move to Russia

A family from Canada learned about moving to Russia the hard way.

Every now and then the Russians will put out propaganda trying to entice Westerners to pull up stakes and move to Russia, such as this video that went viral on YouTube about a year ago or so.

There are even YouTube channels, such as Russian Code, featuring interviews with Westerners who made the move to Russia where they talk about how happy they are in their new country.

If that weren’t enough, there is a proposed new village that would be built in the Moscow region in order to entice any devoted followers of Donald Trump's Make America Great Again movement who is extremely disillusioned with living in the US to consider moving to Russia.

Before you decide to pack your bags and move to Russia, you really need to do your research about your proposed country first. Failure to do that can cause all kinds of hardships.

Exhibit A is this family that I previously mentioned in this Substack last month. Arend and Anneesa Feenstra are a Dutch-Canadian couple who were mostly happy with their farming life and religious beliefs in their native Canada with one major exception. They just couldn't deal with people around them being more liberal than they are. Worse, these liberals were way too accepting of LGBTQ people.

In fact, the Feenstras became so fed up with liberals and their acceptance of the LGBTQ community that they decided to sell their farm then use the proceeds to relocate to Russia with their eight children. They settled in the Nizhny Novgorod region of the Russian Federation only to have their new dream country soon turned into a nightmare. Their new Russian bank accounts were suddenly frozen. They were unable to buy anything because their money was frozen. Moving back to Canada was not an option because all of their money was tied up in their frozen accounts so they couldn't even afford a plane ticket. Worse, they had a hard time getting the help that they desperately needed because the locals in Nizhny Novgorod didn't speak English! Their plight was recounted in this TikTok video that went viral.

Things briefly settled down until the family faced another obstacle to living their new lives in Russia. They weren't able to get a temporary residency permit because they couldn't pass the required Russian language proficiency test. So now that their visas are up, they are required to leave Russia for three months and maybe try again after the three months are up.

On top of it, the Feenstras weren't able to resume their farming trade because it's a bit difficult for foreigners to start their own farms in Russia. Apparently they thought that all they needed to do was to just buy some land and begin farming. Nope, it doesn't work like that in Russia.

Here's a video about that family's plight for those of you who are wanting to engage in a bit of schadenfreude.

There are a few lessons regarding the the Feenstra family's misadventures in Russia. They let their intolerance towards those who are different from them drive them to make an incredibly drastic decision that turned out to be a disaster for them. They could have simply ignored other locals flying rainbow flags and openly embracing LGBTQ people and just lived their lives according to their values. The liberals in their former hometown weren't demanding that the Feenstras become liberals just like them. People who are LGBTQ weren't demanding that the Feenstras become LGBTQ like them. I know from personal experience with meeting LGBTQ people that they are only asking to be accepted for who they are and not discriminate against them. They aren't actively recruiting new members into their ranks like the military or certain religious faiths. LGBTQ is something that you're born with, it's not something that you can be recruited into like the Rotary Club or the Elks Club.

Another lesson is to do a thorough research about a new place that you are thinking about moving to before deciding on whether to make the move. It's obvious that the Feenstras didn't do much research before moving to Russia. Just spending an hour or two doing Google searches could've spared them a lot of trouble. They also could've gone further and contacted the Russian Embassy in Ottawa for information on what to expect when moving to Russia.

One more lesson is this: If you plan to move to a non-English speaking country, you should make every effort to learn the language before moving there. The Feenstras didn't even do the bare minimum of downloading the Duolingo app on their smartphones and mobile devices to teach themselves Russian, which caused such a problem when they were unable to communicate with the locals and they couldn't even pass the required language test. If you’re going to move to Russia, learning basic Russian should be your top priority before you move there.

Thanks to this family's hostility towards people who are different from them, they no longer have their original farm in Canada (because they sold it) and they have spent much of their money from their farm sale moving to Russia then being forced to move out of Russia. Learning to coexist with people from different walks of life would've been way less costly in the long run and they would still have their farm to work on.

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