Don't rush into myth

What qualities does a person need in order to successfully incorporate into someone else's life and not become a "professional Russian"
The environment that has taken shape in Western Europe in the last century and a half suggests high mobility, which is alien to the Russian consciousness. For a Russian person, whose culture requires 100% loyalty to a place, leaving is always a transition to a new state and another space, to which he is going to go forever. Rarely do any of my friends in Moscow who are planning to move abroad discuss this issue in European style when people are going to go somewhere to live for a year or two. The Russians plan their departure for life, without returning. Or they think about returning, but to “another Russia” - if it is about leaving for political reasons.

The space into which a person expects to move very often turns out to be absolutely mythologized. It doesn't really exist, it's taken from books or movies. People do not imagine that in other places there is no heaven or hell, but there are countries with their own shortcomings and virtues, problems, sometimes no less than in Russia. Leaving for the expected paradise is not entirely correct, because you are leaving not for a myth, but for a real country. Many emigrant stories that I observed were similar to one another: a person is fascinated by a relaxed life, comfort, the absence of an intrusive state that catches you and does not help you do what you want. The first year a person is in a state of euphoria, and then disappointments begin. It turns out that you can't find a normal plumber, and Western bureaucracy is also not ideal, and it has its own procrastination and idiocy. Disappointment often turns into a phase of denial - people realize that the move has ruined their lives. They have changed something bad for something worse, because in the new country they are also strangers. I have seen many such broken destinies. But here the whole problem is in the heads.

If a person understands where and why he is going, he succeeds. For someone who runs in an unknown direction, everything usually ends in serious disappointments. I would advise those who are now seriously discussing in Moscow about moving to another country, looking back at their own experience, to think about a profession, about a vocation. If everything you earn money on and what you value in life is connected with the language and with the people you know, with the knowledge of the country in which you live, then it will be very difficult to change your place of residence. At best, you will become what I jokingly call a "professional Russian" - a consultant or expert on Russia, someone who answers any questions about Russia. This is a very thankless job, such experts have recently formed an insane amount and ugly quality. They are not in high demand.

Therefore, if your knowledge is not able to be converted into the English language, the English social environment with its connections, you need to think ten times before moving somewhere. There are professions in which such problems do not arise. A classic example is programmers, people from the exact sciences, mathematicians. They can move around the world in new nomad mode quite easily.

But if you really want to leave Russia behind, you need to ask yourself: how young, strong and full of excitement are you still in order to try to compensate for the lack of language, connections and knowledge that inevitably arises with a new education or new professional skills. Nothing is impossible, of course. I know lawyers who moved at the age of 35-40, graduated from British law schools and, being people with brains, raised their knowledge of English to such a level that not every Englishman could compete with them in the skill of choosing the right words correctly. They acquired connections that can only be envied, and a new life began in a new cultural space, much more successful and pleasant than the one they would lead in Russia. But this requires some courage, damnation, recklessness - qualities that many people lack.