When I returned home to Moscow in 2012 after three years in London as a correspondent for various Russian media outlets, my parents were puzzled. “Why wouldn’t you just stay in Britain?” my mom wondered, convinced Russia could only get worse before it got better. She’d seen it before. “We can go back to our internal emigration,” she said, referring to the late Soviet-era escapist practice of immersing oneself in the arts (both my parents are big opera buffs) or an obscure hobby—as far away from the propaganda on television and in the newspapers as possible.
