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EugeneCharles
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YES, Adam! Those are the most fascinating things that I find in the US. You can’t find them anywhere else in the world. Not forgetting about the awesome buildings, beautiful people, and diversity in culture.
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DaveBj
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When I retired, I “emigrated” from the Baltimore-D.C. area to rural Alabama, and I don’t plan to ever move again.
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BartholomewB
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It’s a long time since I was last there, but I know several people who have moved there in recent years and are glad that they did.
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Sunbreak
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I would go to Canada, but it’s difficult for retired folks to emigrate there.
Poland would be another choice - I can speak some Polish and there are relatives there I never met whose families never came to the US or elsewhere.
Poland would be another choice - I can speak some Polish and there are relatives there I never met whose families never came to the US or elsewhere.
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superhancpetram
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I like the idea, but do remember that that is pretty much how the United States started out, and see where we have ended up. Still, if 100 Catholic families could somehow club together to purchase, say, 200 square miles of land in the Central African Republic, I can see the potential.
Morality? You presumably are not aware that Russia has the highest rate of abortion per capita in the world. Russia’s abortion rate is almost 54 per 1,000 women per year. The next highest is Vietnam, where the figure is just over 35, a significant drop from 54. In the United States, the figure is just under 21. In the Netherlands, which I would consider generally a very liberal country, it’s half that.
Russia also has huge problems such as corruption, human trafficking, prostitution (including child prostitution and forced prostitution), child pornography (almost a quarter of the world’s child pornography is produced in Russia and more than half is produced in the US), alcoholism, and domestic abuse.
Please do not get me wrong, there is much to admire about Russia. It is a vast and beautiful country with a proud history and many great achievements in literature, music, ballet, art, architecture, film, sport, science, and technology. But one area in which Russia does not excel is morality. And no, I don’t think the US excels in the field of morality either. But it would seem pretty odd to emigrate from the US to Russia because of the morality. That would be like emigrating from Arizona to Saudi Arabia because of the climate. If you want morality, try Poland or Malta.
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Anesti33
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Right, I have been considering my choice of escaping to another big city in Eastern Europe, and realizing that perhaps it’s rural life that would suit me better, in many respects. Rural areas tend to skew more conservative, might be closer-knit in terms of community and parish church, I would have to deal with fewer strangers, especially the constant stream of homeless drifters right outside my home. Perhaps, though, I’d just trade one set of problems for another, and the grass looks greener over there. I have a pretty sweet setup and I’ve always been a city boy, or at least a suburbia guy.
A few people have challenged me on Russia’s “morality”. Yeah, I stand corrected. But I didn’t mean its actual, on-the-ground morality so much as its moral compass seems different. Russia is a nation that suffered under atheist communism for decades, but is also imbued and suffused with a monoculture of Russian Orthodoxy that never went away, and I admire that, and I admire the stand they’re taking against the LGBT colonization and other Western incursions. They seem determined to set themselves apart, even just for appearances sake.
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DaveBj
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I’m fluent in Russian, thanks to the Air Force; I have a BA in the language and an MA in Soviet studies, (pre-crash), so I do have at least a passing acquaintance with the culture, but it’s still sufficiently foreign to me that I can’t see myself living there. Among other things, where would I get my barbecue fix?
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Carmel
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Or the deep pocket of George Soros
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RhodesianSon
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I bet a bbq joint with sufficient marketing could do really well in a place that doesn’t have any. As soon as the locals tried it I bet they’d go wild for it.
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Dolphin
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I can speak, write, and read Greek so maybe Greece. Australia probably most likely though. If I was to stay in US and move (I’m in New York), I’d go to Minnesota
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AnaCarolina7
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South America. I have been there many times. Such kind people.
I would retire there.
I would retire there.
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Anesti33
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The thing about Russia is, they are downright hostile to any perceived Western influence. Perhaps Levi’s Jeans and the Beatles made it through the Iron Curtain, but that protectionism is still alive and well vis-a-vis the LGBT agenda. So… I don’t know if the hostility would necessarily extend to Texas cuisine, but it could. Just sayin’.DaveBj:
I bet a bbq joint with sufficient marketing could do really well in a place that doesn’t have any. As soon as the locals tried it I bet they’d go wild for it.
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RhodesianSon
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That’s where proper marketing would come in lol don’t advertise it as western. Tell them some Russian invented it lol
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superhancpetram
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That is also not true. Your idea of Russia does not match the reality of Russia. Russia is the largest country in the world, and its population is very diverse in ethnicity, language, culture, and religion. For a start, around 10% of Russians are Muslims (exact figures vary depending on how statistics are collected, but Islam is on any view Russia’s second largest religion and a very significant part of the Russian religious landscape). Furthermore, before the Revolution, around another 10% of Russians were Old Believers and therefore in schism with the Russian Orthodox Church (today only a fraction of 1% of Russians are Old Believers).
To illustrate the diversity of Russia, the Tuva Republic is about 3,000 miles east of St Petersburg and shares a border with Mongolia. The Tuvans are a Turkic people who speak their own Siberian Turkic language. More than 60% of the population of Tuva, including the vast majority of ethnic Tuvans, practice Tibetan Buddhism, although many also practice an indigenous form of shamanism. Again, estimates vary, but only about 1% of the population of Tuva are Russian Orthodox. In the neighboring Buryat Republic, Tibetan Buddhism and shamanism are also the main religions practiced by the Buryats, a Mongol people who make up about one third of the population of the republic. Indeed, the whole of Siberia (an area larger than the United States, Mexico, and Ontario combined and with a population roughly equal to Florida and Ohio combined) is incredibly diverse with many people practicing a variety of indigenous religions.
Another major group that you are overlooking are Jews. The number of Jews in present day Russia is indeed negligible, but Judaism was historically one of the most important religious minorities in Russia. At the height of the Russian Empire, there were more Jews in Russia than anywhere else in the world. Indeed, today, about 15% of Israelis are Russian Jews and about 20% of Israelis speak Russian. About 10% of American Jews are of Russian descent. Within the Pale of Settlement, Jews were about as numerous as they are today in New York State, and in some areas of the Pale they were about as numerous as they are in Brooklyn. In the far east of Russia, thousands of miles from the former Pale of Settlement, there is still a Jewish Autonomous Oblast, although almost all of the Jews have now left.
It is also worth mentioning a significant number of Lutherans, especially of German ethnicity (other ethnic Germans in Russia were Calvinists, Mennonites, etc). The number of Germans in Russia increased greatly during the reign of Catherine the Great, who was of course herself German and a convert from Lutheranism to Russian Orthodoxy. Throughout the 18th century, the consorts of the Russian emperors were mostly Germans as well as a Pole and a Dane who converted to Orthodoxy from Lutheranism (or more rarely Calvinism).
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Cruciferi
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No, you’d be in Miami with the other dolphins 
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Dolphin
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I was thinking about saying I’d try out another ocean haha
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Anesti33
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Thank you for showing me everything I don’t know about this place. I’m sorry I have such a parochial Westerner’s view. I admit I have never studied Russia intensively, and most of my exposure is 80s Cold War American propaganda anyway…
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Lasse
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I am Orthodox but I have been to (Roman) Catholic Mass in Moscow. It was very dignified. I do not think I would like living there myself however; people are too cold for my taste, at least when interacting outside their inner circle of friends and family.
I live in Sweden, where I also grew up, and I like the country and the culture at large. I must admit, however, that I enjoy being in countries like Greece, France, Italy, the southern parts of Germany etc, where people are friendly and the sun shines occasionally also during the late Fall/Winter.
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DaveBj
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Hmm . . . maybe Norway (my ancestral homeland) from April thru September, and then somewhere on the Med coast from October thru March. Altho I was in Oslo on a business trip for several days in November a couple decades ago, and it was quite pleasant walking to work and back every day in normal clothes with just a light jacket.
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Anesti33
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If the weather were my #1 and only criterion for emigration, I would choose the Mediterranean climate to match that of my native Southern California. Give me Greece, or Catalonia, or the toe of Italy… mmm…
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