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"Displacement and misplacement are this century’s commonplace" — does that sound relevant? It’s a line about the previous century, delivered by Joseph Brodsky during a speech on political exiles at the Wheatland Foundation, in Vienna, in 1987. In 2025, the U.N. estimates that 281 million people, 3.6% of the world’s population, will be displaced.

Some people become displaced because they’re fleeing war, others are escaping political persecution, and still others have lost their homes to the catastrophic effects of climate change. Though these people number in the millions, representing diverse backgrounds, socioeconomic status, and legal standing, the U.N. uses one term to designate them all: "migrants".

The word "migrant", from the Latin "migrans", exists in Russian, though its meaning is far from politically neutral. In the Soviet press, the term "emigrant" was a slur slightly stronger than "fascist". In the post-Soviet period, "migrant" took root as a condescending and disdainful term for people who emigrated to Russia from neighboring countries — usually, it refers to those considered insufficiently integrated and insufficiently proficient in the Russian language. The German word "Ausländer" now appears to be acquiring similar connotations.

More than six million Ukrainians have arrived in Europe since 2022, as refugees and victims of war, receiving temporary asylum abroad. Since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, 650,000 Russians have left their country, and three years later still cannot agree on what to call themselves. Who are they? Political emigrants? Far from all of them. The relocated? Same problem. Simply "those who left" — as opposed to "those who stayed?"? Journalists, writers, artists, directors — all people whose lives were closely connected to their native language and culture — opted to append the words "in exile" to their professions.

There are many examples of literary and cultural processes that are more interesting in exile than in the country left behind: Russia after the 1917 revolution, Nazi Germany, Franco’s Spain, Iran after the Islamic revolution. In the 2020s, in the midst of yet another humanitarian catastrophe, many have had a chance to experience firsthand what this process is like.

But what do artists in exile usually write, sing, make plays, and shoot films about? Their abandoned homeland, of course. About a place where everything’s sort of miserable, a place they may not love, but one they understand; a place that’s theirs.

The exile’s status is unique in its own way: it gives the exile the right to hang in limbo, and from there he can gaze into the past with angry nostalgia, dream about a beautiful uncertain future, and completely ignore the present. Wasting energy that could have been spent immersing himself in a new culture on ruminations about where it all went wrong in the old one.

The exile dreams of returning, especially if he’s an exile "with soul and talent", as has been true since Ovid’s time* — except he doesn’t want to return somewhere, but somewhen. One can live in a "displaced and misplaced" state for years — gradually losing any connection to the country of his birth, while failing to establish a connection with the new one. Meanwhile, his native country and the country that has taken him in agree on one thing: he is welcome nowhere.

*1 In the year 8 A. D., the ancient Roman poet Publius Ovidius Naso was exiled for unclear reasons to the city of Tomis, in present-day Romania, where he wrote the Tristia, an elegiac poetic cycle about longing for home. “With soul and talent” is an excerpt from one of Pushkin’s letters: “the devil guessed that I was born in Russia, with soul and talent”.

Alexandra Zerkaleva