Russian filmmaker Roma Liberov had long been fascinated by writers who fled the country after the 1917 Bolshevik revolution. He never imagined that he would one day become an exile himself.

In the midst of the COVID pandemic in January 2021, Liberov left Russia because of a powerful conviction that its people had become “hostages of the state” and that a long-simmering conflict with Ukraine would erupt into full-scale war.

Thirteen months later, his fears became reality when Russia invaded its neighbour. In 2023, he was designated as a “foreign agent”, making it very risky to return. Yet even now, Liberov said he suffers doubts, and wonders if he should have stayed.

“It’s always louder when you’re in the same cage, when you experience the same difficulties, when you are with your country and with your people, with all its grief and joy. And now … for those who stayed in Russia, I’m a betrayer, I’m an alien, I’m someone who left.”

Artists who move abroad are “condemned to be forgotten in our home country. We need to declare that we exist,” he said.

We Exist! is the title Liberov gave to a 2023 “film concert” he produced that features Russian musicians now spread across the world from Montenegro to Argentina. It is also the name of the cultural foundation he runs from London, which aims to promote arts throughout the Russian diaspora.

When Russia was convulsed by revolution and civil war more than a century ago, an estimated two million people fled abroad including artists, musicians and poets.

Some, like Vladimir Nabokov, author of Lolita, became famous in the West, while others lived in near-obscurity, haunted by the desire to return home but able to do so only in their imaginations.

Liberov is equally fascinated by those who made the opposite choice and remained in Russia despite the danger of persecution, such as the poet Anna Akhmatova. REUTERS