Interesting story. Brains and skills you take with you, everything else is a lot less mobile than people might think. Even credentials and diplomas are often not recognized in your new home.
As emigrants from South Africa recently discovered, when you might want to sell your farmland or business, due to political instability, everyone else does too.
My Great-great-great-Grandfather was Alexander Herzen, son of Ivan Iakovlev, the Czar's cousin. After Herzen became a revolutionary, the Czar exiled him out of the country. He and his children obtained Swiss citizenship, although he himself lived in London, then Paris. He was good friends with Charles Dickens.
Although my Great-Grandfather and his Dad both became Doctors in Switzerland, much of their money was still derived from Russian farmland. My Great-Grandmother (Greek) grew up in Moldova. She saw the problems developing in Europe, which led to WW-I, so she built the home in West Hollywood in 1913. This had the additional benefit of being roughly 5,000 miles from where her husband was living at the time, in Moscow.
She also had bonds in the Bank of France, a bank which had made a lot of loans backed by Russian real estate. Too many Russian loans to survive the fall of the Czar, so the Bank of France failed sometime around 1918 I think. Money transfers from her Dad in Moldova ended in 1921 when the Bolsheviks tightened control of Moldova. My Granddad became a Doctor, his brother a lawyer, and his sister a real estate developer.
If things collapse here, I think Australia would be my preferred exit choice, but the only place I can get citizenship guaranteed is Switzerland. Not bad.
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