Ilya’s post below about intellectuals and inventors who left Soviet Russia for the U.S. reminded me of this poem by Bulat Okudzhava [UPDATE: Link fixed, sorry about the error]. It’s unfortunately only accessible to Russian speakers, but we have a few of those among our readers, so this post is for their benefit. (My attempts to try to capture it in English failed, but if some of you want to try a hand either at translating it or even at just explaining it, please do so.)