Literature about Russians abroad includes memoirs and other non-fiction narratives of exile and emigration, often by writers who wrote from first-hand experience. It also includes fiction by writers who may or may not have emigrated themselves. Emigration is at once a biographical fact and a literary phenomenon; this has led to conflicting approaches to its interpretation. This chapter centres on the protagonists found in works of émigré literature – universalising archetypal figures, minimally disguised authorial alter egos, and migrants who elicit an unexpected jolt of recognition – all created in their historical moment, yet open to new meanings beyond their time and émigré milieu. It concludes with an examination of the exodus of writers from Russia that began soon after the 2022 invasion of Ukraine and the concomitant need to re-evaluate the association between literary emigration and the émigré writer as a voice of moral authority.