Yes. Catherine the great invited Germans to settle along the Volga River, and promised exemption from military service. A couple of generations later, the Russians instituted a draft— with service requirements of 20 years. Basically slavery. Whole villages got up and walked away, to a port hundreds of miles away.
My mother’s people are Volga Germans who settled in Western Kansas.
Most of them were Mennonites. Good people, they would stop and help you if your car had a flat. Also would let me hunt pheasants and deer.
My Grandfather first came to America at age 15 from Germany. He farmed and met my German Grandmother in Nebraska. They went back after they married to see their families back in Germany. On the return trip Grandma was pregnant with the first child. The baby boy was born on the ship and sadly he died. They had a burial at sea for the baby.
They farmed until their deaths in Nebraska and had 7 more children: one was my Mother.