AHC: Maximize Russian emigration to the US pre-1900

[NolanFoster]

Include Jews, Ukrainians, Balts, and others if you wish. How can Russian-American (and other Slav, etc) culture be a major shaping force in the same way those of the Irish, Germans, and Italians have been in the US? How can large regions of the country have ancestry from the Russian Empire as their largest demographic by 1950?

 

[Hvalrossen]

More religious dissenters.

 

[Mad Bad Rabbit]

Siberian Traps begin erupting again.

 

[funnyhat]

Russia probably needs to be less successful expanding to the east.

 

[funnyhat]

Even more

There is actually not a lot of people in the Russian Far East

Could there be some kind of natural or manmade calamity in the Russian Empire resulting in a mass exodus of people

I don't mean just the Far East, but also the regions west of the Urals. Russians had immense lands to settle in their own empire, so why leave?

 

[UnaiB]

@alexmilman

 

[alexmilman]

Higher standard of living in the US

Generally, not enough of a motivation or there would be a greater migration in OTL. Besides, a higher standard of living does not mean that you are getting it automatically as soon as you are out of the Ellis Island.

 

[Crazy Boris]

Siberian Traps begin erupting again.

This kills the everyone

 

[Simreeve]

There's a series of pogroms, and Britain doesn't accept many -- if any -- of the Jewish refugees so that those who would have stopped here otherwise go onwards to the USA instead.

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Is changing 18th-century & 19th century events so that more of Europe is under Russian rule, so that more people count as [loosely speaking] "Russian" to start with, allowed here? Rumanians, Greeks, more of the Poles, and perhaps others?

 

[SlideAway]

I think beyond the fact that Russia had plenty of lands in the east and the south that could be settled, I'm fairly certain I've read that the Russian Empire banned or restricted emigration for most Russians. At least according to the US Library of Congress:

The next great wave of emigration from the Russian Empire came in the late 19th century—but the Russians were barely included in it. In the 1880s, the Russian countryside was strained by severe land shortages. Facing poverty and starvation, farmers and peasants from across the Empire sought a brighter future overseas, and millions set sail for the United States. Ethnic Russians, however, could not share in this hope; the imperial government barred them from leaving the country. Over the next few decades, Ukrainians, Belarussians, Lithuanians, and Poles arrived at Ellis Island by the hundreds of thousands. Russians, however, made the journey only a few at a time, and only by braving many hazards. The U.S. census of 1910 found only 65,000 Russians in the country.

 

[Jan Olbracht]

Perhaps serfdom is abolished in different manner, creating masses of landless peasants?