I have a great great grandma that in the years between 1870-1890 fled from Russia to Norway sometimes in those years but my grandparents has never told me or the rest of the family why.
I can't find anything that might have made them flee other then Tsar Alexander 2nd was assassinated by revolutionaries and his son gave more power to the secret police. It's clear that they were scared and fled for their life but not why.
I don't know where they lived but they fled to Norway so you can assume they lived somewhere in the western or northern parts of Russia. They had a daughter in 1887 in Norway and they were around 20-30 years old at the time so they fled late 1870s to early 1880s. Almost nothing know of their life in Russia besides that they might have been nobility but it's not 100%.
It's to late to ask my grandparents for answers to I turn to you. What happened in Russia in 1870s-1890s that might have made people flee for their lives? Both why nobility might have fled and other. Reminder, they fled for their life, they were afraid of something.
Thanks for you help.
Before 1890, almost everyone who emigrated from the Russian Empire was from a religious or ethnic minority. According to historian Eric Lohr, "Jews were 184 times more likely to emigrate than Russians, Germans 55 times and Poles 57 times more likely". The main reason is that East Slavs practiced partible inheritance, while other subjects of the Russian Empire did not. Partible inheritance meant that each son in the family was able to inherit at least some land, while unitary inheritance practiced by other ethnic groups produced a constant surplus of second, third, and fourth sons who either left for the cities or emigrated abroad. Another reason is that the Russian Empire had draconian laws against emigration, based on the old serf system that was technically abolished in 1861. While other ethnic groups were sometimes encouraged to emigrate, the empire tried to hold onto its core East Slavic Russian Orthodox population. Of the ethnic Russians who did emigrate, most of them were members of persecuted religious sects, such as Old Believers, Molokane, or Dukhobor.
This information is from: Lohr, Eric (2012). Russian Citizenship: From Empire to Soviet Union. Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-06780-6.
Given the draconian laws against emigration, which was almost always illegal, it's possible that what your ancestors were afraid of was getting caught while trying to leave. Alternately, they may have belonged to a persecuted religious group. Overall, few people were leaving the Russian Empire for political reasons before the White Russian exodus in 1917.
Another thing about the situation you describe that is unusual is the destination: most emigrants from the Russian Empire went to the Ottoman Empire (if they were Muslim) or to the Americas. But there were a significant number of Finns from the Russian Empire and also Russian Jews that settled in Norway at this time. Russian Jews could have been fleeing pogroms (there was a major wave of anti-Jewish violence in the early 1880s) although they also left for economic reasons.