Many Russians credit President Vladimir Putin with restoring national pride. Credit:AP Now, after a career in Moscow that has spanned 30 years and taken in Mikhail Gorbachev's perestroika, Boris Yeltsin's reforms and Vladimir Putin's re-establishment of "order", the Foreign Ministry itself is showing me the door. I am not expelled exactly – I can return as a guest or tourist – but a new stringency in applying the rules of accreditation means I can no longer operate as a self-employed, freelance journalist. Being philosophical, I see that the Foreign Ministry has done me a favour. My time in Russia was naturally coming to an end, but I was finding it difficult to extract myself from a place where I have twice been married to Russians, helped to bring up six Russian stepchildren and had scores of Russian friends. The Foreign Ministry spared me the stress of a rushed departure, giving me a grace period of three months to pack up. No doubt, the bureaucrats hoped I would leave "in the English way", as Russians say of a guest who slips away from a party without saying anything to the host. But after all these years, I am enough of a Russian to want a last drink na pososhok (for the road). My toast of gratitude is not to the state, but to ordinary Russians for their humour and hospitality; to the artists and musicians for sharing with me their visions and techniques.

The assassination of politician Boris Nemtsov horrified liberal Russians but was shrugged off by many of their countrymen. Credit:AP The music of Rachmaninov drew me to Russia and it was to Rachmaninov I turned during a past attempt to settle in Australia, when I was feeling homesick for Russia. "You do realise," said my husband, "that Rachmaninov wrote most of his 'quintessentially Russian music' when he was living in America." Now I am coming to understand that part of what it means to be Russian is to live in exile. Wave after wave of many of the best Russians have emigrated from their Motherland. Like the Jews, the Armenians and the Palestinians, these Russians hold on to who they are in diaspora. Russians carrying protest banners march in memory of assassinated opposition leader Boris Nemtsov. Credit:AP New Russian government statistics show that hundreds of thousands of people have left Russia over the past two years, citing various political, economic and personal reasons. For the first eight months of 2014, the number of emigres was 203,000, up from 186,000 in the whole of 2013.

Soon, I too will be in the departure lounge. On some days, I feel excited about new possibilities. On others, I ache. Seeing it for the last time, I see all the beauty of Russia. There is a Russian saying: "Before you die, you cannot get enough of breathing." I have preferred the bitter truth to the sweet lie, but I have never stopped loving Russia. The experience of others is helpful. I have a French-Italian friend in Australia who was born and grew up in Alexandria, Egypt. Her family was forced to leave when Gamal Abdel Nasser expelled "foreigners" after the 1956 Suez Crisis. "It was painful, but we had to accept that Egypt belonged to the Egyptians; it was their country and they were doing what they wanted." If the majority of Russians are happy that President Putin has "raised them up off their knees", who am I to object? I was only ever a guest in Russia. It is not my country. I have no vote there; only a feeble and now fading voice. I didn't want to see it, but the writing had been on the wall for some time. After the annexation of Crimea, a friend with whom I had shared an interest in art wrote on Facebook: "Let's all post the St George's ribbon [a symbol of remembrance for the war dead] to see who is svoi [one of us] and who is chuzhoi [an alien]." I engaged her in discussion and managed to salvage that friendship.

Friends and even families fell into different camps. Each sensed the position of the other and avoided conflict by avoiding contact. My neighbour, a perfectly nice woman who used to water my plants and feed my cat, wouldn't look me in the eye when MH17 came down. On Facebook, she posted Kremlin propaganda. We knew we disagreed with each other; it was safer not to speak. After Victory Day this year, another friend wrote that she felt "personally offended and humiliated" that Western leaders had boycotted the 70th anniversary parade. I answered that we acknowledged the losses and respected the veterans, but found it hard to watch BUK missiles (of the kind that probably brought down flight MH17) rumbling through Red Square. Her mind was not completely closed. I think she took my point. But, increasingly, I have felt lonely and isolated, realising that fewer Russians remain on my wave length. Russia seems unable now to recognise its true friends. I have been a critic but, I hope, a constructive one. I have preferred the bitter truth to the sweet lie, but I have never stopped loving Russia. The warning that the axe was about to fall on me came in February. I flew into Moscow to be met at the airport by my husband with the words: "You have arrived in a different country." The night before, liberal politician Boris Nemtsov had been assassinated within full view of the Kremlin.

Compared with Nemtsov, I am lightly punished; I am lucky. He died in the dirty snow of late winter. I have lived to see another glorious Russian spring of lilacs, lily-of-the-valley and nightingales. I attended Nemtsov's funeral, when mourners gathered to bury not only the man but also their last hopes for Russian democracy. The Western-leaning intelligentsia was only ever a minority in Russia, but the line of those queuing to pay tribute snaked all the way from Kursk railway station to the Sakharov Centre, a good two city blocks. One teacher had travelled all the way from the provincial city of Tver to lay two red roses on Nemtsov's coffin. "After this," she said, "I will go home and close my door and shut my mouth. All hope is lost." It was heartbreaking. Bad as was the killing – and the subsequent arrest of the usual Chechen suspects – I found myself even more appalled by the general indifference to the murder. An opinion poll showed that a third of those asked "felt nothing in particular" about it. "Well, who was Nemtsov? He was a nobody really," was a common reaction.

"He must have deserved it," said others. This was how Stalin's secret police could take away millions in the middle of the night and send them to their deaths. It was possible because fellow citizens chose not to see, closing their eyes to the terror, as long as it didn't affect them. Warning of the sense I have of creeping fascism in Russia, I feel my cries fall on deaf ears. History will show. I hope I am wrong. What will I do? Where will I go? Back to Australia, probably, because despite all my absences, delays and doubts about migration, here is a smiling country that still seems to want me. Before my visa runs out, I have time to accomplish one last pet project. I am bringing the string ensemble from Moscow to perform at a church music festival in my small seaside hometown in Yorkshire, England. We will give what we are calling "The Friendly Concert" to show that, despite the frostiness between Russia and the West, cultural ties and the friendship of ordinary people can and should go on. It will be a good note on which to go out. Then, with heavy hearts, we will part "until better times". Heaven only knows when those better times will come.

Helen Womack has contributed to Fairfax from Moscow since 2003. She is the author of The Ice Walk: Surviving the Soviet Break-up and the New Russia (Melrose Books, 2013).