Jake,

My GF was the daughter of loyal Communist Party apparatchiks in Leningrad. Oops, make that St. Petersburg (once again). She emigrated with her young daughter in 1991 and after 9/11 they both became US citizens.
She's not wildly GOP yet and simply hates Sarah Palin (she did an excellent Palin Haloween costume in 2008), but she really likes our new Guv, Chris Christie, a union challenging, big govt. enemy Republican.
Give me a few more years.

Side note: She has a much better life here than most of her college classmates do back home, except some guy named Medvedev, who was a couple of years behind her. Things aren't too good in Russia right now for the average citizen.