The late 18th and early 19th century saw a flow of Swiss farmers forming colonies such as Şaba (Bessarabia, at the Dniester Liman, now part of Ukraine), besides specialists of various professions, working as winemakers, cheesemakers, merchants, officers or governesses.
Most of these Swiss diaspora populations returned to Switzerland during the interwar period in the wake of the Russian Revolution of 1917, and especially as a result of the Dekulakization under Joseph Stalin during 1929-1931.
The most famous Swiss to have lived in Russia are probably the mathematician Leonhard Euler and the military officer Franz Lefort, a close associate of Peter the Great.
Notably, Zürich played host to both Lenin and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, and in the years predating the Revolution, up to a third of students at Swiss universities were citizens of Tsarist Russia.
[1] The archive collects records of some 5,600 individuals who had come to Switzerland following the collapse of the tsarist state claiming Swiss citizenship, estimated to correspond to about two thirds of the total number.