The first contact between Brazil and Russia took place in the 19th century, in 1804, when Russian explorer-naturalist Grigory Ivanovich Langsdorff led an expedition to study Brazil. In 1813, he became the first general consul of Russia in this country.

Mass migration from Russia to Brazil began in 1909. According to Brazil, from 1850 to 1912, 19,500 settlers from the Russian Empire arrived legally, although contemporaries cited different figures. The Russian envoy in South America, M. E. Prozor, estimated the number of settlers in his 1905 report at 60,000 people.

Among the emigrants from the Russian Empire, a Polish colony formed in the states of Paraná and Rio de Janeiro, while Latvians, Estonians, Poles, and Ukrainians settled around São Paulo. Volga Germans, Estonians, and Russians also established themselves in the state of Santa Catarina. The second wave of settlers was associated with the White emigration and began in April 1921 with the arrival of the steamship "Rion." More than 3,000 White Guards settled in Brazil, mainly from Wrangel's forces in France.

The third wave of migration occurred between 1947 and 1949, when former Soviet prisoners of war, White emigrants from Europe, and displaced persons from the USSR fled to Brazil. In 1952 and 1965, Russian Old Believers were evacuated from China to Brazil, having previously escaped from collectivization in Primorye and the Kazakh Altai.

Russian Old Believers predominantly live in rural areas in the states of Paraná, Mato Grosso, Goiás, and Tocantins, where they engage in agriculture, growing soybeans, beans, rice, cotton, and sunflowers. Settlers from the first pre-revolutionary wave founded the city of Campina das Missões in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, where, according to some data, their descendants make up 20% of the population. The White emigration mainly settled in São Paulo. Russian Old Believers brought unknown rice and buckwheat varieties to Brazil, which were appreciated by local farmers.