> Self-referential structs work fine in Rust and always have.

They 'work fine' in that the Rust compiler will let you create one and then never let you move it or access the whole object mutably again while it is self-referential. They don't 'work fine' as in being first-class objects in the language that work as any other object.

For what it's worth, I think Rust made the right choice in not allowing custom move constructors that would enable first-class self-referential types.