But in 1936 the city elected a communist deputy, whereupon right-wing extremists started to cause unrest. The parties to the war migration in 1917 were neither Crimean Turks nor Caucasian Muslims. We in a foreign land do not have a tomb of an 'unknown soldier', but we do have thousands of suffering people. Many military and civil officers living, stationed, or fighting the Red Army across Siberia and the Russian Far East moved together with their families to Harbin (see Harbin Russians), to Shanghai (see Shanghai Russians) and to other cities of China, Central Asia, and Western China. Some did find professional work, teaching music or French. After the Bolshevik revolution, many returned seeking refuge and work. The civil war scattered between one and two million White Russians -- nicknamed after anti-Communist forces -- from China to Brazil, creating diaspora communities that in some cases endure to this day. [12] PP, La rsurrection de la franc-maonnerie en Russie, June 13, 1935, 2 p., AN/19940500/306. The exodus also sparked an unprecedented international drive to give legal protection to refugees, resulting in the "Nansen passport", the first ever travel document for stateless people. The emigre community swarmed with Soviet spies, as some defeated Russian officers continued plotting a military fightback from abroad. The latter was established in 1924 as the International Entente against the ThirdInternational and maintained close links with the Russian Labor Christian Movement (Russkoe trudovoe khristianskoe dvizhenie, RTCD), itself financed by the Swiss and Dutch governments. [10] Similarly, Russian Freemasonry, which had been proscribed in Soviet Russia, was re-established on French soil and came to include a large number of lodges: by 1933 there were two Russian lodges in Paris in the Grand Orient de France, six in the Grande Loge de France, and one in Le Droit Humain. 9, December 2020 Transnational History of the Far Right Series. Globally, however, the rise of minorities secessionism was seen with suspicion; many White Russians believed that only Germany would protect the territorial integrity of Russia. [42] Les monarchistes russes et lItalie, November 9, 1922, AN/F/7/15943/1. To the living: care, to the dead: memory. Some white migrs, labeled "Soviet patriots," adopted pro-Soviet sympathies. Vonsiastsky and Kazem-Beg were reportedly welcomed to Berlin by Goering and Rosenberg. [38] Upon the death of its leader, Prince Alexander Lieven, a meeting took place in Berlin in 1937 at which Anatole Toll, a Finnish resident who seems to have worked for the French intelligence services in the mid-1920s, was appointed president. Russian Shanghai, Belgrade and Paris. [55] Les migrs russes de France et le pacte germano-sovitique, October 26, 1939, p. 3, AN/20010216/282. When they arrived in France, such newcomers brought with them a profound and deep sense of loss and nostalgia. Kirill seemed to entertain the hope that a restoration of the German monarchy would provide him with the tools to take the Russian throne. He had links with the Nazis, and while the organization may have regretted German excesses against Jews, it went on to roundly claim that the Jews had organized the Russian Revolution, that a majority of Soviet leaders were Jewish, and that they had unleashed violence on their population that would dwarf the violence meted out by the authorities of the Third Reich against the Jews. Their tendency to seek to establish a miniature Russia in exile sometimes provoked tensions with the French authorities: for example, the French administration had to ask Grand Duke Kirill to stop awarding decorations that competed with those of the French state. This smaller second wave fairly quickly began to assimilate into the white migr community. [16] A/S du Centre dUnification des Organisations Nationalistes Russes, September 1937, 2 p., AN/19880206/7. The main White restorationist organization was the Russian All-Military Union (ROVS), also known in France as the Union Militaire Russe or the Fdration Gnrale des Associations danciens combattants russes ltranger. The police report concluded in unambiguous terms: In summary, it appears that, with the exception of smaller Bolshevik groups, the existence in France of an increasing number of White Russian movements tends to constitute, on our soil, a kind of national minority, obeying the political nuances of the former regime and constantly influenced by external events.[6]. They are our honor and our justification (opravdanie) before the world. The nature of the link between the Whites in France and Germany is well encapsulated by the Russian Fascist Party (Russkaia fashistkaia partiia, RFP). This fragmentation among migr associations had its share of attempts at unification. [29], In France, the Coty-funded organization also relayed the documentation of the International Centre for the Active Struggle against Communism (CILACC), founded in 1929 by Victor and Joseph Douilletwhose successful 1928 book was the reference used by Herg for his volume Tintin in the Land of the Soviets. On 17 May 2007, the Act of Canonical Communion with the Moscow Patriarchate reestablished canonical ties between the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad and the Russian Church of the Moscow Patriarchate, after more than 80 years of separation. A cultural history of the Russian emigration, 1919-1939, New York 1990: Oxford University Press. Other women took work as dressmakers, shop assistants and hairdressers. [25] After the death of its founding father, General Wrangel, Grand Duke Nikolai appointed General Kutepov as the new head. Its conspiratorial style and opportunistic claim to perpetrate violence on Soviet territories guaranteed it a certain aura. Starting from France, the RSNUV subsequently established branches in Germany, Belgium, Greece, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia, and it was clearly oriented in favor of the Third Reich. According to a German document that circulated in French diplomatic and police circles in 1920, the Socit des Fidles (Society of the Faithful) was an esoteric, subversive organization that, based in Germany, claimed to have members from Paris to Moscow. On January 19, 1938, in Moscow, one of Stalins main aides, Andrei Zhdanov, fulminated against the protection that the French government was providing the White Russians and their criminal organizations, which are in reality nests of terrorist vipers, openly practicing their anti-Soviet work under the protection of the French authorities.[61] In reality, even if France constituted a central base for the White Russians, their transnational networks were more polarized by and oriented toward Berlin, Rome, and Tokyo than they were geared toward organizing seditious activity on Soviet territory. Kirill Vladimirovich proclaimed himself tsar in London on November 5, 1924, to the irritation of the entire Romanov house. Since they could not find allies in the German government, they began to build themselves an entourage among the political opposition of the time. This ideology was largely inspired by General Pyotr Wrangel, who said upon the White army's defeat "The battle for Russia has not ceased, it has merely taken on new forms". The latter was perceived by many Russian officers as an ongoing case that was never finished since the day of their exile. [14], The political divide between Kirills and Nikolais supporters had repercussions for migr community life. Sign-Up For Our Institute and Program Mailing Lists, http://russie-europe.ens-lsh.fr/article.php3?id_article=62. [47] Tranlation given by La Cte dmeraude, October 25, 1935. [11] PP, La franc-maonnerie russe, August 1933, 2 p., AN/19940500/306. The IABIC maintained links with the Ukrainian Anti-Bolshevik Committee, which aimed to have the Soviet republics join the League of Nations and participate in establishing a European Confederation. . Lud Fedoseyeva was the best-paid Russian model, an migr supermodel. O. Beyda, Re-Fighting the Civil War: Second Lieutenant Mikhail Aleksandrovich Gubanov. [citation needed]. Overall, Hitlers advent was met with enthusiasm among those Russians in France. In 1924, the Chinese government recognized the government of the Soviet Union and the majority of White Russians in China who refused to become Soviet citizens were rendered stateless, thus subject to Chinese law unlike other Europeans, Americans, and Japanese living in China who enjoyed the principles of extraterritoriality. Officially, the group was formed in 1938, but it was informally visible as early as 1922, when Kirill distributed honor medals. Culture. [11] In 1927, the Orthodox Metropolitan Evlogii He has fond memories of the dances, shows and parties where . In short, according to a detailed 1933 report by the French political police, Russians in France were integrated but not assimilated: their rate of ordinary crimes and misdemeanors was very low, and they commonly learned French, but they seldom asked to be naturalized. "France had lost millions of men in World War I, so French entrepreneurs were very happy to have this manpower," says Alexandre Jevakhoff, a senior civil servant, historian and author of a new book on the civil war. The transition from a national anticommunist struggle liberating Russia from Soviet powerto a global one drew many Whites into the magnetic field of fascism. 14 (2010): 551. A significant percentage of white migrs may be described as monarchists, although many adopted a position of being "unpredetermined" ("nepredreshentsi"), believing that Russia's political structure should be determined by popular plebiscite. Supporters of the Grand Duke Kirill and far-right-oriented Russians recognized as their spiritual guide Archbishop Antony of Serbia, who had proclaimed himself independent of the Moscow Patriarchate. 16, AN/20010216/282. And Tatiana would become a factory worker's wife in France, part of a huge wave of aristocrats, intellectuals, military officers and others fleeing the brutal civil war after the revolution. Karl Schlgel (ed. [20] PP, report dated February 6, 1930, AN/F/7/13975/1. [4], One of the most notable forms of activities by Russian migrs was building monuments to Russian war dead of World War I, which stood in marked contrast to the Soviet Union, which did not build any monuments to the 2 million Russians killed between 1914 and 1917, as the war had been condemned by Lenin as an "imperialist war". [36], Together with other nationalist organizations, the BRT advocated for a unified anti-Soviet front on a global scale with the aim of establishing a liberation movement of peoples who had come under communist rule. Among the emigres were Lolita author Vladimir Nabokov, . Those who arrived in 1919 were better off economically. [41] RalphSchor, Le Parti Populaire Franais dans les Alpes-Maritimes (19361939),Cahiers de la Mditerrane3334 (1986): 99125. The main reason that pushed the Whites to support the German power with action was the concept of a 'spring offensive', an armed intervention against the USSR that must be exploited in order to continue the civil war. 9 October 2020 09:00. ), Der groe Exodus. Many symbols of the White migrs were reintroduced as symbols of the post-Soviet Russia, such as the Byzantine eagle and the Russian tricolor. "Riches to rags" tales of ex-aristocrats scraping by as Paris taxi drivers, cabaret performers or seamstresses became legendary. The county of Nice only came under French sovereignty in 1860, giving birth to the administrative department of the Maritime Alps. [6] The popularity of monuments for the war dead reflected not only sadness over the war dead, but also a way to bring together the often badly divided migr communities shattered across Europe, Asia and North America. Aksyonov died and was buried in Moscow. The historical, geographical, and political situation was therefore particularly conducive to the production of transnational far-right connections. Orobchenko, shuffling through faded photographs, fears there will soon be little left of the community he loved -- just the 10,000 buried in the Russian cemetery in the southern Paris suburb of Sainte-Genevieve-des-Bois. [28], The White Russian women mostly worked in the "Badlands" area adjoining the Beijing Legation Quarter on the east, centered on the alley of Chuanban Hutong. 12, AN/1988206/7; A/S de Wladimir Krassinksy et de lUnion des Jeunes Russes, April 1932, 6 p., AN/20010216/283. But this pro-German activism also raised concerns. Longing for home, emigres often described themselves as "sitting on our suitcases", ready to head back to Russia at a moment's notice. Most of the Russians went to Manchuria (especially in Harbin, which at the time had the largest population of Russians of any city outside Russia[27]) and treaty ports such as Shanghai, but a few ended up in Beijing. [13] Many noble titles were usurped, a fact that underlined both the social weight of the Russian nobility and its decomposition. Constantinople would serve as one transit point for the estimated one million people who fled the Bolsheviks after 1917, but it was to Paris and Berlin that many were headed as they scrambled to . [22] The economic success of the Russians in Harbin often surprised foreign visitors who assumed that they should be poor, leading one visitor in 1923 to comment that Russian ladies as well gowned as at the Paris races [who] strolled "That explains why there were few mixed marriages, why few Russians demanded French nationality," says Jevakhoff. Karl Schlgel (ed. These people formed organizations such as the Mladorossi, the Evraziitsi, and the Smenovekhovtsi. He was replaced by the very anti-communist Pierre Laval, who became in 1940 the second-in-command of the collaborationist Vichy government. The White Russians who fled to Germany, led by Kirill Vladimirovich, disapproved greatly of this newfound cordiality with the Soviets who had brought about their downfall. "They continued to speak Russian at home.". The content you requested does not exist or is not available anymore. [13] Serbian King Alexander of Yugoslavia was a Russophile who welcomed Russian migrs to his kingdom, and after France, Yugoslavia had the largest Russian migr community, leading to Yugoslavia to have almost as many war memorials to the Russian war dead as France. [26] In 1930, the kidnapping of Kutepov on the streets of Paris by Soviet agents generated a state of psychosisin 36 hours, 200 people went to the police to reveal the truth about the caseand gave rise to a meeting organized by the French far right, including Action franaise. [20] About 127,000 people living in Harbin in 1920 came from Russia, making it one of the largest Russian-speaking cites in East Asia. Since the end of the 1980s, the term "first-wave migr" has become more common in Russia. [54] RG, report dated April 13, 1936, 2 p., AN/19940500/305. There were Russian-language newspapers and a radio station. [56] The difficulty for Solonevich seems to have been Rosenbergs demand for radical anti-Semitic propaganda. [13] PP, A/S du Comit des organisations dmigrs russes, July 9, 1936, 2p., AN/19940500/307. No one knows how this rumor arose, but it reveals the temptation to work with the French far right to defend the White cause. Their wounds and suffering are for Russia. If the choice between the descendants of Nicholas II had not yet been made, the HCM clearly leaned toward Nikolai,[22] only to later reconsider by postponing the choice of king until after the fall of the USSR. The leader of the Young Russians preferred to look to Italy, from which he obtained funds.[52]. For his part, Nikolai Nikolaevich enjoyed the sympathy of the House of Bourbon. The term is often broadly applied to . The new German republic and the new Soviet government decided to bury the hatchet and to put a stop in each others expansionist politics, signing the Treaty of Rapallo in 1922. Pre-World War I Paris had been a playground for Russia's idle rich. This study is based mostly on declassified archives from the French police and intelligence services, especially the National Security Directorate, the Police Prefecture for Paris, and the Administrative Policy and General Intelligence for the rest of the territory. While we know about the role some Russian emigres played in supporting the U.S.-led anticommunist struggle during the Cold War period, we still know very little about their connections with the first anticommunist organizations in the interwar period. [3] Chez les Russes : le Grand-duc Cyrille, June 27, 1922; Sret Nationale (SN), Monarchistes russes-Parti du grand-duc Cyrille, October 9, 1932, AN/F/7/15943/1. : [Z]. For the International Anticommunist Entente, the Pact was a ploy by Germany to destroy Western democracies and bring about world revolution. Like the rest of the movement, the French section was clearly pro-Kirill. It held that this unifying principle could only succeed, however, after the White movements had been purified of their suspect elements. The American explorer Roy Chapman Andrews said he frequented the "cafes of somewhat dubious reputation" with the explorer Sven Hedin and scientist Davidson Black to "have scrambled eggs and dance with the Russian girls."[29]. Berlin and Paris developed thriving migr communities. It claimed that the White Russians could not be satisfied with wanting to defeat Bolshevism in Russia but must fight it wherever they found themselvesthat is, allied with every enemy of the Soviet Union. [26] A/S darticles de presse signalant la dcouverte dun complot tsariste Moscou, May 1927, 3p., report dated May 15, 1928, AN/F/7/13975/1. when he spoke at the war monument in Valenciennes: "Blood spilled on the soil of beautiful and glorious France is the best atmosphere to unite France forever with a Russia national and worthy". Many white migrs believed that their mission was to preserve the pre-revolutionary Russian culture and way of life while living abroad, in order to return this influence to Russian culture after the fall of the USSR. The BRTs leader in France was General Piotr Krasnov, former Ataman of the Don Cossacks, who would be hanged by the Soviet regime in 1947 for having joined the Axis forces. M. V. Nazarov, The Mission of the Russian Emigration, Moscow: Rodnik, 1994. (Taittinger would later, in 1934, play a critical role in trying to constitute a unified National Front, a group whose central notion would be revamped, this time successfully, by Jean-Marie Le Pen in 1972.) [12] In Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, war memorials to the Russian war dead were presented in Pan-Slavic terms, as a symbol of how Russians had fought together with the Czechs and Serbs in the war. Since they assumed the Soviet regime would last a few years at most, few worried about integrating. [28] PP, report dated February 3, 1928, AN/20010216/168. Here, in a bucolic and romantic setting, lie some of the greatest names in Russian art and culture, such as the writer Sergei Bulgakov, the artist Serge Poliakoff, and the ballet stars Serge Lifar and Rudolf Nureyev. [43] Above all, his motivations were more pecuniary than ideological. Russian counter-revolutionary migrs in France participated both in transnational organizations specifically dedicated to their national cause and in those that took a more global view of the fight against communism. Lost amid the horrors of . [38] Wim Coudenys, Activisme politique et militaire dans lmigration russe : ralit ou sujet littraire? [62] Kazem-Beg, for his part, reacted to the invasion of Poland not by supporting German and Soviet policies, but instead by sending a telegram of support to the President of the French Council, ending with these words: I wish to renew in the name of the Young Russian Movement our commitment to fight alongside France against our implacable enemy, Germany. France 24 is not responsible for the content of external websites. [44], Much more serious is the case of the Mladorossy, or Young Russians. Many, estimated as being between the hundred thousands and a million,[2] also served Germany in the Wehrmacht or in the Waffen-SS, often as interpreters.[3]. [12] The fact that the crosses of the Russians buried in France were painted white-the color of the French war dead and allies-while the crosses of the German war dead were painted black was widely noticed within the Russian community in France as a sign that the French regarded them as allies. Russian American Immigration [ edit | edit source] Between 1820 and 1870 only 7,550 Russians immigrated to the United States, but starting with 1881, immigration rate exceeded 10,000 a year: 593,700 in 1891-1900, 1.6 million in 1901-1910, 868,000 in 1911-1914, and 43,000 in 1915-1917. : , 1979. "But it was extremely hard," adds the 62-year-old, part of a small community of "White Russian" descendants still keeping their heritage alive, a century later. It even affected the domain of worship, threatening the bond between the sword and the clergy. Ludmila Fedoseyeva, Paris, 1938. In Paris, its members were linked to the Russian Sportsmens Union, an organization that carried out paramilitary preparations under the guise of sports activities and was downright pro-Nazi. It was from this community of Germanophile veterans that the approximately 700 White Russians who volunteered to fight in Spain for General Franco originated. Douillets reputation for corruption was reinforced when Colonel Aleksandr Resanov, a member of White Russian counterintelligence during the Civil War, published an indictment after leaving CILACC[31] in which he alleged that the Douillet family was raising funds for personal gaina claim confirmed by the French police, who considered CILACC a purely commercial venture.[32], Paris was also the starting point of White Russian international organizations such as the International Anti-Bolshevik Initiative Committee (IABIC), founded in 1930 by the Russian Massialas Galitzin and the Romanian Theodore Crivez. Among these stillborn initiatives was the Unification Center for Russian Nationalist Organizations, comprising the Russian journal Tribune Libre (Free Tribune), the Friendship Union of Russian Veterans, the Patriotic Association of Young Russians in Paris, and the Russian Empire Union. Most white migrs left Russia from 1917 to 1920 (estimates vary between 900,000 and 2 million). This made the white migrs a target for infiltration by the Soviet secret police (e.g. The publications of the Young Russians testify to a shift in 1938: if the consolidation of Germany had once appeared to be an asset to White Russians, the Reichs territorial ambitions over Ukraine now aroused concerns, with some Whites calling for an understanding between the USSR and the West. [56] Police Administrative (PA), A/S du journal Civilisation et bolchevisme, May 16, 1939, 3 p., AN/20010216/283. A Russian monastery in Mount Athos is registered as the owner, while the Turkish government recognizes only the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate as the authority over all Orthodox denominations in the country. The Union of Russian Nobility, an association founded in Paris in 1926, tried to counter the phenomenon by seeking to verify genealogies. During and after World War II, many Russian migrs moved to the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Peru, Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, South Africa and Australia where many of their communities still exist in the 21st century. Long favoured by Russian aristocrats who dotted balmy resorts like Nice with their holiday villas, France became a natural hub, with an emigre community numbering some 200,000. They were not only ethnic Russians but belonged to other ethnic groups as well. A significant part of the coveted property being domiciled in Italy, the pretender wrote to Mussolini asking him to intervene on his behalf. His children and grandchildren all speak Russian; Orobchenko married a Frenchwoman, but she proudly shows off pictures of the Russian cakes she bakes every Easter. [53] Les migrs russes de France et le pacte germano-sovitique, October 26, 1939, p. 2, AN/20010216/282. Die russische Emigration und ihre Zentren 19171941, Mnchen 1994. Pierre de Fermor, president of Nice's Friends of the Russian Cathedral, a pro-Moscow group. The productivity of the Russian press in France demonstrates real vitality, yet its offerings were divided into multiple small print runs. [24], White migrs fought with[clarification needed] the Soviet Red Army during the Soviet invasion of Xinjiang and the Xinjiang War of 1937.[25]. The White Russians who had settled in Germany pushed to mobilize for the Reich: General Pavel Bermondt-Avalov, who was the leader of the Nazi-controlled ROND in 1932-1933, sent his emissaries from Berlin to Paris. [17], In the fall of 1937, the RSNUV attempted a new unifying process, this time at a meeting in Berlin with the leaders of the All-Russian Fascist Party and the Russian National Socialist Party. Its audience was made even larger by the two Russian-language newspapers it published: Mladoross and Russkaia iskra. Aksyonov was one of the few emigres to return to Russia after Perestroika. Munich was a strategic choice, since the Bavarian monarchists also filled up the coffers of Kirills cause, making it possible for General Vasily Biskupskythe first White Russian to give unqualified support to Hitler and who also helped Kirill finance his rise to powerto organize this funding from Germany. But while the famous Russian community of Paris--like those in Berlin and Riga--combined well-off . [52] PP, March 23, 1934, AN/19940497/70; A/S de lactivit de lmigration russe en France, September 1934, 9 p., AN / 20010216/282; August 1934, 2 p., AN/19940500/307; Note de renseignements: affaires russes, February 7, 1940, 5 p., AN/19940500/305; September 11, 1937, AN/19940500/309; DRG, Les migrs russes en France et linfluence hitlrienne sur leurs groupements, January 29, 1938, p. 3; Attitude des principales organisations dmigrs russes en prsence des vnements, September 28, 1938; A/S de lopinion des nationalistes russes de Paris aprs la confrence de Munich, September 30, 1938; A/S dune propagande des Russes blancs en faveur de lAllemagne, October 3, 1938, AN/20010216/282; Nicolas Ross, De Koutiepov Miller. The 1917 Russian Revolution led to an exodus of two million " White Russians " escaping the Bolshevik "Reds". Some would flee a Europe at war; others would remain loyal to a defeated France led by Marshal Ptain; and still others would venture into the world of collaborationism. [29] PP,La Croisade des patries, May 18, 1933, 2 p., AN/1994500/240. 89, AN/20010216/282. Some migrs also fled to Portugal, Spain, Romania, Belgium, Sweden, Switzerland, and Italy. Put another way, Russianswho accounted for 9.3% of foreigners in France at that timecomprised 90% of the countrys political immigrants. But just as Evie arrives, her grandmother becomes very ill. Sasha Sokolov (born in 1943 . Both he and Melnik have visited Russia -- an experience they found exhilarating, though Melnik says that, at first, people were hostile when she explained her family history. [18] The political weakness induced by the crumbling of the Russian migr community in France strengthened monarchists and fascists capacity to work together. As for the choice of pretender to the Russian throne, the Italians were initially divided: Mussolini leaned toward Kirill, but the monarchy preferred Nikolai, since the Italian queen was his sister-in-law.