But he has tried to keep his family connected to its roots. The most important of the emigres in Serbia was Baron Pyotr Wrangel, who led the White Russian Army in the South of the Russian Empire and, after their defeat in 1920, fled to Sremski Karlovci, a . It enabled the establishment of the High Council of the Monarchy (HCM), which organized its first congress in Paris the following year. The exodus developed in . [45] PP, A/S dune propagande en faveur des doctrines sovitiques qui serait faite parmi les membres de lAssociation des Jeune Russes, January 1932, pp. [11] PP, La franc-maonnerie russe, August 1933, 2 p., AN/19940500/306. They made connections with several factions of the French extreme right, including the largest far-right organization at the time, Action Franaise. [5] Eventually, beginning in 1925, Nikolais cancerto which he would succumb in 1929gave the advantage to the Kirill camp. Claiming to be the last representative of the Stroganoffs, the false nobleman sued the widow of Sergei Stroganoff, who had died in Nice in 1923 and whose estate was estimated in the French press at several hundred million francs. The French section was created in 1925. [10] PP, A/S de lUnion des chevaliers de lOrdre militaire imprial russe de Saint-Georges, November 6, 1939, 3 p., AN/19940497/70; Ibid., Un entretien avec le Grand-duc Cyrille, November 9, 1922, AN/F/7/15943/1. [49] Alexandre Jevakhoff, Les Russes blancs (Paris: Tallandier, 2011). Since they assumed the Soviet regime would last a few years at most, few worried about integrating. [14], The political divide between Kirills and Nikolais supporters had repercussions for migr community life. Pierre de Fermor, a dandy-like figure whose grandfather was a general in the White army, is one. For the French authorities, this White question was a particularly sensitive issue primarily because of the tendency of the first wave of tsarist refugees to have pro-German feelings. He has fond memories of the dances, shows and parties where . And the great Slavic soul of the Russians did not allow it to be looked upon with indifference that a fraternal Slavic people should perish". Russian Shanghai, Belgrade and Paris. Five stories of White Russian Lud Fedoseyeva was the best-paid Russian model, an migr supermodel. This fragmentation among migr associations had its share of attempts at unification. The latter was perceived by many Russian officers as an ongoing case that was never finished since the day of their exile. 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 transition from a national anticommunist struggle liberating Russia from Soviet powerto a global one drew many Whites into the magnetic field of fascism. 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. In 1934, this policy was welcomed by the French Foreign Minister, Louis Barthou, and allowed for negotiations that led to the 1935 Mutual Assistance Treaty between France and the Soviet Union. After the war, active anti-Soviet combat was almost exclusively continued by NTS: other organizations either dissolved, or began concentrating exclusively on self-preservation and/or educating the youth. 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. 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. They remain true to honor and obligation. [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. Karlinsky, Simon Freedom from Violence and Lies: Essays on Russian Poetry and Music, Boston, Academic Studies Press, 2013. The succession of official names ran as follows: Association des Jeunes Russes, then Union des Associations des Jeunes Russes, and lastly Union des Jeunes Russes. At 90, Orobchenko considers himself "the last White Russian of Clichy", a northern Paris suburb once home to a vibrant emigre community. [11] According to the White Russian newspaper Vozrozhdenie (Renaissance), Russian Freemasons actively worked to steer their French brothers in an anti-Soviet direction. 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. One faction pledged for Grand Duke Kirill Vladimirovich, the eldest surviving son of Alexander III; another faction supported Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich, a grandson of Emperor Nicholas I. Of its 1,000 activists worldwide, about 300 resided in France, with about half in the Paris region and the other half largely spread between Lyon and Nice. 1920. [1] Most white migrs left Russia from 1917 to 1920 (estimates vary between 900,000 and 2 million). White migr ( ) is a political term used to describe Russian people who left Russia because of the Russian Revolution or Civil War. 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. That he left for the United States in 1941, where he provided information about the Russian opposition to the U.S. intelligence services, and then returned to Soviet Russia to promote the ecumenical relations of the Moscow Patriarchate,[49] may lend support to this hypothesis. This transition from a national to a global struggle drew many Whites from the anti-communist camp into the magnetic field of fascism. William E. Odom was the last U.S. top-level official to address the . [44], Much more serious is the case of the Mladorossy, or Young Russians. [21] Le Parti national pan-russe et les partis politiques franais, May 28, 1934, 2 p., AN/20010216/283. 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. [37] Although the BRT succumbed to internal quarrels and Soviet infiltration in 1932, it actually kept running, albeit rather weakened. 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. [34], Some secret societies attracted the attention of the French authorities. Source: Open source. [17] RG, Les migrs russes en France et linfluence hitlrienne sur leurs groupements, January 29, 1938, pp. Internal processes of socio-political control were also developed: in 1935, a popular restaurant was opened in Paris for all unemployed Ukrainian workers in need, with the notable exception of communists.[2]. Ludmila Fedoseyeva, Paris, 1938. On the French Riviera, migrs fight a Russian advance 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. 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. With the White Russians in Paris. But a more common reality was to find factory work with industrial giants such as Renault and Peugeot. The two rivals took different roads: Nikolai Nikolaevich fled to France and settled in his castle of Choigny near Paris, while Kirill Vladimirovich settled in Bavaria and made connections with the German monarchist and nationalist circles supported by his wife, Victoria Melita of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. [14] War memorials in Yugoslavia usually also honored both Serbian war dead and the members of the Czechoslovak Legions who died in the war, giving them a decidedly pan-Slavic feel. After 1933, there were attempts to copy the NSDAP and cozy up to the German National Socialists, thus the short-lived parties such as the ROND (Russian Popular Liberation Movement) came into existence in Germany. [19] Blanc, September 18, 1937, AN/19880206/7. The historical, geographical, and political situation was therefore particularly conducive to the production of transnational far-right connections. During World War II, many white migrs took part in the Russian Liberation Movement. . It even affected the domain of worship, threatening the bond between the sword and the clergy. The first arrivals found some jobs in the French and British representations, commissions, or alongside them in civil service, translator, or even military or security units in Istanbul.[31][32]. White migrs were, generally speaking, anti-communist and did not consider the Soviet Union and its legacy to be representative of Russia but rather of an occupying force. [3] Thanks to the Bavarian connections of his wife, Victoria Melita, Kirill was surrounded by Germanophiles, had associations with pan-Germanists, and received German funds for his propaganda. By 1921, Kirill Vladimirovichs wife, Victoria Melita of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, was funding Hitlers emerging NSDAP; hence, she indirectly facilitated the Beer Hall Putsch of 1923. This time, those who took refuge in Istanbul were the 'nobles' and soldiers of Tsarist Russia, who had fought the Ottomans for centuries. The International Congress of Russian Monarchists was held in Bavaria in 1921 and brought together 200 figures from 33 countries. Alexandre Kazem-Beg, the movements guide, lived in Le Vsinet in the Paris region. In 1926, a new organization, the Russian Legitimist-Monarchist Union, was founded in Munich to bring together all the movements that supported Kirill Vladimirovich. [35] Internal Organization of the Society of the Faithful and Make-Up of Its Action Committee (translation of a German document), October 1920, 9 p., AN/F/7/13424. had larger Russian emigre populations. White migr - Wikiwand 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. Berlin and Paris developed thriving migr communities. [48] Union des Young Russians, August 1933, 10 p., AN/20010216/282. [33], The Committees profile was moderate, setting it apart from another, more radical organization, the Ligue Internationale Anti-Communiste, which claimed to have sections in Argentina, Belgium, France, Italy, Poland, Switzerland, and the United States. They are our honor and our justification (opravdanie) before the world. Joseph Douillet tried to integrate the International Anticommunist Entente (EIA), also known as the Aubert League after its founder. [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. Hundreds of members of the Russian aristocracy . The Russian Monarchist Party was a rather inactive French branch of the HCM (with 250 members, including about 100 in the Paris region). [8] The design of Orthodox churches at the war memorials was done in the style of medieval Orthodox churches in Novgorod and Pskov as this architectural style was seen as politically neutral and hence able to bring the communities together better. [7] The Nice special commissioner to the SN director, Au sujet des agissements germanophiles de quelques personnages russes officiels, dont Basile Lebedeff, August 7, 1918, 4 p., AN/20010216/282. Longing for home, emigres often described themselves as "sitting on our suitcases", ready to head back to Russia at a moment's notice. 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". Founded in 1921, the BRT had bases in Germany, the United States, France, Manchuria, the Baltic states, and Yugoslavia. 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. 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. The so-called Russes Blancs or White Russians . In truth-we have nothing, we have lost everything. During this meeting, a public letter from Paul Taittinger, then-leader of the Jeunesses Patriotes, was read. The Refugees Who Built Modern Belgrade | Balkan Insight Some did find professional work, teaching music or French. The White emigration was the first and biggest of the four waves of Russian emigration, with nearly two million people leaving the country between 1917 and 1923. The Union of the Russian Empire, founded in 1928 as the discreetly pro-Kirill Russian Empire Union, had only 200 members spread across Paris, Nice, Belgium, Bulgaria, China, the United States, and Poland; some of its members went to fight for General Franco. [11] In 1927, the Orthodox Metropolitan Evlogii However, if dynastic competition was a matter that mobilized the diaspora globally, the debate over the succession essentially took place between Paris and Munich. With the White Russians in Paris. [16] A/S du Centre dUnification des Organisations Nationalistes Russes, September 1937, 2 p., AN/19880206/7. Preserving Russian Culture through Education and Religion in France [2] Police Prefecture (PP), A/S de luvre de Secours des Chmeurs Ukrainiens et du nomm Nikitukiv, AN/19940497/70. Approximately 150,000 White Russians, including princes, princesses, generals and senior officers, fled to the Ottoman Empire in the wake of the Revolution. with men faultlessly garbed by European standards, leading him to wonder how they achieved this "deceptive appearance". The leader of the Young Russians preferred to look to Italy, from which he obtained funds.[52]. Turkul notably participated in the Russian National Front, launched in 1938 to bring together pro-Third-Reich organizations. ), Russische Emigration in Deutschland 19181941. [59] A/S dun nouveau journal russe, Autour du Monde, cr par Alexandre Sipelgas, 4 juillet 1935, 2p., AN/19940500/309. 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]. [9] The neo-classical style which typically adorned war memorials in Imperial Russia was consciously avoided as building a war memorial in that style was viewed as expressing support for restoring the monarchy. [30] But Prince Andrey Kuragin, the Russian secretary of the EIA and a naturalized French citizen, rejected Douillet as corrupt. In the Soviet Union, white migr (, byeloemigrant) generally had negative connotations. 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. Even before proclaiming himself tsar, Kirill appointed personal representatives throughout Europe (Germany, Austria, America, England, Bavaria, Finland, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Romania, Serbia, and Switzerland). [9] Personnalits politiques trangres qui furent victimes dattentats commis Paris au cours de ces dernires annes, March 20, 1930, 2 p., AN/F/7/13975/1. Leben im europischen Brgerkrieg, Berlin: Akademie-Verlag 1995. It was a front that brought together right-wing monarchists and pro-Hitlerites.[23]. Robinson, Paul: The White Russian Army in exile, 1920-1941, Oxford; New York 2002: Clarendon Press; Oxford University Press. The place, formerly known as Hristaki Passage, became known as iek Pasaj after the Russian flower girls took up residence. They consider the period of 1917 to 1991 to have been a period of anti-Christian occupation by the Soviet regime. Factories welcomed Russian ex-soldiers as they tended to be hard-working and non-unionised, says Jevakhoff, himself the grandson of an imperial officer turned Parisian train station porter. [53] Faced with General Millers resistance to turning ROVS into a fascist organization, the Third Reich sought to set up its own Russian movement. 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. [22] Nicolas Glady, Les partis monarchistes russes migres Paris 19191939, Bulletin de lInstitut Pierre Renouvin 9 (2000): 84100. Second and third-generation White Russians married locals and spoke French at home. 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. [30] Tens of thousands of people who left their titles, money and palaces in Russia and came to Istanbul tried to hold on to life by dispersing all over the city. 2023 Copyright France 24 - All rights reserved. This smaller second wave fairly quickly began to assimilate into the white migr community. [5] PSC, report dated October 8, 1924, 4 p.; Les monarchistes russes et lItalie, November 9, 1922, AN/F/7/15943/1. A term preferred by the migrs themselves was first-wave migr (Russian: , emigrant pervoy volny), "Russian migrs" (Russian: , russkaya emigratsiya) or "Russian military migrs" (Russian: , russkaya voyennaya emigratsiya) if they participated in the White Russian movement. These associations goal was to bring together all the groups, and especially to attract the most important association, ROVS,[16] which had 9,000 members in France and 35,000 worldwide. 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. [28] Similarly, in 1932, when Coty launched his Croisade des patries (Crusade of Fatherlands) from Belgium, his Russian representative was General Hartman, President of the Union of Russian Veterans in Belgium. White migrs, called "White Russians" in East Asia, flooded into China after World War I and into the early 1920s. White migr - Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia [8] Moreover, the political assassinations of foreigners committed in Paris in the second half of the 1920s were mostly of Soviet refugees and Italian fascists[9]a phenomenon that was conducive to the rapprochement of these two groups. One of the clear signs of the tendency to recreate an imperial Russia on the banks of the Seine River was the constitution of a Union of Knights of the Russian Imperial Military Order of St. George in Paris. For the International Anticommunist Entente, the Pact was a ploy by Germany to destroy Western democracies and bring about world revolution. [12], Eventually, traditions lost in Soviet Russia were reconstituted abroad, as was the social and political dominance of military veterans and clergy members. 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. Various youth organizations, such as the Scouts-in-Exile became functional in raising children with a background in pre-Soviet Russian culture and heritage. Among those who were opposed to the Weimar Republic were nationalists and former members of the imperial German army Adolf Hitler and Erich Ludendorff. At the demographic level, the Russian community in France was sizable. "In Russia you always hear that the emigres were extremely rich people who left to continue a life of luxury," she says. For Russian Aristocrats, Paris Was a Glittering Expat Playground To house the burials of the White Russians who arrived in Moscow after the Bolshevik revolution in Russia, some of the land was granted in 1927 to an English benefactress, Dorothy Paget who had set up with Elena Orlov and her . In fact, a monument to Pushkin would have been built in Paris had not a dispute arisen with the Ministry of Fine Arts over its precise location. ), Der groe Exodus. In 1932, the Soviet Minister of Foreign Affairs, Maxim Litvinov, urged Stalin to attempt a rapprochement with France and the United Kingdom to contain the advances of Nazism. [14] A planned Orthodox church to honor the Russian prisoners who died in an Austrian POW camp outside Osijek would have featured busts of the Emperor Nicholas II, King Peter I and King Alexander to emphasis how the Houses of Romanov and Karaorevi had been allied in the war, linking the Russian and Serbian experiences of the war. Some sold books, some handcrafted souvenirs and some flowers. To the living: care, to the dead: memory. White migrs and International Anti-Communism in France (1918-1939) In the summer of 1923, the French intelligence services observed these monarchists interest in the secessionist movement of the Rhine Republic. Five stories of White Russian migrs. Among them were members of the French Parti populaire of Jacques Doriot, a former communist leader who had turned to fascism. In Brussels, Seattle, and Harbin, monuments were built to honor the executed Emperor Nicholas II while a monument was put up in Shanghai to honor Alexander Pushkin, Russia's national poet. The emigre community swarmed with Soviet spies, as some defeated Russian officers continued plotting a military fightback from abroad. [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. They used the pre-revolutionary tricolor (white-blue-red) as their flag, for example, and some organizations used the ensign of the Imperial Russian Navy. [20] PP, report dated February 6, 1930, AN/F/7/13975/1. says Igor Orobchenko, a former bank worker whose father came to France with a contract to clear World War I mines. 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. [33] PP, Comit dinitiative international anti-bolchvique, January 12, 1933, 4p.; Ibid., Comit dinitiative international anti-bolchvique, August 1933, 2p., AN/20010216/168. 16, AN/20010216/282. [40] PP, Union des sportsmen Russes, February 1, 1939, AN/19940500/307. One of the important figures in this nomadic spy network was Jean Kologrivov, who was born in 1890 and arrived in France in 1922. But like so many others whose lives were torn apart by Russia's 1917 revolution, she would eventually find herself a long way from home, her life transformed beyond recognition. [23] The extent of Russian economic dominance of Harbin could be seen that Moya-tvoya", a pidgin language combining aspects of Russian and Mandarin Chinese which developed in the 19th century when Chinese went to work in Siberia was considered essential by the Chinese merchants of Harbin. 25. The party affirmed that, ultimately, migrs must develop reconcilable orientations on a global scale and join in an international military intervention against Moscow. In 1936, when the Committee of Russian migr Organizationsthe umbrella group for the vast majority of White Russian groups in Franceappointed its members, they included 20 generals, four colonels, two admirals, a frigate captain, an archbishop, and 23 archpriests. [36] The archives AN/20010216/282 contain several communiqus from the CVR translated by the PP. Of those, an estimated 100,000 settled in China. Russian Shanghai, Belgrade and Paris. For his part, Nikolai Nikolaevich enjoyed the sympathy of the House of Bourbon. There were Russian-language newspapers and a radio station. Istanbul, which had a population of around 900,000 at that time, opened its doors to approximately 150 thousand White Russians. A century on, White Russians cling to their roots - France 24 [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. A Russian who had naturalized as a U.S. citizen, Vonsiatsky would ultimately be arrested and jailed in the United States in 1942 for spying for the Axis. The contribution of the White Russian migr community to the global anticommunist struggle remains to be written. That is our Russian passport". 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. Kirill seemed to entertain the hope that a restoration of the German monarchy would provide him with the tools to take the Russian throne. . Those who arrived in 1919 were better off economically. He has fond memories of the dances, shows and parties where many sought comforting reminders of home. Sometimes the term is used to describe . White Russian migrs were Russians who emigrated from the territory of the former Russian Empire in the wake of the Russian Revolution (1917) and Russian Civil War (19171923), and who were in opposition to the revolutionary Bolshevik communist Russian political climate.