– In the first half of the 20th century, it was customary to talk about two waves of emigration. The “first wave” is traditionally associated with the period of revolution and civil war. These are people who left their homeland on their own, as part of military units, in the flow of civilian refugees, who retreated abroad with the ranks of the White armies, who went abroad with their family, or who fled abroad illegally. As part of the “first” wave, about one million people left Russia.
This number does not include representatives of Russian national minorities who lived on the former outskirts of the Russian Empire and gained independence - they did not cross the Russian or Soviet border, but simply received a new status. Some of them still identified themselves with the Russian emigration and later became emigrants, for various reasons moving further to the West, primarily due to fear of the coming of Soviet power. Later, in foreign countries, the children and sometimes grandchildren of mainly representatives of the “first” wave began to be called emigrants, even if they were born outside of Russia - much depended on the self-identification, attitude and life of each individual person.
The “second” wave of the 1940s was approximately half a million people who had USSR citizenship as of June 22, 1941, who left the territory of the USSR during the war (some of the Ostarbeiters and prisoners of war who did not return to their homeland from Europe, refugees who voluntarily left the occupied territory of the USSR, as well as Vlasovites and other Soviet citizens who collaborated with the enemy in various forms, members of their families) and escaped post-war repatriations. This also includes several thousand Soviet military personnel and specialists who fled from the Soviet occupation zones of European countries to the West in the second half of the 1940s. But the absolute majority were residents of territories annexed to the USSR in the 1939-1940s. The share of representatives of all national groups who identified themselves specifically with Russian culture in this stream was hardly more than 100 thousand people.
We will talk about the “first” wave of Russian emigration.
Here you need to understand that Russian emigrants and Russian white emigrants are different categories. A Russian emigrant is a person who identified himself with a certain cultural - and in most cases, religious - tradition, regardless of national or political sympathies. The Russian white emigrant, in addition, took a very definite political position, often energetic, principled,activist, that is active rejection of the Bolshevik government, its crimes and opposition to it - and to one degree or another associated himself with the White movement and the tradition of national resistance to the Bolsheviks. At the same time, not all Russian emigrants, who considered themselves fundamental political opponents of the Bolsheviks, sympathized with the whites. So the palette of moods, assessments, reactions, views was bright and different.
The Crimean Exodus of 1920, of course, differed from the Narva, Odessa, Novorossiysk, Far Eastern and other exoduses. And here it’s not just a matter of numbers - the exodus of Russian people to Manchuria was also numerous. During the short period of his stay in power in the Crimea and the South of Russia in 1920, Lieutenant General Baron Pyotr Nikolaevich Wrangel and his closest ally, whose name is much less known to our contemporaries, largely succeeded in creating a model of Russian statehood and clearly demonstrating it to both contemporaries and descendants - on what foundations and principles the whites were going to create and restore Russia.
The Crimean Exodus is the end of the failed Russian Taiwan. And it is very important that the Russian Army, with which tens of thousands of civilian refugees left, left their homeland defeated, but not defeated by the Bolsheviks, which subsequently caused them considerable concern. “We carried Russia out on our banners,” General Wrangel emphasized in one of his orders. In 1920-1921, in the Crimea and in the camp of the I Army Corps in Gallipoli, an obvious alternative to Bolshevik power was created and strengthened - military, political, social, spiritual and moral. At the same time, the whites and refugees who left Crimea 95 years ago had no idea what a monstrous price Russia and its people would pay for the power of the Bolsheviks in the next thirty years.
– Are the exact numbers of those who left known?
– According to General Wrangel, 145,693 people left Crimea on 126 ships and vessels. According to his associates - second lieutenant Vladimir Khristianovich Davats and socio-political figure Nikolai Nikolaevich Lvov - up to 136 thousand people were taken out on 126 ships and vessels. Let's imagine the order of numbers.
– History does not know the subjunctive mood, but nevertheless – what if they had not left? Could they have stayed? What played the main role in choosing fate, what were the arguments?
– The answer is simple: in my opinion, Russia experienced a demographic catastrophe during the period from the end of 1917 to the spring of 1953. Totalin 35 yearsin our country after the establishment of power, self-called, in the words of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, “Soviet”,under this government, and often due toits political and socio-economic activities - more than50 million people.
This monstrous figure is the sum of the main categories of deaths. The number of each of them separately is generally known and can be justified either by demographic calculations or official statistics; here we only summarize them: 7.5 million people are victims of the civil war, 4.5 million people are victims of the famine of 1921-1922, 6.5 million people are victims of the man-made famine of 1933, 0.8 million people are “kulaks” who died during the stages of dispossession and in special settlements for the dispossessed, approximately 1 million are “counter-revolutionaries” (the so-called “58th Article”), executed on political charges in 1923-1953, 2 million - prisoners who died in colonies, prisons, camps, on stages, in isolation wards in 1922-1953, 27 million - victims of local wars, conflicts and World War II, 1.3 million - victims of the 1947 famine and the post-war struggle between the authorities and the rebels.
Some categories are still problematic to establish, for example, estimates of mortality from starvation on Stalin’s collective farms in the 1930s – 1940s in the USSR, the number of deaths during the suppression of anti-collective farm uprisings in the early 1930s, the number of “sexed” prisoners, goners, those who died immediately after formal liberation and were not included in the mortality statistics in the Gulag, etc. Overall, isn’t this a catastrophe? In what country in the world did something similar happen in just 35 years?
Yes, of course, there were cataclysms in Tsarist Russia, but the scale of losses is not comparable. For example, 375 thousand people died from hunger and cholera in 1891-1892 under Alexander III, the intelligentsia said: “Tsar-famine.” For all crimes, including criminal ones, as well as crimes for which they were tried by military courts, in the Russian Empire for almost forty years, in 1875-1913, no more than 10 thousand people were executed, with all allowances and exaggerations - compare with a million “counter-revolutionaries” shot. Over 30 years, in 1885-1915 in Russia, 126 thousand people died in the prison system of the civil department, this is with a low level of medicine and the absence of antibiotics - now compare with the two million dead prisoners of Soviet prisons and camps (this does not include dispossessed people).
And how to evaluate the constant compulsion to live in lies and hypocrisy, which devastated human souls and killed a person’s spiritual self-worth?.. Incentives to denounce, to change beliefs on command in accordance with the next decision of the party political bodies?.. It was necessary to demonstrate loyalty , enthusiasm, devotion, pretend to be a “non-party Bolshevik” - or be one out of conviction. Of course, all this had irreversible consequences.
Thus, if they had not left, the result is not difficult to predict. Especially considering that, for example, in the Middle Urals, as part of the repressive policy, former officials of the White armies were sentenced to death, including with the wording“in the future it will not be beneficial for the Soviet government” . Ivan Alekseevich Bunin, in his famous speech of 1924, answered the question why they didn’t stay:“One way or another, we did not accept the life that had reigned in Russia for some time now, we were in one way or another in disagreement, in one way or another struggle with this life, and, convinced that our further resistance threatened us only with fruitless, senseless death, we left for a foreign land » .
– Is it possible to at least approximately estimate the scale of the loss that Russia suffered due to emigration?
– Someday this will happen, when the most complete name databases of representatives of the Russian educated class have been compiled and we will be able to assess the scale of losses that society suffered as a result of the revolution, civil war and emigration. But for this it is necessary to understand the meaning and value of human life and human capital. How can one evaluate and how to measure uncreated scientific schools and technologies, uneducated generations of pupils and students, uncarried out experiments and undeveloped theories, unwritten textbooks, works and paintings, unmade films, unmade discoveries, undefended dissertations and unopened laboratories...
How can one assess the damage to legal consciousness and public education as a result of the disappearance of Russian lawyers?.. How can one explain that the intelligence and talents of such aircraft engineers as Igor Ivanovich Sikorsky, Alexander Nikolaevich Prokofiev de Seversky, Alexander Mikhailovich Kartveli - and hundreds of other engineers who implemented themselves abroad, as evidenced by the questionnaires of the Archive of the Society of Russian Engineers - unique?..
Pitirim Aleksandrovich Sorokin created an entire sociological department at Harvard. What financial measure can be used to measure this intellectual achievement, lost to Russia?.. And in what units to evaluate the long-term work of the department of history of Russian culture, which worked under the leadership of Fyodor Avgustovich Stepun at the University of Munich?.. Readers themselves can give more than enough similar examples.
– If you try to find positive aspects in the tragedy of emigration, were there any? What did emigration give to Russia and the world? The phrase “We took Russia with us” is well known. Did emigration really make it possible to save part of Russian culture from destruction?
– If we return again to the Paris speech of Ivan Alekseevich Bunin, he clearly formulated the essence and meaning of the mission of the Russian emigration: evidence that Russia is not the USSR, butRussian And Soviet– diametrically opposed, hostile and unmixable concepts(“It was possible to endure Batu’s headquarters, but Leningrad cannot be endured” ); a witness to Bolshevism to the rest of the world; and – continuation of resistance. Yes, emigration did not overthrow Soviet power. But, as the writer and political prisoner Nikita Igorevich Krivoshein said in one of his speeches, it brought the end of Soviet power at least half an hour closer.And half an hour is a lot.
– There are many myths and stereotypes about Russian emigration: white bones, aristocracy, monarchists drinking away awards in Parisian taverns... Where did all this come from?
– First of all, Soviet cinema.
– Are there films that reliably, without distortion, show the Russian emigration? What should people interested in the topic watch or read?
– In my subjective opinion, we still have problems with feature films. If we talk about documentary films, I recommend the serial film by St. Petersburg documentary director Mikhail Lvovich Ordovsky-Tanaevsky “Russian Corps. Evidence." Interviews, living testimonies, and, first of all, the tonality, intonation, and reflection of the narrators make a strong impression, regardless of personal attitude to their actions and actions.
If we talk about popular historical literature, I would recommend to beginning readers the historical essay by Mikhail Viktorovich Nazarov “The Mission of Russian Emigration” (Volume I). And for consultations on literature on individual topics and plots of the history of Russian emigration, you can contact the House of Russian Abroad.
– What was the attitude of emigrants towards Russia? What moods prevailed?
– If we talk about pre-war emigration, many “sat on their suitcases” and waited for the fall of Soviet power in order to return to their homeland. In the 1920s and 1930s, the politically active part of the emigration understood that enormous social changes were taking place in their homeland and their results must be taken into account. Hopes for mechanical restoration - of power, property, the House of Romanov, of the usual forms of pre-revolutionary life - are hardly realistic. Therefore, the emigration sought to find out and understand what was happening “behind the Iron Curtain” and how the people viewed the authorities. To collect information, various types of information were used, including the transfer of volunteers across the border. Most of them ended tragically.
Of course, part of the emigration went into everyday life, a small part - in one form or another - reconciled with the Soviet regime. There were also those who not only returned, but also went to serve the Bolsheviks as agents abroad. Among the most famous examples are the husband of Marina Tsvetaeva, pioneer, second lieutenant of the Markov Infantry Regiment Sergei Yakovlevich Efron and the husband of Nadezhda Plevitskaya, head of the Kornilov Shock Division, Major General Nikolai Vladimirovich Skoblin.
But the majority, at least in Europe, took an irreconcilable position, but the forms of this intransigence varied.
According to British experts, in 1937-1938 approximately 350 thousand unassimilated Russian refugees lived in Europe. In 1993, the son of an officer of the Kornilov Shock Regiment, Yaroslav Aleksandrovich Trushnovich, told me about it this way: “In 1934, there were at least 80 Russian organizations in Belgrade, including the Fishermen’s Union of 16 people, which was also considered a political organization. The overwhelming majority of the military emigration wanted to fight.”
"Russian Corner" of Paris: in front of the Russian Church on rue Daru on a Sunday morning (1930?)
(Huntington W. The Homesick Million. Russia-out-of-Russia. Boston, 1933.)
– A pressing issue is emigration and cooperation with Nazi Germany. What were the motives and arguments of supporters and opponents? Did this cause significant damage to the “image” of the Russian emigration?
– This is a large and complex topic, which I will talk about briefly. The liquidation of Russian statehood and sovereignty was excluded. I think that there were few emigrants whom we would call Russian National Socialists and they did not enjoy serious political influence among their compatriots. There were much more politically active emigrants who were interested in the results of the social experiments of Hitler, Mussolini, Salazar in the 1930s, who were looking for options for a “third way” in organizing public life and the national economy - between classical capitalism and Stalinist socialism. Compared to Stalin’s collective farms and the Gulag, which by 1941 housed more than 3.3 million people, this “third way,” the “national labor system,” still looked more optimal, since it allowed private initiative, entrepreneurship, and peasant ownership of land without restitution of landowners' rights. But theseactivistswere hardly the majority.
I think that among the emigrants, the majority in Europe were either those who counted on the fact that in the war between Germany and the USSR Stalin’s power would collapse, and then options were possible, or those who took a neutral position. Some of the emigrants believed that it was necessary to protect the external borders of the USSR, since objectively these were Russian borders. Others, recalling the words of the late General Wrangel, intended to “go even with the devil against the Bolsheviks, provided that this devil cannot saddle Russia.”
Lieutenant General Anton Ivanovich Denikin believed that it was necessary to focus on the Anglo-French allies who would defeat Hitler and then Stalin. He fundamentally and resolutely rejected participation in the war on the side of Germany, but did not change one iota in his attitude towards the Bolshevik regime and in 1946 wrote: “Nothing has changed in the basic features of the ideology of the Bolsheviks and in their practice of governing the country. Word and thought are still strangled in the USSR; The sweatshop system of serf labor still reigns there, and millions of innocent people languish in hard labor in concentration camps; As before, denunciations, investigation and provocation are the usual methods of Soviet rule, the “wall” is the favorite means of reprisal, and fear, overwhelming, animal fear, is the main stronghold of Soviet law and order. As before, the peoples of the richest country in the world are poor, voiceless, without justice and without rights. Only those who don’t want to know don’t know this.” At the same time, Denikin, with his principled position, found himself in the minority during the war years.
Major General Anton Vasilyevich Turkul believed that Russian emigrants should support those “sub-Soviet” people who would raise the tricolor flag and challenge Stalin. In emigration in the 1930s, the point of view of the magazine “Chasovoy” and the National Labor Union that such people would be found and they would leave the ranks of the Red Army resonated – in protest against collectivization and the famine of 1933, which claimed millions of lives.
Lieutenant General Professor Nikolai Nikolaevich Golovin argued that even if – contrary to common sense – Germany will wage a colonial war against the USSR; it will never have enough strength and resources to occupy and maintain such a vast territory under its control. And so on. Many opinions and options for action were offered.
In practice, in 1941-1945, approximately 14-15 thousand Russian emigrants carried out military service on the side of Germany, including many generals and white soldiers, including probably several thousand officers, as well as St. George's Knights, General Staff service officers, heroes and participants of the First World War.
Hundreds of Russian emigrants, perhaps, took part in the Resistance and served in the Allied forces. – a few thousand maximum. But there were incomparably fewer white warriors among them. One of the most famous of them – L.-Guards. staff captain of the horse artillery Igor Aleksandrovich Krivoshein, participant in the French Resistance and prisoner of Buchenwald. In 1947, the French authorities deported him and his family from France. As a result, he repatriated to the USSR, in 1949 he was arrested by the MGB and sentenced to ten years for “collaboration with the world bourgeoisie.” He was released in 1954, and released from the USSR back to France only in 1974.
A special story – service of white soldiers in the Vlasov army. Of the 35 generals of the Vlasov army – more than half participated in the White movement; among colonels, lieutenant colonels and military sergeants, their share exceeded a quarter. Former ranks of the White armies prevailed in the positions of commanders of units and formations. In addition to the officers of the Russian Corps and the Cossack Stan, they gave the Vlasovites corps, division and at least five regimental and four battalion commanders.
Of course, there were also emigrants who maintained a neutral position during the war. It’s difficult for me to judge the damage to the “image” of emigration here. – civil wars do not end in 25-30 years, and the emigrants believed that they were waging their own civil war. This point of view can either be accepted or rejected, and assessments of actions in any case will be individual, and they are unlikely to ever become unanimous. Therefore, I propose that the readers themselves evaluate the arguments and motives of the participants in the events by watching the above-mentioned film by Mikhail Ordovsky-Tanaevsky at their leisure.
– What changed for emigrants after the collapse of the Soviet system?
- Or – What hasn’t changed?.. These questions are best asked to the emigrants themselves. In short – there were a lot of hopes. Boris Stepanovich Bruno, a cadet of the Vladikavkaz Cadet Corps, told me in 1991 that the future of Russia depends on whether there are good priests, good teachers and good officers.Who and what wanted to see in post-Soviet Russia?.. For some – The most important thing was the borders, the gathering of lands and territories around the Russian state. For others – the main excitement and fears were associated with the preservation of the Soviet heritage, the mausoleum and a new round of Stalinism. For others – Russia's place in the world around us is of utmost importance – or detachment and distance from this world.But many heartilyand sincerely, despite their advanced age, they rushed to help and serve as best they could, to publish books and magazines with their tiny pensions, to recreate destroyed churches... A few moved and returned to their homeland. But you need to understand that three generations have passed since the 1917 revolution, and Russian emigration in the 1990s was not at all the same as in the 1950s – 1960s.
– What are emigrant communities like today? To what extent have you assimilated or, conversely, retained your national identity?
– In my opinion, the Russian Abroad, which Ivan Alekseevich Bunin spoke about in his Paris speech in 1924, became an integral part of Russian history and culture at the end of the last century. Just one eloquent example: in exile, November 7 has not been celebrated for a long time with memorable services, meetings and speeches – the anniversary of the seizure of power by the Bolsheviks in Russia, the Day of Sorrow and Intransigence, which once united almost the entire emigration.
– Trauma in the public consciousness as a consequence of the schism and the Exodus – Is she already healed or not yet? Are we experiencing the consequences today? Which?
– Do you think that anyone is seriously concerned about the schism and the Exodus of 1920?.. They will soon be completely forgotten. The irreconcilable will be reconciled. In this sense, I am afraid that we are facing an evil temptation. We have long given up on having a serious and honest conversation about our own past. – about Bolshevism and its price. We are all trying to connect the Gulag, collective farms, NKVD and millions of victims – with historical Russia. If necessary, they will put Dzerzhinsky, Bunin, Stalin, and Metropolitan Anthony (Khrapovitsky) on the same page.
Why was it necessary to arrange the reburial of the Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna in Russia? To carry her remains past the monuments to the killer of her children and grandchildren?..
Why was it necessary to arrange the reburial in Russia of Lieutenant General Anton Ivanovich Denikin and Ivan Aleksandrovich Ilyin?.. To continue to glorify Stalin and the “happy collective farm life” with workdays in the form of sticks in the collective farm report card without a shadow of embarrassment?..
The Russian emigration has always considered itselfthe voice of free Russia – in words, deeds, thoughts, in the organization of church and parish life, in creativity and prayer, in the denial of Bolshevik lack of freedom, destructive for the human spirit. But isn’t modern Russia looking for a new lack of freedom? And therefore – Why do we need such a rich and varied emigrant experience if we only need emigrant rarities to improve our image?..
There is no more Russian Abroad. Consequently, there is no emigrant rejection of Soviet power, and those emigrants and their descendants who remained – not all, thank God, but many now prefer to agree with her, not noticing or not wanting to notice alarming events and facts. Both they and we, in my opinion, have largely forgotten how to distinguish between spirits – and see the difference between Russian and Soviet. Between Bolshevism and Russia.
Today we are gradually and successfully privatizing the remains of Russia Abroad, including archives, documents, exhibits – and even in some cases the remains – as long as nothing interferes with us or prevents us from remaining in historical unconsciousness, complacency and indifference. Therefore, we strive to forget as soon as possible that the national emigration sought to bring the end of Soviet power at least half an hour closer.
Prepared by Artem Levchenko
Mass emigration is closely connected with the history of the Russian Empire at the beginning of the twentieth century. The First World War, revolutions, and the collapse of political regimes were the reasons for the resettlement of masses of people. But if at the turn of the century emigration from Russia was predominantly economic or religious in nature, then during the First World War political trends began to prevail in it. After the October Revolution and the associated civil war, millions of its citizens fled from Russia. This was the so-called “first wave” of mass emigration precisely for political reasons. Who was it and how many of them left the former Russian Empire?
Russian emigration of the first post-revolutionary wave, often called “White,” is a unique phenomenon unparalleled in world history. And not only by its scale, but also by its contribution to world and Russian culture. The first wave of emigrants not only preserved, but also enhanced many traditions of Russian culture. It was they who wrote many brilliant pages in the history of world literature, science, ballet, theater, cinema, painting, etc. It was they who created the “mainland”, not indicated on any map of the world, with the name “Russian Abroad”.
The first emigration consisted of the most cultured strata of Russian pre-revolutionary society, with a disproportionately large share of military personnel. According to the League of Nations, a total of 1 million 160 thousand refugees left Russia after the revolution. About a quarter of them belonged to the White armies, which emigrated at different times from different fronts. In 1921, the League of Nations and the Red Cross Society made the first attempt to register Russian refugees in the Slavic countries, Romania and Turkey. There were about 800 thousand of them. Modern historians assume that at least 2 million people left Russia. By the way, Lenin called this figure in his time. There is no complete data on the number of military personnel who left Russia.
Geographically, this emigration from Russia was primarily directed to the countries of Western Europe. The main centers of Russian emigration of the first wave were Paris, Berlin, Prague, Belgrade, and Sofia. At the same time, the Russian emigration chose France as the unifying country, and Paris as its capital. “The main reasons for such a decision were political, economic and moral. But the most important thing was the fact that for many years there were stable contacts between Russia and France, which influenced the formation of two cultures - Russian and French. France was the only country that recognized Wrangel’s government. She signed an agreement according to which its representative took Russian refugees under his protection on behalf of the country.” The first wave of emigrants considered their exile to be a forced and short-term episode, hoping for a quick return to Russia after what they thought was a quick collapse of the Soviet state.
The famous polar explorer Nansen was appointed Commissioner for Russian Refugees by the League of Nations. Nansen put forward a project to create temporary identity cards for immigrants from Russia. In 1926, more than 30 countries agreed to issue the Nansen passport. It was a temporary identity document that replaced the passports of stateless persons and refugees. These passports greatly eased their situation in various countries. All immigrants from Russia received refugee status only in 1926, when persons of Russian origin who did not enjoy the protection of the USSR and did not become subjects of another state began to be considered Russian refugees. It should be noted that many refugees deliberately did not accept another citizenship, hoping to return to Russia. But the position of the Soviet government towards them became tougher from year to year. According to the Decree, the following were deprived of citizenship:
a) persons who have stayed abroad continuously for more than five years and did not receive Soviet passports before June 1, 1921;
c) persons who voluntarily fought in the armies that fought against Soviet power, or were members of counter-revolutionary organizations,” etc., etc.
Among the emigrants were such outstanding figures as: I. Bunin, A. Kuprin (until 1937), M. Tsvetaeva (until 1939), Chaliapin, Rachmaninov, Zvorykin and others.
Several thousand people entered the French Foreign Legion, becoming its most “disciplined and combat-ready and most valued part.” “Russian legionnaires bore the brunt of the fight against the Rifans, Kabyls, Tuaregs, Druze and other rebel tribes in the period 1925-1927. In the hot sands of Morocco, on the rocky ridges of Syria and Lebanon, in the stuffy gorges of Indo-China, Russian bones are scattered everywhere
The first years of emigration were also difficult for civilians. “Except for a few bankers, restaurant owners, doctors and lawyers, Russian refugees lived in extreme poverty, in impossible conditions; some died of hunger,” having neither money, nor work, nor social rights - this is how the German researcher X.-E. Volkmann describes the situation in post-war Germany, where already in 1919 the main stream of emigrants poured. The emergence of many emigrant trade unions there was dictated primarily by the desire for mutual assistance. But they all depended on charitable organizations, of which the main ones were the Russian Red Cross (which stored pre-revolutionary funds abroad for the care of prisoners of war) and, of course, foreign institutions: the International Red Cross (the American one especially helped) and the Catholic Church (which did not hide the fact that in addition also pursues another charitable goal: “an incentive to convert to the union” and even directly to Catholicism; for this purpose, the “Pontifical Oriental Institute” was created already in 1917; however, as Volkman notes, no success was achieved in this field).
In 1921 - 1924, the Republican-Democratic Association (RDO) of Russian emigrants was created, uniting in its ranks a wide political spectrum of Russian liberal democrats from the Cadets to the right Socialist Revolutionaries and Socialists. The organization was headed by a prominent figure of the Cadet Party P.
N. Milyukov. Both associations claimed to be the flagship of the political life of Russian abroad, sought to extend their influence to the military formations of the emigration, youth, developing and trying to implement plans for creating an underground movement in Soviet Russia.
An important factor stimulating the political activity of emigration was changes in the internal policy of the Soviet government. The transition to NEP aroused special hopes and expectations among the Russian emigration. Speaking at a rally in December 1927 in Prague, one of the leaders of the RDO and “Peasant Russia” S.S. Maslov said: “Since 1921, when the NEP was introduced, communism began to die, because the communist party, having abandoned the primitive forced economy of equalization, thereby refused to implement its communist ideology and program. The decline in national income is the inevitable failure of the slogan of industrialization and the growing the accumulation of private commercial capital in private trade turnover - these are the mines and those knots that the Soviet government cannot cut.
In 1924, speaking at a rally in Prague, one of the leaders of the RDO group B.N. Evreinov stated: “Currently, the entire center of gravity of the counter-revolutionary struggle against Soviet power comes down to discrediting it before foreign powers and inflating all sorts of sensational rumors about communists and about the USSR It is advisable to send these rumors to Russia in the form of printed messages, so that when reading them, the population believes that this is the real truth, hidden from them.”
In general, it is important to note the following main characteristics of the first emigration:
* Emigration was forced, political, anti-Bolshevik in nature. For the majority, refusal to emigrate meant physical destruction in their homeland. Emigration is associated with the military defeat and retreat of the White Army.
* The first outcome is active anti-communists and opponents of the Soviet regime, who offer all kinds of resistance to it, including armed resistance (White movement) and, for the most part, do not recognize it
legitimacy. The political and military goal is the overthrow of the Soviet regime.
* The first wave is still legally subjects of the Russian Empire.
* The overwhelming majority of the first emigration were Orthodox, which generally determined their system of values and behavioral orientations. From here arose the mission of preserving the Orthodox religious experience and Orthodox values, which was actively recognized by the “cultural layer” of the first emigration. Orthodoxy acted as the basis of worldview and at the same time as an integral part of ideology. And in many ways, the political split in emigration was associated with an underestimation of the role of Orthodoxy, neglect or rejection of Orthodoxy by part of the emigration political elite.
* The idea of temporary stay abroad. A significant part of the first emigration did not intend to settle abroad forever and actively supported the idea of returning to Russia.
* Specifics of the composition of the first emigration. A significant layer of bearers of Russian culture left on a mass scale. This made it possible to build a Russia Abroad.
* Transfer of political movements and parties from Russia to Russian diaspora. The consequence was a significant political split in the ranks of the first emigration, which was never overcome.
Return of some emigrants
There were several reasons that became the prerequisites for this turn of events:
Another form of political agitation. The Bolsheviks spoke of “come to their senses” and “repentant” supporters of emigration, who expressed a desire to return to Russia and were generously accepted into their historical homeland.
The USSR was considered the main winner of Nazi Germany, which significantly increased its “popularity” in the eyes of former emigrants.
Victory in World War II became a great reason for supporters of migration to forgive the Bolsheviks, and this even applied to many White Guards.
Before the Holocaust of 1917, Russia's official name was "All-Russian Empire". Its constitution (Fundamental Laws) also used the name “Russian State”. It was a multinational state, with many religions, with flexible constitutional forms that allowed for a variety of confederal relations (for example, with Finland, with part of Poland, etc.), and even principalities with their own monarchs, as, for example, in the case of the Khan of Nakhichevan.
This multinational character was also reflected in the imperial passports, which not only accredited the imperial citizenship common to all residents of Russia, but also the nationality and religion of each citizen, in accordance with his will. Among the citizens of the Russian Empire there were subjects of non-Russian and even non-Slavic nationalities, who were listed as Russian in their passports, at their own request.
As a result, in this certificate the name “Russian” is used in the broadest sense of the word: all Russian citizens who called themselves that way are called Russian, even if they had a different ethnic origin. Russian culture and the Russian state did not recognize national and racial discrimination, because in their spirit they were imperial, that is, anti-racist. It is also necessary to keep in mind that before the de facto constitutional reforms carried out by the communist dictatorship, the name “Russian” was applied de jure and de facto indifferently to Great Russians, Ukrainians (Little Russians) and Belarusians. The great Russian scientist Mendeleev notes this criterion in his analysis of the results of the 1897 imperial census.
The Russian emigration, which arose as a result of the five-year civil war (1917 - 1922), numbering three million people, always used precisely this criterion. Moreover, this emigration consisted not only of members of the above three groups of Eastern Slavs, but also of persons belonging to various minorities of the Russian Empire, which was not an obstacle to their own self-determination as “Russian emigrants”. This article applies these same criteria, without taking into account the various renamings and reclassifications of the communist dictatorship that are often used to this day. According to such communist criteria, Lenin, Stalin and the majority of revolutionary leaders cannot in any way be called Russian.
Origin of the Russian White Emigration
The main core of the Russian White emigration were Russian soldiers. This emigration arose de facto, as a consequence of the almost five-year Russian Civil War (1917 - 1922), and de jure, as a consequence of Lenin’s decree, which illegally and inhumanly deprived, without trial, the citizenship of all Russians who found themselves abroad as a result of this civil war . This illegal and inhumane decree has not yet been repealed by anyone, despite the fact that the regime that gave birth to it long ago failed ingloriously, having achieved neither of its two goals for which it supposedly arose: the world proletarian revolution and the construction of socialism in one country.
After the state putsch carried out in 1917 by Lenin and his team (who arrived through the Kaiser’s Germany, which was at war with Russia, whose leadership financed them), a civil war broke out in Russia, lasting 5 years, as a result of which (and as a result of the dismemberment of the Russian Empire caused by the revolution) Russian White political emigration, or simply Russian emigration, arose. This colossal human contingent had mainly two origins: those evacuated with the White armies from the ports of southern Russia in 1920 and from Vladivostok in 1922.
Russian citizens who found themselves outside the borders of the new Soviet state, proclaimed de facto by Lenin, living in the border territories separated from Russia by the communist disaster, and included in the newly created independent states (Finland, Poland and the Baltic countries). In addition, several hundred thousand inhabitants live on the territory of the Russian "Chinese Eastern Railway", with its capital in Harbin, in Manchuria, liquidated by Stalin and given to China in 1945.
The central core of the first group consisted of ranks of the White Army, which at the end of the civil war in southern Russia was called the Russian Army, under the supreme command of Lieutenant General P. N. Wrangel. This army was evacuated in November 1920 from Crimea on 130 ships. More than 150 thousand people, military and civilian, were evacuated, mainly to Gallipoli, south of Constantinople, and to the island of Lemnos. The Russian Army included several Russian Cadet Corps and two Russian Military Schools. The French military authorities in Constantinople requisitioned 45 thousand rifles, 350 machine guns, 12 million cartridges, and 58 thousand pairs of boots from the Russian army.
The Russian navy sailed to the French naval base at Bizerte, in Africa, under the Russian war flag of St. Andrew, illegally abolished in Russia by the communist putschists in January 1918, who replaced this Russian state flag with the red flag of the German socialist parties. The St. Andrew's flag of the Russian Navy was temporarily lowered at Bizerte on October 16, 1924, during the demobilization of the fleet, and was raised again on Russian warships after the fall of communism. However, all Russian national and state symbols have since then been uninterruptedly fully preserved in the Russian Emigration, in its schools and its organizations.
Many civilians, mostly intellectuals, including academicians and professors, about 30 bishops and thousands of priests, were evacuated along with the troops.
In 1922, they were joined by about 150 representatives of the highest culture of Russia (philosophers, thinkers, scientists, writers and poets), illegally expelled from their homeland and deported to Western Europe without any trial or sentence, on the personal orders of Lenin, who claimed that a communist state “needs neither philosophers nor mathematicians,” for it can be controlled by “any cook.”
This entire colossal mass of people of both sexes, including the elderly and children, was illegally deprived of their Russian citizenship by the Soviet government, without any judicial decision, by decree of the communist international tyranny of December 15, 1921.
Thus, a group of approximately 3 million Russian emigrants and refugees arose in the world who found themselves illegally deprived of their citizenship. This circumstance forced the manager of the refugee affairs of the League of Nations, Nobel Prize winner Fridtjof Nansen, to create a special passport in 1924, then nicknamed the “Nansen passport”, with the help of which the “citizenlessness” of Russian white emigrants was confirmed. (Fyodor Chaliapin said on this occasion: “I, a Russian citizen, was deprived of Russian citizenship, but I became a citizen of the world.”)
The post-communist governments that emerged after the collapse and collapse of the communist state lost the opportunity to correct this unjust lawlessness and gross violation of law and human rights, during the lifetime of their last victims, by repealing the act of December 15, 1921. Ten years ago some of the victims of this atrocity were still alive, but today almost none of them are alive anymore. Thus, only the possibility of posthumous restoration of their rights and the rights of their heirs remains.
Contribution of Russian emigration to world culture
It is impossible to list even partially in a short article the names of the most famous Russian White emigrants, scattered throughout the world, but mainly in Europe and the USA, who made significant contributions to world culture. Just as an example, we can mention some of them.
Philosophers: Nikolai Berdyaev, Sergei Bulgakov, Boris Vysheslavtsev, Vladimir Veidle, Ivan Ilyin, Nikolai Lossky, Fyodor Stepun, Vasily Zenkovsky, Simon Frank.
Nobel laureates: Ivan Bunin (Nobel Prize Laureate in Literature 1933), V. Leontiev, Ilya Prigozhin.
Composers: Igor Stravinsky, Sergei Prokofiev, Alexander Glazunov and Sergei Rachmaninov.
Writers: Mark Aldanov, Vladimir Volkov, Zinaida Gippius, Alexander Kuprin, Dimitry Merezhkovsky, Vladimir Nabokov, Henri Troyat, Ivan Shmelev.
Scientists: Sociologist Pitirim Sorokin (“father of North American sociology”), historian M. Rostovtsev (whose work “Rome” was published in translation into Spanish in Buenos Aires in 1968, by the Buenos Aires State University Publishing House), Tatyana Proskuryakova , who deciphered the Mayan writings, astronomer N. Stoiko, father of aerodynamics R. Ryabushinsky, inventor of the helicopter (helicopter) and aircraft designer Igor Sikorsky, inventor of television V. Zvorykin, inventor of high-quality oil V. Ipatiev.
Opera singers: Fyodor Chaliapin, Nikolai Gedda, Igor Markevich.
Choreographers: Balanchine, Sergei Diaghilev, Colonel de Basil, Matilda Kshesinskaya, Sergei Lifar, Nijinsky, Anna Pavlova.
Artists and film directors: Jacques Tati (Tatishchev), Roger Vadim, Marina Vladi (Polyakova), Odile Versoix (Polyakova), Sasha Distel.
Russian diaspora (dispersion) in the world
According to some studies, the total number of Russians in Exile in the 1920s was close to the three million people who made up the Russian diaspora. Of these three million expelled, one million can be considered active political white emigrants, in the narrow sense of the word, while the remaining two million can be considered political refugees.
It was customary to summarize this entire three-million-strong Russian diaspora under one general name of “Russian White emigration.” However, today such a generalization is inappropriate, because today in the Russian diaspora there are large contingents of people who have nothing to do with the civil war and often are not political emigrants at all.
Together with seven million Russians who then lived in the border territories, after the Holocaust they found themselves outside the Russian state borders, this diaspora formed “Foreign Rus'”, which, in the end, then included about 10 million people. Today, after the second round of dismemberment of Russia, this Foreign Rus' has greatly increased.
At first, most of the exiles settled in Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Germany and France. In 1922 - 1923, the number of Russian emigrants in Germany reached 600 thousand people, of which 360,000 were in Berlin alone. According to German statistics, in Germany during these years more books were published in Russian than in German.
Russian diaspora in Argentina: three immigrations and one emigration
Argentina has so far received five waves of immigration from Russia, dating back to the late 19th century. Of these, only the last three are included in the Russian diaspora (dispersion).
The first immigrants (that is, settlers) from Russia to Argentina were Russian Germans from the Volga. After the introduction of universal conscription in Russia in 1874, some groups of Volga Germans decided to move to Argentina, taking advantage of its new immigration law of 1876. (At that time, Argentina did not yet have universal conscription, introduced at the beginning of the 20th century, and abolished by President Menem in the mid-90s). By 1910, about 45,000 Russian Germans lived in Argentina.
Around 1890, Jews from the western regions of the Russian Empire began to move to Argentina. This was the second wave of immigrants to Argentina from Russia. In 1891, the Society to Aid Jewish Colonization was founded in London by Baron Hirsch. By 1914, about 100,000 Jews from Russia lived in Argentina.
The third wave of Russian immigrants to Argentina were temporary seasonal workers, mainly peasants from Russia's western provinces, in the early 20th century, who were then stranded in Argentina as a result of World War I and the 1917 Holocaust.
Then, after the first dismemberment of Russia by the communists, thousands of immigrants from those western parts of Belarus and Ukraine that were given by Lennin to Poland arrived in Argentina in the early 20s. This was the fourth wave.
The fifth wave of immigrants to Argentina from Russia arose after the second dismemberment of Russia by the Communists, in the early nineties. These are the so-called “new arrivals”.
All these economic and everyday immigrants should neither be confused nor mixed with Russian political white emigrants.
Russian political White emigrants in Argentina
According to a study by Metropolitan John of St. Petersburg, published in 1993, about 3,000 Russian emigrants arrived in South America in the 1920s. It is difficult to determine how many of them reached Argentina, but it can be assumed, based on some evidence, that it is less than a thousand. K. Parchevsky in his book “To Paraguay and Argentina” (Paris, 1937) testifies that in the 1930s about 500 Russian white emigrants lived in Buenos Aires.
In the early 30s of the last century, several hundred Russian white military personnel arrived in Paraguay, collaborating with the Paraguayan army during the war with Bolivia. Some of them reached important positions and were recognized for their military ranks. This role of the Russians in Paraguay had one of the consequences of the exceptional fact that Paraguay never recognized the communist dictatorship in Russia as its legitimate power.
After World War II, the second great exodus began, this time to the Americas. The first country to invite Russian white emigrants after the war was Argentina. The President of the Republic, General Peron, personally issued an order in 1948 to accept 10,000 Russians, regardless of their age and marital status. However, between 5,000 and 7,000 arrived in Argentina. Among those who arrived in 1948 - 1951 were not only emigrants who lived before the war in Western European countries, but also a significant number of former Soviet prisoners of war in Germany who did not want to return to Russia, which continued to be under communism, and joined the white emigration.
Among this wave, more than ten clergy of the Russian Orthodox Church arrived, both from its Foreign part and from Russia, including members of the Catacomb Church and former prisoners of the concentration camps on Solovki. Several hundred military personnel also arrived. Eight Russian generals, several dozen colonels, about twenty pages of His Imperial Majesty, about forty Knights of St. George and more than twenty officers of the Russian Imperial Navy lived and died in Argentina. About 250 cadets from the Imperial and Foreign Cadet Corps also arrived.
Russian diaspora and Russian emigration in the 21st century
Today, in the process of implementing long-term plans, inexorably developing after the Holocaust of 1917, the Russian diaspora and Rus' Abroad have greatly increased. At the same time, Russian White emigration decreased greatly. Its first generation has passed away, with a few exceptions, but its second, third and even fourth generations partially continue to consider themselves part of the Russian White emigration. Almost all of them belong to the Russian diaspora and the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia. However, despite the strong numerical reduction, the Russian White Emigration continues to exist politically, primarily for the simple reason that in Russia the pseudo-legal reason for its existence has not yet been annulled: Lenin’s illegal acts of expulsion and deprivation of citizenship of millions of Russian people.
After the collapse of other totalitarian regimes of the last century, their political emigrations were not only immediately restored to all their rights that had been illegally taken from them, but they were also welcomed back into the bosom of their fatherland with honor. Thus they became true compatriots again.
introduction
background
Contrary to popular belief, mass emigration from Russia began even before the revolution
Maria Sorokina
historian
“The first major migration flow was labor migration at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries. These were primarily national streams - Jews, Poles, Ukrainians and Germans. .... Expand > In fact, until the end of the 19th century, only Jews were allowed to travel freely; everyone else was issued a passport only for 5 years, after which it had to be renewed. At the same time, even the most loyal citizens had to ask for permission to leave.
It is believed that about two million Jews left the Russian Empire during this period. There was also emigration of ethno-professional groups and sectarians - Old Believers, Mennonites, Molokans, etc. They went mainly to the USA, many to Canada: there are still settlements of Russian Doukhobors there, whom Leo Tolstoy helped to leave. Another direction of labor migration is Latin America, up to 200 thousand people went there by 1910.”
Mikhail Denisenko
demographer
“Until 1905, emigration was allowed for Jews, Poles and sectarians, which, in addition to the Doukhobors, also included the descendants of German colonists who lost their privileges in the second quarter of the 19th century. .... Expand > Cases of Russian emigration proper (which before the revolution included Great Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians) emigration were relatively rare - it was either political emigration, or sailors who served in the merchant fleet, seasonal workers who went to work in Germany, as well as the already mentioned sectarians.
After 1905, travel to work was allowed, and a Russian working mass began to form in the USA, Canada, Australia and Latin America. If in 1910, according to the census, there were only 40 thousand Russians in the United States, then in the next decade more than 160 thousand people arrived there.
Numerous communities formed in Pennsylvania and Illinois. True, in American statistics, the Orthodox Ukrainians of Austria-Hungary, who settled together with the Russians and went to the same churches with them, were also classified as Russians. They were mainly engaged in hard physical labor in metallurgical and automobile factories, slaughterhouses and textile factories, and in mines. However, there were also nobles and commoners who, for various reasons, were forced to leave Russia. For example, the famous Russian engineer, inventor of the incandescent lamp Alexander Lodygin, worked in the USA for a long time. The founder of the city of St. Petersburg in Florida was the Russian nobleman Pyotr Dementyev, who became a famous businessman in exile. Trotsky and Bukharin found political asylum in the United States.
It was not easy for the formerly illiterate peasants who made up the majority in this stream to adapt to the high pace of work in American industry; they often suffered work-related injuries, and foremen and managers treated them with disdain. After the Bolshevik revolution, many lost their jobs and could not find a new one - employers saw a Bolshevik in every Russian.”
Photo: ITAR-TASS
Lenin (second from right) in a group of Russian political emigrants in Stockholm, traveling from Switzerland to Russia, 1917
first wave
1917 - late 1920s
It is this wave, caused by the revolution of 1917, that is traditionally called the first, and it is with it that many associate the concept of “Russian emigration”
Marina Sorokina
historian
“Strictly speaking, the flow formed after the two revolutions of 1917 and the Civil War cannot be called “emigration.” People did not choose their fate; in fact, they were refugees. .... Expand > This status was officially recognized; the League of Nations had a commission on refugee affairs, headed by Fridtjof Nansen (this is how the so-called Nansen passports appeared, which were issued to people deprived of a passport and citizenship. - BG).
At first we went primarily to the Slavic countries - Bulgaria, the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, Czechoslovakia. A small group of Russian military personnel went to Latin America.
Russian refugees of this wave had a fairly strong ramified organization. In many countries of settlement, Russian scientific institutes arose that helped scientists. In addition, a significant number of specialists took advantage of the established connections, left and made a brilliant career. A classic example is Sikorsky and Zvorykin in the USA. A lesser-known example is Elena Antipova, who went to Brazil in 1929 and actually became the founder of the Brazilian psychological and pedagogical system. And there are a lot of such examples.”
Mikhail Denisenko
demographer
“The idea of Americans about Russians as Bolsheviks and communists was radically changed by white emigration, shining with the names of S. Rachmaninov and F. Chaliapin, I. Sikorsky and V. Zvorykin, P. Sorokin and V. Ipatiev. .... Expand > Its ethnic composition was heterogeneous, but these emigrants identified themselves with Russia and this primarily determined their national identity.
The first main flow went to countries located relatively close to Russia (Germany, Czechoslovakia, Poland). As Wrangel's army evacuated, Istanbul, Bulgaria and Yugoslavia became major centers. Until 1924, the White Fleet was based in Bizerte (Tunisia). Subsequently, emigrants moved further to the West, in particular to France. In subsequent years, many moved on to the United States, as well as Canada and Latin America. In addition, white emigration came across the Far Eastern borders; large emigrant centers developed in Harbin and Shanghai. From there, many emigrants subsequently moved to America, Europe and Australia.
The size of this flow is estimated differently - from 1 to 3 million people. The most widely accepted estimate is 2 million people, calculated from data on issued Nansen passports. But there were also those who did not fall into the attention of organizations helping refugees: Volga Germans fleeing the famine of 1921–1922, Jews fleeing pogroms that resumed during the Civil War, Russians who received citizenship of states that were not part of the USSR. By the way, during the Civil War, the idea of marrying a foreigner and leaving the country became popular - there were more than 2 million foreigners in the form of prisoners of war of the First World War (mainly from the former Austria-Hungary) on Russian territory.
In the mid-1920s, the emigration outflow noticeably weakened (Germans continued to leave), and at the end of the 1920s, the country’s borders were closed.”
second wave
1945 - early 1950s
The Second World War caused a new wave of emigration from the USSR - some left the country following the retreating German army, others, taken to concentration camps and forced labor, did not always return back
Marina Sorokina
historian
“This wave primarily consists of the so-called displaced persons (DP). These are residents of the Soviet Union and annexed territories who, for one reason or another, left the Soviet Union as a result of World War II. .... Expand > Among them were prisoners of war, collaborators, people who voluntarily decided to leave, or those who simply found themselves in another country in the whirlwind of war.
The fate of the population of the occupied and unoccupied territories was decided at the Yalta Conference in 1945; The allies left it up to Stalin to decide what to do with Soviet citizens, and he sought to return everyone to the USSR. For several years, large groups of DP lived in special camps in the American, British and French occupation zones; in most cases they were sent back to the USSR. Moreover, the allies handed over to the Soviet side not only Soviet citizens, but also former Russians who had long had foreign citizenship, emigrants - such as the Cossacks in Lienz (in 1945, the British occupation forces handed over to the USSR several thousand Cossacks who lived in the vicinity of the city of Lienz. - BG). They were repressed in the USSR.
The bulk of those who avoided being returned to the Soviet Union went to the United States and Latin America. A large number of Soviet scientists from the Soviet Union left for the USA - they were helped, in particular, by the famous Tolstoy Foundation, created by Alexandra Lvovna Tolsta. And many of those whom international authorities classified as collaborators left for Latin America - because of this, the Soviet Union subsequently had difficult relations with the countries of this region.”
Mikhail Denisenko
demographer
“The emigration of the Second World War was very diverse in terms of ethnic composition and other characteristics. Part of the inhabitants of Western Ukraine and Belarus, the Baltic states, who did not recognize Soviet power, and Volksdeutsche (Russian Germans) who lived in the territory of the Soviet Union occupied by the Germans left with the Germans of their own free will. .... Expand > Naturally, those who actively collaborated with the German occupation authorities, primarily policemen and soldiers and officers of the military units created by the Nazis, sought to hide. Finally, not all of the Soviet prisoners of war and civilians deported to Germany wanted to return to their homeland - some were afraid of reprisals, others managed to start families. In order to avoid forced repatriation and obtain refugee status, some Soviet citizens changed documents and surnames, hiding their origin.
Numerical estimates of the emigration wave caused by the Second World War are very rough. The most likely range is from 700 thousand to 1 million people. More than half of them were Baltic peoples, a quarter were Germans, a fifth were Ukrainians, and only 5% were Russians.”
third wave
early 1960s - late 1980s
Few managed to cross behind the Iron Curtain; Jews and Germans were released first if the political situation was favorable for them. Then they began to expel dissidents
Marina Sorokina
historian
“This stream is often called Jewish. After World War II, with the active assistance of the USSR and Stalin, the State of Israel was created. By this point, Soviet Jews had already survived the terror of the 1930s and the struggle with the cosmopolitans of the late 1940s, so when the opportunity to leave during the Thaw arose, many took it. .... Expand > At the same time, some of the emigrants did not stay in Israel, but moved on - mainly to the USA; It was then that the expression “a Jew is a means of transportation” appeared.
These were no longer refugees, but people who really wanted to leave the country: they applied to leave, they were refused, they applied again and again - and finally they were released. This wave became one of the sources of political dissidence - a person was denied the right to choose his country of life, one of the basic human rights. Many sold all their furniture, quit their jobs - and when they refused to let them out, they staged strikes and hunger strikes in empty apartments, attracting the attention of the media, the Israeli embassy, and sympathetic Western journalists.
Jews constituted the overwhelming majority in this stream. It was they who had a diaspora abroad, ready to support new members. With the rest, the situation was more complicated. Life in exile is bitter bread. Since the beginning of the 20th century, different people with very different ideas about the future have found themselves abroad: some sat on their suitcases and waited to return to Russia, others tried to adapt. Many found themselves completely unexpectedly thrown out of life; some managed to find a job, others were unable to do so. The princes drove taxis and acted as extras. Back in the 1930s in France, a significant layer of the Russian emigration elite was literally entangled in the intelligence network of the Soviet NKVD. Despite the fact that the situation had changed by the period described, intra-diaspora relations remained very tense.”
Mikhail Denisenko
demographer
“The Iron Curtain came down with the beginning of the Cold War. The number of people leaving the USSR per year was, as a rule, small. So, in 1986, just over 2 thousand people left for Germany, and about 300 for Israel. .... Expand > But in some years, changes in the foreign policy situation led to a surge - issues of emigration often acted as bargaining chips in various negotiations between the governments of the USSR and the USA or the USSR and Germany. Thanks to this, after the Six-Day War from 1968 to 1974, Israel accepted almost 100 thousand migrants from the Soviet Union. Subsequent restrictions led to a sharp reduction in this flow. For this reason, the Jackson-Vanik amendment was adopted in the United States in 1974, which was repealed this fall (the amendment to the American Trade Law limited trade with countries that violate the right of their citizens to emigrate, and primarily concerned the USSR. - BG).
If we take into account the small outflow of people to Germany and Israel that existed in the 1950s, it turns out that in total this wave involved more than 500 thousand people. Its ethnic composition was formed not only by Jews and Germans, who were the majority, but also by representatives of other nations with their own statehood (Greeks, Poles, Finns, Spaniards).
The second, smaller flow consisted of those who fled the Soviet Union during business trips or tours or were forcibly expelled from the country. The third stream was formed by migrants for family reasons - wives and children of foreign citizens, they were mainly sent to third world countries.”
fourth wave
since the late 1980s
After the end of the Cold War, everyone who could find a job abroad in one way or another poured out of the country - through repatriation programs, through refugee status or some other way. By the 2000s, this wave had noticeably dried up.
Mikhail Denisenko
demographer
“I would divide what is traditionally called the fourth wave of emigration into two separate streams: one - from 1987 to the early 2000s, the second - the 2000s. .... Expand >
The beginning of the first stream is associated with changes in Soviet legislation adopted in 1986–1987, which made it easier for ethnic migrants to travel abroad. From 1987 to 1995, the average annual number of migrants from the territory of the Russian Federation increased from 10 to 115 thousand people; from 1987 to 2002, more than 1.5 million left Russia. This migration flow had a clear geographical component: from 90 to 95% of all migrants were sent to Germany, Israel and the United States. This direction was set by the presence of generous repatriation programs in the first two countries and programs for the reception of refugees and scientists from the former USSR in the latter.
Since the mid-1990s, policies regarding emigration from the former USSR began to change in Europe and the United States. Opportunities for emigrants to obtain refugee status have sharply decreased. In Germany, the program for the admission of ethnic Germans began to be phased out (by the early 2000s, the quota for their admission was reduced to 100 thousand people); The requirements for repatriates in terms of knowledge of the German language have increased noticeably. In addition, the potential for ethnic emigration has been exhausted. As a result, the outflow of the population for permanent residence abroad has decreased.
In the 2000s, a new stage in the history of Russian emigration began. Currently, this is normal economic emigration, which is subject to global economic trends and is regulated by the laws of those countries that accept migrants. The political component no longer plays a special role. Russian citizens seeking to travel to developed countries do not have any advantages compared to potential migrants from other countries. They have to prove their professional competence to the immigration services of foreign countries, demonstrate their knowledge of foreign languages and integration capabilities.
Thanks largely to tough selection and competition, the Russian immigrant community is becoming younger. Emigrants from Russia living in Europe and North America have a high level of education. Women predominate among emigrants, which is explained by a higher frequency of marriage with foreigners compared to men.
In total, the number of emigrants from Russia from 2003 to 2010 exceeded 500 thousand people. At the same time, the geography of Russian emigration has expanded significantly. Against the background of declining flows to Israel and Germany, the importance of Canada, Spain, France, Great Britain and some other countries has increased. It should be noted that the process of globalization and new communication technologies have significantly increased the variety of forms of migration movements, due to which “emigration forever” has become a very conventional concept.”
Marina Sorokina
historian
“The 20th century was extremely active in terms of migration. Now the situation has changed. Take Europe - it no longer has national borders. .... Expand > If earlier cosmopolitanism was the lot of single people, now it is an absolutely natural psychological and civil state of a person. We can not say that in the late 1980s - early 1990s. a new wave of emigration began in Russia, and that the country had entered a new open world. This has nothing to do with the flows of Russian emigration that we talked about above.”
photo story
pearl by the sea
In the 70s, Russian emigrants began to actively settle in the New York area of Brighton Beach.
He became the main symbol of the third wave of emigration, a time machine that is still capable of transporting anyone to the imaginary Odessa of Brezhnev's times. Brighton's "pounds" and "slices", Mikhail Zadornov's concerts and pensioners walking along the boardwalk - all this, obviously, will not last long, and old-timers complain that Brighton is no longer the same. Photographer Mikhail Fridman (Salt Images) observed modern life in Brighton Beach
