Emigration from Russia became massive in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The reasons for the exodus were mainly political, which was especially pronounced after the 1917 revolution. the site remembered the most famous Russian emigrants and "defectors".

Andrey Kurbsky

One of the first channel emigrants can be called Prince Andrei Kurbsky. During the Livonian War, the closest associate of Ivan the Terrible went to the service of King Sigismund-August. The latter transferred vast estates in Lithuania and Volhynia into the possession of a noble Russian fugitive. And soon the prince began to fight against Moscow.

Chorikov B. "Ivan the Terrible listens to a letter from Andrei Kurbsky"

Alexey Petrovich

In 1716, as a result of a conflict with his father, who wanted to remove him from the inheritance, Alexei secretly fled to Vienna, and then crossed to Naples, where he planned to wait for the death of Peter I and then, relying on the help of the Austrians, become the Russian Tsar. Soon the prince was tracked down and returned to Russia. Alexei was condemned to death as a traitor.

Orest Kiprensky

The illegitimate son of the landowner A. S. Dyakonov, at the first opportunity, went to Italy to comprehend the secrets of fine art. There he spent several years, making good money with portraits and enjoying well-deserved fame. After 6 years in Italy, Kiprensky was forced to return in 1823 to St. Petersburg. The cold reception at home, failures in work and the destruction of the canvases by critics led the artist to the idea of ​​​​returning to Italy. But even there difficulties awaited him. The Italian public, who had carried him in their arms not long before, managed to forget Kiprensky, Karl Bryullov now reigned over their minds. On October 17, 1836, Kiprensky died of pneumonia at the age of 54. The tombstone over his grave in the church of Sant'Andrea delle Fratte was put together by Russian artists who worked in Rome.

Burial place of Kiprensky

Alexander Herzen

Herzen became an emigrant after the death of his father, who left a decent fortune. Having gained financial independence, Herzen went to Europe with his family in 1847. Abroad, Herzen published the almanac "Polar Star" (1855-1868) and the newspaper "The Bell" (1857-1867). The latter became the mouthpiece of openly anti-Russian propaganda, which alienated many, even quite liberal readers, from Herzen.
In 1870, 57-year-old Herzen died in Paris from pleurisy. He was buried in the Pere Lachaise cemetery, then the ashes were transported to Nice, where he rests to this day.

Herzen against Herzen, double portrait. Paris, 1865

Ogaryov and Herzen, summer 1861

Ilya Mechnikov

In 1882, the scientist Ilya Mechnikov left Russia. He explained his departure by the lack of conditions for work, nit-picking by officials from the Ministry of Public Education. It was in Italy, observing the larvae of starfish, that Mechnikov literally stumbled upon his future field of scientific activity - medicine. On July 15, 1916, the great scientist died in Paris after a severe attack of cardiac asthma at the age of 71. The urn with his ashes is in the Pasteur Institute.

Mechnikov with his wife, 1914

Sofia Kovalevskaya

Kovalevskaya, wanting to get a higher education (in Russia, women were not allowed to enter higher educational institutions), she married Vladimir Kovalevsky in order to travel abroad. Together they settled in Germany.

She died of pneumonia on January 29, 1891. The grave of the most famous female mathematician is located in the Northern Cemetery of the capital of Sweden.

Wassily Kandinsky

The founder of abstract art, the founder of the Blue Rider group, Wassily Kandinsky left Moscow in 1921 due to disagreement with the attitude of the newly arrived authorities to art. In Berlin, he taught painting and became a prominent theorist of the Bauhaus school. He soon gained worldwide recognition as one of the leaders in abstract art. In 1939, he fled the Nazis to Paris, where he received French citizenship. The "father of abstract art" died on December 13, 1944 in Neuilly-sur-Seine and was buried there.

Kandinsky at work

Kandinsky in front of his painting. Munich, 1913

Kandinsky with his son Vsevolod

Kandinsky with his cat Vaska, 1920s

Konstantin Balmont

The poet, whose work became one of the symbols of the beginning of the 20th century, left Russia and returned to his homeland more than once. In 1905, he plunged headlong into the element of rebellion. Realizing that he had gone too far and fearing arrest, Balmont left Russia on New Year's Eve 1906 and settled in the Parisian suburb of Passy. On May 5, 1913, Balmont returned to Moscow under an amnesty declared in connection with the 300th anniversary of the Romanov dynasty. The poet, like the vast majority of Russians, enthusiastically welcomed the February coup, but the October events horrified him. Life in Moscow was incredibly hard, hungry, almost beggarly. Having hardly obtained permission to go abroad for treatment, Balmont with his wife Elena and daughter Mirra left Russia on May 25, 1920. Now it's forever. After 1936, when Konstantin Dmitrievich was diagnosed with a mental illness, he lived in the town of Noisy-le-Grand, in the Russian House shelter. On the night of December 23, 1942, the 75-year-old poet passed away. He was buried in the local Catholic cemetery.

Balmont with his daughter, Paris

Balmont, 1920s

Balmont, 1938

Ivan Bunin

The writer for some time tried to "escape" from the Bolsheviks in his native country. In 1919, he moved from red Moscow to unoccupied Odessa, and only in 1920, when the Red Army approached the city, did he move to Paris. In France, Bunin will write his best works. In 1933, he, a stateless person, will be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature with the official wording "for the strict skill with which he develops the traditions of Russian classical prose."
On the night of November 8, 1953, the 83-year-old writer died in Paris and was buried in the cemetery of Saint-Genevieve-des-Bois.

Bunin. Paris, 1937

Bunin, 1950s

Sergei Rachmaninoff

The Russian composer and virtuoso pianist Sergei Rachmaninov emigrated from the country shortly after the 1917 revolution, taking advantage of an unexpected invitation to give a series of concerts in Stockholm. Abroad, Rachmaninov created 6 works, which were the pinnacle of Russian and world classics.

Ivan Bunin, Sergei Rachmaninov and Leonid Andreev

Rachmaninoff at the piano

Marina Tsvetaeva

In May 1922, Tsvetaeva was allowed to go abroad with her daughter Ariadna - to her husband, who, having survived the defeat of Denikin, as a white officer, became a student at Prague University. At first, Tsvetaeva and her daughter lived for a short time in Berlin, then for three years on the outskirts of Prague. In 1925, after the birth of their son George, the family moved to Paris. By 1939, the whole family returned to the USSR. However, soon Ariadne was arrested, and Efron was shot. After the start of the war, Tsvetaeva and her son were evacuated to Yelabuga, where the poetess hanged herself. The exact place of her burial is unknown.

Tsvetaeva, 1925

Sergei Efron and Marina Tsvetaeva with children, 1925

Marina Tsvetaeva with her son, 1930

Igor Sikorsky

The outstanding aircraft designer Igor Sikorsky created the world's first four-engine aircraft "Russian Knight" and "Ilya Muromets" in his homeland. Sikorsky's father adhered to monarchist views and was a Russian patriot. Because of the threat to his own life, the aircraft designer first emigrated to Europe, but, not seeing opportunities for the development of aviation, he decided to emigrate in 1919 to the United States, where he was forced to start from scratch. Sikorsky founded Sikorsky Aero Engineering. Until 1939, the aircraft designer created more than 15 types of aircraft, including the American Clipper, as well as a number of helicopter models, including the VS-300 with one main rotor and a small tail rotor, on the principle of which 90% of helicopters in the world are built today.
Igor Sikorsky died on October 26, 1972 at the age of 83 and was buried in Easton, Connecticut.

Sikorsky, 1940

Sikorsky, 1960s

Vladimir Nabokov

In April 1919, before the capture of the Crimea by the Bolsheviks, the Nabokov family left Russia forever. They managed to take some of the family jewels with them, and with this money the Nabokov family lived in Berlin, while Vladimir was educated at Cambridge University. With the outbreak of World War II, the writer and his wife fled to the United States, where they spent 20 years. Nabokov returned to Europe in 1960 - he settled in the Swiss Montreux, where he created his last novels. Nabokov died on July 2, 1977, and was buried in the cemetery in Clarence, near Montreux.

Nabokov with his wife

Sergei Diaghilev

The popularity of the Russian Seasons, which Diaghilev organized in Europe, was extremely high. The question of whether to return to his homeland after the revolution did not stand before Diaghilev in principle: he had long been a citizen of the world, and his exquisite art would hardly have met with a warm welcome among the proletarian public. The great "man of art" died on August 19, 1929 in Venice from a stroke at the age of 57. His grave is on the island of San Michele.

Diaghilev in Venice, 1920

Diaghilev with an artist of the troupe of Russian Seasons

Jean Cocteau and Sergei Diaghilev, 1924

Anna Pavlova

In 1911, Pavloa, who by that time had already become a world ballet star, married Victor d'André. The couple settled in the suburbs of London in their own mansion. Living far from Russia, the ballerina did not forget about her homeland: during the First World War she sent medicines to soldiers, after the revolution she supplied food and money to students of the choreographic school and artists of the Mariinsky Theater. However, Pavlova was not going to return to Russia; she invariably spoke sharply negatively about the power of the Bolsheviks. The great ballerina died on the night of January 22-23, 1931, a week before her fiftieth birthday, in The Hague. Her last words were "Get me a Swan costume."

Pavlova, mid 1920s

Pavlova and Enrico Cecchetti.London, 1920s

Pavlova in the dressing room

Pavlova in Egypt, 1923

Pavlova and her husband arrived in Sydney, 1926

Fyodor Chaliapin

Since 1922, Chaliapin was on tour abroad, in particular in the United States. His long absence aroused suspicion and a negative attitude at home. In 1927, he was deprived of the title of People's Artist and the right to return to the USSR. In the spring of 1937, Chaliapin was diagnosed with leukemia, and on April 12, 1938, he died in Paris in the arms of his wife. He was buried in the Batignolles cemetery in Paris.

Chaliapin sculpts his bust

Chaliapin with his daughter Marina

Repin painting a portrait of Chaliapin, 1914

Chaliapin at Korovin's in his Paris studio, 1930

Chaliapin in concert, 1934

Chaliapin's Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame

Igor Stravinsky

The beginning of the First World War found the composer in Switzerland, where his wife was forced to undergo long-term treatment. The neutral country was surrounded by a ring of states hostile to Russia, so Stravinsky remained in it for the entire duration of the hostilities. Gradually, the composer finally assimilated into the European cultural environment and decided not to return to his homeland. In 1920, he moved to France, where he was initially taken in by Coco Chanel. In 1934, Stravinsky took French citizenship, which allowed him to freely tour around the world. A few years later, and after a series of tragic events in the family, Stravinsky moved to the United States, becoming a citizen of this country in 1945. Igor Fedorovich died on April 6, 1971 in New York at the age of 88. He was buried in Venice.

Stravinsky and Diaghilev at London Airport, 1926

Stravinsky, 1930

Stravinsky and Woody Herman

Rudolf Nureyev

On June 16, 1961, while on tour in Paris, Nureyev refused to return to the USSR, becoming a "defector". In this regard, he was convicted in the USSR for treason and sentenced to 7 years in absentia.
Nureyev soon began working with the Royal Ballet (Royal Theater Covent Garden) in London and quickly became a world celebrity. Received Austrian citizenship.

Nureyev and Baryshnikov

From 1983 to 1989, Nureyev was the director of the ballet troupe of the Paris Grand Opera. In the last years of his life he acted as a conductor.

Nureyev in his apartment in Paris

Nureyev in the dressing room

Joseph Brodsky

In the early 1970s, Brodsky was forced to leave the Soviet Union. Deprived of Soviet citizenship, he moved to Vienna and then to the United States, where he accepted the post of "guest poet" at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and taught intermittently until 1980. From that moment on, Brodsky, who completed an incomplete 8th grade of secondary school in the USSR, leads the life of a university teacher, holding professorial positions at a total of six American and British universities, including Columbia and New York, over the next 24 years.

In 1977, Brodsky took American citizenship, in 1980 he finally moved to New York. The poet died of a heart attack on the night of January 28, 1996 in New York.

Brodsky with Dovlatov

Brodsky with Dovlatov

Brodsky with his wife

Sergey Dovlatov

In 1978, due to the persecution of the authorities, Dovlatov emigrated from the USSR, settled in the Forest Hills area in New York, where he became the editor-in-chief of the New American weekly newspaper. The newspaper quickly gained popularity among the emigrants. One after another, books of his prose were published. By the mid-1980s, he had achieved great reader success, published in the prestigious Partisan Review and The New Yorker magazines.

Dovlatov and Aksenov

During twelve years of emigration he published twelve books in the USA and Europe. In the USSR, the writer was known by samizdat and the author's broadcast on Radio Liberty. Sergey Dovlatov died on August 24, 1990 in New York from heart failure.

Vasily Aksenov

July 22, 1980 Aksyonov emigrated to the United States. He himself subsequently called his step not political, but cultural resistance. He was deprived of Soviet citizenship a year later. The writer was immediately invited to teach at the Kennan Institute, then worked at the George Washington University and George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, collaborated with the Voice of America and Radio Liberty radio stations.

Evgeny Popov and Vasily Aksenov. Washington, 1990

Popov and Aksenov

Aksyonov with the Zolotnitskys at the opening of their exhibition in Washington

Already in the late 1980s, with the beginning of perestroika, it began to be widely printed in the USSR, and in 1990 Soviet citizenship was returned. Nevertheless, Aksyonov remained a citizen of the world - he lived with his family in France, the USA and Russia alternately. On July 6, 2009, he died in Moscow. Aksyonov was buried at the Vagankovsky cemetery.

Savely Kramarov

By the early 1970s, Kramarov was one of the most sought-after and beloved comedians in the USSR. However, a brilliant career came to naught as quickly as it began. After Kramarov's uncle emigrated to Israel, and the actor himself began to regularly attend the synagogue, the number of proposals began to decline sharply. The actor applied for travel to Israel. He was refused. Then Kramarov took a desperate step - he wrote a letter to US President Ronald Reagan "As an artist to an artist" and threw it over the fence of the American embassy. Only after the letter was heard three times on Voice of America did Kramarov manage to leave the USSR. He became an emigrant on October 31, 1981. The actor settled in Los Angeles.

On June 6, 1995, at the age of 61, Kramarov passed away. He is buried near San Francisco.

The first photo that Kramarov sent from America

Kramarov with his wife

Kramarov with his daughter

Savely Kramarov in the film Armed and Dangerous

Alexander Solzhenitsyn

On February 12, 1974, Solzhenitsyn was arrested and imprisoned in Lefortovo Prison. He was found guilty of treason, deprived of his citizenship, and the next day he was sent by special plane to Germany. Since 1976, Solzhenitsyn lived in the United States near the city of Cavendish, Vermont. Despite the fact that Solzhenitsyn lived in America for about 20 years, he did not ask for American citizenship. During the years of emigration in Germany, the USA and France, the writer published many works. The writer was able to return to Russia only after perestroika - in 1994. Alexander Isaevich died on August 3, 2008 at the age of 90 at his dacha in Troitse-Lykovo from acute heart failure.

Nobel Prize awarded to Solzhenitsyn

Solzhenitsyn among US Senators. Washington, 1975

Mikhail Baryshnikov

In 1974, while on tour with the Bolshoi Theater Company in Canada, having accepted an invitation from his longtime friend Alexander Mintz to join the American Ballet Theater troupe, Baryshnikov became a "defector".

Baryshnikov before leaving for the USA

Baryshnikov with Marina Vlady and Vladimir Vysotsky, 1976

Baryshnikov, Liza Minnelli and Elizabeth Taylor, 1976

Baryshnikov with Jessica Lange and their daughter Alexandra, 1981

During his time in American ballet, he had a significant impact on American and world choreography. Baryshnikov acted in many films, serials, played in the theater. Together with Brodsky, they opened the Russian Samovar restaurant in New York.

We remember the terrible events of 95 years ago. The tragedy that happened in the country then was felt not only by adults. The children understood it in their own way, in a sense, clearer and sharper. Boys and girls in the 1920s. The voices of those children tell more and more truthfully, they do not know how to lie.

I can't lie

1917 as a turning point in the history of Russia and the fratricidal civil war that followed it for many years were the object of close attention not only from professional historians, but also from many contemporaries of those events. In essence, they began to “remember” almost immediately, almost simultaneously with what was happening. And this could not be explained only by the influence of the political situation: what happened in the country directly and directly affected each of its citizens, completely turned upside down, and sometimes simply broke their lives, forcing them to rethink the recent past again and again, looking for an answer to intractable or insoluble questions raised by the revolutionary epoch so unexpectedly and sharply. It may seem surprising, but the discordant “remembering” polyphony of the first post-revolutionary years was constantly woven into the voices of those who, it would seem, were difficult to hear there - children who happened to grow up in this difficult time.

Indeed, the boys and girls of the 1920s left behind a lot of written texts that dealt with what happened to themselves, to their parents, to other people close and not very close to them after the 1917 revolution. For the most part, such childhood memories have been preserved in the form of school essays. Without denying the fact that the influence of adults on this form of children's memoirs was quite large - even their very appearance was initiated by adults - the significance of such memories can hardly be overestimated. Not only did observant children sometimes notice and fix what adults had not seen, not only did they offer their own, “childish” interpretations of many phenomena, facts and events, they wrote so frankly, so sincerely and openly that what they stated in simple notebook pages immediately turned into a kind of confession. “I don’t know how to lie, but I write what is true,” this confession of a 12-year-old girl from the Yaroslavl province could be extended to the vast majority of childhood memoirs written shortly after the end of the Civil War in Russia.

Children of 1917

The earliest childhood memories of the 1917 revolution dated back to the written culture of the "former" and were created by the children of the "strangers". These texts were clearly politicized, which is understandable: the past quickly turned for these children into a “lost paradise”, often along with the lost Motherland and the emigrant epilogue found - it was not for nothing that one of the Russian emigrant teachers, writer and publicist N. A. Tsurikov called them "little migratory birds". According to estimates, established in 1923 in Prague under the chairmanship of the outstanding theologian, philosopher and teacher V.V. . Of these, at least 12 thousand people studied at a foreign Russian school. Emigrant teachers believed, not without reason, that studying in Russian schools would contribute to the preservation of children's national identity, including through the preservation of their native language and the Orthodox faith. It should be noted that Orthodox clergy, both personally and as leaders of public organizations, played a huge role in the creation and operation of Russian refugee schools. A significant contribution to the development of the psychological and pedagogical foundations for the upbringing and education of children and youth and directly to the life of the Russian school in exile was made by the religious thinker, theologian and philosopher G. V. Florovsky, the founder and First Hierarch of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad, Metropolitan Anthony (Khrapovitsky) and future successor Metropolitan Anastassy (Gribanovsky), Bishop of Prague Sergius (Korolev), his closest colleague, who was entrusted primarily with teaching the Law of God in Russian emigre schools, Archimandrite Isaac (Vinogradov), honorary chairman of the Diocesan Administration of the Russian Orthodox Churches in Western Europe, Metropolitan Evlogy (Georgievsky), the head of the Russian Ecclesiastical Mission in China, Metropolitan Innokenty (Figurovsky), and many others. Under the auspices of the Russian Orthodox Church, various children's and youth organizations existed and operated abroad: scouts, falcons, children's choirs, orchestras and theater groups, the Days of Russian Culture were regularly held and the Days of the Russian Child celebrated on the Annunciation, during which funds were raised for the needs of children through church plate fees and subscription lists.

In December 1923, in one of the largest Russian émigré schools, the Russian gymnasium in Moravska Trzebov (Czechoslovakia), on the initiative of its director, two lessons were unexpectedly canceled and all students were asked to write an essay on the topic “My memories from 1917 to the day they entered the gymnasium "(Among other participants in the survey was the daughter of Marina Tsvetaeva Ariadna Efron, which she wrote about in her memoirs many years later). Later, the Pedagogical Bureau extended this experience to a number of other Russian émigré schools in Bulgaria, Turkey, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia. As a result, by March 1, 1925, the Bureau had collected 2403 essays with a total volume of 6.5 thousand handwritten pages. The results of the analysis of the memoirs were published in several brochures, but the memoirs themselves were not published for a long time and were stored first in the Russian Foreign Historical Archive in Prague, and after it was transferred to Russia after the end of World War II - in the TsGAOR of the USSR (now the State Archive of the Russian Federation) . Some of these documents (over 300) were published only in 1997 with the blessing of Archimandrite Kirill (Pavlov).

The collected essays were very different, which is no coincidence: after all, they were written by students of different ages, and the age range ranged from 8 (students of preparatory classes) to 24 years (young people who resumed their studies after a forced break). Accordingly, these essays differed greatly from each other in their volume - from a few lines, derived with great difficulty by the smallest ones, to 20-page essays by high school students, written in a neat, small handwriting. As the child grew older and his written language improved, a natural complication of texts was traced, when the fixation of individual, often disparate autobiographical facts was replaced by attempts to comprehend the past, reasoning about the fate of the abandoned Motherland, and often patriotic moods and feelings were directly fed by the religious attitudes and religious consciousness of the writers. Russia and the Orthodox faith were intertwined, and it was in the faith of Christ that these children, rejected by the new Soviet government, saw hope for the resurrection of their Fatherland: “Let us ask God to take under his protection the desecrated and humiliated, but not forgotten, despite persecution, the Christian faith, our dear Holy Russia”; “Somewhere out there, in the depths of vast Russia, people of the old way will appear, who, with the name of God on their lips, will go to save Russia”; "I believe that truth will triumph and Russia will be saved by the light of the Christian Faith!"

God was with the children

With all their diversity, the bulk of childhood memories meaningfully and evaluatively fit into a fairly stable opposing scheme: "it was good - it became bad." The pre-Bolshevik past appeared in the writings of the children of emigration as a beautiful, kind fairy tale, in which there was always a place for religion and God. Remembering the “golden”, “quiet”, “happy” childhood in Russia, the boys and girls described in detail with such impatience the expected “bright holidays” of Christmas and Easter, when they definitely went to church and received gifts, decorated the Christmas tree and painted Easter eggs, when there were parents and friends nearby, and also - "Someone Merciful, Who will forgive and not condemn." “...Christmas,” writes Ivan Chumakov, a 6th grade student at the English School for Russian Boys in Erinkei (Turkey). - You study the troparion, you tell it to your father, mother, sisters, and even your younger brother, who still does not understand anything. And you will ask your mother to wake you up for matins three days in advance. In church you stand calmly, every minute you cross yourself and read the troparion. The church service is over. Not returning home, you run to “praise Christ.” There are sweets, gingerbread, pennies - all pockets. Then go home to break the fast. After that - again to praise, and so the whole day ... And soon Easter. It's a holiday... indescribable. All day long bell ringing, rolling eggs, “christening”, congratulations, gifts ... "

God was with the children, and the children were with God, not only on religious holidays, but constantly, daily, hourly. Some of them directly admitted to the "deep religiosity" inherited from their parents. Prayer invariably occupied its special, stable place in children's routine daily practices: “The next morning I always woke up cheerful, dressed, washed, prayed to God and went to the dining room, where the table had already been set ... After tea, I went to study, solved several problems, wrote two calligraphy pages, etc.” God kept, God protected, God pacified, God gave hope: “Here are some pictures from my distant childhood. At night, in front of the image of the Mother of God, a lamp is burning, its trembling false light illuminates the all-forgiving face of the Charming Virgin, and it seems that her features are moving, living, and her lovely deep eyes are looking at me with affection and love. I, a little girl, am lying in bed in a long nightgown, I don’t feel like sleeping, I hear the snoring of my old nanny, and it seems to me in the silence of the night that I am alone in a vast world where there is not a single human soul, I get scared but, looking at the wonderful features of the Mother of God, my fears gradually disappear, and I imperceptibly fall asleep.

And suddenly, all of a sudden, in an instant, all this - so "own", so familiar, so settled - was destroyed, and godlessness, no matter how blasphemous it sounds, was elevated to the rank of a new faith, where they prayed to the new revolutionary apostles and followed the new revolutionary precepts . “The Bolsheviks preached that there is no God, that there is no beauty in life, and everything is permitted,” and they did not just preach, but put this permissiveness into practice. The ban on the teaching of the Law of God and the replacement of icons hanging in classrooms—“those trinkets,” as the red commissars called them—with portraits of the leaders of the revolution were perhaps the most innocuous of what the new authorities undertook. The desecration of religious shrines took place everywhere: even during searches witnessed by children (“Several drunken, unbridled sailors, hung from head to toe with weapons, bombs and machine-gun belts, burst into our apartment with loud screams and abuse: the search began ... Everything subjected to destruction and destruction, even the icons were torn down by these blasphemers, beaten with butts, trampled under foot”), and outside their home. “The Bolsheviks invaded the temples of God, killed the priests, took out the relics and scattered them around the church, swore in the Bolshevik way, laughed, but God endured and endured,” a 15-year-old student of the Russian gymnasium in Shumen (Bulgaria) testifies bitterly. “The light from the fire illuminated the church… hanged men swayed on the belfry; their black silhouettes cast a terrible shadow on the walls of the church,” recalls another. “On Easter, instead of ringing, shooting. It’s scary to go outside, ”writes a third. And there were many such testimonies.

It was in God that the children trusted in the most difficult, most terrible moments of their lives, when there was nothing to hope for, and it was to Him that they praised when the trials were already behind: “We were led into a large bright room (Cheka. - A.S.)… I remember that at that moment I was only praying. We did not sit long, a soldier came and led us somewhere; when asked what they would do with us, he, stroking my head, answered: “They will shoot me” ... We were led to the yard, where several Chinese were standing with guns ... It looked like a nightmare, and I just waited for it to end. I heard someone counting: “One, two” ... I saw my mother whispering: “Russia, Russia”, and my father squeezing my mother’s hand. We were waiting for death, but ... a sailor entered and stopped the soldiers ready to shoot. “These will come in handy,” he said, and told us to go home. Returning ... home, all three of us stood in front of the icons, and for the first time I prayed so fervently and sincerely. For many, prayer became the only source of vitality: “On the night before the Annunciation there was a terrible cannonade; I did not sleep and prayed all night”; “I had never prayed before, never remembered God, but when I was left alone (after the death of my brother), I began to pray; I prayed all the time - wherever the opportunity presented itself, and most of all I prayed in the cemetery, at the grave of my brother.

Have mercy on Russia, have mercy on me!

Meanwhile, among the children there were those who were completely desperate, who had lost their vital core, and with it, as it seemed to them, their faith in the Almighty: “I am worse than a wolf, faith has collapsed, morality has fallen”; “I ... noticed with horror that I don’t have anything that is holy, that good that dad and mom put into me. God ceased to exist for me as something distant, caring about me: the Gospel Christ. A new god arose before me, the god of life ... I became ... a complete egoist who is ready to sacrifice the happiness of others for his own happiness, who sees in life only the struggle for existence, who believes that the highest happiness on earth is money. It was these children and adolescents that V. V. Zenkovsky had in mind when, analyzing the writings, he argued that the “religious path of overcoming” was not yet open to everyone, and very painstaking work was needed to help children “come closer to the Church.”

In emigration, children were to some extent protected from the bloodthirsty revolutionary Moloch. They got back much of what they themselves would like to get back from the recent past. But, in their own words, even Christmas became somehow “sad”, not the same as in abandoned Russia, which they could not forget and where they so wanted to return. No, they did not need a new Soviet fatherland, hostile and unusual for them "anti-world" of Soviet power and Bolshevism. They aspired to that former Russia, which they wrote about in their writings and which they depicted in their drawings: quiet, snow-covered noble estates, Kremlin walls and towers, small village churches. Among the surviving drawings, one is especially touching: domes of Orthodox churches with crosses and a laconic inscription “I love Russia”. Most of these children never achieved their dream. But they continued to believe and earnestly pray for the Motherland - as earnestly as for themselves: “God, will everything remain like this? Have mercy on Russia, have mercy on me!”

In preparing the article, materials from the books "Children of the Russian emigration (The book that exiles dreamed and could not publish)" (M.: TERRA, 1997) and "Children of emigration: Memoirs" (M.: Agraf, 2001), as well as monographs author of "Russian childhood in the twentieth century: History, theory and practice of research." (Kazan: Kazan State University, 2007).


Building Russian scouts. Marseilles. 1930

Music lessons with children in the Russian commune of Montgeron. Paris. 1926

Teachers and students of the gymnasium of the All-Russian Union of Cities in the Selimiye camp. 1920

Teachers and students of St. Sergius Theological Institute in Paris. 1945 In the centerSchemamonk Savvaty. To his right— Vladimir Weidle. Alexander Schmemann, Konstantin Andronikov and Sergei Verkhovsky. Far right- father Vasily Zenkovsky

Text: Alla SALNIKOVA

The formation of the Russian Diaspora, a unique phenomenon in the history of modern Europe, began after the revolution of 1917 and the civil war, which split the population of Russia into two irreconcilable camps. In Soviet Russia, the fact of the existence of a stable Russian diaspora abroad was recognized later, after the publication of the decree of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee and the Council of People's Commissars of December 15, 1921, on the deprivation of civil rights to certain categories of the population. According to the decree, citizenship rights were lost to persons who were abroad continuously for more than five years and did not receive a passport from the Soviet government before July 1, 1922, persons who left Russia after November 7, 1917 without the permission of the Soviet authorities; faces; voluntarily serving in the White Army or participating in counter-revolutionary organizations. The decree (Article 2) provided for the possibility of returning to their homeland, subject to the recognition of Soviet power.

Post-October emigration was caused by a whole range of reasons due to the Russian events of 1917-1922. Based on motivation, three main categories of emigrants can be distinguished. These are political emigrants (representatives of the upper strata of society, the big bourgeoisie, landowners, heads of the central and local administration), who, as a result of the October Revolution, were deprived of their former social status and property. Ideological disagreements and conflicts with the Soviet authorities forced them to leave the country literally in the first post-revolutionary years. The second group includes officers and soldiers who fought in the civil war against the Bolsheviks and the Red Army. The third group consisted of citizens who left the country for economic reasons. In fact, these were refugees who were forced by war, ruin, terror to seek shelter in foreign lands. This category can include small proprietors (Cossacks, peasants), the bulk of urban residents, and the non-politicized part of the intelligentsia. Obviously, many of them would have remained in Russia if the revolution had developed according to a different scenario.

Complicated and tragic is the emigration of civilians. Many of them hesitated until the last moment, because it was not easy to change the fatherland for a foreign land, the usual way of life for the unknown. For many Russians, brought up in the highest notions of honor and dignity, the very idea of ​​fleeing from their own homeland seemed humiliating. These sentiments, especially widespread among the intelligentsia, were described in detail by A.V. Peshekhonov, exiled from Soviet Russia in 1922, in his pamphlet Why I Didn't Emigrate. Few people imagined what life would be like in the new Russia, many were very far from politics, did not sympathize with either the whites or the reds, even staunch opponents of the Bolsheviks considered it possible for themselves to stay in their homeland.

The artist M. V. Nesterov has a painting "Philosophers". It depicts two thinkers - Sergei Bulgakov and Pavel Florensky. They walk along the shore of the lake and talk peacefully. Fate decreed that S. Bulgakov ended up in exile, and P. Florensky, deciding to stay in Russia, went through all the circles of hell: 1919-20s - persecution and persecution, 1928 - exile to Nizhny Novgorod, February 1933 - arrest and the Solovetsky Special Purpose Camp, 1937 - second conviction and August 8, 1937 - camp death.

Gradually, three main directions of emigration were formed: northwestern, southern and Far Eastern. On the first route, emigrants through Poland and the Baltic states were sent to the countries of Central Europe (Germany, Belgium, France). Immediately after the fall of the monarchy, members of the royal family, senior officials and the nobility left through this channel. In early 1919, well-known politicians P. B. Struve, A. V. Kartashov, S. G. Lianozov, N. A. Suvorov and others emigrated from Petrograd to Finland. After the defeat in October 1919, a hasty evacuation to Estonia and Finland of Yudenich's army began, in February 1920 - General Miller. As a result, up to 200,000 people fled from Russia in the northwestern direction, the vast majority of whom later ended up in the countries of Western Europe.

The southern route through Turkey was formed as a result of the "Crimean evacuation". By October 1920, there were more than 50 thousand civilians and military persons in the Crimea, by November 1920, after the defeat of Wrangel's army, their number reached 200 thousand people. However, Turkey turned out to be only a temporary stop for the majority of emigrants. By the mid-20s. the number of Russians in this country did not exceed 3 thousand people. After the collapse of the Russian army in exile, many servicemen moved to Bulgaria, Greece, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia. The refugees hoped that in the Slavic countries, traditionally associated with Russia, they would be able to wait out the hard times and then return to Russia. The idea of ​​a quick return to their homeland, which owned the vast majority of emigrants in the first years of exile, determined the originality of their life even in those countries where integration and assimilation could have been relatively easy, as, for example, in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, Slovenes, (Kingdom of the SHS) .

One of the largest was the Far Eastern direction, which was distinguished by the originality of its political and legal situation. The peculiarity of the situation was that, according to the Russian-Chinese agreements, the territory of the CER was considered the Russian right-of-way. Russian citizenship was preserved here, the Russian administration, the court, educational institutions, banks operated. The revolution of 1917 and the civil war changed the status of the local population. Unexpectedly for themselves, Russian subjects who settled in Manchuria found themselves in the category of emigrants. A stream of defeated White Guard units and refugees also poured in here. In the early 1920s, the number of emigrants in China reached its peak and amounted to a quarter of a million people. The Russian emigrant environment was replenished to a large extent at the expense of the military and the Cossacks.

Of particular difficulty in studying the history of the first wave of emigration is the question of the number of emigrants. Many researchers, representatives of international and charitable organizations have tried to establish the number of Russian refugees. As a result, some initial data have emerged that, complementing each other, give a rough idea of ​​the magnitude of this unique outcome. Today, two sources of information can be distinguished: Soviet historiography and foreign statistics. Researchers from the former USSR provided data on the number of emigrants based on Lenin's calculations. For the first time, the number of "enemies of the Bolshevik government" who found themselves outside Soviet Russia was determined by V. I. Lenin at the All-Russian Congress of Transport Workers on March 27, 1921. It was about 700 thousand people. Three months later, in a report on the tactics of the RCP (b), read on July 5, 1921, at the Third Congress of the Comintern, Lenin named a figure of one and a half to two million people. The basis for such conclusions was the intelligence of the Red Army, which stated that the total number of Russian emigrants in the early 1920s. reached 2 million 92 thousand people. Subsequently, this information was included in all Soviet reference and encyclopedic publications.

According to the results of calculations by international organizations, a rather wide range of figures has been revealed, none of which is generally accepted. So, according to the American Red Cross - 1963500 people on November 1, 1920; from the report of the High Commissioner of the League of Nations for Refugees F. Nansen - 1.5 million people in March 1922 and 1.6 million people in March 1926. According to the historian from the USA M. Raev, by 1930 in countries of the world there were 829 thousand Russian refugees, and according to the German historian G. von Rimsha, the number of emigrants from Russia in 1921 was 2935000 people. The Russian emigrants themselves called the figure of 1 million people.

More comparable were the calculations carried out by a number of international organizations (the commission of the League of Nations, the Russian Press Bureau in Constantinople, the Russian Committee in Belgrade, etc.), which concluded that the number of Russian emigrants in European countries in the early 20s ranged from 744,000 up to 1215500 people.

It should be recognized that there is no more complete and accurate information about the size of the first wave of emigration. The avalanche-like flow of refugees from Russia, their forced migration from one country to another, the administrative chaos in post-war Europe made any accounting almost impossible.

The analysis of the national, socio-professional composition and general educational level of emigration is also rather approximate. Based on a few sources, for example, "questionnaires" filled out by refugees in the Bulgarian port of Varna in 1919-1922, one can get a general idea of ​​the bulk of the first wave of emigrants. So, by nationality, the majority were Russians - 95.2%, of the rest, Jews predominated. Among the emigrants, men were 73.3%, children - 10.9%, people over 55 years old - 3.8%; 20-40-year-old refugees were the majority - 64.8%. According to M. Raev, "in the Russian Diaspora there was a much higher level of education compared to the average indicators characteristic of the population of old Russia." Approximately two-thirds of adult emigrants had a secondary education, almost all had a primary education, and one in seven had a university degree. Among them were qualified specialists, representatives of science and the intelligentsia, the wealthy sections of the urban population. According to one of the emigrants, Baron B. Nolde, in 1917 the "flower of the nation" left Russia, people who held key positions in the economic, socio-political, cultural life of the country.

Russian post-October emigration is a complex and contradictory phenomenon. It represented various social and national groups, political currents and organizations, a wide range of social activity and positions in relation to Soviet Russia. But it would be an oversimplification to bring all emigration to some single negative denominator. Most of the emigration was against the Bolshevik government, but not always - against Russia.



S.I. Golotik, V.D. Zimina, S.V. Karpenko

Russian emigration after 1917 is a unique historical phenomenon due to the peculiarities of Russia's development in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The depth and stability of the social split in pre-revolutionary Russian society, the abyss between the "tops" and "bottoms", the overwhelming predominance of the tendency to build and strengthen the state machine in the political system, the absence of differences between power and property, the replacement of the democratic separation of powers by the differentiation of functions within the huge bureaucratic apparatus - All these factors predetermined the nature of emigration. They predetermined the main thing in it - the predominance of political expediency and the natural desire to save life over all material and moral considerations in favor of staying at home.

In the process of the formation of Russian emigration after 1917, three stages (or three waves of emigration) can be distinguished:

- emigration during the Civil War and the first post-revolutionary years,
- emigration of the last years of the Second World War,
- emigration from the USSR in the 70s - 80s.

The Russian emigration of the first post-revolutionary wave, often referred to as “white” or “anti-Bolshevik”, occupies a special place in the emigration process itself. Being significant in its scale (geographical, demographic, economic, social, political, ideological, cultural), it consisted of many diasporas divided by countries, united by the all-Russian past and culture. This is what became the foundation of "Foreign Russia" (or "Russian Abroad") as a unique semblance of statehood. Its uniqueness lay in the fact that out of the usual three components - people, territory and power - it had only "people", tried to create a "territory" and was completely deprived of "power".

Geographically, emigration from Russia was primarily directed to the countries of Western Europe. Its main "transshipment base" became Constantinople, and the main centers - Belgrade, Sofia, Prague, Berlin, Paris, in the East - Harbin.

Russian emigration during the Civil War and the first post-war years included the remnants of white troops and civilian refugees, representatives of the nobility and bureaucracy, entrepreneurs and creative intelligentsia who left Russia on their own or were expelled by decision of the Bolshevik government.

Devastation and famine, Bolshevik nationalization and terror, miscalculations of the Entente governments, the irrationality of the policy of the White authorities and the defeat of the White troops gave rise to the evacuation of the Entente troops and refugees from Odessa (March 1919), the evacuation of the Armed Forces in southern Russia, General A.I. Denikin and refugees from Odessa, Sevastopol and Novorossiysk (January - March 1920) to Turkey and the Balkan countries, the withdrawal of the North-Western Army of General N.N. Yudenich to the territory of Estonia (December 1919 - March 1920), the evacuation of the Zemskaya rati of General M.K. Diterikhs from Vladivostok to China (October 1922).

The largest in terms of numbers was the evacuation of units of the Russian army and civilian refugees from the Crimea to Turkey, carried out on more than a hundred military and merchant ships. According to military and undercover intelligence of the Red Army, up to 15,000 soldiers of Cossack units, 12,000 officers and 4-5,000 soldiers of regular units, 10,000 cadets of military schools, 7,000 wounded officers, more than 30 thousand officers and officials of the rear units and institutions and up to 60 thousand civilians, among whom the families of officers and officials made up the majority. The total figure, which is found in various sources, ranges from 130 to 150 thousand rubles.

In Turkey, in the Gallipoli region, the 1st Army Corps of General A.P. was camped. Kutepov, which included the remnants of the regular units of the former Volunteer Army. On the island of Lemnos, the remains of the Kuban Cossack units are located, reduced to the Kuban Corps of General M.A. Fostikova. Don Corps of General F.F. Abramov was placed in camps near Constantinople, mainly in the Chataldzhi region. According to the information of the command of the Russian army on November 16, 1921, the following lived in military camps: in Gallipoli - 2 6 4 85 people, of which 1 354 were women and 24 6 were children; on Lemnos - 8,052, of which 149 are women and 25 children; in Chataldzha - 8,729, of which 548 are women and children.

At the end of 1920 - beginning of 1921. intelligence agencies of the Red Army received a variety of, sometimes very divergent, data on the number of troops concentrated in military camps, as well as on the number of civilian refugees living in Constantinople and in camps located in the vicinity of the Turkish capital and on the Princes' Islands. After repeated clarifications, the number of troops was determined at 50-60 thousand, of which almost half were officers, and civilian refugees at 130-150 thousand, of which about 25 thousand were children, about 35 thousand were women, up to 50 thousand - men of military age (from 21 to 43 years old) and about 30 thousand - elderly men unfit for military service.

The first attempt to calculate the total number of emigrants from Russia was made in November 1920, even before the evacuation of the Russian army from the Crimea, by the American Red Cross. Based on the approximate data of various refugee organizations, he determined it to be almost 2 million. Another approximately 130 thousand military and civilian refugees of the Wrangel evacuation brought this figure to almost 2 million 100 thousand.

It is very difficult to establish the exact number of the first wave of emigration: the figures of various institutions and organizations vary too much, too many refugees were not taken into account when they left the country, there were too frequent registrations that Russian organizations sinned, seeking to receive material assistance in as much as possible. Therefore, in the historical literature you can find a variety of figures. The most common figure is 1.5 - 2 million people who left Russia in 1918 - 1922.

The national, gender, age and social composition of emigrants is partly characterized by the information collected in Varna in 1922 through a survey of almost 3.5 thousand people. Mostly Russians left (95.2%), men (73.3%), middle-aged - from 17 to 55 years (85.5%), with higher education - (54.2%).

Immediately after emigration, re-emigration began.

Already in the summer of 1920, officers of Denikin's armies, who had left for Turkey and the Balkan countries in January-March, began to return to the south of Russia, occupied by the Russian army of General Wrangel. According to the RVSR Field Headquarters, 2,850 people had returned by mid-November, most from Constantinople.

In November-December 1920, immediately after the landing of units of the Russian army of General Wrangel and refugees from the ships, ordinary soldiers and Cossacks, having cooled down from the fever of retreat and evacuation and overcoming their fear of the Bolsheviks, began to attempt to return to their native land by boat .

On November 3, 1921, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of the RSFSR adopted a decree on amnesty for the military personnel of the White Army, they were given the opportunity to return to Soviet Russia. Over 120,000 refugees took advantage of it, the overwhelming majority being soldiers and Cossacks. This was facilitated, firstly, by disappointment in the White movement and its leaders, secondly, by the hardships of life in the camps and the even more bitter and humiliating life of poor civilian refugees in Constantinople (lack of work, housing and food), and thirdly, the weakening of fear before the Bolsheviks, fourthly, the policy of the Entente command, which saw the Russian army as a dangerous force and by reducing its content, sought to speed up the process of transferring its ranks to the position of civilian refugees. The following factor also played a certain role: after the First World War in
Russia was returning, mainly from America, labor and religious emigrants (Doukhobors and Molokans).

Since the summer of 1921, the command of the Russian army, having secured the consent of the governments of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, Slovenes (Yugoslavia) and Bulgaria, began the transfer of units to these countries. Refugees followed the military.

A year later, more than 4,500 Russians lived in Yugoslavia alone. Significant colonies of emigrants from Russia arose in Czechoslovakia, Germany, France and other European states, including those that gained independence as a result of the collapse of the Russian Empire (Finland, Poland, Estonia and others). The numerical distribution of emigrants by country of residence was constantly changing. The Russian emigration of the first wave resembled a mass “overflowing” from country to country. This was due solely to the search for the most favorable environment for adaptation to life in a foreign land.

The Slavic countries were preferable for the Russians because of the closeness of culture and the benevolent policy of the authorities, who did a lot for the emigrants. In Yugoslavia, immigrants from Russia were in a privileged position. Since Russia, until October 1917, provided the Serbs with the entire set of rights, up to entering the military service, Russian emigrants in Serbia also enjoyed broad rights. They were granted the right to engage in crafts and trade, the right to carry out transactions with currency, which was prohibited for foreigners by local legislation.

The most acute problem was physical survival. In this situation, the emigration's ability to self-organize, to create an effective structure for solving the whole range of problems related to life support, acquired particular importance. Such a structure was the "Central Joint Committee of the Russian Red Cross Society, the All-Russian Zemstvo Union and the All-Russian Union of Cities" (CSC). It was subsidized by the powers of the Entente and actually turned into a kind of ministry for civil affairs, if we bear in mind that Wrangel's headquarters and the institutions that functioned under it were primarily concerned with providing and supplying the army. The CSC was used to supply Russian refugees with food, clothing and other essentials. A whole system was created for the rehabilitation and arrangement of the ranks of the white armies who were injured. On his initiative, the League of Nations established the position of High Commissioner for Russian Refugees. On August 20, 1921, the Norwegian polar explorer and public figure F. Nansen agreed to lead the cause of helping the Russians.

To solve the problem of the movement of refugees from one state to another, on his initiative, “refugee passports” were introduced, legalized by international agreements of July 5, 1922 and May 31, 1926. Until October 1929, these passports were recognized by 39 countries. However, England, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and some other countries closed their doors to holders of "Nansen passports".

The political spectrum of the emigration was unusually diverse: from organizations of monarchists and even fascists to leftist, socialist parties - Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks. In the center stood the Kadet Party, which preached liberal values. None of these organizations and parties represented a single political trend and broke up into two, three or more groups. All of them had press organs, made plans for the liberation of Russia from Bolshevism and its revival, developed programs and made statements on various political issues.

The Cadets, who split into right and left after the defeat in the Civil War, published two newspapers: Rul in Berlin, edited by V.D. Nabokov and I.V. Gessen and Latest News in Paris, edited by P.N. Milyukov.

The Socialist-Revolutionaries published publications with populist headlines: "Revolutionary Russia" (the central organ), edited by party leader V.M. Chernov and "The Will of Russia" - in Prague, edited by V.L. Lebedeva, M.A. Slonim, V.V. Sukhomlina and E.A. Stalinsky. In Paris, the journal Sovremennye Zapiski was published under the editorship of N.D. Avksentieva, M.V. Vishnyak and V.V. Rudnev. In Revel in the early 20s. Socialist-Revolutionaries published the newspaper "For the People's Deed" and the magazine "For the People" especially for distribution in Soviet Russia. The Mensheviks published in Berlin one of the most voluminous magazines in exile, the Socialist Bulletin, edited by L. Martov, F. Abramovich and F. Dan.

In addition to these main printed organs, there were dozens of emigre magazines and newspapers of various trends.

No less diverse was the socio-political life of the Far Eastern branch of the Russian emigration. The monarchists were most strongly represented here. Back in 1922, 13 monarchist societies and organizations moved from Primorye to Harbin. However, as in Europe, these forces were divided. The largest organization is the Union of Legitimists, headed by General V.A. Kislitsin, - supported led. book. Kirill Vladimirovich. Others preferred led. book. Nikolai Nikolaevich. Relying on the officer corps of the military and Cossack units, having the support of the clergy, Western emigrant forces, and partly the Chinese authorities, the monarchists were not only the most numerous part of the political emigration in China, but also the most implacable fighters against the Bolshevik power in Russia.

At the same time, new trends emerged.

In the 20s. part of the Russian diaspora in Harbin was the teaching staff of Russian universities, most of whose representatives were adherents of the ideas of the cadet party. Even at the end of the Civil War, the most far-sighted members of the party suggested changing the tactics of fighting the Bolsheviks. Professor of the Harbin Faculty of Law N.V. Ustryalov in 1920 published a collection of his articles "In the struggle for Russia." It preached the idea of ​​the futility of a new military campaign against the Soviets. Moreover, it was emphasized that Bolshevism defended the unity and independence of Russia, and the White movement associated itself with the interventionists. “To start from the beginning what was practically not possible under incomparably better conditions and with immeasurably richest data, only political Don Quixotes can, at best,” Ustryalov believed.

In the summer of 1921, a collection of articles entitled “Change of milestones” was published in Prague, which became the program of a new political trend in the Russian diaspora. The authors of the articles (Yu.V. Klyuchnikov, S.S. Lukyanov, Yu.N. Potekhin and others) believed: if the failure of the revolution is undesirable for the intelligentsia, and its victory in the form in which it was realized is incomprehensible, then there is a third way - the rebirth of the revolution. At the same time in Paris, P.N. Milyukov, the leader of the Kadet party, published an article "What to do after the Crimean catastrophe?" with similar conclusions. Not accepting Bolshevism and reconciling with it, he believed that the methods of overcoming it should radically change in order to restore Russia as a great and united state. The proclaimed "new tactics" were supposed to focus on the internal anti-Bolshevik forces in Russia (peasant insurrection, etc.).

Reflections on the fate of Russia, on the specifics of its geopolitical position, which led to the victory of Bolshevism, were realized in a new ideological direction - Eurasianism.

The founders of Eurasianism were young talented scientists: philologist N.S. Trubetskoy, musicologist P.P. Suvchinsky, geographer and economist P.N. Savitsky, lawyers V.N. Ilyin and N.N. Alekseev, philosopher-theologian G.V. Florovsky, historians M.M. Shakhmatov, G.V. Vernadsky, L.P. Karsavin. The Eurasianists began their journalistic activity in Sofia in 1920, and then continued it in Prague, Paris and Berlin. They published the collections "Eurasian Chronicle" in Prague and "Eurasian Time" in Berlin and Paris, and from the second half of the 20s. published in France the newspaper "Eurasia". Cultivating the identity of Russia, they were ready to come to terms with the Soviet transformations, if they were in favor of this very historical socio-cultural identity of the Russian statehood.

In the mid 20s. began to fade hope for a speedy return to Russia, freed from the yoke of the Bolsheviks. This was facilitated by the "band of recognition" of the USSR by the governments of European and Asian states. The diplomatic successes of the Bolshevik government, based on the skillful use of the interest of many countries in the resumption of trade exchange with Russia, had a detrimental effect on the rights of emigrants.

After the establishment of diplomatic relations between the USSR and China in 1924, the Soviet government renounced the rights and privileges relating to all concessions acquired by the tsarist government, including the rights of extraterritoriality in the area of ​​the CER. According to a number of additional agreements, the service of Russian emigrants in the Chinese army and police was terminated, and the CER was declared a purely commercial enterprise, managed on an equal footing by the USSR and China. In accordance with the Soviet-Chinese agreements, only Soviet and Chinese citizens were allowed to work on the railway, which caused serious damage to stateless emigrants.

Therefore, part of the emigrants, in order to retain their place of work, passed into Soviet citizenship and received Soviet passports, part - into Chinese citizenship, while the rest had to receive and annually renew the so-called "annual residence permit in the Special Region of the Eastern Provinces." Wealthy emigrants in search of more comfortable living conditions moved from Harbin to the United States and Western Europe. Those who had nothing and nowhere to go stayed and tried to adapt to local conditions.

Similar processes took place in Western European countries.

Thus, in France until 1924, when the French government recognized the USSR and established diplomatic relations with it, a Russian embassy operated in Paris, and Russian consulates in a number of large cities. Ambassador of the former Provisional Government V.A. Maklakov enjoyed considerable influence in French government circles, thanks to which Russian diplomatic missions protected the interests of emigrants by issuing them various documents proving their identity, social status, profession, education, etc.

Of particular importance was the assistance of Russian diplomatic missions to emigrants who decided to accept the citizenship of the country where they lived, since many had neither the money nor the opportunity to master all the legal formalities required in such cases.

The recognition of the USSR led to the closure of Russian embassies and consulates in European countries, which greatly hampered the protection of the rights of Russian emigrants.

Serious changes were taking place in the ranks of the military emigration, one of the largest parts of the Russian diaspora. In the mid 20s. the army was transformed into a conglomerate of various military societies and unions. In this situation, General P.N. Wrangel, who formally retained the title of Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Army, in 1924 created the Russian All-Military Union (ROVS).

By the end of the 20s. The ROVS united most of the military organizations under its command. According to Wrangel's headquarters, in 1925 the EMRO had 40 thousand people in its ranks. At first, the ROVS was financed from the amounts at the disposal of the command of the Russian army, but they soon dried up.

Since there were no forces in the world community ready to openly finance a conservative military organization advocating the restoration of the Russian Empire, membership fees and donations became the main source of funds for the ROVS, which were far from enough to launch full-scale activities. At the same time, some structures of the ROVS agreed to cooperate with the intelligence services of foreign states, with their financial and other support, conducting intelligence operations against the USSR.

On the other hand, the ROVS provided legal and material assistance to military emigrants. Many disabled emigrants received various benefits, some were placed in hospitals and nursing homes. A lot was done in the historical and memorial area: materials were collected on the history of military units during the Civil War, military museums were created.

The main task set by Wrangel before the ROVS - the preservation of army personnel in the conditions of emigrant dispersion and the obtaining of funds for the life of officers by their own labor - was not fully resolved. Formally uniting a significant part of the Russian military emigration, the ROVS was unable to create a broad and combat-ready military-political movement abroad. Contradictions within the leadership and calls for military intervention against the USSR led to the isolation of the ROVS, confrontation with the democratic forces of emigration, conflicts with the governments of France, Germany and Bulgaria, the outflow of soldiers and Cossacks from military organizations.

In 1929, during the armed conflict on the CER, the military part of the emigration attempted to put into practice the idea of ​​resuming the struggle against the Bolshevik authorities. From Chinese territory, armed white detachments were sent across the border of the USSR, with the goal of raising an uprising and defeating the Soviet border garrisons. However, the theory of an armed invasion of emigrant military formations into the territory of the USSR did not stand the test of practice: the population did not support them, and they could not resist the regular units of the Red Army.

The GPU - OGPU - NKVD, widely resorting to the recruitment of agents among emigrants and the creation of dummy underground organizations in the USSR, sought to paralyze the intelligence and sabotage activities of the ROVS, to eliminate its most irreconcilable leaders. As a result, the ROVS failed to organize an anti-Soviet underground in the USSR, and all projects for creating an anti-Bolshevik movement on its territory remained on paper. The counterintelligence of the ROVS was unable to protect the organization and its leadership from the "active measures" of the Soviet state security agencies: in 1930, the chairman of the ROVS, General A.P., was kidnapped in Paris. Kutepov, in 1937 - General E.K. Miller.

Despite the legal, material and other difficulties of life in exile, the emigration was thinking about the future. “To preserve the national culture, to teach children to love everything Russian, to educate the younger generation for the future Russia, to temper its will, to develop a strong character” - such a task was set for emigre educational institutions. In emigration, the same education system that existed in pre-revolutionary Russia was preserved: elementary school (state, zemstvo and parochial), secondary school (gymnasiums, real schools), higher educational institutions (institutes, universities, conservatories). Among immigrants from Russia, there were 16 thousand students whose studies were interrupted by the world war and revolution. During the 10 years of exile, 8,000 young people received higher education, mainly in Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia.

About 3,000 graduate engineers left Russia, hundreds of educated specialists in all fields of natural, technical and human sciences. The governments of the states where the refugees ended up showed them a lot of benevolence and human sympathy. But, in addition to expressing these feelings, there was also a significant share of self-interest and commercialism in their actions. Among the Russian emigrants there were many scientific and technical intelligentsia. The influx of teaching staff, scientists and engineers played a significant role in the revival of the scientific and cultural life of a number of European and Asian countries.

The governments of these states provided substantial assistance to Russian émigré organizations, which did not have sufficient funds of their own, in organizing the education of Russian children and youth. At the beginning of 1921, on the initiative of the Assistant Minister of Foreign Affairs of Czechoslovakia Girsa, a state cultural and educational plan for helping the Russians was prepared. It was approved by the President of the country T. Massaryk. The Czech government allocated funds for the maintenance of students who were on the territory of Czechoslovakia. From the end of 1921, Czechoslovakia began to accept Russian students from other countries. In the spring of 1922, 1,700 Russian students received scholarships from the Czechoslovak government. They were settled in dormitories and partly in private apartments, received clothes, food, and pocket money. Before the formation of Russian educational institutions, students were distributed among the higher educational institutions of Czechoslovakia in Prague, Brno, Bratislava and other cities. For these purposes, the authorities of Czechoslovakia spent large sums. Appropriations, which began with 10 million Czech crowns in 1921, exceeded 300 million.

By 1926, the authorities of Czechoslovakia, as well as other European states, in the early 20s. were convinced that Bolshevism would not last more than five to seven years in Russia, and after its death, the youth who had received an education in the republic would return to Russia and “serve there as a starter for the formation of a new European democratic state system.” Thanks to the help of the government, the emigrants managed to form a number of Russian educational institutions in Czechoslovakia: the Russian Faculty of Law, the Russian Pedagogical Institute named after Jan Amos Kamensky, the Russian Railway Technical School and others.

There were six institutions of higher education in Harbin and eight in Paris.

In the mid 20s. Czechoslovak authorities began to curtail the "Russian action of assistance." The “Union of Russian Students in Pshibram” reported to the Czechoslovak Foreign Ministry that by the beginning of 1931 “Russian students were deprived of government scholarships”, there were layoffs at enterprises and “the number of engineers dismissed from the service in the first place are Russians, moreover, those in which businesses need.

There were several reasons for this. The global economic crisis of the late 20s. affected all sectors of the economy, science and culture. In this situation, the demands of the Czechs, especially the workers, to limit the allocation of funds and jobs to the "former White Guards" sounded more and more insistent. On the other hand, the authorities could not help but react to the protests of the USSR, both official and in the media, against "feeding the Whites."

In this situation, the Russian higher education began to change its character and direction, moving on to training specialists for those countries where the emigrants ended up. Many educational institutions began to close or be transformed into scientific and educational centers. Financial assistance from the governments and public organizations of the countries that hosted emigrants from Russia quickly dried up. The main source of funding was the own commercial activities of emigre educational and scientific institutions.

Among the emigrants were scientists who deserved world fame: aircraft designer I.I. Sikorsky, developer of television systems V.K. Zworykin, chemist V.N. Ignatiev and many others. According to a survey in 1931, there were about 500 scientists in exile, including 150 professors. Scientific institutes in Belgrade and Berlin worked successfully. There were Russian academic groups in almost all major capitals, of which Paris and Prague had the right to award academic degrees.

Russian emigrants had a huge impact on the development of world culture. Writers I.A. Bunin and V.V. Nabokov, composer S.V. Rachmaninov, singer F.I. Chaliapin, ballerina A.P. Pavlova, artists V.V. Kindinsky and M.Z. Chagall is a small fraction of the list of Russian masters of art who worked abroad.

On a voluntary basis, 30 emigrant museums were created.

Of the archives, the Russian Foreign Historical Archive in Prague (RZIA) has become the most famous. It was formed in February 1923 and until 1924 was called the Archive of the Russian Emigration. The archive registered all military, political and cultural organizations in exile. Information messages about the formation of the archive were sent to these organizations with requests for the transfer of their materials for storage. Until the end of the 30s. Hundreds of Russian organizations and emigration figures transferred their documents to the archive. In 1939, after the occupation of Czechoslovakia by Germany, the archive came under the control of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Nazi Reich. After the end of World War II, at the request of the Soviet government, the archive was transferred to the USSR. 650 boxes of materials of the Russian emigration of the 20-40s. were transferred to Moscow. By decision of the NKVD of the USSR, access to documents was strictly limited. And only in the spring of 1987 did the documents of organizations and emigration figures begin to be declassified, becoming the basis of the source base for studying the history of the Russian diaspora by the current generation of historians.

The specific features of Russian emigration as a special socio-cultural phenomenon include a stable succession of all waves in the preservation and development of national culture, as well as openness to the cultures of the countries of residence and free interaction with them. Taken together, they determined the adherence of emigrants to the roots left in Russia, their feeling of being an organic part of the national culture and, consequently, the interaction of the regions of settlement, which made it possible not to lose spiritual and cultural integrity. All this took place in the context of cultural integration, which was a complex process of transition from "cultural shock" with its elements of hostility, isolation and disorganization, to a situation where elements of one's own and another's culture, contacting and going through conflicts between different cultural stereotypes, began to merge.

Sources and literature

Sources

Diaspora: New materials. Issue. I. SPb., 2001.
Political history of Russian emigration, 1920 - 1940: Documents and materials. M., 1999.
Russian military emigration of the 20s - 40s: Documents and materials. M., 1998. T.1. Thus began the exile, 1920-1922. Book 1. Exodus; Book 2. In a foreign land.

Gessen I.V. Years of Exile: A Life Report. Paris, 1979. Odoevtseva I. On the banks of the Seine // Odoevtseva I. Favorites. M., 1998.

Literature

Aleksandrov S.A. The leader of the Russian cadets P.N. Milyukov in exile. M., 1996.
Berezovaya L.G. Culture of the Russian emigration (1920 - 30s) // New Historical Bulletin. 2001. No. 3(5).
Doronchenkov A.I. Emigration of the "first wave" about national problems and the fate of Russia. SPb., 2001.
Ippolitov S.S., Nedbaevsky V.M., Rudentsova Yu.I. Three capitals of exile: Constantinople, Berlin, Paris. Centers of foreign Russia in the 1920s - 1930s M., 1999.
Raev M. Russia abroad: History of the culture of Russian emigration, 1919 - 1939. M., 1994.
Russians Without a Fatherland: Essays on the Anti-Bolshevik Emigration of the 1920s and 1940s. M., 2000.

Notes:
1. Diaspora (Greek, English, German diaspora - dispersion) - a significant part of the people (ethnic community), staying outside the country of its main settlement.
2. The problem of legal regulation of the status of Russian emigrants is covered in the note by O.A. Chirova, placed in this issue.

And Source: New Historical Bulletin, Issue No. 7 / 2002

Russian emigration and repatriation in Russian America in 1917-1920s

Vorobieva Oksana Viktorovna

Candidate of Historical Sciences, Associate Professor, Department of Public Relations, Russian State University of Tourism and Service.

In the last quarter of the XIX - early XX centuries. In North America, a large Russian diaspora was formed, the bulk of which were labor migrants (mainly from the territory of Ukraine and Belarus), as well as representatives of the left-liberal and social democratic opposition intelligentsia, who left Russia in the 1880s-1890s. and after the first Russian revolution of 1905-1907. for political reasons. Among the Russian political emigrants of the pre-revolutionary era in the United States and Canada, there were people of various professions and social backgrounds - from professional revolutionaries to former officers of the tsarist army. In addition, the world of Russian America included communities of Old Believers and other religious movements. In 1910, according to official figures, 1,184,000 immigrants from Russia lived in the United States.

On the American continent there was a significant number of emigrants from Russia, who linked their return home with the fall of tsarism. They were eager to apply their strength and experience in the cause of the revolutionary transformation of the country, building a new society. In the first years after the revolution and the end of the World War, a repatriation movement arose in the community of Russian emigrants in the United States. Encouraged by the news about the events in their homeland, they quit their jobs in the provinces and gathered in New York, where lists of future repatriates were compiled, rumors circulated on the ships that the Provisional Government should send. According to eyewitnesses, these days in New York one could often hear Russian speech, see groups of protesters: "New York was seething and worried along with St. Petersburg."

Initiative groups for re-emigration were created at the Russian consulates in Seattle, San Francisco and Honolulu. However, only a few who wished managed to return to their homeland due to the high cost of moving and transporting agricultural implements (a condition of the Soviet government). From California, in particular, about 400 people were repatriated, mostly peasants. A departure to Russia for Molokans was also organized. On February 23, 1923, a resolution of the STO of the RSFSR was issued on the allocation of 220 acres of land in the South of Russia and the Volga region for repatriates, who founded 18 agricultural communes. (In the 1930s, most of the settlers were repressed). In addition, in the 1920s many Russian Americans refused to return to their homeland because of fears for their future, which appeared with the arrival of "white" emigrants and the dissemination of information in the foreign press about the actions of the Bolshevik regime.

The Soviet government was also not interested in repatriation from the United States. “There was a time when it seemed that the moment of our return to our homeland was about to become a fait accompli (it was said that even the Russian government would help us in this direction by sending ships). When a myriad of good words and slogans were spent, and when it seemed that the dreams of the best sons of the earth would come true, and we would all live a good happy life - but this time has come and gone, leaving us with broken dreams. Since then, the obstacles to returning to Russia have increased even more, and the thoughts from this have become even more nightmarish. Somehow I don't want to believe that the government would not let its own citizens into their native country. But it is so. We hear the voices of our own relatives, wives and children, imploring us to return to them, but we are not allowed to step over the threshold of the tightly closed iron door that separates us from them. And it hurts my soul from the realization that we, Russians, are some unfortunate stepchildren of life in a foreign land: we cannot get used to a foreign land, they are not allowed to go home, and our life is not going as it should be ... as we would like ... " , - V. Shekhov wrote in the beginning of 1926 to the Zarnitsa magazine.

Simultaneously with the repatriation movement, the flow of immigrants from Russia increased, including participants in the armed struggle against Bolshevism in the era of 1917-1922 and civilian refugees.

Russian post-revolutionary immigration to the United States was influenced by the immigration law of 1917, according to which persons who did not pass the literacy exam and who did not meet a number of mental, moral, physical and economic standards were not allowed into the country. As early as 1882, entry from Japan and China was closed without special invitations and guarantees. Political restrictions on persons entering the United States were imposed by the Anarchist Act of 1918. Immigration to the United States during the period under review was based on the system of national quotas approved in 1921 and took into account not citizenship, but the place of birth of the immigrant. Permission to enter was given strictly individually, as a rule, at the invitation of universities, various companies or corporations, public institutions. Visas for entry into the United States during the period under review were issued by American consuls in various countries without the intervention of the US Department of Foreign Affairs. In particular, B.A. Bakhmetiev, after his resignation and the closure of the Russian embassy in Washington, had to leave for England, where he received a visa to return to the United States as a private person.

In addition, the quota laws of 1921 and 1924 twice reduced the allowable number of annual entry of immigrants into the United States. The law of 1921 allowed the entry of professional actors, musicians, teachers, professors and nurses in excess of the quota, but later the Immigration Commission tightened its requirements.

An obstacle to entry into the United States could be the lack of livelihood or guarantors. For Russian refugees, additional problems sometimes arose due to the fact that national quotas were determined by place of birth. In particular, the Russian emigrant Yerarsky, who arrived in the United States in November 1923, spent several days in the isolation ward because the city of Kovno was indicated in his passport as the place of birth, and in the eyes of American officials he was a Lithuanian; meanwhile, the Lithuanian quota for this year has already been exhausted.

It is curious that neither the Russian consul in New York, nor the YMCA representative who took care of the immigrants could solve his problem. However, after a series of articles in American newspapers, which created the image of a suffering "Russian giant" of more than six feet, who was allegedly "the closest employee of the Tsar", and described all the difficulties and dangers of the long voyage of Russian refugees, the risk of forced repatriation in case of return to Turkey, etc., permission was obtained from Washington for a temporary visa on a bail of $1,000.

In 1924-1929. the total immigration flow amounted to 300 thousand people a year against more than 1 million before the First World War. In 1935, the annual quota for natives of Russia and the USSR was only 2,172 people, most of them arrived through the countries of Europe and the Far East, including using the mechanism of guarantee and recommendations, special visas, etc. evacuation of the Crimea in 1920 in Constantinople in extremely difficult conditions. It is believed that during the interwar period, an average of 2-3 thousand Russians arrived in the United States annually. According to American researchers, the number of immigrants from Russia who arrived in the United States in 1918-1945. is 30-40 thousand people.

The representatives of the “white emigration” who arrived in the USA and Canada after 1917, in turn, dreamed of returning to their homeland, linking it with the fall of the Bolshevik regime. Some of them tried to simply wait out the difficult times abroad, without making any special efforts to settle down, tried to exist at the expense of charity, which did not at all coincide with the American approach to the refugee problem. So, in the report of N.I. Astrov to the general meeting of the Russian Zemstvo-City Committee on January 25, 1924, a curious fact is cited that an American, with whose assistance several dozen Russians were transported from Germany, expresses dissatisfaction with their “insufficient energy”. His patrons are said to enjoy his hospitality (he provided them with his house) and do not aggressively seek work.

It should be noted that this trend was still not dominant in the emigrant environment, both in North America and in other centers of foreign Russia. As numerous memoir sources and scientific studies show, the vast majority of Russian emigrants in various countries and regions of the world in the 1920s-1930s. showed exceptional perseverance and diligence in the struggle for survival, sought to restore and improve the social status and financial situation lost as a result of the revolution, receive education, etc.

A significant part of Russian refugees already in the early 1920s. realized the need for a more solid settlement abroad. As stated in a note from one of the employees of the Committee for the Resettlement of Russian Refugees in Constantinople, “the state of refugee is a slow spiritual, moral and ethical death.” Existing in poverty, on meager charitable benefits or meager earnings, without any prospects, forced the refugees and the humanitarian organizations that assisted them to make every effort to move to other countries. At the same time, many turned their hopes to America, as a country in which "even an emigrant enjoys all the rights of a member of society and state protection of sacred human rights."

According to the results of a survey of Russian refugees who applied to leave Constantinople for the United States in 1922, it turned out that this element of the colony was “one of the most vital of the refugee mass and gave the best people”, namely: despite unemployment, all of them lived by their own labor and even made some savings. The professional composition of those leaving was the most diverse - from artists and artists to laborers.

In general, Russian refugees who went to the United States and Canada did not shy away from any kind of work and could offer the immigration authorities a fairly wide range of specialties, including workers. Thus, in the documents of the Committee for the Resettlement of Russian Refugees, there were records of questions that interested those who were going to leave for Canada. In particular, they inquired about employment opportunities as a draftsman, bricklayer, mechanic, driver, milling turner, locksmith, experienced horseman, etc. Women would like to get a job as a house tutor or a seamstress. Such a list does not seem to correspond to the usual ideas about the post-revolutionary emigration, as a mass of, basically, educated intelligent people. However, it is necessary to take into account the fact that quite a lot of former prisoners of war and other persons who ended up abroad in connection with the events of the First World War and did not want to return to Russia accumulated in Constantinople during this period. In addition, some managed to get new specialties at professional courses that were opened for refugees.

Russian refugees who went to America sometimes became the object of criticism from the political and military leaders of foreign Russia, who were interested in preserving the idea of ​​​​an early return to their homeland, and in some cases, revanchist sentiments among the emigrants. (In Europe, these sentiments were fueled by the proximity of Russian borders and the opportunity for certain groups of refugees to exist at the expense of various kinds of charitable foundations). One of the correspondents of General A.S. Lukomsky reported from Detroit at the end of December 1926: “Everyone has split into groups-parties, each with an insignificant number of members - 40-50 people, or even less, arguing over trifles, forgetting the main goal - the restoration of the Motherland!”

Those who moved to America, on the one hand, involuntarily broke away from the problems of the European diaspora, on the other hand, after a very short period of support from humanitarian organizations, they had to rely only on their own strength. They sought to "leave the abnormal state of refugee as such and move into the difficult state of an emigrant who wants to work his way through life". At the same time, it cannot be said that the Russian refugees, making the decision to go overseas, were ready to irrevocably break with their homeland and assimilate in America. So, people who traveled to Canada were worried about the question of whether there was a Russian representation there and Russian educational institutions where their children could go.

Certain problems for immigrants from Russia during the period under review arose in the era of the “red psychosis” of 1919-1921, when the pro-communist pre-revolutionary emigration was subjected to police repressions, and the few anti-Bolshevik circles of the diaspora found themselves isolated from the bulk of the Russian colony, carried away by the revolutionary events in Russia. In a number of cases, emigrant public organizations encountered in their activities a negative reaction from the public and the country's authorities. For example, in November 1919, the Yonkers branch of the Nauka (social democratic pro-Soviet) society was attacked by Palmer agents, who forced the doors of the club, smashed a bookcase and took away some of the literature. This incident frightened the rank and file members of the organization, in which soon out of 125 only 7 people remained.

US anti-communist policy in the early 1920s. was welcomed in every possible way by the conservative layers of the post-revolutionary emigration - officer and monarchist societies, church circles, etc., but had practically no effect on their status or financial situation. Many representatives of the "white" emigration noted with chagrin the sympathy of the American public for the Soviet regime, their interest in revolutionary art, and so on. A.S. Lukomsky in his memoirs reports on the conflict (public dispute) of his daughter Sophia, who served in the early 1920s. in New York as a stenographer in the Methodist Church, with a bishop who praised the Soviet system. (Curiously, her employers later apologized for this episode.)

Political leaders and the public of the Russian emigration were concerned about the emerging in the late 1920s. US intentions to recognize the Bolshevik government. However, Russian Paris and other European centers of foreign Russia showed the main activity in this matter. Russian emigration to the United States from time to time carried out public actions against the Bolshevik government and the communist movement in America. For example, on October 5, 1930, an anti-communist rally took place in the Russian Club of New York. In 1931, the Russian National League, which united the conservative circles of Russian post-revolutionary emigration in the United States, issued an appeal to boycott Soviet goods, and so on.

Political leaders of foreign Russia in 1920 - early 1930s. repeatedly expressed fears in connection with the possible deportation to Soviet Russia of Russian refugees who were illegally in the United States. (Many entered the country on tourist or other temporary visas, entered the United States through the Mexican and Canadian borders). At the same time, the American authorities did not practice the expulsion from the country of persons in need of political asylum. Russian refugees in a number of cases ended up on Ellis Island (immigrant reception center near New York in 1892-1943, known for its cruel orders, because the “Isle of Tears”) until the circumstances were clarified. On the Isle of Tears, new arrivals were subjected to medical examinations and interviewed by immigration officials. Persons in doubt were detained in semi-prison conditions, the comfort of which depended on the class of ticket with which the immigrant arrived or, in some cases, on his social status. “This is where the dramas take place,” testified one of the Russian refugees. “One is detained because he came at someone else’s expense or with the help of charitable organizations, the other is detained until a relative or acquaintances come for him, to whom you can send a telegram with a challenge.” In 1933-1934. in the United States, there was a public campaign for a new law, according to which all Russian refugees who legally resided in the United States and arrived illegally before January 1, 1933, would have the right to be legalized on the spot. The corresponding law was passed on June 8, 1934, and about 600 "illegal immigrants" were revealed, of which 150 lived in California.

It should be emphasized that, in general, the Russian colony was not the object of special attention of the American immigration authorities and special services and enjoyed political freedoms on an equal basis with other immigrants, which to a large extent determined public sentiments within the diaspora, including a rather detached attitude to events in their homeland. .

Thus, the Russian emigration of the 1920s-1940s. in America had the greatest intensity in the first half of the 1920s, when refugees from Europe and the Far East arrived here in groups and individually. This emigration wave was represented by people of various professions and age groups, the majority ended up abroad as part of the evacuated anti-Bolshevik armed formations and the civilian population that followed them. Arising in 1917 - early 1920s. in Russian America, the repatriation movement actually remained unrealized and had almost no effect on the socio-political appearance and number of Russian diasporas in the United States and Canada.

In the early 1920s the main centers of the Russian post-revolutionary abroad were formed in the USA and Canada. Basically, they coincided with the geography of the pre-revolutionary colonies. Russian emigration has taken a prominent place in the ethnographic and socio-cultural palette of the North American continent. In large US cities, the existing Russian colonies not only increased in number, but also received an impetus for institutional development, which was due to the emergence of new socio-professional groups - representatives of white officers, sailors, lawyers, etc.

The main problems of Russian emigration in the 1920s-1940s. in the US and Canada, it was obtaining visas under quota laws, finding an initial livelihood, learning a language and then finding a job in a specialty. The targeted immigration policy of the United States in the period under review determined significant differences in the financial situation of various social groups of Russian emigrants, among which scientists, professors and qualified technical specialists were in the most advantageous position.

With rare exceptions, Russian post-revolutionary emigrants were not subjected to political persecution and had opportunities for the development of social life, cultural, educational and scientific activities, the publication of periodicals and books in Russian.

Literature

1. Postnikov F.A. Colonel-worker (from the life of Russian emigrants in America) / Ed. Russian Literary Circle. – Berkeley (California), n.d.

2. Russian calendar-almanac = Russian-American calendar-almanac: A Handbook for 1932 / Ed. K.F. Gordienko. - New Haven (New-Heven): Russian publishing house "Drug", 1931. (Further: Russian calendar-almanac ... for 1932).

3. Awakening: The Organ of Free Thought / Ed. Russian progressive organizations in the United States and Canada. - Detroit, 1927. April. No. 1. S. 26.

4. Khisamutdinov A.A. In the New World or the history of the Russian diaspora on the Pacific coast of North America and the Hawaiian Islands. Vladivostok, 2003. S.23-25.

5. Zarnitsa: Monthly literary and popular science magazine / Russian group Zarnitsa. - New York, 1926. February. T.2. No.9. P.28.

6. "Totally personal and confidential!" B.A. Bakhmetev - V.A. Maklakov. Correspondence. 1919-1951. In 3 volumes. M., 2004. V.3. P.189.

7. GARF. F.6425. Op.1. D.19. L.8.

8. GARF. F.6425. Op.1. D.19. L.10-11.

9. Ulyankina T.I. US immigration policy in the first half of the 20th century and its impact on the legal status of Russian refugees. - In: Legal status of Russian emigration in the 1920s-1930s: Collection of scientific papers. SPb., 2005. S.231-233.

10. Russian scientific emigration: twenty portraits / Ed. Academician Bongard-Levin G.M. and Zakharova V.E. - M., 2001. P. 110.

11. Adamic L.A. Nation of nations. N.Y., 1945. P. 195; Eubank N. The Russians in America. Minneapolis, 1973, p. 69; and etc.

12. Russian refugees. P.132.

13. GARF. F.6425. Op.1. D.19. L.5ob.

14. GARF. F.6425. Op.1. D.19. L.3ob.

16. GARF. F. 5826. Op.1. D. 126. L.72.

17. GARF. F.6425. Op.1. D.19. L.2ob.

18. GARF. F.6425. Op.1. D.20. L.116.

19. Russian calendar-almanac ... for 1932. New Haven, 1931.p.115.

20. GARF. F.5863. Op.1. D.45. L.20.

21. GARF. F.5829. Op.1. D.9. L.2.