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, having decided 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 authorities" 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”, people who held key positions in the economic, socio-political, and cultural life of the country, left Russia in 1917.

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.



While in exile, many representatives of the Russian intelligentsia continued to work: they made scientific discoveries, promoted Russian culture, created medical care systems, developed faculties, headed the departments of leading universities in foreign countries, established new universities and gymnasiums.

In Moscow, within the framework of the International Annual Theological Conference of St. Tikhon's Orthodox Humanitarian University, the IX International Scientific and Educational Conference "People and Destinies of the Russian Diaspora" was held.

The conference was dedicated to the emigration of the Russian scientific elite abroad at the beginning of the 20th century. The experts in their reports told about the history of the life path of scientists who went abroad and made a significant contribution to the development of world science.

The event was attended by: Archbishop Michael of Geneva, independent researchers, experts from the Institute of World History of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Slavic Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, INION RAS, the Higher School of Economics, Moscow State University, the Institute of Russian Cultural Heritage of Latvia, the Institute of History of the Academy of Sciences of Moldova, etc.

As Professor of the Odessa National Medical University K.K. Vasiliev, the fate of a professor of imperial Russia naturally fell into two parts - life at home and in exile. What made some scientists, many of whom had already made a career and made a name in Russian science, emigrate from Russia after 1917 and disperse around the world along with other intellectuals? Everyone had their own private reasons: persecution, arrests, family circumstances, dismissals, closing of departments, the inability to continue work on the chosen topic, etc. However, ideological pressure can be called the main reason. “People were put in certain limits. A person who grew up free could not agree to such conditions, and, naturally, people left Russia not with joy, but with great bitterness in the hope of returning back to their homeland soon, ”said the doctor of history and representative of the Russian Institute to the International Affairs magazine. cultural heritage of Latvia Tatjana Feigmane.

The fate of the professor of Imperial Russia naturally fell into two parts - life at home and in exile. Data on the number of Russian scientists who emigrated in the 1920s vary from 500 to more than 1,000 people. However, as Associate Professor of the Higher School (Faculty) of State Audit of Moscow State University named after M.V. Lomonosov Olga Barkova, many modern researchers believe that the Russian scientific emigration was about ¼ of the pre-revolutionary scientific community, i.e. about 1100 people. Some scientists who found themselves in a foreign land managed not only to realize themselves in the difficult conditions of emigration, but also to promote Russian scientific thought abroad. As an example, they include the following personalities, whose life and work were described in detail by the participants of the conference:

• Privatdozent of Petrograd University Alexander Vasilyevich Boldur, having emigrated to Romania, headed for many years the historical departments of the leading universities of the country.
• Professor N.K. Kulchitsky, who made a dizzying career from a medical student to the Minister of Education in Imperial Russia, became world famous in the field of histology and embryology. In 1921, he moved to Britain and, while working at the University of London, made a significant contribution to the development of domestic and British histology and biology.
• Historian of philosophy and jurisprudence P.I. Novgorodtsev became one of the organizers of the Russian Faculty of Law in Prague, which was opened at the Charles University in 1922.
• Clinical scientist A.I. Ignatovsky after 1917 was evacuated to the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, where he received a chair at the University of Belgrade. After the Second World War, the University of Skopje opened in Macedonia, where he also headed the clinical department. Among other things, A.I. Ignatovsky founded his scientific school.
• Private Associate Professor of St. Petersburg University A.N. Kruglevsky, in connection with the closure of the legal departments of the faculties of social sciences, left for Latvia in 1924, where he already earned authority at the University of Latvia, became the author of many scientific works on criminal law published in Latvian, Russian and German. Participated in the creation of articles on criminal law for the Latvian Encyclopedic Dictionary.
• Professor F.V. Taranovsky (a well-known lawyer, doctor of state law, author of the textbook "Encyclopedia of Law", which is still published and used in law faculties) emigrated to the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes in 1920, where he was immediately elected professor of Slavic law at the University of Belgrade, and in 1930 he headed the Russian Scientific Institute in Belgrade.

An important contribution to the formation and development of the Russian scientific community in exile, as well as world science, was made not only by men, but also by women who, according to Olga Barkova, went abroad mainly as part of their families, either with their parents or with their husbands. The expert cited several women as examples:

• Doctor of Medicine Nadezhda Dobrovolskaya-Zavadskaya, the first woman from Russia to head the Department of Surgery, whose research in the field of oncology in the 1930s. were associated with the study of the effects of X-rays on the nature of various cancers.
• Immunologist, graduate of Moscow University, head of the laboratory at the Pasteur Institute and laureate of the French Academy of Medicine (1945) Antonina Gelen (nee Shchedrina), who proposed a method for using bacteriophage viruses for medical purposes, which laid the foundation for one of the methods of modern chemotherapy.
• Philosopher - theologian Nadezhda Gorodetskaya, the first woman professor who worked at the university department in Liverpool.
• Historian Anna Burgina, a specialist in the history of the Menshevik movement, whose efforts in the United States formed a scientific direction for the study of the history of the labor movement and trained a whole generation of American specialists in the history of Russia.

At the same time, not all of the emigrated Russian intelligentsia successfully realized themselves in a foreign land, as the complex processes of adaptation and integration into a new society, language difficulties and other problems affected. According to the Paris and Marseille Bureau of Zemgor for 1923, out of 7050 people, 51.3% were people of intelligent professions who received earnings in the field of physical labor, and only 0.1% - in the field of mental labor.

The Russian emigration wave after 1917 moved not only to Europe, but also to Asia, to China, where there were specific conditions - not only the climate, but also a completely different civilization, language, customs, lack of sanitation and much more. Senior researcher at INION RAS Viktoriya Sharonova, who highlighted her report to Russian professors in Shanghai, noted that the Russian faculty in this country can be divided into two categories: 1 - those who came to China during the construction of the Chinese Eastern Railway, 2 - refugees , who came mainly from St. Petersburg (it was they who made up the color of the professorship), as well as the remnants of Kolchak's army, refugees from Western and Eastern Siberia, the Far East, Transbaikal Cossacks. “In China, professors carried out, first of all, educational activities not only among Russians, but also among Chinese youth. Thanks to our intelligentsia, a new generation of Chinese has emerged. Directions were very different. For the Russians, military education was the most important (because cadet corps were evacuated to China and a large number of Russian military men lived here), for the Chinese, European medicine was important, as well as culture, ”the expert said.

In her speech, Victoria Sharonova mentioned Professor Bari Adolf Eduardovich, a native of St. Petersburg, a psychiatrist by training. He arrived in Shanghai, a city with one of the highest suicide rates, where people went crazy, homesick. Adolf Eduardovich was active in educational and social activities: he taught at the University of Shanghai, arranged free consultations for Russian emigrants, was a detachment doctor of the Russian regiment of the Shanghai volunteer corps, chairman of the Russian charitable society, professor at the Chinese University in Beijing. Victoria Sharonova noted the high role of Bari in saving the lives of Russian emigrants in Shanghai.

At the end of the conference, the participants agreed that, in addition to all scientific achievements, Russian emigrant scientists presented amazing examples of morality, fortitude, readiness for self-sacrifice, which can serve as an example for today's youth.

Barkova O. N. "They could not go into only one science ...": women - scientists of the Russian diaspora in 1917 - 1939 // Clio. - 2016. - No. 12. - S. 153–162.

The first wave of Russian emigration is a phenomenon resulting from the Civil War, which began in 1917 and lasted for almost six years. Nobles, soldiers, manufacturers, intellectuals, clergy and civil servants left their homeland. More than two million people left Russia in the period 1917-1922.

Causes of the first wave of Russian emigration

People leave their homeland for economic, political, social reasons. Migration is a process that has occurred to varying degrees at all times. But it is characteristic primarily for the era of wars and revolutions.

The first wave of Russian emigration is a phenomenon that has no analogue in world history. The ships were full. People were ready to endure intolerable conditions, if only to leave the country in which the Bolsheviks won.

After the revolution, members of noble families were repressed. Those who did not have time to escape abroad died. There were, of course, exceptions, for example, Alexei Tolstoy, who managed to adapt to the new regime. The nobles, who did not have time or did not want to leave Russia, changed their surnames and hid. Some managed to live under a false name for many years. Others, being exposed, ended up in Stalin's camps.

Beginning in 1917, writers, entrepreneurs, and artists left Russia. There is an opinion that European art of the 20th century is unthinkable without Russian emigrants. The fate of people cut off from their native land was tragic. Among the representatives of the first wave of Russian emigration there are many world-famous writers, poets, scientists. But recognition doesn't always bring happiness.

What is the reason for the first wave of Russian emigration? The new government, which showed sympathy for the proletariat and hated the intelligentsia.

Among the representatives of the first wave of Russian emigration, there are not only creative people, but also entrepreneurs who managed to make fortunes through their own work. Among the manufacturers were those who at first rejoiced at the revolution. But not for long. Soon they realized that they had no place in the new state. Factories, enterprises, plants were nationalized in Soviet Russia.

In the era of the first wave of Russian emigration, few people were interested in the fate of ordinary people. The new government did not care about the so-called brain drain either. The people who were at the helm believed that in order to create a new one, everything old should be destroyed. The Soviet state did not need talented writers, poets, artists, musicians. New masters of the word appeared, ready to convey new ideals to the people.

Let us consider in more detail the causes and features of the first wave of Russian emigration. The brief biographies presented below will create a complete picture of the phenomenon, which had terrible consequences both for the destinies of individuals and for the whole country.

Famous emigrants

Russian writers of the first wave of emigration - Vladimir Nabokov, Ivan Bunin, Ivan Shmelev, Leonid Andreev, Arkady Averchenko, Alexander Kuprin, Sasha Cherny, Teffi, Nina Berberova, Vladislav Khodasevich. Nostalgia permeated the works of many of them.

After the Revolution, such outstanding artists as Fyodor Chaliapin, Sergei Rachmaninov, Wassily Kandinsky, Igor Stravinsky, Marc Chagall left their homeland. Representatives of the first wave of Russian emigration are also aircraft designer engineer Vladimir Zworykin, chemist Vladimir Ipatiev, hydraulic scientist Nikolai Fedorov.

Ivan Bunin

When it comes to Russian writers of the first wave of emigration, his name is remembered in the first place. Ivan Bunin met the October events in Moscow. Until 1920, he kept a diary, which he later published under the title Cursed Days. The writer did not accept Soviet power. In relation to the revolutionary events, Bunin is often opposed to Blok. In his autobiographical work, the last Russian classic, as the author of "Cursed Days" is called, argued with the creator of the poem "The Twelve". Critic Igor Sukhikh said: "If Blok heard the music of the revolution in the events of 1917, then Bunin heard the cacophony of rebellion."

Before emigrating, the writer lived for some time with his wife in Odessa. In January 1920, they boarded the Sparta steamer, which was leaving for Constantinople. In March, Bunin was already in Paris - in the city in which many representatives of the first wave of Russian emigration spent their last years.

The fate of the writer can not be called tragic. In Paris, he worked a lot, and it was here that he wrote the work for which he received the Nobel Prize. But Bunin's most famous cycle - "Dark Alleys" - is riddled with longing for Russia. Nevertheless, he did not accept the offer to return to their homeland, which many Russian emigrants received after the Second World War. The last Russian classic died in 1953.

Ivan Shmelev

Not all members of the intelligentsia heard the "cacophony of revolt" in the days of the October events. Many perceived the revolution as a victory for justice and goodness. At first, he rejoiced at the October events and, however, quickly became disillusioned with those who were in power. And in 1920 an event occurred, after which the writer could no longer believe in the ideals of the revolution. The only son of Shmelev - an officer of the tsarist army - was shot by the Bolsheviks.

In 1922, the writer and his wife left Russia. By that time, Bunin was already in Paris and in his correspondence promised more than once to help him. Shmelev spent several months in Berlin, then went to France, where he spent the rest of his life.

One of the greatest Russian writers spent his last years in poverty. He died at the age of 77. Buried, like Bunin, at Sainte-Genevieve-des-Bois. Famous writers and poets - Dmitry Merezhkovsky, Zinaida Gippius, Teffi - found their last resting place in this Parisian cemetery.

Leonid Andreev

This writer at first accepted the revolution, but later changed his views. Andreev's latest works are imbued with hatred for the Bolsheviks. He ended up in exile after the separation of Finland from Russia. But he did not live long abroad. In 1919, Leonid Andreev died of a heart attack.

The grave of the writer is located in St. Petersburg, at the Volkovskoye cemetery. Andreev's ashes were reburied thirty years after his death.

Vladimir Nabokov

The writer came from a wealthy aristocratic family. In 1919, shortly before the Bolsheviks took over the Crimea, the Nabokovs left Russia for good. They managed to withdraw part of what saved them from poverty and hunger, to which many Russian emigrants were doomed.

Vladimir Nabokov graduated from the University of Cambridge. In 1922 he moved to Berlin, where he earned his living by teaching English. Sometimes he published his stories in local newspapers. Among the heroes of Nabokov there are many Russian emigrants ("Protection of Luzhin", "Mashenka").

In 1925, Nabokov married a girl from a Jewish-Russian family. She worked as an editor. In 1936, she was fired - an anti-Semitic campaign began. The Nabokovs left for France, settled in the capital, and often visited Menton and Cannes. In 1940, they managed to escape from Paris, which, just a few weeks after their departure, was occupied by German troops. On the Champlain liner, Russian emigrants reached the shores of the New World.

In the United States, Nabokov lectured. He wrote both in Russian and in English. In 1960 he returned to Europe and settled in Switzerland. The Russian writer died in 1977. The grave of Vladimir Nabokov is located in the cemetery in Clarens, located in Montreux.

Alexander Kuprin

After the end of the Great Patriotic War, a wave of re-emigration began. Those who left Russia in the early twenties were promised Soviet passports, jobs, housing, and other benefits. However, many emigrants who returned to their homeland became victims of Stalinist repressions. Kuprin returned before the war. He, fortunately, did not suffer the fate of most of the emigrants of the first wave.

Alexander Kuprin left immediately after the October Revolution. In France, at first he was mainly engaged in translations. He returned to Russia in 1937. Kuprin was famous in Europe, the Soviet authorities could not do with him as they did with most of them. However, the writer, being by that time a sick and old man, became a tool in the hands of propagandists. They made the image of a repentant writer who returned to sing a happy Soviet life out of him.

Alexander Kuprin died in 1938 from cancer. He was buried at the Volkovsky cemetery.

Arkady Averchenko

Before the revolution, the life of the writer was wonderful. He was the editor-in-chief of a humorous magazine, which was very popular. But in 1918 everything changed dramatically. The publishing house was closed. Averchenko took a negative position in relation to the new government. With difficulty, he managed to get to Sevastopol - the city in which he was born and spent his early years. The writer sailed to Constantinople on one of the last steamships a few days before the Crimea was taken by the Reds.

First Averchenko lived in Sofia, then in Belgorod. In 1922 he left for Prague. It was difficult for him to live away from Russia. Most of the works written in emigration are permeated with the longing of a person who is forced to live far from his homeland and only occasionally hear his native language. However, in the Czech Republic, he quickly gained popularity.

In 1925, Arkady Averchenko fell ill. He spent several weeks in the Prague City Hospital. Died March 12, 1925.

taffy

The Russian writer of the first wave of emigration left her homeland in 1919. In Novorossiysk, she boarded a steamer that was going to Turkey. From there I went to Paris. For three years, Nadezhda Lokhvitskaya (this is the real name of the writer and poetess) lived in Germany. She published abroad, and already in 1920 she organized a literary salon. Teffi died in 1952 in Paris.

Nina Berberova

In 1922, together with her husband, poet Vladislav Khodasevich, the writer left Soviet Russia for Germany. Here they spent three months. They lived in Czechoslovakia, in Italy, and since 1925 - in Paris. Berberova was published in the emigrant edition "Russian Thought". In 1932, the writer divorced Khodasevich. After 18 years, she moved to the USA. She lived in New York, where she published the almanac Commonwealth. Since 1958, Berberova has taught at Yale University. She died in 1993.

Sasha Black

The real name of the poet, one of the representatives of the Silver Age, is Alexander Glikberg. He emigrated in 1920. Lived in Lithuania, Rome, Berlin. In 1924, Sasha Cherny left for France, where he spent his last years. In the town of La Favière, he had a house where Russian artists, writers, and musicians often gathered. Sasha Cherny died of a heart attack in 1932.

Fyodor Chaliapin

The famous opera singer left Russia, one might say, not of his own free will. In 1922, he was on tour, which, as it seemed to the authorities, dragged on. Long performances in Europe and the United States aroused suspicion. Vladimir Mayakovsky immediately reacted, writing an angry poem in which there were such words: "I'll be the first to shout - roll back!"

In 1927, the singer donated the proceeds from one of the concerts in favor of the children of Russian emigrants. In Soviet Russia, this was perceived as support for the White Guards. In August 1927, Chaliapin was deprived of Soviet citizenship.

In exile, he performed a lot, even starred in a film. But in 1937 he was diagnosed with leukemia. On April 12 of the same year, the famous Russian opera singer died. He was buried in the Batignolles cemetery in Paris.

introduction

backstory

Contrary to popular belief, mass emigration from Russia began even before the revolution

Maria Sorokina

historian

“The first major migration flow was the labor migration of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. These were primarily national streams - Jews, Poles, Ukrainians and Germans. .... Expand > In fact, until the end of the 19th century, only Jews were allowed to travel freely, all the rest were issued a passport for only 5 years, then it had to be renewed. At the same time, even the most loyal citizens had to ask for permission to leave.

It is believed that about two million Jews left the Russian Empire during this period. There was also an emigration of ethno-professional groups and sectarians - Old Believers, Mennonites, Molokans, etc. They went mainly to the USA, many to Canada: there are still settlements of Russian Doukhobors, whom Leo Tolstoy helped to leave. Another direction of labor migration is Latin America, up to 200 thousand people left there by 1910.”

Mikhail Denisenko

demographer

“Until 1905, emigration was allowed in relation to Jews, Poles and sectarians, who, in addition to the Doukhobors, also included the descendants of German colonists who lost their privileges in the second quarter of the 19th century. .... Expand > Cases of proper Russian (which before the revolution included Great Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians) emigration were relatively rare - it was either political emigration, or sailors who served in the merchant fleet, seasonal workers who left to work in Germany, as well as the already mentioned sectarians.

After 1905, leaving to work was allowed, and a Russian working mass began to form in the USA, Canada, Australia and Latin America. If in 1910, according to the census, there were only 40,000 Russians in the United States, then in the next decade, more than 160,000 people arrived there.

Numerous communities have formed in the states of Pennsylvania and Illinois. True, in American statistics, the Orthodox Ukrainians of Austria-Hungary were also classified as Russians, who settled together with the Russians and went to the same churches with them. Basically, they were engaged in hard physical labor in metallurgical and automobile plants, slaughterhouses and textile factories, in mines. However, there were also nobles and raznochintsy, who for various reasons were forced to leave Russia. For example, a well-known Russian engineer, the inventor of the incandescent lamp, Alexander Lodygin, worked in the USA for a long time. The founder of the city of St. Petersburg in Florida was the Russian nobleman Pyotr Dementiev, who became a well-known businessman in exile. Trotsky and Bukharin found political asylum in the United States.

Formerly illiterate peasants, who constituted the majority in this stream, it was not easy to adapt to the high rates of labor in American industry; they often received industrial injuries, foremen and managers treated them with disdain. After the Bolshevik revolution, many lost their jobs and could not find a new one - employers saw a Bolshevik in every Russian.

Photo: ITAR-TASS
Lenin (second from right) in a group of Russian political emigrants in Stockholm, passing from Switzerland to Russia, 1917

first wave

1917 - late 1920s

It is this wave, caused by the 1917 revolution, that is traditionally called the first, and it is with it that many associate the concept of “Russian emigration”

Marina Sorokina

historian

“Strictly speaking, the stream formed after the two revolutions of 1917 and the Civil War cannot be called “emigration”. People did not choose their fate, in fact they were refugees. .... Expand > This status was officially recognized, under the League of Nations there was a commission for refugees, which was headed by Fridtjof Nansen (this is how the so-called Nansen passports appeared, which were issued to people deprived of a passport and citizenship. - BG).

At first, we went primarily to the Slavic countries - Bulgaria, the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, Czechoslovakia. A small group of Russian military went to Latin America.

The Russian refugees of this wave had a rather strong branched organization. In many settlement countries, Russian scientific institutes arose to help scientists. In addition, a significant number of specialists took advantage of the established connections, left and made a brilliant career. A classic example is Sikorsky and Zworykin in the USA. A less well-known example is Elena Antipova, who went to Brazil in 1929 and actually became the founder of the Brazilian psychological and pedagogical system. And there are many such examples."

Mikhail Denisenko

demographer

“The idea of ​​Americans about Russians as Bolsheviks and Communists was radically changed by the white emigration, shining with the names of S. Rakhmaninov and F. Chaliapin, I. Sikorsky and V. Zvorykin, P. Sorokin and V. Ipatiev. .... Expand > In terms of ethnic composition, it was heterogeneous, but these emigrants identified themselves with Russia and this, first of all, determined their nationality.

The first main flow went to countries located relatively close to Russia (Germany, Czechoslovakia, Poland). As Wrangel's army was evacuated, Istanbul, Bulgaria and Yugoslavia became major centers. The White Fleet until 1924 was based in Bizerte (Tunisia). In the future, emigrants moved further to the West, in particular to France. In the years that followed, many moved on to the US, as well as Canada and Latin America. In addition, white emigration went through the Far Eastern borders; large emigrant centers formed in Harbin and Shanghai. From there, many emigrants subsequently moved to America, Europe and Australia.

The number of this flow is estimated differently - from 1 to 3 million people. The most widely accepted estimate is 2 million people, based on Nansen passports issued. But there were also those who did not fall into the sphere of attention of organizations that helped refugees: the Volga Germans fleeing the famine of 1921-1922, Jews who fled from pogroms that resumed during the Civil War, Russians who received citizenship of states that were not part of the USSR. By the way, during the Civil War, the idea of ​​marrying a foreigner and leaving the country became popular - foreign prisoners of war of the First World War (mainly from the former Austria-Hungary) in Russia had more than 2 million people.

In the mid-1920s, the emigration outflow noticeably weakened (the Germans continued to leave), and in the late 1920s the country's borders were closed.

second wave

1945 - early 1950s

The Second World War caused a new wave of emigration from the USSR - some left the country after the retreating German army, others, driven to concentration camps and forced labor, did not always return back

Marina Sorokina

historian

“This wave primarily consists of the so-called displaced persons (DP). These are residents of the Soviet Union and annexed territories who, as a result of World War II, left the Soviet Union for one reason or another. .... Expand > Among them were prisoners of war, collaborators, people who voluntarily decided to leave, or those who simply ended up in another country in a whirlwind of war.

The fate of the population of the occupied and non-occupied territories was decided at the Yalta Conference in 1945; what to do with Soviet citizens, the allies left Stalin to decide, and he sought to return everyone to the USSR. For several years, large groups of DP lived in special camps in the American, British and French zones of occupation; in most cases they were sent back to the USSR. Moreover, the allies handed over to the Soviet side not only Soviet citizens, but also former Russians who had long had foreign citizenships, emigrants - such as, for example, the Cossacks in Lienz (in 1945, the British occupation forces handed over to the USSR several thousand Cossacks who lived in the vicinity of the city of Lienz. - BG). In the USSR they were repressed.

The bulk of those who avoided returning to the Soviet Union went to the United States and Latin America. A large number of Soviet scientists from the Soviet Union left for the United States - they were helped, in particular, by the famous Tolstovsky Foundation, created by Alexandra Lvovna Tolstaya. And many of those whom the international authorities classified as collaborators left for Latin America - because of this, the Soviet Union subsequently had difficult relations with the countries of this region.

Mikhail Denisenko

demographer

“The emigration of the Second World War is very diverse in terms of ethnic composition and other characteristics. Volksdeutsche (Russian Germans), who lived in the territory of the Soviet Union occupied by the Germans, left with the Germans of their own free will. .... Expand > Naturally, those who actively collaborated with the German occupation authorities, primarily policemen and soldiers and officers of the military units created by the Nazis, sought to hide. Finally, not all of the Soviet prisoners of war and civilians deported to Germany wanted to return to their homeland - some were afraid of reprisals, others managed to create families. In order to avoid forced repatriation and obtain refugee status, some Soviet citizens changed their documents and surnames, hiding their origin.

Numerical estimates of the emigration wave caused by World War II are very approximate. The most probable is in the interval from 700 thousand to 1 million people. More than half of them were the peoples of the Baltic states, a quarter were Germans, a fifth were Ukrainians, and only 5% were Russians.”

third wave

early 1960s - late 1980s

Few managed to get over the Iron Curtain - Jews and Germans were released first of all, if the political situation was favorable for them. At the same time, dissidents began to be expelled

Marina Sorokina

historian

“This stream is often called Jewish. After the Second World War, with the active assistance of the USSR and Stalin, the State of Israel was created. By this point, Soviet Jews had already survived the terror of the 1930s and the struggle with the cosmopolitans of the late 1940s, so when the opportunity to leave appeared during the thaw, many took it. .... Expand > At the same time, part of the emigrants did not stay in Israel, but went further - mainly to the USA; it was then that the expression "a Jew is a means of transportation" appeared.

These were no longer refugees, but people who really wanted to leave the country: they applied to leave, they were refused, they applied again and again - and finally they were released. This wave became one of the sources of political dissidence - a person was denied the right to choose a country of life, one of the basic human rights. Many sold all the furniture, quit their jobs - and when they refused to let them out, they went on strikes and hunger strikes in empty apartments, attracting the attention of the media, the Israeli embassy, ​​and sympathetic Western journalists.

Jews constituted the overwhelming majority in this stream. It was they who had a diaspora abroad, ready to support new members. The rest were more difficult. Life in exile is bitter bread. Since the beginning of the 20th century, different people have found themselves abroad with very different ideas about the future: some sat on their suitcases and waited for their return to Russia, others tried to adapt. Many were completely unexpectedly thrown out of life, someone managed to get a job, someone could not. The princes drove a taxi and starred in extras. Back in the 1930s in France, a significant layer of the Russian emigration elite was literally entangled in the intelligence network of the Soviet NKVD. Despite the fact that by the period described the situation had changed, intra-diaspora relations remained very tense.”

Mikhail Denisenko

demographer

“The Iron Curtain came down with the start of the Cold War. The number of people leaving the USSR during the year was, as a rule, small. So, in 1986, a little more than 2 thousand people left for Germany, about 300 for Israel. .... Expand > But in some years, a change in the foreign policy situation led to a surge - emigration issues often acted as a bargaining chip in various negotiations between the governments of the USSR and the USA or the USSR and Germany. Thanks to this, after the Six-Day War from 1968 to 1974, Israel received almost 100,000 migrants from the Soviet Union. Subsequent restrictions led to a sharp reduction in this flow. For this reason, the United States adopted the Jackson-Vanik amendment in 1974, which was repealed this fall (the amendment to the American Trade Law restricted trade with countries that violate the right of their citizens to emigrate, and primarily concerned the USSR. - BG).

If we take into account the small outflow of people to Germany and Israel that existed in the 1950s, it turns out that in total this wave involved more than 500 thousand people. Its ethnic composition was formed not only by Jews and Germans, who were in the majority, but also by representatives of other nations with their own statehood (Greeks, Poles, Finns, Spaniards).

The second, smaller flow consisted of those who fled the Soviet Union during business trips or tours or were forcibly expelled from the country. The third stream was formed by migrants for family reasons - wives and children of foreign citizens, they were mainly sent to third world countries.

fourth wave

since the late 1980s

After the end of the Cold War, everyone who could one way or another get settled abroad poured out of the country - through repatriation programs, through refugee status, or in some other way. By zero, this wave has noticeably dried up

Mikhail Denisenko

demographer

“What is traditionally called the fourth wave of emigration, I would divide into two separate flows: one - from 1987 to the early 2000s, the second - the 2000s. .... Expand >

The beginning of the first flow is associated with changes in Soviet legislation adopted in 1986–1987, which made it easier for ethnic migrants to travel abroad. From 1987 to 1995, the average annual number of migrants from the territory of the Russian Federation increased from 10,000 to 115,000 people; more than 1.5 million left Russia between 1987 and 2002. This migration flow had a clear geographical component: from 90 to 95% of all migrants went to Germany, Israel and the USA. This direction was set by the presence of generous repatriation programs in the first two countries and programs for the reception of refugees and scientists from the former USSR in the latter.

Since the mid-1990s, in Europe and the United States, the policy regarding emigration from the former USSR began to change. Opportunities for emigrants to obtain refugee status have been sharply reduced. In Germany, the program for the admission of ethnic Germans began to be curtailed (by the beginning of the 2000s, the quota for their admission was reduced to 100 thousand people); the requirements for repatriates in terms of the level of knowledge of the German language have noticeably increased. In addition, the potential for ethnic emigration has been exhausted. As a result, the outflow of the population for permanent residence abroad has decreased.

In the 2000s, a new stage in the history of Russian emigration began. Currently, this is normal economic emigration, which is subject to global economic trends and is regulated by the laws of those countries that receive migrants. The political component no longer plays a special role. Russian citizens seeking to emigrate to developed countries have no advantages over potential migrants from other countries. They have to prove their professional competence to the immigration services of foreign states, demonstrate knowledge of foreign languages ​​and integration opportunities.

Largely due to tough selection and competition, the Russian immigrant community is becoming younger. Emigrants from Russia living in Europe and North America are distinguished by a high level of education. Women predominate among emigrants, which is explained by the higher frequency of marriage with foreigners compared to men.

In total, the number of emigrants from Russia from 2003 to 2010 exceeded 500 thousand people. At the same time, the geography of Russian emigration has noticeably expanded. Against the backdrop of declining flows to Israel and Germany, the importance of Canada, Spain, France, Great Britain and some other countries has increased. It should be noted that the process of globalization and new communication technologies have significantly increased the variety of forms of migration movements, due to which “emigration forever” has become a very conditional concept.”

Marina Sorokina

historian

“The 20th century was exceptionally active in terms of migrations. Now the situation has changed. Take Europe - it no longer has national borders. .... Expand > If earlier cosmopolitanism was the lot of singles, now it is an absolutely natural psychological and civil state of a person. We can not say that in the late 1980s - early 1990s. a new wave of emigration began in Russia, but that the country entered a new open world. This has nothing to do with the flows of Russian emigration that we spoke about above.”

photo story

pearl by the sea

In the 70s, Russian emigrants began to actively settle in the New York area of ​​Brighton Beach.
He became the main symbol of the third wave of emigration, a time machine that is still able to transfer anyone who wishes to an imaginary Odessa of the Brezhnev times. Brighton "pounds" and "slice", concerts by Mikhail Zadornov and pensioners walking along the "boardwalk" - all this, obviously, is not long, and the old-timers complain that Brighton is not the same anymore. Photographer Mikhail Fridman (Salt Images) observed the modern life of Brighton Beach

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 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 the estimates of the Pedagogical Bureau for the Affairs of the Middle and Lower Russian Schools Abroad, established in Prague in 1923 under the chairmanship of the outstanding theologian, philosopher and teacher V.V. Zenkovsky, by the mid-1920s there were about 20 thousand Russian children of only school age abroad . 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 the 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 his 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 first stored 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 the 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 tight, 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 lit, 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 want to sleep, 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 intertwined, 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 to 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 like in the 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