Their parents dreamed about it. And they did it. 100 years after the 1917 revolution, the descendants of aristocrats returned to live and work in Russia. A country that is now compatible with their values.

Daniil Tolstoy recalls his first trip to Russia with his father in 1989. Then he was 16 years old. “Mystical experience,” he smiles. Daniil meets guests at the alley with majestic birch trees, which leads to the family property, which has become a museum. We are located 200 kilometers from Moscow, in Yasnaya Polyana, the legendary estate where his great-grandfather Leo Tolstoy wrote his masterpieces War and Peace and Anna Karenina. Here, among summer cottages and forests, Daniil Tolstoy is engaged in a large-scale ecological farming project. “The black soil here is one of the best in the country. And the ideal climate: enough rain and warm summers. Just don't yawn, because spring passes very quickly.

Tolstoy, Romanov, Apraksin... They bear these well-known surnames, because they are descendants of the Russian aristocracy and officers of the White Army. All of them were expelled from the country by the revolution of 1917. In France, where many of them emigrated, we call them White Russians and we know very well their history, the difficult circumstances of their appearance. These well-educated, but left without money (most lost everything with the change of regime) people became taxi drivers and workers. Generations later, many do not speak Russian and have never been to the land of their ancestors. Be that as it may, 100 years after the revolution, the minority that became pro-Russian is returning to its roots, since Russia has ceased to be Soviet.

Such is the case with Swedish-born Daniil Tolstoy. Although the return for him is associated with emotions (he says that the idea to go into agriculture came to him at a family meeting, at the sight of abandoned endless fields), it is explained primarily by the economy. Agroindustry is a priority for the Putin government. “The standards are low, but the potential is just huge. Russia knows how to catch up quickly if it wants to.” To take advantage of this, a descendant of Tolstoy bought 500 cows and 7,000 hectares of land. He plans to grow cereals and start producing bread, cheese, sausages ... He is counting on government subsidies, which will be easier to get thanks to a well-known name and connections.

Rostislav Ordovsky-Tanaevsky managed to make a fortune in the new Russia. On his account, probably, the most impressive financial achievements among all the descendants of white emigrants who returned to the country. Although the businessman himself lives between London and Moscow, he speaks of his Russian heritage with fervor and pride. This is evidenced by a family tree with many ancestors and their photographs on the walls of his spacious office, where he meets us. His great-grandfather was the governor of Tobolsk, where the entourage of the last tsar was sent in 1917 before the assassination in Yekaterinburg. After the revolution, his family left Russia, first to Yugoslavia, then to Venezuela after World War II, "to be as far away from Stalin as possible."

In 1984, Rostislav Ordovsky-Tanaevsky worked for Kodak. He was invited to a film festival in Moscow. There he saw how difficult it was to eat somewhere in the city. “Some restaurants had an absurd “Closed for Lunch” sign. You had to ask to be served. It's just unthinkable!" A few years later, he settled in the Russian capital, opened the first enterprise and began to develop fast food chains: Spanish, Swiss and Italian cuisine enjoyed huge success against the backdrop of the opening of the communist bloc. “Then there was anarchy. Everything that was not forbidden was allowed. The laws on doing business by foreigners were reduced to just three pages.” He smiles at the memory of those times.

There is something to smile about: today Rostislav owns about 200 restaurants. He is an active member of the White Russian community and every year organizes receptions with the participation of representatives of different waves of emigration. “We whites were brought up with an often idealized idea of ​​Russia. At home, the first toast was always to Russia, and there was a completely naive belief that one day we would return to liberate the country.”

Christopher Muravyov-Apostol brushes aside nostalgia (which, for his taste, is too gloomy) and speaks, rather, of an emotional connection with his native country. 15 years ago, this Swiss businessman and philanthropist embarked on a long adventure: he restored the palace of his ancestors of the 18th century and turned it into an exhibition center. He quickly won the support of the media that appreciated his story and the former mayor of Moscow, Yuri Luzhkov, who was removed in 2010 for corruption. We meet with him in the Moscow Palace. He comes out to us with a smile, apologizes for being late, answers the call of his Brazilian wife and starts a conversation in French or English, demonstrating his typical language skills. He was born in Brazil to a family that is known for participating in the uprising against the emperor for the constitutional order with the Decembrist movement in 1825.

After the Bolsheviks seized power, the family left, first to France, then to Geneva. In 1991, she was invited to Russia to follow in the footsteps of her ancestors. “They wanted to start a process of reconciliation, to bring whites back into the country. Of course, my father was afraid to go, but at the same time he was full of enthusiasm.” Christopher could not resist the charm of the country. “I grew up in Brazil, where the heritage of the past is almost invisible. Therefore, here I was fascinated by such attachment to history. Back then, he worked in developing-country finance and redirected his career to Russia so that he could return there more often.

Context

Lessons from the February Revolution

SRBIN.info 06.03.2017

Petersburg does not celebrate the centenary of the revolution

Die Welt 03/14/2017

One hundred years is too little

Yle 05.03.2017

The victory of "historical Russia"

Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 01/11/2017

SR alternative

Radio Liberty 03/09/2017 At that time, the former Moscow palace of the family, which became the Museum of the Decembrists under the USSR, finally fell into disrepair. “There was still a director, a deputy, a woman in the wardrobe. But everything was just for show, because in fact no one was paid. Banks and casinos have targeted the building. I took urgent action and, fortunately, my project was supported. First of all, because I wanted to create a place open to the public. In addition, the Muravyov-Apostles still have a romantic image created during the USSR: we are, first of all, Decembrists and revolutionaries, and not aristocrats. Only one issue remains to be resolved: he received a lease for 49 years, and the palace remains the property of Moscow. He would like to make it permanent. He himself is clearly amused by the situation: “All this is a little strange. White stories are often dark and nostalgic. I returned to my roots through a wonderful adventure. There is something romantic about it."

David Henderson-Stewart is also headlong into the romantic business. This English descendant of white émigrés is relaunching the famous Soviet watch brand Raketa. In 2010, he bought the Petrodvorets Watch Factory founded by Peter the Great in 1821. It was nationalized under the USSR, became a state-owned enterprise and started producing watches, including those in honor of the Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin. After the 1990s, it fell into disrepair, and the decision to buy it was risky. Be that as it may, David and his business partner, Frenchman of Russian origin Jacques von Polier, are convinced of the right step: “In 2010, everyone told us that this was crazy. "Made in Russia" no longer seemed attractive to anyone. People wanted to wear Swiss watches. The locals would never do such a thing. For us, everything was different. The project concerned us. We are Russian in the sense that we are patriots, but we have a French sense of prestige and brand.”

Since then, the company has managed to win big names over to its side: the famous fashion model Natalya Vodianova (she gave her name to one of the models), a couple of Bolshoi Theater stars, the Serbian director Emir Kusturica and the descendant of the last tsar, Prince Rostislav Romanov, who lives between Britain and Russia and is on the company's board of directors.

Here the next question arises: how can the descendants of aristocrats support the Soviet brand? In a design studio in the very center of Moscow, we get an answer. “We start from the pure aesthetics of the Russian avant-garde. This artistic movement has conquered the world much more than the ideas of Bolshevism,” Jacques von Polier eloquently argues with a charming smile, who loves his work, as evidenced by a T-shirt with the Rocket logo. “At the same time, we refuse to spread nostalgia for the USSR. We have removed political symbols from watches: Lenin, hammer and sickle.”

The point is that history is still a sensitive issue. In public opinion, whites are often seen as strangers who fled the country at its worst time. “For 70 years of communism, civil war was a taboo subject. White troops were considered traitors. And the nature of history books has changed little,” lamented David Henderson-Stewart. Together with his wife Xenia Jagello, the daughter of a priest from the Orthodox Alexander Nevsky Cathedral in Paris, they fought to open an exhibition about the White Army. It took place in the Novospassky Monastery, where the remains of the Romanovs are buried.

This evening, a small group of descendants of emigrants gather at Xenia and David's. They prepare for the religious service and try to practice singing. Borscht and herring under a fur coat are served on the table, two typical Russian dishes. Blond children play the balalaika and domra. Old war anthems are sung. “Music is a pillar of emigration, it allows you to save the language,” says Ksenia. According to her, she "adores Russia" and decided to live here in order to give local education to children. “Here they receive an open, much more creative and serious education. Nevertheless, everything cannot be called idyllic either. Sometimes it's not easy."

In any case, even though the descendants of white emigrants did not find the lost paradise of their ancestors, they see themselves in the values ​​of modern Russia: religion and patriotism. “Putin is a true Orthodox,” notes Rostislav Ordovsky-Tanaevsky on behalf of the community. He goes to church and white people appreciate it. In addition, he raised the country, returned her place in the world, even if his authoritarian steps may not be liked.”

A similar opinion is shared in the "Rocket". “With the advent of Putin, people have regained their pride, and our watches are a step in that direction. The current political situation with the rise of patriotism certainly plays into our hands.” This is also evidenced by the latest models: the watch "Crimea 2014" was released in honor of the "unification of Crimea with Russia." Be that as it may, only a few have accepted Russian citizenship, as Vladimir Putin formally offered them. Most of them constantly travel to their homeland. “I am French, France gave us everything when we arrived,” one of them admits. Others talk about the social benefits of not having Russian citizenship, others about the administrative difficulties in obtaining it. "There's so much writing... And no benefits!" - Dissatisfied with the other. In addition, distrust remains to this day. “Can I really trust the Russian government?” asks Rostislav Ordovsky-Tanaevsky with a slightly guilty smile.

There is no clarity on how the commemorative events in honor of the 1917 revolution will take place. This issue remains difficult for many, although Vladimir Putin says he would like reconciliation. Raketa, in turn, has already proposed a new model: a black watch with a dial through which a drop of blood flows. Their author was Prince Rostislav Romanov.

The materials of InoSMI contain only assessments of foreign media and do not reflect the position of the editors of InoSMI.

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 high 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.

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 emigration was unusually diverse: from organizations of monarchists and even fascists to left-wing, 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 to transfer 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 - scattering) - a significant part of the people (ethnic community) residing 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 associated 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 section 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.

The main reasons for leaving the Motherland, the stages and directions of the "first wave" of Russian emigration; attitude to emigration as "temporary evacuation";

The mass emigration of Russian citizens began immediately after the October Revolution of 1917 and continued intensively to various countries until 1921-1922. It was from this moment that the number of emigration remained approximately constant in general, but its share in different countries was constantly changing, which is explained by internal migration in search of a slave to receive an education and better material living conditions.

The process of integration and socio-cultural adaptation of Russian refugees in various social conditions of European countries and China went through several stages and was basically completed by 1939, when the majority of emigrants no longer had the prospect of returning to their homeland. The main centers of dispersion of Russian emigration were Constantinople, Sofia, Prague, Berlin, Paris, Harbin. The first place of refuge was Constantinople, the center of Russian culture in the early 1920s. In the early 1920s, Berlin became the literary capital of Russian emigration. The Russian diaspora in Berlin before Hitler came to power was 150,000 people. When the hope of a speedy return to Russia began to fade and an economic crisis began in Germany, the center of emigration moved to Paris, from the mid-1920s - the capital of the Russian diaspora. By 1923, 300 thousand Russian refugees settled in Paris. Eastern centers of dispersion - Harbin and Shanghai. Prague was the scientific center of the Russian emigration for a long time. The Russian People's University was founded in Prague, 5,000 Russian students studied there free of charge. Many professors and university teachers also moved here. An important role in the preservation of Slavic culture and the development of science was played by the Prague Linguistic Circle.

The main reasons for the formation of Russian emigration as a sustainable social phenomenon were: the First World War, Russian revolutions and civil war, the political consequence of which was a lot of redistribution of borders in Europe and, above all, a change in the borders of Russia. The turning point for the formation of emigration was the October Revolution of 1917 and the civil war caused by it, which split the country's population into two irreconcilable camps. Formally, this provision was legally enshrined later: on January 5, 1922, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee and the Council of People's Commissars published a decree of December 15, 1921, depriving certain categories of persons abroad of citizenship rights.

According to the decree, the rights of citizenship were deprived of persons who were abroad continuously for more than five years and did not receive a passport from the Soviet government before June 1, 1922; persons who left Russia after November 7, 1917 without the permission of the Soviet authorities; persons who voluntarily served in the armies that fought against the Soviet regime or participated in counter-revolutionary organizations.

Article 2 of the same decree provided for the possibility of restoring citizenship. In practice, however, this possibility could not be realized - from persons wishing to return to their homeland, not only an application was required to accept citizenship of the RSFSR or the USSR, but also the adoption of Soviet ideology.

In addition to this decree, at the end of 1925, the Commissariat of Internal Affairs issued rules on the procedure for returning to the USSR, according to which it was allowed to delay the entry of these persons under the pretext of preventing an increase in unemployment in the country.

Persons intending to return to the USSR immediately after obtaining citizenship or an amnesty were recommended to attach to the application documents on the possibility of employment, certifying that the applicant would not replenish the ranks of the unemployed.

The principal feature of the Russian post-revolutionary emigration and its difference from similar emigrations of other major European revolutions is its wide social composition, which includes almost all (and not just the previously privileged) social strata.

the social composition of the Russian emigration; problems of adaptation;

Among the people who found themselves outside of Russia by 1922, there were representatives of practically classes and estates, ranging from members of the former ruling classes to workers: "persons living off their capital, government officials, doctors, scientists, teachers, military and numerous industrial and agricultural workers, peasants".

Their political views were also heterogeneous, reflecting the entire spectrum of the political life of revolutionary Russia. The social differentiation of Russian emigration is explained by the heterogeneity of the social causes and methods of recruitment that caused it.

The main factors of this phenomenon were the First World War, the Civil War, the Bolshevik terror and the famine of 1921-1922.

Related to this is the dominant trend in the gender composition of the emigration - the overwhelming predominance of the male part of the Russian emigration of working age. This circumstance opens up the possibility of interpreting Russian emigration as a natural economic factor in post-war Europe, the possibility of viewing it in the categories of economic sociology (as a large-scale migration of labor resources of various levels of professional qualifications, the so-called "labor emigration").

The extreme conditions of the genesis of Russian emigration determined the specifics of its socio-economic position in the structure of Western society. It was characterized, on the one hand, by the cheapness of the labor force offered by emigrants, which acts as a competitor to national labor resources) and, on the other hand, by a potential source of unemployment (since emigrants were the first to lose their jobs during the economic crisis).

Territories of predominant resettlement of Russian emigrants, reasons for changing the place of residence; cultural and political centers of Russian emigration;

The principal factor determining the position of emigration as a socio-cultural phenomenon is its legal insecurity. Refugees' lack of constitutional rights and freedoms (speech, press, the right to form unions and societies, join trade unions, freedom of movement, etc.) did not allow them to defend their position at a high political, legal and institutional level. The difficult economic and legal situation of Russian emigrants made it necessary to create a non-political public organization with the aim of providing social and legal assistance to Russian citizens living abroad. Such an organization for Russian emigrants in Europe was the Russian Zemstvo-City Committee for Assistance to Russian Citizens Abroad (“Zemgor”), created in Paris in February 1921. The first step taken by the Parisian Zemgor was to influence the French government in order to achieve its refusal to repatriate Russian refugees in Soviet Russia.

Another priority was the resettlement of Russian refugees from Constantinople to the European countries of Serbia, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, ready to receive a significant number of emigrants. Realizing the impossibility of settling all Russian refugees abroad at the same time, Zemgor turned to the League of Nations for help; for this purpose, a Memorandum on the situation of refugees and ways to alleviate their situation was submitted to the League of Nations, drawn up and signed by representatives of 14 Russian refugee organizations in Paris, including Zemgor . Efforts Zemgor's efforts were effective, especially in the Slavic countries - Serbia, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, where many educational institutions (both established in these countries and evacuated there from Constantinople) were taken to the full budget financing of the governments of these states

The central event that determined the psychological mood and composition of this "cultural emigration" was the infamous expulsion of the intelligentsia in August-September 1922.

The peculiarity of this expulsion was that it was an action of the state policy of the new Bolshevik government. The XII Conference of the RCP(b) in August 1922 equated the old intelligentsia, which strove to maintain political neutrality, with "enemies of the people", with the Cadets. One of the initiators of the deportation, L.D. Trotsky cynically explained that by this action the Soviet government was saving them from execution. Yes, in fact, such an alternative was also announced officially: in case of return - execution. Meanwhile, only one S.N. Trubetskoy could be accused of specific anti-Soviet actions.

In composition, the group of expelled "unreliable" consisted entirely of the intelligentsia, mainly the intellectual elite of Russia: professors, philosophers, writers, journalists. The decision of the authorities for them was a moral and political slap in the face. After all, N.A. Berdyaev has already lectured, S.L. Frank taught at Moscow University; P.A. Florensky, P.A. Sorokin ... But it turned out that they were thrown away like unnecessary trash.

the attitude of the Soviet government towards the Russian emigration; deportations abroad; remigration process;

Although the Bolshevik government tried to present the deportees as insignificant for science and culture, the emigrant newspapers called this action a "generous gift." It was truly a "royal gift" for Russian culture abroad. Among the 161 people on the lists of this expulsion were the rectors of both metropolitan universities, historians L.P. Karsavin, M.M. Karpovich, philosophers N.A. Berdyaev, S.L. Frank, S.N. Bulgakov, P.A. Florensky, N.O. Lossky, sociologist P.A. Sorokin, publicist M.A. Osorgin and many other prominent figures of Russian culture. Abroad, they became the founders of historical and philosophical schools, modern sociology, and important trends in biology, zoology, and technology. The “generous gift” to the Russian diaspora turned into a loss for Soviet Russia of entire schools and trends, primarily in historical science, philosophy, cultural studies, and other humanitarian disciplines.

The expulsion of 1922 was the largest state action of the Bolshevik authorities against the intelligentsia after the revolution. But not the latest. The stream of expulsions, departures and simply flight of the intelligentsia from Soviet Russia dried up only by the end of the 1920s, when an “iron curtain” of ideology fell between the new world of the Bolsheviks and the entire culture of the old world.

political and cultural life of the Russian emigration.

Thus, by 1925 - 1927. the composition of "Russia No. 2" was finally formed, its significant cultural potential was designated. In emigration, the proportion of professionals and people with higher education exceeded the pre-war level. In exile, a community was formed. Former refugees, quite consciously and purposefully, sought to create a community, establish ties, resist assimilation, and not dissolve in the peoples that sheltered them. The understanding that an important period of Russian history and culture has irretrievably ended came to Russian emigrants quite early.