[17] In Germany, right-wing migrs found much to their own frustration that right-wing German veterans shunned their offers to participate in Totensonntag ("Day of the Dead") as German conservatives did not wish to honor the sacrifices of those who had fought against Germany, and it was left-wing German veterans, usually associated with Social Democratic Party, who welcomed having Russians participate in Totensonntag to illustrate the theme that all peoples in the nations involved in the First World war were victims. White migrs, called "White Russians" in East Asia, flooded into China after World War I and into the early 1920s. The city itself is located less than 40 kilometers from the Italian border. [19], The link among White migrs was also ensured by a high volume of publications highlighting the religious dimension of emigration. Many White Russian migrs participated in the White movement or supported it. Long favoured by Russian aristocrats who dotted balmy resorts like Nice with their holiday villas, France became a natural hub, with an emigre community numbering some 200,000. The first arrivals found some jobs in the French and British representations, commissions, or alongside them in civil service, translator, or even military or security units in Istanbul.[31][32]. Lost amid the horrors of . The term is also applied to the descendants of those who left and who still retain a Russian Orthodox Christian identity while living abroad. O. Beyda, Re-Fighting the Civil War: Second Lieutenant Mikhail Aleksandrovich Gubanov. Veteran circles were particularly sensitive to Hitlers influence, and Nazi agents regularly visited the RNSUV in Paris. "He really wanted to give something back to France, to thank the country for welcoming him," Melnik says. The transition from a national anticommunist struggle liberating Russia from Soviet powerto a global one drew many Whites into the magnetic field of fascism. Masha's interviews and video footage . According to a report from the French intelligence services, before the Nazi-Soviet Pact of August 1939, most of the White Russians in France, even those who had no sympathy for National Socialist doctrines, considered that the Third Reich was the only dangerous opponent of Bolshevism. Following the signing of the Nazi-Soviet Pact, however, the Third Reich dissolved all Russian anti-Soviet organizations on its territory. [10], This was especially the case in France, the home of the largest overseas Russian community, where services honoring the events of World War I were a major part of French life after 1918, and where by honoring the Russian war dead allowed the Russian migrs in France to take part in the ceremonials, letting the migrs feel like a part of the wider French community. According to the French intelligence services, on September 22, 1933, a meeting took place in the ROND headquarters in Berlin-Wilmersdorf between a delegation from ROND, led by Bermondt-Avalov; a delegation from the Mladorossy, led by Alexander Kazem-Beg; and Anastasy Vonsiatsky, leader of the All-Russian Fascist Organization (Vserossiiskaia fashistskaia organizatsiia, VFO). Russian counter-revolutionary migrs in France participated both in transnational organizations specifically dedicated to their national cause and in those that took a more global view of the fight against communism. [8], Both left-wing and right-wing migr who otherwise passionately disagreed came together to honor the war dead of World War I, which was virtually the only occasions when overseas Russian communities could all come together, explaining why such memorial services were so important to the migr communities. [8] The design of Orthodox churches at the war memorials was done in the style of medieval Orthodox churches in Novgorod and Pskov as this architectural style was seen as politically neutral and hence able to bring the communities together better. They spanned all classes and included military soldiers and officers, Cossacks, intellectuals of various professions, dispossessed businessmen and landowners, as well as officials of the Russian Imperial government and of various anti-Bolshevik governments of the Russian Civil War period. Those White Russians who settled in France found themselves in a more complex situation. [50] According to its call published in Signal, the RNSUV newspaper in France, this unification began with the agreement remotely sponsored by Berlin between the Russian Fascist Party (based in Harbin), the National Labor Union of the New Generation (Natsionalno-trudovoi soiuz novogo pokoleniia, NTSNP, based in Belgrade), the Russian Liberation National Movement (Rossiiskoe osvoboditelnoe natsionalnoe dvizhenie) (ROND, based in Berlin), and the RNSUV. "Riches to rags" tales of ex-aristocrats scraping by as Paris taxi drivers, cabaret performers or seamstresses became legendary. This fragmentation among migr associations had its share of attempts at unification. They used the pre-revolutionary tricolor (white-blue-red) as their flag, for example, and some organizations used the ensign of the Imperial Russian Navy. [42] Les monarchistes russes et lItalie, November 9, 1922, AN/F/7/15943/1. "Every day they had to think, how are we going to eat?" Sasha Sokolov (born in 1943 . [53] Les migrs russes de France et le pacte germano-sovitique, October 26, 1939, p. 2, AN/20010216/282. [13] Many noble titles were usurped, a fact that underlined both the social weight of the Russian nobility and its decomposition. In France, the Leagues Nice section was led by George Reno, the son of the former Nicaraguan consul in Odessa; the younger Reno had once acted as a strike breaker in Germany and dreamed of attracting both Action franaise militants and fascist Italians. Couples who had lived through a world war and a civil war now found themselves in a foreign land, often having gone from a comfortable bourgeois existence to working lowly jobs. Its conspiratorial style and opportunistic claim to perpetrate violence on Soviet territories guaranteed it a certain aura. Indeed, the imaginaries of Russian and German monarchists were mutually reinforcing. Raeff, Marc: Russia abroad. [54] RG, report dated April 13, 1936, 2 p., AN/19940500/305. 14 (2010): 551. White Russian migrs were Russians who emigrated from the territory of the former Russian Empire in the wake of the Russian Revolution (1917) and Russian Civil War (19171923), and who were in opposition to the revolutionary Bolshevik communist Russian political climate. [33] PP, Comit dinitiative international anti-bolchvique, January 12, 1933, 4p.; Ibid., Comit dinitiative international anti-bolchvique, August 1933, 2p., AN/20010216/168. The American explorer Roy Chapman Andrews said he frequented the "cafes of somewhat dubious reputation" with the explorer Sven Hedin and scientist Davidson Black to "have scrambled eggs and dance with the Russian girls."[29]. The fact that Nice was a crucial base for the Russian emigration had an immediate political consequence. Having never succeeded in establishing a minimum of common aspirations or actions, White Russian migrs in France were bound to enter the war in a state of dispersion, more or less in accordance with the dynamics of previous transnational alliances. With the White Russians in Paris. Pre-World War I Paris had been a playground for Russia's idle rich. [3] Chez les Russes : le Grand-duc Cyrille, June 27, 1922; Sret Nationale (SN), Monarchistes russes-Parti du grand-duc Cyrille, October 9, 1932, AN/F/7/15943/1. 89, AN/20010216/282. The RRRA was established in late 1920, immediately after the White Army General Wrangel' s forces were evacuated from the Crimea and '200,000 refugees were added to the hundreds of thousands of the Russian migrs whom civil war had driven out of Russia [sic]' (Add MS 54466, ff. During World War II, many white migrs took part in the Russian Liberation Movement. For the French authorities, this White question was a particularly sensitive issue primarily because of the tendency of the first wave of tsarist refugees to have pro-German feelings. Among those who were opposed to the Weimar Republic were nationalists and former members of the imperial German army Adolf Hitler and Erich Ludendorff. (Taittinger would later, in 1934, play a critical role in trying to constitute a unified National Front, a group whose central notion would be revamped, this time successfully, by Jean-Marie Le Pen in 1972.) Premire parution : Nicolas Lebourg, White Russian migrs and International Anti-Communism in France (1918-1939), IERES Occasional Papers, no. This ideology was largely inspired by General Pyotr Wrangel, who said upon the White army's defeat "The battle for Russia has not ceased, it has merely taken on new forms". 2021, AN/20010216/282. News Russian Shanghai, Belgrade and Paris. [56] The difficulty for Solonevich seems to have been Rosenbergs demand for radical anti-Semitic propaganda. This transition from a national to a global struggle drew many Whites from the anti-communist camp into the magnetic field of fascism. The Union of the Russian Empire, founded in 1928 as the discreetly pro-Kirill Russian Empire Union, had only 200 members spread across Paris, Nice, Belgium, Bulgaria, China, the United States, and Poland; some of its members went to fight for General Franco. [28], The White Russian women mostly worked in the "Badlands" area adjoining the Beijing Legation Quarter on the east, centered on the alley of Chuanban Hutong. . White Russian migrs were Russians who emigrated from the territory of the former Russian Empire in the wake of the Russian Revolution (1917) and Russian Civil War (1917-1923), and who were in opposition to the revolutionary Bolshevik communist Russian political climate. [11] PP, La franc-maonnerie russe, August 1933, 2 p., AN/19940500/306. The contribution of the White Russian migr community to the global anticommunist struggle remains to be written. As for the choice of pretender to the Russian throne, the Italians were initially divided: Mussolini leaned toward Kirill, but the monarchy preferred Nikolai, since the Italian queen was his sister-in-law. [5] PSC, report dated October 8, 1924, 4 p.; Les monarchistes russes et lItalie, November 9, 1922, AN/F/7/15943/1. 9 October 2020 09:00. Overall, Hitlers advent was met with enthusiasm among those Russians in France. The parties to the war migration in 1917 were neither Crimean Turks nor Caucasian Muslims. The Russian section of this unified organization was tasked with liberating Russia by joining an Anti-Comintern International, meant to bring together the religious, national, fascist, national socialist, popular, cultural forces of all countries.[51]. Put another way, Russianswho accounted for 9.3% of foreigners in France at that timecomprised 90% of the countrys political immigrants. We are beginning to realise with horror that the Bolsheviks have dragged us down into an abyssWe have been duped by a past of . Their universe crumbled with the Russian old regime, and the memories of pre-1917 Russia came to dominate the themes of the Russian migr literature in the 1920s. According to the French intelligence services, the Reich hedged its bets on the prestigious thinker Ivan Solonevich, whom Alfred Rosenberg is said to have received in person in Berlin to offer him the leadership of a potential international philo-Nazi union of ex-Russian officers. [57] Solonevich himself participated with General Turkul in the National Party of Russia, which they founded in Berlin in 1938 together with General Biskupskywho had been put in charge of Russian affairs by the Third Reich. The history of Russian "expansion" into the foreign fashion market began with the break-up of the Russian Empire following the revolution of 1917. The exchanges between the Finnish and French services led to the conclusion that the BRT was simply a bluff.[39]. [20] PP, report dated February 6, 1930, AN/F/7/13975/1. The first task of the organization was to try to build new networks in Paris.[58]. Even before proclaiming himself tsar, Kirill appointed personal representatives throughout Europe (Germany, Austria, America, England, Bavaria, Finland, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Romania, Serbia, and Switzerland). . The Empress Alexandra Feodorovna, wife of the late Nicolas I, liked to stay there to rest since her widowhood.She raised money in 1856 to build a church for the parish [5] Eventually, beginning in 1925, Nikolais cancerto which he would succumb in 1929gave the advantage to the Kirill camp. Nevertheless, the groups Russian members appeared to many of their compatriots to be too corrupt, which prevented the League from really taking off. Many white migrs believed that their mission was to preserve the pre-revolutionary Russian culture and way of life while living abroad, in order to return this influence to Russian culture after the fall of the USSR. [29], In France, the Coty-funded organization also relayed the documentation of the International Centre for the Active Struggle against Communism (CILACC), founded in 1929 by Victor and Joseph Douilletwhose successful 1928 book was the reference used by Herg for his volume Tintin in the Land of the Soviets. : [Z]. Berlin and Paris developed thriving migr communities. [55] Les migrs russes de France et le pacte germano-sovitique, October 26, 1939, p. 3, AN/20010216/282. [17], In the fall of 1937, the RSNUV attempted a new unifying process, this time at a meeting in Berlin with the leaders of the All-Russian Fascist Party and the Russian National Socialist Party. In 1924, the Chinese government recognized the government of the Soviet Union and the majority of White Russians in China who refused to become Soviet citizens were rendered stateless, thus subject to Chinese law unlike other Europeans, Americans, and Japanese living in China who enjoyed the principles of extraterritoriality. [14], The political divide between Kirills and Nikolais supporters had repercussions for migr community life. Five stories of White Russian migrs. After the murder of Tsar Nicholas II and his brother Grand Duke Michael Alexandrovich in 1918, the Russian line of succession became disputed. The most important of the emigres in Serbia was Baron Pyotr Wrangel, who led the White Russian Army in the South of the Russian Empire and, after their defeat in 1920, fled to Sremski Karlovci, a . And despite having never lived there, she had the strange sensation of being somewhere familiar, thanks to her grandmother's vivid stories. [9] Personnalits politiques trangres qui furent victimes dattentats commis Paris au cours de ces dernires annes, March 20, 1930, 2 p., AN/F/7/13975/1. [51] Report dated July 27, 1937, 2p., AN/20010216/283. [45] PP, A/S dune propagande en faveur des doctrines sovitiques qui serait faite parmi les membres de lAssociation des Jeune Russes, January 1932, pp. [30] Rapport gnral du Bureau permanent de lEntente internationale contre la IIIe Internationale pour 1938, Geneva, 1939, p. 9, AN/20010216/170. This study is based mostly on declassified archives from the French police and intelligence services, especially the National Security Directorate, the Police Prefecture for Paris, and the Administrative Policy and General Intelligence for the rest of the territory. Evacuation Russian Army of General Baron [1] P. N. Vrangel from Crimea. Life in these homes was often "psychologically very difficult", he adds. A significant percentage of white migrs may be described as monarchists, although many adopted a position of being "unpredetermined" ("nepredreshentsi"), believing that Russia's political structure should be determined by popular plebiscite. He has fond memories of the dances, shows and parties where . When perfumer Franois Coty, a financier of the French far right and of some international anti-communist initiatives, proposed a Bureau Politique International in 1928, his inaugural event attracted many Parisian Russians, including General Wrangel. [7] The Nice special commissioner to the SN director, Au sujet des agissements germanophiles de quelques personnages russes officiels, dont Basile Lebedeff, August 7, 1918, 4 p., AN/20010216/282. The main reason that pushed the Whites to support the German power with action was the concept of a 'spring offensive', an armed intervention against the USSR that must be exploited in order to continue the civil war. The police report concluded in unambiguous terms: In summary, it appears that, with the exception of smaller Bolshevik groups, the existence in France of an increasing number of White Russian movements tends to constitute, on our soil, a kind of national minority, obeying the political nuances of the former regime and constantly influenced by external events.[6]. The White emigration was the first and biggest of the four waves of Russian emigration, with nearly two million people leaving the country between 1917 and 1923.
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