white russian emigres in paris white russian emigres in paris

Of its 1,000 activists worldwide, about 300 resided in France, with about half in the Paris region and the other half largely spread between Lyon and Nice. [48] Union des Young Russians, August 1933, 10 p., AN/20010216/282. Cimetire russe de Sainte-Genevive-des-Bois : 4, rue Lo-Lagrange - 91700 Sainte-Genevive-des-Bois. Most of the Russians went to Manchuria (especially in Harbin, which at the time had the largest population of Russians of any city outside Russia[27]) and treaty ports such as Shanghai, but a few ended up in Beijing. For the International Anticommunist Entente, the Pact was a ploy by Germany to destroy Western democracies and bring about world revolution. "Riches to rags" tales of ex-aristocrats scraping by as Paris taxi drivers, cabaret performers or seamstresses became legendary. [22] Nicolas Glady, Les partis monarchistes russes migres Paris 19191939, Bulletin de lInstitut Pierre Renouvin 9 (2000): 84100. [35] It was made up, among others, of former members of the Brotherhood of Russian Truth (Bratsvo russkoi pravdy, BRT), an international anti-Soviet terrorist network that carried out attacks in the USSR: the BRT claimed responsibility for a tank fire; a kolkhoz fire; stopping a train, tying up its employees, and stealing its goods; etc. [17] A service at the Russian war memorial in Terezin in 1930 turned into "a Russian-Czech political demonstration in a manifestation of Slavic mutuality" with the theme that the Russians had died so that the Czechs might be free. [36] The archives AN/20010216/282 contain several communiqus from the CVR translated by the PP. Its goal was allegedly to restore the Russian political and territorial order that had existed prior to February 1917 by forming an alliance with Germany, Japan, and Turkey. This made the white migrs a target for infiltration by the Soviet secret police (e.g. The Russian Monarchist Party was a rather inactive French branch of the HCM (with 250 members, including about 100 in the Paris region). 25. This astonished White Russians; many of those who had naturalized would join the French army. This transition from a national to a global struggle drew many Whites from the anti-communist camp into the magnetic field of fascism. [60] A/S des nomms Kologriwov Hans, Oujitzky et Moussard, signals comme agents de la Gestapo, November 1937, 3 p., AN/19940500/308. 2021, AN/20010216/282. This fragmentation among migr associations had its share of attempts at unification. This time, those who took refuge in Istanbul were the 'nobles' and soldiers of Tsarist Russia, who had fought the Ottomans for centuries. [57] DRG, Les migrs russes en France et linfluence hitlrienne sur leurs groupements, January 29, 1938, pp. Constantinople would serve as one transit point for the estimated one million people who fled the Bolsheviks after 1917, but it was to Paris and Berlin that many were headed as they scrambled to . [55] Les migrs russes de France et le pacte germano-sovitique, October 26, 1939, p. 3, AN/20010216/282. Most white migrs left Russia from 1917 to 1920 (estimates vary between 900,000 and 2 million). Let us earn the right not to blush, but be proud of our existence abroad. This Orders phantom political construction therefore seems to have been, above all, a hopeful means of influencing the Duce. 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. Sasha Sokolov (born in 1943 . A group of Russian expatriates in Paris, ca. The immigration, which started with small groups at the end of 1917, grew with the loss of Crimea to the Bolsheviks in 1920. [4] Police spciale des Chemins de fer et de la frontire (PSC), report dated October 8, 1924, 4 p.; Les monarchistes russes et lItalie, November 9, 1922, AN/F/7/15943/1. We in a foreign land do not have a tomb of an 'unknown soldier', but we do have thousands of suffering people. Russians quickly became the third-largest contingent of immigrants in Paris: at 51,578 individuals in 1929, they lagged behind only Italy and Poland. "She used to say she had lived completely different lives, and that each was rich in its own way," says her granddaughter Catherine Melnik, an art dealer whose elegant Paris apartment is crammed with Russian paintings. [27] Following the kidnapping of Kutepovs successor, General Miller, in 1937, ROVS leaders stopped establishing themselves in Paris: General Abramov took up residence in Sofia in 1938, while General Arkhangelsky went to live in Brussels. His regular trips to Berlin linked him to the Nazi party, and in particular to Paul Schulz, who came to be one of the Nazis main recruiting agents among Russian migrs from 1934.[60]. Many symbols of the White migrs were reintroduced as symbols of the post-Soviet Russia, such as the Byzantine eagle and the Russian tricolor. [62] Kazem-Beg, for his part, reacted to the invasion of Poland not by supporting German and Soviet policies, but instead by sending a telegram of support to the President of the French Council, ending with these words: I wish to renew in the name of the Young Russian Movement our commitment to fight alongside France against our implacable enemy, Germany. [13] Serbian King Alexander of Yugoslavia was a Russophile who welcomed Russian migrs to his kingdom, and after France, Yugoslavia had the largest Russian migr community, leading to Yugoslavia to have almost as many war memorials to the Russian war dead as France. To house the burials of the White Russians who arrived in Moscow after the Bolshevik revolution in Russia, some of the land was granted in 1927 to an English benefactress, Dorothy Paget who had set up with Elena Orlov and her . [54] The project was stillborn, but Solonevichs newspaper, Nasha gazeta, read in France mainly by former junior officers, still sided with the German camp,[55] as did Civilisation et bolchvisme, a Belgian White Russian newspaper published in France; Solonevich participated in and possibly also provided financial support to the latter publication. And despite having never lived there, she had the strange sensation of being somewhere familiar, thanks to her grandmother's vivid stories. France 24 - International breaking news, top stories and headlines. Their tendency to seek to establish a miniature Russia in exile sometimes provoked tensions with the French authorities: for example, the French administration had to ask Grand Duke Kirill to stop awarding decorations that competed with those of the French state. The publication testified to the change in logic that was under way. Those White Russians who settled in France found themselves in a more complex situation. [51] Report dated July 27, 1937, 2p., AN/20010216/283. Supporters of the Grand Duke Kirill and far-right-oriented Russians recognized as their spiritual guide Archbishop Antony of Serbia, who had proclaimed himself independent of the Moscow Patriarchate. The publications of the Young Russians testify to a shift in 1938: if the consolidation of Germany had once appeared to be an asset to White Russians, the Reichs territorial ambitions over Ukraine now aroused concerns, with some Whites calling for an understanding between the USSR and the West. This smaller second wave fairly quickly began to assimilate into the white migr community. [56] The difficulty for Solonevich seems to have been Rosenbergs demand for radical anti-Semitic propaganda. Istanbul, which had a population of around 900,000 at that time, opened its doors to approximately 150 thousand White Russians. By 1921, Kirill Vladimirovichs wife, Victoria Melita of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, was funding Hitlers emerging NSDAP; hence, she indirectly facilitated the Beer Hall Putsch of 1923. The transition from a national anticommunist struggle liberating Russia from Soviet powerto a global one drew many Whites into the magnetic field of fascism. Vonsiastsky and Kazem-Beg were reportedly welcomed to Berlin by Goering and Rosenberg. [23] The extent of Russian economic dominance of Harbin could be seen that Moya-tvoya", a pidgin language combining aspects of Russian and Mandarin Chinese which developed in the 19th century when Chinese went to work in Siberia was considered essential by the Chinese merchants of Harbin. "That explains why there were few mixed marriages, why few Russians demanded French nationality," says Jevakhoff. [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. Since they could not find allies in the German government, they began to build themselves an entourage among the political opposition of the time. At the demographic level, the Russian community in France was sizable. "In Russia you always hear that the emigres were extremely rich people who left to continue a life of luxury," she says. Those who arrived in 1919 were better off economically. After the Bolshevik revolution, many returned seeking refuge and work. In 1932, the Soviet Minister of Foreign Affairs, Maxim Litvinov, urged Stalin to attempt a rapprochement with France and the United Kingdom to contain the advances of Nazism. The Soviet secret police, the NKVD, eventually infiltrated the emigre community and in 1937 kidnapped Gen. Yevgeny Miller, a former leader of the White Army, smuggled him from Paris to Moscow . [26] During the war, the white migrs came into contact with former Soviet citizens from German-occupied territories who used the German retreat as an opportunity to either flee from the Soviet Union, or were in Germany and Austria as POWs and forced labor, and preferred to stay in the West, often referred to as the second wave of migrs (often also called DPs displaced persons, see Displaced persons camp). [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. "But it was extremely hard," adds the 62-year-old, part of a small community of "White Russian" descendants still keeping their heritage alive, a century later. To the living: care, to the dead: memory. One of the Karaky churches, St. Panteleimon, is filled each Sunday by Russian emigres who have arrived since the Soviet Union's collapse. Though Nicholas II had managed to ostracize Kirill after the latters marriage to Victoria, a divorced and non-Orthodox German woman, Kirills supporters did not recognize as legitimate any debate about the succession. White army veteran Captain Vasili Orekhov, publisher of the "Sentry" journal, encapsulated this idea of responsibility with the following words: There will be an hour believe it there will be, when the liberated Russia will ask each of us: "What have you done to accelerate my rebirth." Veteran circles were particularly sensitive to Hitlers influence, and Nazi agents regularly visited the RNSUV in Paris. The exchanges between the Finnish and French services led to the conclusion that the BRT was simply a bluff.[39]. When they arrived in France, such newcomers brought with them a profound and deep sense of loss and nostalgia. The Order of the Knights of the Russian National Fascist Patriots was led from Nice by its lifetime president, the false Count Nicholas Stroganoff. 89, AN/20010216/282. 1011, AN/20010216/282. [39] RG, Les migrs russes en France et linfluence hitlrienne sur leurs groupements, January 29, 1938, pp. [40] PP, Union des sportsmen Russes, February 1, 1939, AN/19940500/307. He was replaced by the very anti-communist Pierre Laval, who became in 1940 the second-in-command of the collaborationist Vichy government. [41] From 1940 to 1942, the Italian army occupied the eastern part of the department; Nice was fully absorbed when the occupation zone was extended to Switzerland. It even affected the domain of worship, threatening the bond between the sword and the clergy. M. V. Nazarov, The Mission of the Russian Emigration, Moscow: Rodnik, 1994. After 1933, there were attempts to copy the NSDAP and cozy up to the German National Socialists, thus the short-lived parties such as the ROND (Russian Popular Liberation Movement) came into existence in Germany. Karlinsky, Simon Freedom from Violence and Lies: Essays on Russian Poetry and Music, Boston, Academic Studies Press, 2013. In East Asia, White Russian ( Chinese: , Japanese: , ) is the term most commonly used for such Russian migrs, although some have been of Ukrainian and other ethnicities, and were not culturally Russians. The two rivals took different roads: Nikolai Nikolaevich fled to France and settled in his castle of Choigny near Paris, while Kirill Vladimirovich settled in Bavaria and made connections with the German monarchist and nationalist circles supported by his wife, Victoria Melita of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. A transnational nomadism therefore emerged in the service of international anti-communism. That is our Russian passport". Some would flee a Europe at war; others would remain loyal to a defeated France led by Marshal Ptain; and still others would venture into the world of collaborationism. In 1935, Vonsiatskys personal representative in Paris, Alexandre Sipelgas, together with a former journalist from Le Tocsin and another journalist who had previously published the daily Les Dernires Nouvelles, ultimately set up an agency whose role was to translate articles from German and organize the migration of Russians in France to the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo. 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. Claiming to be the last representative of the Stroganoffs, the false nobleman sued the widow of Sergei Stroganoff, who had died in Nice in 1923 and whose estate was estimated in the French press at several hundred million francs. [28] PP, report dated February 3, 1928, AN/20010216/168. [25] PP, report dated September 3, 1930, 4 p., AN/19880206/7. Karl Schlgel (ed. He was also supported by General Piotr Wrangel, who had agreed to proclaim Nikolai leader of the Russian All-Military Union (Russkii obshchevoinskii soiuz, ROVS).[4]. Longing for home, emigres often described themselves as "sitting on our suitcases", ready to head back to Russia at a moment's notice. Officially, the group was formed in 1938, but it was informally visible as early as 1922, when Kirill distributed honor medals. In a way, she says, "it felt like I never left.". [45] The Young Russians allegedly had contacts with fascist Germany and Italy, whose style they adopted. [16] A/S du Centre dUnification des Organisations Nationalistes Russes, September 1937, 2 p., AN/19880206/7. They consider the period of 1917 to 1991 to have been a period of anti-Christian occupation by the Soviet regime. Cover photo: Made by John Chrobak using: Boulevard Courcelles Paris 20060503 1 by Georges Seguin CC BY-SA 3.0. Approximately 150,000 White Russians, including princes, princesses, generals and senior officers, fled to the Ottoman Empire in the wake of the Revolution. They are our honor and our justification (opravdanie) before the world. Of those, an estimated 100,000 settled in China. [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. [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. O. Beyda, Re-Fighting the Civil War: Second Lieutenant Mikhail Aleksandrovich Gubanov. Founded in 1921, the BRT had bases in Germany, the United States, France, Manchuria, the Baltic states, and Yugoslavia. Joseph Douillet tried to integrate the International Anticommunist Entente (EIA), also known as the Aubert League after its founder. The succession of official names ran as follows: Association des Jeunes Russes, then Union des Associations des Jeunes Russes, and lastly Union des Jeunes Russes. What are you reading? No one knows how this rumor arose, but it reveals the temptation to work with the French far right to defend the White cause. Another organization, the Russian National Unification, was founded in 1926 after the world congress held that year in Paris, and in 1937 it became the Russian Central Union, which had 80,000 members worldwide, including 10,000 in Paris, a strong presence in China and Yugoslavia, and sections in Germany, Belgium, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, and Switzerland. 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. They were popular with both foreign men, there being a shortage of foreign women, and Chinese men. Among them were members of the French Parti populaire of Jacques Doriot, a former communist leader who had turned to fascism. Many White Russian migrs participated in the White movement or supported it. The BRTs leader in France was General Piotr Krasnov, former Ataman of the Don Cossacks, who would be hanged by the Soviet regime in 1947 for having joined the Axis forces. [14] PP, report dated August 1933, 2 p., AN/19940500/306. Photo de Soloman Soh sur Pexels.com The contribution of the White Russian migr community to the global anticommunist struggle remains to be written. Melnik's father -- the grandson of the tsar's doctor -- became a top French intelligence official, dedicating his life to fighting the KGB from abroad. The latter was perceived by many Russian officers as an ongoing case that was never finished since the day of their exile. He continued to use the formula The Tsar and the Soviets as his slogan. The civil war scattered between one and two million White Russians -- nicknamed after anti-Communist forces -- from China to Brazil, creating diaspora communities that in some cases endure to this day. 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. The county of Nice only came under French sovereignty in 1860, giving birth to the administrative department of the Maritime Alps. Issued on: 30/10/2017 - 10:00Modified: 30/10/2017 - 09:45. [59] A/S dun nouveau journal russe, Autour du Monde, cr par Alexandre Sipelgas, 4 juillet 1935, 2p., AN/19940500/309. The White Russians who had settled in Germany pushed to mobilize for the Reich: General Pavel Bermondt-Avalov, who was the leader of the Nazi-controlled ROND in 1932-1933, sent his emissaries from Berlin to Paris. [citation needed]. Tens of White Army veterans (numbers vary from 72 to 180) served as volunteers supporting Francisco Franco during the Spanish Civil War. Some Russian migrs in Paris enthused that the Third Reich sought to offer them a new state consisting of Slovakia, Ruthenia, and Bessarabia. [12] The fact that the crosses of the Russians buried in France were painted white-the color of the French war dead and allies-while the crosses of the German war dead were painted black was widely noticed within the Russian community in France as a sign that the French regarded them as allies. [12] In Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, war memorials to the Russian war dead were presented in Pan-Slavic terms, as a symbol of how Russians had fought together with the Czechs and Serbs in the war. It was from this community of Germanophile veterans that the approximately 700 White Russians who volunteered to fight in Spain for General Franco originated. Many White Russian migrs participated in the White movement or supported it. With the White Russians in Paris. Its audience was made even larger by the two Russian-language newspapers it published: Mladoross and Russkaia iskra. Despite benefitting from the wealth of his American wife, the mythomaniac tendencies of this former U.S.-based leader of the Brotherhood of Russian Truth led to his downfall. Paris provided support to the Whites by supplying them with military equipment and, notably, participated in the Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War on the side of the Whites. Hundreds of members of the Russian aristocracy . Growing up at the court of tsar Nicholas II, Tatiana Botkina's childhood was one of splendour. But he has tried to keep his family connected to its roots. Source: Open source. Karl Schlgel (ed. After the war, active anti-Soviet combat was almost exclusively continued by NTS: other organizations either dissolved, or began concentrating exclusively on self-preservation and/or educating the youth. 16, AN/20010216/282. Kirill seemed to entertain the hope that a restoration of the German monarchy would provide him with the tools to take the Russian throne. [20] PP, report dated February 6, 1930, AN/F/7/13975/1. And the great Slavic soul of the Russians did not allow it to be looked upon with indifference that a fraternal Slavic people should perish". In Paris, its members were linked to the Russian Sportsmens Union, an organization that carried out paramilitary preparations under the guise of sports activities and was downright pro-Nazi. The term "migr" is most commonly used in France, the United States, and the United Kingdom. According to a German document that circulated in French diplomatic and police circles in 1920, the Socit des Fidles (Society of the Faithful) was an esoteric, subversive organization that, based in Germany, claimed to have members from Paris to Moscow. The exodus also sparked an unprecedented international drive to give legal protection to refugees, resulting in the "Nansen passport", the first ever travel document for stateless people. Many, estimated as being between the hundred thousands and a million,[2] also served Germany in the Wehrmacht or in the Waffen-SS, often as interpreters.[3]. The history of Russian "expansion" into the foreign fashion market began with the break-up of the Russian Empire following the revolution of 1917. [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. 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. Russian Shanghai, Belgrade and Paris. The IABIC maintained links with the Ukrainian Anti-Bolshevik Committee, which aimed to have the Soviet republics join the League of Nations and participate in establishing a European Confederation. A League of Nations survey in Shanghai in 1935 found that 22% of Russian women between 16 and 45 years of age were engaging in prostitution to some extent. [21] Many of the Russians in Harbin were wealthy, and the city was a center of Russian culture as the Russian community in Harbin made it their mission to preserve the pre-war Russian culture in a city on the plains of Manchuria with for instance Harbin having two opera companies and numerous theaters performing the traditional classics of the Russian stage.