White émigré

• 1. Defining The White Emigré Movement

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  The Imperial Russian tricolor, adopted by White Russian émigrés after the Red Russian Revolution, later became the flag of the Russian Federation. White émigrés were Russians who emigrated from the territory of the former Russian Empire in the wake of the Russian Revolution and the Russian Civil War. They stood in opposition to the revolutionary Bolshevik political climate. Many White Russian émigrés participated in the White movement or supported it directly. The term is often broadly applied to anyone who may have left the country due to the change in regimes. Some white émigrés, like Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries, opposed the Bolsheviks but had not directly supported the White movement; some were apolitical. The term is also applied to the descendants of those who left and who still retain a Russian Orthodox Christian identity while living abroad. The term "émigré" is most commonly used in France, the United States, and the United Kingdom. A term preferred by the émigrés themselves was "first-wave émigré". In the Soviet Union, the term "white émigré" generally carried negative connotations. Since the end of the 1980s, the term "first-wave émigré" has become more common in Russia. Most white émigrés left Russia from 1917 to 1920, with estimates varying between 900,000 and 2 million. Some managed to leave during the 1920s and 1930s, or were expelled by the Soviet government. 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. Not all of them were ethnic Russians; other ethnic groups were included.

• 2. Global Displacement And Settlement Patterns

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  Most émigrés initially fled from Southern Russia and Ukraine to Turkey and then moved to other Slavic countries in Europe. A large number also fled to Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Finland, Iran, Germany and France. Some émigrés also fled to Portugal, Spain, Romania, Belgium, Sweden, Switzerland, and Italy. Berlin and Paris developed thriving émigré communities. Many military and civil officers living, stationed, or fighting the Red Army across Siberia and the Russian Far East moved together with their families to Harbin, Shanghai, and other cities of China, Central Asia, and Western China. After the withdrawal of American and Japanese troops from Siberia, some émigrés traveled to Japan. During and after World War II, many Russian émigrés moved to the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Peru, Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, South Africa and Australia. Thousands of emigres, of them 3 to 5 thousand on the Eastern Front, served Germany in the Wehrmacht or in the Waffen-SS, often as interpreters. Approximately 150,000 White Russians, including princes, princesses, generals and senior officers, fled to the Ottoman Empire in the wake of the Revolution. Istanbul opened its doors to approximately 150 thousand White Russians. The Philippines welcomed 800 Russians fleeing the dangers of the Socialist Revolution of 1917. From 1949 to 1951, the Philippines under President Elpidio Quirino admitted 6,000 White Russians fleeing from China after the communist People's Republic of China was proclaimed in the region.

• 3. Ideological Conflicts And Political Activism

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  White émigrés were generally anti-communist and did not consider the Soviet Union and its legacy to be representative of Russia but rather of an occupying force. They used the pre-revolutionary tricolor as their flag, for example, and some organizations used the ensign of the Imperial Russian Navy. A significant percentage of white émigrés may be described as monarchists, although many adopted a position of being "unpredetermined". Many white émigrés believed that their mission was to preserve the pre-revolutionary Russian culture and way of life while living abroad. A religious mission to the outside world was another concept promoted by people such as Bishop John of Shanghai and San Francisco who said at the 1938 All-Diaspora Council: "Many white émigrés also believed it was their duty to remain active in combat against the Soviet Union, with the hopes of liberating Russia." 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." The émigrés formed various organizations for the purpose of combating the Soviet regime such as the Russian All-Military Union, the Brotherhood of Russian Truth, and the NTS. Between 1934 and 1936, an ossuary containing the bones of Russian soldiers killed all over the world was built in the Novo Groblje cemetery in Belgrade. 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 came into existence in Germany.

• 4. Cultural Preservation In Exile Communities

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  The city of Harbin in China was founded by the Russians in 1896, becoming known the "Moscow of the Orient" due to its Russian appearance. About 127,000 people living in Harbin in 1920 came from Russia, making it one of the largest Russian-speaking cites in East Asia. Many of the Russians in Harbin were wealthy, and the city was a center of Russian culture. Harbin had two opera companies and numerous theaters performing the traditional classics of the Russian stage. By the mid-1930s there were two Russian schools, as well as a variety of cultural and sporting clubs. There were Russian-language newspapers and a radio station. An important part was also played by the local Russian Orthodox Church under the guidance of St. John of Shanghai and San Francisco. The white émigrés formed the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad in 1924. The church continues its existence to this day, acting as both the spiritual and cultural center of the Russian Orthodox community abroad. On the 17th of May 2007, the Act of Canonical Communion with the Moscow Patriarchate reestablished canonical ties between the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad and the Russian Church of the Moscow Patriarchate, after more than 80 years of separation. In France, services honoring the events of World War I were a major part of French life after 1918.

• 5. The Tragedy Of Human Rights Abuses

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  Japanese general Kenji Doihara forced White Russian women into prostitution and drug addiction to spy and spread drugs to their male Chinese clients. He initially gave food and shelter to tens of thousands Russian White émigré women who had taken refuge in the Far East after the defeat of the White Russian anti-Bolshevik movement during the Russian Civil War. Having lost their livelihoods, and with most of them widowed, Doihara forced the women into prostitution, using them to create a network of brothels throughout China where they worked under inhuman conditions. The use of heroin and opium was promoted to them as a way to tolerate their miserable fate. Japanese scientists conducted human experiments on White Russian men, women and children by gassing, injecting and vivisecting them in Unit 731 and Unit 100. There were multiple Russian victims of Unit 731 and testimonies and records show that a Russian girl and her mother were gassed and one Russian man was cut in two and preserved with formaldehyde. Some children grew up inside the walls of Unit 731, infected with syphilis. A Youth Corps member deployed to train at Unit 731 recalled viewing a batch of subjects that would undergo syphilis testing: "One was a White Russian woman with a daughter of four or five years of age, and the last was a White Russian woman with a boy of about six or seven." Senior Sgt. Kazuo Mitomo described some of Unit 100's human experiments: "On some of the prisoners I experimented 5, 6 times... One of the prisoners of Russian nationality became so exhausted from the experiments that no more could be performed on him, and Matsui ordered me to kill that Russian by giving him an injection of potassium cyanide."

• 6. Notable Figures And Intellectual Contributions

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  Yevgeny Miller, one of the remaining leaders of the White movement, was abducted from Paris by the NKVD in 1937 and executed in Moscow 19 months later during Stalin's Great Purge. Sergey Voytsekhovsky served as Army General of the Czechoslovak Republic in 1938. In May 1945, he was kidnapped by SMERSH and died in the Soviet Gulag in 1951. The white émigrés formed various organizations for the purpose of combating the Soviet regime such as the Russian All-Military Union, the Brotherhood of Russian Truth, and the NTS. Tens of White Army veterans (numbers vary from 72 to 180) served as volunteers supporting Francisco Franco during the Spanish Civil War. Some white émigrés, labeled "Soviet patriots," adopted pro-Soviet sympathies. These people formed organizations such as the Mladorossi, the Evraziitsi, and the Smenovekhovtsy. During World War II, many white émigrés took part in the Russian Liberation Movement. 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.