Many symbols of the White migrs were reintroduced as symbols of the post-Soviet Russia, such as the Byzantine eagle and the Russian tricolor. 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. 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. [8] The prefect of the Maritime Alps to the Interior Minister, August 23, 1918, 2p., AN/20010216/282. Globally, however, the rise of minorities secessionism was seen with suspicion; many White Russians believed that only Germany would protect the territorial integrity of Russia. [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. The moderates followed Archbishop Euloghi, who, being based in Paris, was neutral toward Soviet ecclesiastical institutions; ROVS leader General Aleksandr Kutepov demanded strenuously but in vain that Euloghi engage in anti-Soviet activities.[15]. Aksyonov died and was buried in Moscow. Some white migrs, labeled "Soviet patriots," adopted pro-Soviet sympathies. Its audience was made even larger by the two Russian-language newspapers it published: Mladoross and Russkaia iskra. 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. 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. During the First World War, the Russian Empire and France were allied against the Triplice concluded between the German Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and the Kingdom of Italy. 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. [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. In 1926, a new organization, the Russian Legitimist-Monarchist Union, was founded in Munich to bring together all the movements that supported Kirill Vladimirovich. This smaller second wave fairly quickly began to assimilate into the white migr community. The city itself is located less than 40 kilometers from the Italian border. [41] RalphSchor, Le Parti Populaire Franais dans les Alpes-Maritimes (19361939),Cahiers de la Mditerrane3334 (1986): 99125. His children and grandchildren all speak Russian; Orobchenko married a Frenchwoman, but she proudly shows off pictures of the Russian cakes she bakes every Easter. [58] PA, report dated November 9, 1938, AN/20010216/283. 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 . They remain true to honor and obligation. Some managed to leave during the 1920s and 1930s, or were expelled by the Soviet government (such as, for example, Pitirim Sorokin and Ivan Ilyin). The Cimetire de Liers was created as the second communal cemetery on February 8, 1879 in the city of Sainte Genevive des Bois in France, 25 km south from Paris. On 17 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. "He really wanted to give something back to France, to thank the country for welcoming him," Melnik says. [44] Commissaire Divisionnaire de police spciale to the Prfet des Alpes maritimes, A/S de lOrdre des Chevaliers des Patriotes Fascistes Nationaux Russes, October 16, 1930, 2 p., AN/19880206/7. [15] PP, A/S de effervescence dans les milieux croyants de lmigration russe, January 14, 1930, 3 p., AN/19940500/35. The productivity of the Russian press in France demonstrates real vitality, yet its offerings were divided into multiple small print runs. Some 958,000 people travelled from Russia on ships through Constantinople to Europe, and roughly a quarter were accepted as refugees in France. These associations goal was to bring together all the groups, and especially to attract the most important association, ROVS,[16] which had 9,000 members in France and 35,000 worldwide. In 1924, he even sent his wife, Grand Duchess Victoria Melita of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha,to the United States to petition funding from Henry Ford, the anti-Semitic car magnate. During World War II, many white migrs took part in the Russian Liberation Movement. There were Russian-language newspapers and a radio station. [citation needed]. On a personal level, Kazem-Beg entertained links with Krasnov and the Brotherhood of Russian Truth.[46]. [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. [52] PP, March 23, 1934, AN/19940497/70; A/S de lactivit de lmigration russe en France, September 1934, 9 p., AN / 20010216/282; August 1934, 2 p., AN/19940500/307; Note de renseignements: affaires russes, February 7, 1940, 5 p., AN/19940500/305; September 11, 1937, AN/19940500/309; DRG, Les migrs russes en France et linfluence hitlrienne sur leurs groupements, January 29, 1938, p. 3; Attitude des principales organisations dmigrs russes en prsence des vnements, September 28, 1938; A/S de lopinion des nationalistes russes de Paris aprs la confrence de Munich, September 30, 1938; A/S dune propagande des Russes blancs en faveur de lAllemagne, October 3, 1938, AN/20010216/282; Nicolas Ross, De Koutiepov Miller. Cover photo: Made by John Chrobak using: Boulevard Courcelles Paris 20060503 1 by Georges Seguin CC BY-SA 3.0. 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). Many white migrs also believed it was their duty to remain active in combat against the Soviet Union, with the hopes of liberating Russia. [59] A/S dun nouveau journal russe, Autour du Monde, cr par Alexandre Sipelgas, 4 juillet 1935, 2p., AN/19940500/309. 2023 Copyright France 24 - All rights reserved. As being temporarily deprived of our Motherland let us save in our ranks not only faith in her, but an unbending desire towards feats, sacrifice, and the establishment of a united friendly family of those who did not let down their hands in the fight for her liberation, The migrs formed various organizations for the purpose of combatting the Soviet regime such as the Russian All-Military Union, the Brotherhood of Russian Truth, and the NTS. A term preferred by the migrs themselves was first-wave migr (Russian: , emigrant pervoy volny), "Russian migrs" (Russian: , russkaya emigratsiya) or "Russian military migrs" (Russian: , russkaya voyennaya emigratsiya) if they participated in the White Russian movement. But while the famous Russian community of Paris--like those in Berlin and Riga--combined well-off . [7] Monuments for the war dead were often a way to symbolically recreate Russia abroad with example at the monument for those Russians killed while serving in the Russian Expeditionary Force (REF) in France at village of Mourmelon-le-Grand having a hermitage built near it together with transplanted fir trees and a Russian style farm to make it look like home. [42] A key concern for the French intelligence services was the potential rapprochement between Russian and Italian emigrants to the benefit of fascist Italyfor a fascist dynamic was sweeping through the various Russian groups, thanks first to their attraction to Italy and then to the polarizing effect of Nazism. This provoked an internal upheaval in the White Russian migr community, with some groups suddenly supporting the Ukrainian and Georgian separatists. At 90, Orobchenko considers himself "the last White Russian of Clichy", a northern Paris suburb once home to a vibrant emigre community. [33] PP, Comit dinitiative international anti-bolchvique, January 12, 1933, 4p.; Ibid., Comit dinitiative international anti-bolchvique, August 1933, 2p., AN/20010216/168. [21] Le Parti national pan-russe et les partis politiques franais, May 28, 1934, 2 p., AN/20010216/283. And despite having never lived there, she had the strange sensation of being somewhere familiar, thanks to her grandmother's vivid stories. [6] The popularity of monuments for the war dead reflected not only sadness over the war dead, but also a way to bring together the often badly divided migr communities shattered across Europe, Asia and North America. They made connections with several factions of the French extreme right, including the largest far-right organization at the time, Action Franaise. Various youth organizations, such as the Scouts-in-Exile became functional in raising children with a background in pre-Soviet Russian culture and heritage. 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. That he left for the United States in 1941, where he provided information about the Russian opposition to the U.S. intelligence services, and then returned to Soviet Russia to promote the ecumenical relations of the Moscow Patriarchate,[49] may lend support to this hypothesis. The transition from a national anticommunist struggle liberating Russia from Soviet powerto a global one drew many Whites into the magnetic field of fascism. Let us earn the right not to blush, but be proud of our existence abroad. 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. 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]. These people formed organizations such as the Mladorossi, the Evraziitsi, and the Smenovekhovtsi. After the October Revolution, France remained loyal to the fallen Romanov dynasty. Lost amid the horrors of . Their program was not one of restoration: The Young Russians, while defending the idea of a social monarchy (tsar and soviets), seek to collaborate with Russian nationalists who are working towards national recovery and defense.[47] They considered Stalins regime despotic but also thought that it had awakened national forces against machinism. The Young Russians believed that the revolution could only end with a social monarchy, a federated empire, and a managed economy.[48] In fact, Kazem-Beg made it his specialty to present Soviet policy in terms that were conducive to adoption by the Russian far right. In Germany, Kaiser Wilhelm IIs constitutional monarchy was replaced in 1919 by a democratic parliamentary republic that later became known as the Weimar Republic. "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. Pre-World War I Paris had been a playground for Russia's idle rich. 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. [20] About 127,000 people living in Harbin in 1920 came from Russia, making it one of the largest Russian-speaking cites in East Asia. [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. In Paris, she found a Russian Atlantis: the continued life of a great, imperial Russian culture united throughout several generations by music, literature andmost strongly of allRussian Orthodox religion. An important part was also played by the local Russian Orthodox Church under the guidance of St. John of Shanghai and San Francisco. They were not only ethnic Russians but belonged to other ethnic groups as well. The latter was perceived by many Russian officers as an ongoing case that was never finished since the day of their exile. This made the white migrs a target for infiltration by the Soviet secret police (e.g. Tens of White Army veterans (numbers vary from 72 to 180) served as volunteers supporting Francisco Franco during the Spanish Civil War. Here, in a bucolic and romantic setting, lie some of the greatest names in Russian art and culture, such as the writer Sergei Bulgakov, the artist Serge Poliakoff, and the ballet stars Serge Lifar and Rudolf Nureyev. [44], Much more serious is the case of the Mladorossy, or Young Russians. It claimed that the White Russians could not be satisfied with wanting to defeat Bolshevism in Russia but must fight it wherever they found themselvesthat is, allied with every enemy of the Soviet Union. The white migrs formed the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad in 1924. [4], One of the most notable forms of activities by Russian migrs was building monuments to Russian war dead of World War I, which stood in marked contrast to the Soviet Union, which did not build any monuments to the 2 million Russians killed between 1914 and 1917, as the war had been condemned by Lenin as an "imperialist war". Some also came there to treat tuberculosis which was then rampant. In the summer of 1923, the French intelligence services observed these monarchists interest in the secessionist movement of the Rhine Republic. On January 19, 1938, in Moscow, one of Stalins main aides, Andrei Zhdanov, fulminated against the protection that the French government was providing the White Russians and their criminal organizations, which are in reality nests of terrorist vipers, openly practicing their anti-Soviet work under the protection of the French authorities.[61] In reality, even if France constituted a central base for the White Russians, their transnational networks were more polarized by and oriented toward Berlin, Rome, and Tokyo than they were geared toward organizing seditious activity on Soviet territory. [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. Among them were members of the French Parti populaire of Jacques Doriot, a former communist leader who had turned to fascism. At 90, Orobchenko considers himself "the last White Russian of Clichy", a northern Paris suburb once home to a vibrant emigre community. White migrs and International Anti-Communism in France (19181939), IERES Occasional Papers, no. A Russian who had naturalized as a U.S. citizen, Vonsiatsky would ultimately be arrested and jailed in the United States in 1942 for spying for the Axis. Solonevichs message enjoyed wide circulation: when Solonevich and his brother Boris went to France in 1937 to hold six talks, the RNSUV periodical Signal published their texts. [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. [34], Some secret societies attracted the attention of the French authorities. 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]. After the murder of Tsar Nicholas II and his brother Grand Duke Michael Alexandrovich in 1918, the Russian line of succession became disputed. Officially, the group was formed in 1938, but it was informally visible as early as 1922, when Kirill distributed honor medals.
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