Russian emigration of the early 20th century. Pros and cons of emigration from Russia: an honest assessment. Emigration from the USSR
In pre-revolutionary Russian legislation, emigration as a legal concept was absent. Russian citizens were forbidden to change citizenship. Those who violated the law, regardless of the class, were waiting for an eternal exile to Siberia and the loss of property. The fate of the waves of Russian emigration from the Middle Ages to the end of the twentieth century was traced by the historian Yaroslav ZVEREV. Emigrants leave the boat on Ellis Island (New York State), where in the 1910-1930s there was the largest filtration center for emigrants from Europe. Today there is a museum of immigrants!
In medieval Russia, the ability to change one's place of residence depended on his estate and economic status. The power of a medieval state, the very stability of an agrarian society was determined by the amount of land and the number of people inhabiting this land. However, Russia was notable for its underpopulation: there was a lot of free land, but there weren’t enough people to cultivate it. So instead of emigration, the territory of the principalities actually expanded to the previously unoccupied territories of the northeast, where people flocked from the south, frightened by nomad raids and attracted by relative security.
Along with the displacement of the agricultural population, people of the military estate, princely retinues, also moved. For them, the basis of existence was service to the princes, and the change of residence did not present such a shock as for a burdened stock, cattle and seeds of a plowman.
At the beginning of the XIV century, military people left the southern principalities devastated by the Mongol conquerors and moved to the north-east - to Moscow or the north-west - to the lands of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. This was not political emigration - they spoke Russian in Lithuania, the Orthodox Church was not persecuted for a long time, and the Chernigov or Bryansk warriors did not feel any political connection with Moscow. On the other hand, noble political immigrants came from Lithuania to Russia - the famous Dovmont, who was defeated in the struggle for power in Lithuania and found a place in Pskov, or Andrei, Dmitry and Vladimir Olgerdovichi, sons of the Grand Duke of Lithuania.
A new situation arises in the 15th century as the unification of Russian lands and the formation of the Moscow state. If earlier a service man could leave the service in due time and “move off” to another prince, now only one sovereign remained in Russia - grand Duke Moscow and all Russia. The Muscovite sovereign claimed power over all the possessions of the Rurikovich and perceived the departure of his subjects as the direct competitor as a betrayal. For princes coming from recently annexed lands, this attitude provoked an internal protest.
The situation worsened in the middle of the 16th century, when Ivan the Terrible began to strengthen tsarist power by despotic methods, and aristocrats, accustomed to personal freedom, turned into slaves, who at any moment could be tortured and executed together with their family according to the will of the sovereign. Some of them could not stand it and fled to hostile Lithuania, saving their lives from an imaginary or real threat. It was to Lithuania that the future impostor and former nobleman Grigory Otrepiev fled, who unsuccessfully enrolled in the slaves to the defeated Romanov boyars.
Another direction of emigration was southern. If in the XI-XV centuries in the southern Russian steppes the Polovtsian and then the Horde khans reigned supreme, then in the XV century with the fall of the Horde on the Don there appeared settlements of Cossacks - people who spoke Russian, but did not recognize the authorities of Moscow. Those who flocked to the Cossack settlements on the Don were those who did not want to recognize the government of the state, the ruined service people and the peasants who could not withstand taxes. On the Don and Volga, a special culture of half-immigrants was formed - people who left Russia but did not want to lose touch with it. However, these were not people who wished to leave their homeland forever - they were just looking for a better share away from the authorities.
In the XVII century, a steady stream of emigration was generated by a church schism. There was not much difference for the persecuted Old Believer who exactly deprives him of the old faith - the Moscow Tsar, the Polish King or the Turkish Sultan. On the contrary, in a state hostile to the tsar, he could count on a more favorable reception as an oppositionist. In 1685, a group of Old Believers priests founded the Vetka settlement in Belarusian Polesie, under the rule of the Polish king. The branch served as the center of gravity of the Old Believer emigration and turned into a 40 thousandth city.
After the defeat of Vetka by Russian troops in 1764, part of the Old Believers moved from it even further, to the borders of the Austrian Empire. Even earlier, part of the Old Believers went to Moldova and the Danube, under the arm of the Turkish Sultan.
In 1708, fleeing the tsar’s wrath, the Don Cossacks-Nekrasovites, participants in the defeated uprising of K. Bulavin, went to Turkey. They settled first on the Kuban, and then on the Danube next to the Old Believers Lipovans.
In 1709, also under the rule of Turkey and the Crimean Khan, the Zaporozhye Cossacks who supported the rebellious hetman I. Mazepu passed. Then part of the Cossacks returned, but in 1775 Catherine II finally abolished Sich, and a significant part of the Cossacks also fell under the power of the Sultan, who settled them on the Danube. Some of these Cossacks returned to Russia during the victory campaign of Kutuzov in 1811-1812, another part - in 1828.
Along with the “grassroots” religious emigration, there was an emigration of representatives of the upper strata of society. However, for them the situation was complicated by the fact that, in contrast to the Old Believers who placed themselves outside Russian society, the nobles were obliged to serve the sovereign, and the decree on the liberty of the nobility did not change much here. Emigration was forever forbidden. For going abroad and even for marriage with a foreigner, it was required to obtain the permission of the emperor. The nobleman was obliged to return to Russia after the expiration of a five-year period, if he stayed abroad, and the “defector” was considered as a traitor, his possessions were confiscated. Therefore, in most cases, such actual emigration took the form of a temporary trip: this is how Count A. G. Orlov, fleeing from the wrath of Paul I, left. In his case, the trip was temporary, and after the change of reign Orlov returned to Russia.
A special form of emigration was the permitted non-return of Russian diplomats: for example, after the resignation, the Russian ambassador S.R. Vorontsov lived in London for many years, and A.K. Razumovsky in Vienna.
If in Europe those who chose the “cultural way of life” settled down, then people were traveling to the New World who wanted to start life from scratch in the new young world without serfdom and conventions of the old society - this is how he appeared in the descriptions of the few travelers and fiction XIX century. But there were few such emigrant Russians. When in 1856 Colonel I.V. Turchaninov decided to start new life in the United States, he did not apply for resignation, but simply did not return from abroad, and he was formally expelled from service only after two years of absence.
However, even until the middle of the XIX century, the number of arrivals in Russia invariably exceeded the number of those leaving. And only after the reforms of 1861 did emigration become mass. By its nature, its main part was labor or economic. In the years 1861-1915, 4.3 million people left Russia with its agrarian overpopulation: peasants, artisans and laborers. True, the vast majority of pre-revolutionary emigrants themselves were foreign nationals, mainly immigrants from Germany, Persia, Austria-Hungary and Turkey. And the majority of emigrants did not leave Russia within its current borders, but from the western provinces - Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, the Baltic countries.
First world War led to a sharp decline in international migrations (at the same time, internal migrations increased sharply, which is primarily associated with the flows of refugees and evacuated). Immediately after the October Revolution (1918-1922), mass emigration (from 1.5 to 3 million people) of the most diverse social groups of the Russian population began, from which some were forced.
The next stage of emigration from Russia (1948-1989 / 1990) is the emigration of the period cold warwhen about 1.5 million people left. We traveled mainly to Germany, Israel and the United States.
In 1991, President of the USSR Gorbachev passed a law on the procedure for entry and exit of Soviet citizens from the USSR, and from that moment, in fact, for the first time in Russian history, emigration became legal. By its nature and motivation, it is similar to the global one and is determined primarily by the economic factor: job search, desire to improve the quality of life.
Emigration from Russia until the middle of the XIX century. was a rare occurrence.
Emigrating from Russia was not easy for a number of reasons:
legal;
socio-psychological;
financial.
The situation changed in 1857 when a law was passed defining the procedure for going abroad for a temporary (5 years) stay, after which
it was necessary to apply for its extension. Otherwise,
the trap was considered to have lost citizenship and his property passed into guardian rule, and he, returning to Russia, was subject to eternal exile.
1892 received the right to officially leave Russia and not return.
The established procedures were retained by the 1903 Charter on Passports
The introduction of relatively simplified rules for traveling abroad coincided with
the abolition of serfdom. After gaining freedom, some peasants decided to leave abroad. A significant portion of Russians left on semi-legal grounds, using instead of passports the so-called legitimate
tickets - temporary certificates intended for residents of the border strip, which facilitated and cheapened the departure. First of all, with such documents
poles and Jews from the Pale of Settlement used it.
Calculating the number of emigrants is complicated - there was no strict accounting, and besides, there was no emigration as such (there was a temporary exit). Pre-revolutionary
emigration is estimated from 4 million.6 (of which 40% are Jews) to 7 million.7 (citizens of the Russian Empire) people.
In emigration of the second half of the XIX - beginning of the XX century. distinguish the following
large groups: labor, religious, national (mostly Jewish), political. Moreover, Jewish emigration includes religious, economic and political elements. In its classification, the chronological principle is not decisive.
6 Emigration and repatriation in Russia. M., 2001.S. 29.
7 Popov A.V. Russian abroad and archives. M., 1998.S. 46.
Pre-revolutionary emigration, unlike subsequent emigration, is not customary to share
to the waves, although some authors do this, having in mind primarily political emigration and linking this division, in accordance with Soviet historiography, to the "stages of the liberation movement." There are two periodizations
pre-revolutionary history of political emigration : 1) the first divides it very conditionally into two stages:
- populist (1847 - 1883),
- proletarian (1883 - 1917),
2) the second periodization is more complex, it is distinguished by different researchers four or five waves (sometimes combine the third and fourth):
- decembrist, or noble (1825 - 1850s, center - Paris),
- the result of the abolition of serfdom and the Polish uprising (1860 - 1870s, center - London and Geneva),
- the result of the second revolutionary situation (end of 1870 - 1895, center -
- (1895 - 1905, centers - Geneva, Paris),
- revolutionary (1906 - 1917) (centers - Paris, cities of Switzerland, Austria, England)8 .
8 See, for example: Pushkareva N.L. Ways of the formation of the Russian diaspora after 1945
// EO. 1992. No. 6. P. 18 - 19.
The most massive among all pre-revolutionary emigration was labor
vaya (economic) emigration9 . It consisted of landless peasants, artisans, unskilled workers. This emigration was gaining strength gradually, but by the 1890s it had already gained impressive proportions. She walked to
new to the countries of the new world, especially the USA. As in Russia, the peasantry abroad united mainly around church parishes, peasant
fraternities, mutual aid societies. Among this category of emigrants there were few educated and literate people, so they left behind few documents, which makes studying this group of emigration extremely difficult.
In part, emigration of well-known figures of art, science and culture is also associated with labor emigration. We can arbitrarily call this group the emigration of "creative intelligentsia." For some of them, living abroad was connected
but exclusively with profitable contracts (sometimes quite lengthy),
after which they returned to their homeland, so they can be attributed to the representatives of the so-called "pendulum migration". For many representatives of the creative intelligentsia, scientists, it was not so much earnings that were important as recognition and the ability to work freely, which also served as another weighty argument.
cop in favor of living abroad. The events of the First World War pre-
cherished free movement and led to the loss of ties with Russia.
9 See more about this: N. Tudoryanu. Essays on Russian labor emigration during the period of imperialism (to Germany, the Scandinavian countries and the USA). Chisinau, 1986.
In the last third of the XIX century. became quite massive national emigre
a nation from Russia (Ukrainians, Poles, Latvians, Lithuanians, Finns, Tatars, Germans, Jews). In many respects, this emigration was caused by harassment by the law and the authorities of these nationalities.
Religious emigrationin the pre-revolutionary period consisted mainly of sectarians: Dukhobors, Molokans, Stundists and Old Believers, who
settled primarily in Canada and the United States. The first mass movement for their
resettlement dates back to the 1890s, the next surge relates to 1905. The number of religious emigrants from 1826 to 1905 amounted to 26.5 thousand Orthodox and sectarians, of which 18 thousand left in the last decade of the XIX century. and in five pre-revolutionary years10.
10 Emigration and repatriation in Russia. M., 2001.S. 31.
You can highlight another group - the so-called " emigrants
le ", who ended up abroad without leaving their native places. These were Russian citizens who became Americans in connection with the sale of Alaska to America in 1867. This group left behind a significant amount of documents,
which was due to the existence in this territory of various Russian trade and other enterprises with their paperwork, as well as the presence of
a large number of Orthodox parishes, which also maintained their documentation.
The number of sources left behind by various groups
emigration, unevenly. While economic emigration practically did not leave sources, like sectarians, other groups, especially political ones, provide rich source material for study, which must be actively involved in historical research.
Until the mid-19th century, emigration was rare and outside of Russia there was no large Russian diaspora with its infrastructure, scientific institutions, museums, newspaper and magazine editorial offices, private archives and archives of emigrant organizations. The history of Russian emigration as a mass phenomenon begins in the middle of the 19th century. Pre-revolutionary emigration, unlike the subsequent one, is not customary to divide into waves. In its classification, the chronological principle is not decisive. In emigration of the second half of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries The following large groups are distinguished: labor, religious, Jewish, political. Travel and long-term residence abroad by representatives of the noble, scientific, and other wealthy strata of pre-revolutionary Russia are closely connected with the concept of "emigration."
In the last third of the 19th century, Paris turned into a major center of Russian political emigration; only representatives of extreme extremist movements were not allowed here. The vaccination of centuries-old culture has fostered tolerance in the French towards representatives of a different nationality, faith, and political views. The demographic crisis of the last third of the XIX - beginning of XX centuries. made the French authorities lenient to foreigners. The Russians enjoyed their special favor from the time of the political rapprochement emerging in the last third of the 19th century, which ended in 1893 with the conclusion of the Russian-French military-political alliance. In Paris, the Decembrist N. I. Turgenev, the people's leader P. L. Lavrov, the anarchists L. I. Mechnikov, P. A. Kropotkin, I. E. Deniker, as well as the Russian Jesuits lived. All of them came into open conflict with the authorities or with the dominant religion. They were deprived of civil and property rights and expelled in absentia from the country. Returning home promised an arrest, hard labor and exile.
In addition to political ones, scientific emigrants flocked to Paris. The number of Russian researchers in Paris in the 19th century is relatively small, but stars of the first magnitude shine among them: geographic traveler Pyotr Aleksandrovich Chikhachev, ethnographer and orientalist Nikolai Vladimirovich Khanykov, chemist Vladimir Fedorovich Luginin, biologist Ilya Ilyich Mechnikov, physiologist Ilya Faddeevich Zion, geographer Mikhail Ivanovich Venyukov.
Photograph of the staff of the Pasteur Institute in Paris. In the center: I.I. Mechnikov
Russian emigrants were among those who changed the minds of educated Europeans and removed the stigma of imitation and primitiveness from Russian culture, and from their people the seal of brute force, slavish humility, moral baseness, duplicity and deceit, which is exactly what he often presented in the writings of Western travelers . Emigrants became agents of the culture and interests of Russia abroad. Russian emigrants became members of numerous scientific societies and academies of Western Europe; two, Chikhachev and Mechnikov, won the rare honor of being elected to the Paris Academy of Sciences for foreigners, becoming members of the Institute of France, a community of five French academies. The Institute of France as a member of the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences included a lawyer and sociologist M. M. Kovalevsky.
2 Switzerland
Political emigrants from Russia in the XIX century sought to Switzerland. Political emigration is a complex, diverse phenomenon that includes the whole spectrum of social life in pre-revolutionary Russia. The traditional principles of dividing the currents of political emigration into conservative, liberal, socialist or noble, diverse, proletarian emigration, etc. do not reflect the entire spectrum of Russian political emigration. It is quite conditionally possible to distinguish two stages in the history of political emigration until 1917: 1. Narodnik, starting from the emigration in 1847 by A. I. Herzen and ending in 1883 with the formation in Geneva of the Emancipation of Labor group uniting the first Russian Marxist immigrants . 2. Proletarian from 1883 to 1917.
The first Narodnik stage is characterized by the absence of political parties with a clearly defined structure and the small number of political emigrants. Basically, these are Narodnaya Volya. The second stage in the history of political emigration is characterized by the formation of a huge number of different groups, societies and parties of political emigrants. The second stage is also distinguished by its relative mass character - colonies of Russian emigrants, editorial offices of the press, party bodies were formed at that time in all major cities of Europe (the main centers of Russian emigration were Geneva - 109 Russian were published in it during 1855-1917. periodicals, Paris - 95, London - 42). By the beginning of the twentieth century, over 150 Russian political parties operated outside of Russia.
An important event in the history of Russian political emigration was the creation in 1870 of a group of emigrants led by Utin in Geneva of the Russian section of the International. In 1887, the Socialist Literary Fund was organized in Zurich by political emigrants to publish works of a socially revolutionary nature. In accordance with the charter, it was a non-partisan organization, with the main purpose of clarifying the foundations of scientific socialism. The head of the Foundation was P. L. Lavrov, who was also an expert in the documents proposed for publication. At the expense of the Fund were published: “Historical letters of P. L. Lavrov,” works by G. V. Plekhanov and others.
The Emancipation of Labor Group
The beginning of the second or “proletarian” stage of the formation of Russian political emigration until 1917 was associated with the formation in 1883 in Geneva of the Emancipation of Labor group. Its origins were former leaders of the populist movement: G. V. Plekhanov - a member of the organization "Earth and Freedom" and the leader of the "Black Redistribution", P. B. Axelrod - Plekhanov's associate in the "Black Redistribution", former editor-in-chief of the Bakunin newspaper "Community ", The earthman V. N. Ignatov and others. The group marked the beginning of the Marxist trend in the history of political emigration. Abroad, members of the Emancipation of Labor group published the Library of Modern Socialism and the Work Library. The activities of the Emancipation of Labor group prepared the education in 1898 and the final execution in 1903 of the RSDLP, with Plekhanov, Axelrod, Zasulich, members of the Emancipation of Labor group, playing a large role in the formation of the RSDLP. The RSDLP has created the largest, compared with other emigrant parties and associations, the infrastructure of party organizations and groups abroad.
Of course, not only political emigrants from Russia lived in Switzerland. The most “Russian” city in Switzerland was Geneva. In 1854, the first Russian Orthodox community was officially created there. In the second half of the 19th century, a growing number of Russians raised the question of building an Orthodox church. The initiator of the construction was Archpriest Petrov, who served in the church at the Russian mission. The great wife Princess Konstantin Pavlovich, Grand Duchess Anna Fedorovna, bequeathed a large sum to the construction of the temple. In 1862, the Geneva authorities allocated a plot of land for the construction of the church for eternal possession to the Orthodox community, and in 1863-1869, the Cross Exaltation Church was erected here by the architect of St. Petersburg D.I. Grimm.
3 London
In the XIX century, many political Russian emigrants also found shelter in London. They not only aroused sympathy among the inhabitants of the British capital, but also managed to captivate many representatives of the Western European intelligentsia with their revolutionary ideals. From the beginning of the 1850s to 1865, the most prominent and colorful person among the Russian colony of the British capital was the writer, publicist, philosopher, revolutionary Alexander Ivanovich Herzen. Herzen’s close friend, poet, publicist, lived in London, revolutionary Nikolai Platonovich Ogarev with his wife Natalia Alekseevna Tuchkova.
Herzen and Ogarev. 1861 year
In 1853, Herzen founded the Free Russian Printing House in London, began to publish together with N. P. Ogarev the newspaper Kolokol and the Polar Star almanac, which became the mouthpiece of the protest; their influence on the revolutionary movement in Russia was enormous. Herzen contributed to the creation of the populist organization "Earth and Freedom."
In London in 1891, the revolutionary populist Sergei Mikhailovich Kravchinsky (pseudonym Stepnyak) founded the Free Russian Press Fund, which was engaged in publishing propaganda literature banned in Russia. The most active employees of the Foundation were Russian revolutionaries Pyotr Alekseevich Kropotkin and Nikolai Vasilievich Tchaikovsky.
4 US
For the period from 1861 to 1915 3 million 978 thousand people emigrated to the countries of the New World, mainly to the USA, from Russia. These were mainly landless peasants, artisans, unskilled workers. Most of them were not ethnic Russians. More than 40% of the emigrants were Jews. In the USA, Jewish emigrants settled mainly in the states of the North Atlantic, primarily New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
Political emigration to the USA did exist. In the 70s of the nineteenth century, the Volunteers began to penetrate into America. In the 70s there already existed several circles and communities of Russian revolutionary emigrants (the commune of Frey, G.A. Mastet and others). A notable person among Russian emigrants in America was the former hierodeacon of the Russian mission in Athens, then an employee of the Herzen Free Printing House and Agapiy Goncharenko, an emigrant to the United States since 1864. He is considered the founder of the Russian press in America. The first political emigrant to the United States was Colonel General Staff I.V. Turchaninov, who emigrated to the United States in 1856. Subsequently, he entered the history of America as one of the heroes of the war between the North and the South, in which he took part on the side of the northerners, commanding the regiment. Until the early 1880s, the number of Russian political emigrants in America was extremely small. The flow of political emigrants increased after the accession of Alexander III. Among Russian political emigrants to the United States of this period, one can name N.K. Sudzilovskogo, N. Aleinikov, P.M. Fedorov, V.L. Burtsev and others.
In 1893, after the conclusion of an agreement between the US and Russian governments on the extradition of political emigrants, many Russian emigrants were forced to leave the United States or to accept American citizenship. For political emigration to the United States, as well as for all political emigration, a gradual retreat into the background of its populist component is characteristic and, by the beginning of the 1890s, the complete domination of the Social Democrats. In particular, in the 1890s, the Russian Social Democratic Society was active in New York, and a group of Russian Social Democrats in Chicago.
Migration and emigration in the pre-revolutionary period in Russia
The history of international (interstate) migration and emigration of Russian citizens dates back several centuries, if we take into account the forced flight of political figures abroad during the Middle Ages. For example: salvation from the persecution of the Orthodox Church and Moscow’s princely power in Lithuania and “among the Germans” at the beginning of the 16th century. Novgorod-Moscow heretics, as well as the transition in 1564 to the side of the Poles, Prince Andrei Kurbsky. His step was dictated by fears for his life related to the conflict between the prince and Ivan the Terrible on the basis of choosing the main paths of political development of Russia. Kurbsky’s political concept consisted in developing the principles of combining the power of the monarch, institutions of the command apparatus and further development of estate-representative bodies, both in the center and in the localities. The point of view advocated by Ivan the Terrible consisted in affirming the principle of unlimited monarchy, "autocracy", with the parallel establishment of a tough, power regime. Subsequent developments showed that the point of view of Ivan IV prevailed.
In the “Petrine” era, religious ones were added to the political motives for leaving abroad. The process of economic migration, which is so characteristic of the countries of Central and Western Europe, practically did not affect Russia until the second half of the 19th century, although there are references to Russian immigrants of the 16th - 18th centuries. to America, China and Africa. However, these migrations were insignificant in number and were associated with the “call of the distant seas” or the search for happiness. At the end of the XVIII century. Russian settlers also appeared in European countries: in France (1774), Germany (in the cities of Halle, Marburg, Jena, etc.), where since the middle of the 15th - 2nd centuries. Russian noble youth began to study.
The main center of Russian political emigration of the second quarter of the XIX century. was Paris, and after the revolution of 1848 it became London, where the "first free Russian printing house" appeared, founded by A. I. Herzen, thanks to which Russian emigration became a significant factor in political life Of Russia. A characteristic feature of the "noble emigration" from Russia in the second quarter of the 19th century, which left quite legally, was a relatively high standard of living.
In the second half of the 19th century, after the Polish uprising of 1863 - 1864. a number of political "criminals" fled from Russia, who settled mainly in London, Bern, Heidelberg, Tulz, Geneva, Berlin. This new emigration has expanded the social composition of Russian political emigration. Petty bourgeoisie, commoners, and intelligentsia were added to the nobility.
A special stream of Russian political emigration that arose after the assassination of Alexander II and the internal political crisis of the 80s of the XIX century covered almost a quarter of a century. The appearance of one of the first political organizations in exile - the Marxist Union of Russian Social Democrats Abroad — dates back to this time.
Speaking of Russians who were abroad in the last quarter of the 19th - beginning of the 20th centuries, the economic “settlers” should be mentioned first. The reason for their departure was higher wages abroad. Until the beginning of the 80s, the number of people who left Russia for economic reasons did not exceed 10 thousand people, later it began to grow and in 1891 reached its "peak" - 109 thousand people. In 1894, it fell sharply, which was associated with a trade agreement between Russia and Germany, which facilitated the border crossing and allowed for a short trip abroad and return. Labor, or economic, emigration in the pre-revolutionary period was the most massive. It was composed mainly of landless peasants, artisans, unskilled workers. In total, from 1861 to 1915, 4 million 200 thousand 500 people left Russia, of which 3 million 978.9 thousand people emigrated to the New World, mainly to the United States, which is 94%. It should be noted that most of the emigrants from Russia were not ethnic Russians. More than 40% of the emigrants were Jews. According to the qualification of 1910, 1 thousand 732.5 thousand natives of Russia were registered in the USA, and persons of “Russian origin” - 2 thousand 781.2 thousand. Among the natives of Russia: 838 thousand Jews, 418 thousand Poles , 137 thousand Lithuanians, 121 thousand Germans and only 40.5 thousand Russians. Thus, it turns out that by 1910 no more than 3% of all people of Russian origin lived in the United States in Russia. Pinpoint ethnic composition labor emigration of the late XIX - early XX centuries. does not seem possible. So, in the USA, Ukrainians, Carpathians, mainly from the western and southern provinces of the Russian Empire, from Austria-Hungary (Galicia, Bukovina), Transcarpathia, were registered as Russian (or Rusyns). They identified themselves with the Russians and, broadly speaking, with East Slavic culture. Their descendants have largely preserved this continuity to our time, and most of the 10 million parishioners of the Russian Church in America (the American Metropolis), numerous Ukrainian and Carpathian churches are descendants of labor emigrants. In the late XIX - early XX centuries. Russian peasants in America united mainly around church parishes and peasant fraternities, mutual aid societies. Among this category of emigrants there were few educated and literate people: they did not write books and memories, but through generations they carried love and respect for Russia, preserving the traditions of Orthodoxy, as evidenced by dozens of Russian Orthodox churches built by their hands.
Some idea of \u200b\u200bthe number of Russian emigrants in the XIX century. give tables 1 and 2.
However, it should be borne in mind that the data in these tables give an idea of \u200b\u200b"subjects of the Russian Empire", and not actually of the Russians. As mentioned above, the percentage of the latter was relatively small. For example, in 1890 - 1900. he accounted for only 2% of all those who left. Of those who arrived in Germany in 1911 - 1912. almost 260 thousand people were “registered” by Russians only in 1915, and in 1912 - 1913. from about the same number - 6360 (Voblyy K. G. Departure for earnings in Germany and the Russian-German trade agreement // Tr. South-West Department of the Russian Passport Chamber. Kiev, 1924, p. 7). A similar situation was observed in Canada. So, from the former subjects of the Russian Empire who left for Canada, the actual Russians were: in 1900 - 1903. - 11 thousand people, which amounted to 46% of the total; in 1904 - 1908 - 17 thousand (34%), in 1909 - 1913 - 64 thousand (56%), and only for 1900 - 1913. - 92 thousand (Russian. M., 1997, S. 146).
It is necessary to mention one more category of Russian emigrants - those who left for religious reasons. Their numbers from 1826 to 1905, according to V.D. Bonch-Bruevich, amounted to 26.5 thousand Orthodox and sectarians, of which 18 thousand left in the last decade of the XIX century. and in five pre-revolutionary years. The largest flows of religious Russian emigration until 1917 were mainly Dukhobors, Molokans, and Old Believers. In the 1890s, the Dukhobor movement intensified with the aim of relocating to America. Some of the Dukhobors were sent to Yakutia, but many in 1905 obtained permission to resettle in America. In 1898 - 1902 about 7.5 thousand Dukhobors moved to Canada, many of them then moved to the United States. In the first decade of the 20th century, more than 3,500 Molokans left for the USA, they settled mainly in California. The Dukhobors, Molokans, and Old Believers largely determined the nature of Russian emigration to America at the beginning of the 20th century. In particular, in 1920 in Los Angeles, out of 3,750 Russians living there, only 100 were Orthodox, the remaining 97% were representatives of various religious sects. The Dukhobors, Old Believers on the American continent, thanks to a fairly separate way of life, to a large extent were able to preserve Russian traditions and customs to this day. Despite the significant Americanization of life and the expansion of the English language, they even now continue to remain Russian islands abroad.
One cannot but mention the mass emigration abroad of representatives of national minorities of Tsarist Russia in the 19th century. First of all, Tatars, Germans, Poles and Jews. In many ways, this emigration was caused by religious reasons. But these flows of emigration are not the subject of study of this work, because only with a big stretch can one consider the Russian (or Russian emigration) emigration of the Mennonite Germans, Crimean Tatars, Poles, most Jews, etc., although they emigrated from Russia. We do not consider such groups in our work, because they very quickly lost any connection with Russia and Russian culture. Although the scale of such emigration from pre-revolutionary Russia was significant, it was more correct to use the term “resettlement from Russia” in relation to it. It would hardly be justifiable to consider the Tatar population of Turkey as descendants of Russian emigrants, and they themselves identify themselves not even with the Tatars, but with the Turks. Just as it would be incorrect to consider the American director S. Spielberg and the magician D. Copperfield as representatives of the Russian diaspora on the American continent only on the grounds that their ancestors were from Odessa. It would be very problematic to detect any influence of Russian culture among the descendants of German immigrants from Russia of the 19th century in Germany and the USA.
The peculiarity of Jewish emigration from Russia is due to the fact that it includes all possible typologies of emigration: political, labor, religious, national, often intertwined and difficult to identify. Another feature of Jewish emigration is that part of it has for over 150 years retained elements of Russian culture and the Russian language. Evidence of this is the large number of Russian-language newspapers, magazines, organizations created by her that use the Russian language as a means of communication. The beginning of mass Jewish emigration dates back to the 70s of the 19th century. Moreover, more than 90% of Jewish emigrants were sent to the United States. In the 70s, of all Russian emigrants who arrived in the United States, 42% were Jews, in the 80s they amounted to 58.2%. The absolute number of Jewish emigrants continues to increase throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This was largely due to the restriction of the rights of Jews in the 80s. In particular, the enactment in 1882 of the "Provisional Rules" of Jewish residence in rural areas. They forbade Jews to settle outside cities, to acquire property, to rent land. In 1887, Jews were forbidden to settle in Rostov-on-Don and in the Taganrog district, in 1891 - in Moscow and the Moscow region. Between 1886 and 1887, decrees were issued restricting the right of Jews to enroll in gymnasiums and real schools throughout Russia. In the USA, Jewish emigrants settled mainly in the states of the North Atlantic, primarily New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. In 1891 - 1900 234.2 thousand Russian Jews left for the USA, which made up 36.5% of all Russian emigrants who arrived in the USA. Jewish emigration reaches its peak at the beginning of the 20th century. In 1901 - 1910 704.2 thousand Jews arrived in the USA, which made up 44.1% of all Russian immigrants. Jewish emigration cannot be classified as labor or temporary. There were practically no re-emigrants among the Jews, i.e. they deliberately tried to find a new homeland in the country of entry. This is partly due to the peculiarities of Russian legislation of that period. In tsarist Russia, emigration was prohibited - only temporary travel abroad was allowed. An exception to this rule was only Jews who received, according to the "Rules" of May 8, 1892, the right to officially leave the country, without the right to return.
On the number of people who left Russia in 1900 - 1917. and emigrants settled in different countries are clearly shown by the data given in table 3.
Political emigration is a complex, diverse phenomenon that includes the whole spectrum of social life in pre-revolutionary Russia. Perhaps, there is not a single noticeable trend in the political and public life of pre-revolutionary Russia that would not be represented in exile. Political emigrants from Russia published only in Europe for the period 1855-1917. 287 newspapers and magazines. Another feature of political emigration is its close interweaving and its relationship with labor, national, and religious emigrants. Such a variety is virtually unclassifiable. The traditional principles of dividing the trends of political emigration into conservative, liberal, socialist, or, noble, motivated, proletarian emigration, etc. do not reflect the entire spectrum of Russian political emigration. It is quite conditionally possible to distinguish two stages in the history of political emigration until 1917: 1. Narodnik, beginning from the emigration of A.I. Herzen in 1847 and ending in 1883 with the formation in Geneva of the Emancipation of Labor group, uniting the first Russian Marxists emigrants (G.V. Plekhanov, P. B Axelrod, V.I. Zasulich, L.G. Deich and others); 2. Proletarian - from 1883 to 1917. The first, populist stage is characterized by the absence of political parties with a clearly defined structure and the small number of political emigrants. Basically, these are Narodnaya Volya or, as they are commonly called in Marxist historiography, "representatives of the second stage of the revolutionary movement." The second stage in the history of political emigration is characterized by the formation of a huge number of different groups, societies and parties of political emigrants. And this is not protoparty, but real parties with a clearly organized structure. The second stage also differs from the first by its relative mass character - colonies of Russian emigrants, editorial offices of the press, party bodies were formed at that time in all major cities of Europe. (The main centers of Russian emigration were: Geneva, where 109 Russian periodicals were published during 1855 - 1917; Paris - 95; London - 42; Berlin - 17). By the beginning of the 20th century, over 150 Russian political parties operated outside of Russia. Characteristic the order of formation and stratification of Russian political parties was the initial design of parties of a socialist orientation, then liberal and, finally, conservative.
One of the first political emigrants of the 19th century was professor of Moscow University V.S. Pecherin (1807 - 1885). In 1836, he left Russia, becoming a political emigrant. Subsequently, Pecherin adopted Catholicism and became one of the most prominent figures in the Order of the Redemptorists, a well-known educator in Ireland. He was not a revolutionary, but actively collaborated with Herzen, in particular Herzen published his correspondence with Pecherin in the Polar Star. In 1840, the first emigration of M.A. Bakunin began, ending with his extradition to the tsarist government in 1851. In 1843, I.G. Golovnin, an official of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, who later lived in Europe and America for several decades, became a defector. Golovnin was also the author of the first revolutionary emigre pamphlet published in 1849 - “The Catechism of the Russian People”.
But, political emigration as a phenomenon begins with A.I. Herzen, who went abroad in 1847. In 1853, Herzen founded the Free Russian Printing House in London. Since 1855 he published the anthology "Polar Star", in 1857 - 67 years. together with N. P. Ogarev, he published the first Russian revolutionary newspaper Kolokol. The first fairly large group of political emigrants were the Volunteers who emigrated to flee the repression of the tsarist government. The most prominent representatives of this movement of political emigrants were P. L. Lavrov, M. A. Bakunin. P.N. Tkachev, P.A. Kropotkin, S.M. Stepnyak-Kravchinsky.
An important event in the history of Russian political emigration was the creation in 1870 of a group of emigrants led by Utin in Geneva of the Russian section of the International. Most well-known organizations of a populist nature were "Land and Freedom", "Narodnaya Volya", "Black Redistribution". From the Russian foreign press of this period, the Vperyod magazine (1873 - 1877) published by Lavrov in Zurich and London, the Nabat newspaper Tkacheva, published in Geneva and London (1875 - 1881), and the Bulletin of People’s Will (1883 - 1886) stand out from the Russian foreign press of this period. , the Geneva newspaper "Grain" (1880 - 1881), the London "At Home" (1882 - 1883), "Narodnaya Volya. Social-revolutionary review ”(1879 - 1885) and others.
In the 70s of the XIX century, Narodnaya Volya began to penetrate into America. In the 70s there already existed several circles and communities of Russian revolutionary emigrants (the commune of Frey, G. A. Mastet, and others). A notable personality among Russian emigrants in America was the former hierodeacon of the Russian mission in Athens, then an employee of the Herzen Free Printing House and, since 1864, an emigrant to the United States, Agapiy Goncharenko. He is considered the founder of the Russian press in America. The first political emigrant to the United States was Colonel General Staff I.V. Turchaninov, who emigrated there in 1856. Subsequently, he entered the history of America as one of the heroes of the war between the North and the South, in which he took part on the side of the northerners, commanding the regiment. Until the early 1880s, the number of Russian political emigrants in America was extremely small. The flow of political emigrants increased after the accession of Alexander III. Among the Russian political emigrants to the United States of this period can be called N.K. Sudzilovskogo, N. Aleinikov, P.M. Fedorov, V.L. Burtsev and others. In 1893, after the conclusion of an agreement between the US and Russian governments on the extradition of political emigrants, many Russian emigrants were forced to leave the United States or to accept American citizenship. For political emigration to the United States, as well as for all political emigration, a gradual retreat into the background of its populist component is characteristic and, by the beginning of the 1890s, the complete domination of the Social Democrats. In particular, in the 1890s, the Russian Social Democratic Society was active in New York, and a group of Russian Social Democrats in Chicago. The Russian Social Democrats were associated with the Emancipation of Labor group, and subsequently with the editors of Iskra. The number of Russian political emigrants in America rose sharply after the defeat of the revolution of 1905-1907.
A significant episode in the history of Russian political emigration was the activity of Herzen's friend, a high-ranking opposition figure, Prince P.V. Dolgorukov. Dolgorukov collaborated with the Herzen's Bell, providing information compromising the ruling strata of tsarist Russia from its illegally exported archive. Dolgorukov also published his periodicals “Future”, “Leaf”, “Truthful”, etc. These are just some of the publications of Prince Dolgorukov: “The current situation at court”, “Emperor Alexander Nikolaevich. His character and lifestyle. His wife Maria Alexandrovna ”,“ About what is happening in the Ministry of Finance ”,“ Career of Mina Ivanovna ”, etc.
The beginning of the second, or “proletarian” stage of the formation of Russian political emigration until 1917 was associated with the creation in 1883 in Geneva of the Emancipation of Labor group. Its origins were former leaders of the populist movement: G. V. Plekhanov, a member of the Earth and Freedom organization and the leader of the Black Redistribution, P. B. Axelrod, Plekhanov's associate in the Black Redistribution, and the former editor-in-chief of the Bakunin newspaper Community ”, The earthman VN Ignatov and others. The group laid the foundation for the Marxist trend in the history of political emigration. Abroad, members of the Emancipation of Labor group published the Library of Modern Socialism and the Work Library. The activities of the Emancipation of Labor group prepared education in 1898, and the finalization of the RSDLP in 1903, with Plekhanov, Axelrod, Zasulich, members of the Emancipation of Labor group, playing a large role in the formation of the RSDLP. The RSDLP has created the largest, compared with other emigrant parties and associations, the infrastructure of party organizations and groups abroad. In particular, the RSDLP overseas groups worked in Geneva, Bern, Paris, Berlin, Munich, Karlsruhe, Freiburg, Boston, Budapest, Lviv, Leipzig, Mannheim, Brussels, Nice, San Remo, Hamburg, Lausanne, Bremen, Lierene, Liege Antwerp, Davos, Copenhagen, Toulouse, Chicago, New York and many other cities in Europe and America. The most famous press organs of the RSDLP are the Iskra, Zarya, Vperyod, Proletariy, Pravda, Social Democrat newspapers and others. In 1908, the center of Russian political emigration moved from Geneva to Paris.
As already mentioned above, emigration, especially emigration of the 19th - early 20th centuries, is a complex, diverse phenomenon that does not fit into the Procrustean bed of any classification and systematization. The division of emigrants into political, economic, who left their homeland due to religious oppression, etc. far from covering all the components of emigration. The motives, reasons that prompted a person to become an emigrant are often very individual. And each has its own story. The only thing that unites this community, a group of people called emigrants, is that they all left their homeland for a long time, and sometimes for a lifetime.
In the period of the second half of the 19th and at the beginning of the 20th centuries, many figures of Russian science, culture and simply rich nobles lived abroad. N.V. Gogol, I.S. Turgenev, K.P. Bryullov, I.I. Mechnikov and others lived for a long time abroad. The reasons for their emigration are very diverse. Often this is a search for more favorable conditions for creativity and scientific work, personal reasons. These diverse motifs are often intertwined.
Z. A. Volkonskaya forever left Russia in 1829 and settled in Rome, where she lived for about 30 years. Villa Volkonskaya for many years has become the main cultural center of the Russian foreign countries in the first half and mid-19th century. And today this villa with a huge garden is called "Villa Volkonskaya." In the villa 3. A. Volkonskaya creates an Alley of Memories. She erects marble steles in honor of A. S. Pushkin and N. M. Karamzin, an urn in memory of D. V. Venevitinov. Frequent guests at Volkonskaya were N. V. Gogol, A. I. Turgenev, M. I. Glinka, K. P. Bryullov, A. A. Ivanov, V. A. Zhukovsky and many others. Volkonskaya salon in Rome was one of the most famous in Europe. Here gathered not only figures of Russian culture, but also of Western Europe. At Volkonskaya, writers read their stories, poems, plays, composers introduced the public to new works. Often concerts were held and even operas were staged. Villa Volkonskaya also had a huge library and a rich collection of art. In February 1915, in Rome, with the aim of assisting Russian emigrants and uniting the Russian colony, the A. Herzen Society was created. The founders of the society were G.I. Schreider, V.N. Richter and other emigrants.
From 1847 until his death in 1883, he lived abroad, mainly in France, I. S. Turgenev. In 1877, a historian, geographer, member of the Russian Geographical Society, correspondent of the Bell magazine M. I. Venyukov emigrated to France. In the early 30s of the XIX century, mother and daughter of Vereshchagins, Elizaveta Arkadevna and Alexandra Mikhailovna, went abroad for permanent residence. A.M. Vereshchagin, cousin of Lermontov, was friends with him during his life in Moscow and was in correspondence. In 1837 A.M. Vereshchagin married Baron Karl von Hugel and since then has not returned to Russia, living mainly in Paris and Stuttgart.
Russian microbiologist, laureate Nobel PrizeI.I. Mechnikov lived in France from 1888 until his death in 1916. In 1888, Mechnikov accepted the offer of Louis Pasteur and headed the largest laboratory of the bacteriological institute in Paris; since 1903, he was also the deputy director of this institution.
The centers of the Russian pre-revolutionary foreign countries were also numerous Russian libraries, which are available in many cities of Europe. One of the first Russian emigrant libraries was the Slavic Library in Paris, founded in 1855 by Russian Jesuits at the initiative of Prince I. S. Gagarin. Significant cultural center of the Russian colony in Paris was the "Russian Library. I. S. Turgenev. " It opened in January 1875. Its founders were I. S. Turgenev and G. A. Lopatin. In 1883, after the death of Turgenev, the library was named after him. In Rome in 1902, the “Russian Library named after N.V. Gogol ". The first to enter the library was the Club of Russian Artists in Rome, which had ceased to exist. Thus, the library received several thousand volumes. The library often hosted readings, concerts, debates. Lecturers were P. D. Boborykin, S. M. Volkonsky, V. F. Ern, S. M. Soloviev, and others. On Wednesdays, weekly meetings were organized for Russian emigrants in Rome. Library named after Gogol was a non-partisan institution and sought to remain equally accessible to all Russian emigrants, regardless of their political views. The membership fee for members of the library was 15 francs. Since 1912, in Rome, there was also the “Society of the Russian Library and Reading Room named after L. N. Tolstoy.” Any Russian emigrant who had lived in Rome for at least three months could be a member of the Society.
The largest book collection of Russian books outside of Russia was owned by the Slavika Library at Alexander University in Helsinki. From 1828 and until 1917, regularly receiving, by decree of Nicholas I, mandatory copies of all books published in the Russian Empire. In addition, it was replenished not only due to obligatory copies, but also due to donations and nominal gifts. The most valuable of them was the “Alexander Gift”, received from the son of Grand Duke Konstantin Pavlovich, Pavel Konstantinovich Alexandrov. He donated 24 thousand volumes from two libraries to the Slavika - the Bolshoi Gatchinskaya and the Marble Palace libraries, consisting mainly of old books from the 17th and 18th centuries. By 1917, the library had about 350 thousand titles of books.
One cannot fail to mention another large group of Russian people who became involuntary emigrants. These are Russians living in Alaska who became emigrants involuntarily - after the sale of Alaska to America in 1867. The parishes of the Russian Orthodox Church also involuntarily ended up in exile.
The Russian Orthodox Church in America dates back to the first Orthodox mission in Alaska in 1794. Since the sale of Alaska to America in 1867, the Russian Church in America has been on the territory of another state - the United States. Since that time, her parishioners have been replenished mainly due to converted Americans. In fact, since 1867, the Russian Orthodox Church in America has become Local the orthodox church, i.e. Having found “its place”, it is in canonical dependence on the Russian Orthodox Church. Gradually, churches of the Russian Orthodox Church appear in the ancestral territory of the USA - in San Francisco (1867), in New York (1870), and all Orthodox living in the USA are already among their parishioners: Serbs, Greeks, Syrians, immigrants from Austria Hungary, etc. In 1903, the Russian Church in America had 52 temples, 69 chapels. The number of registered parishioners reached 32 thousand people, while there were only 876 immigrants from Russia. In order not to embarrass parishioners who did not have Russian citizenship, the Holy Synod, by decree of January 27, 1906, did not allow the practice of commemoration at the services of Emperor Nicholas II, but US President. By 1917, there were already about a hundred thousand registered parishioners and 306 churches and chapels in the American Church. In addition, the Syro-Arab Mission, the Serbian and Albanian missions belonged to the Russian Church.
Summing up the analysis of Russian emigration in pre-revolutionary Russia, we can draw the following conclusions. Emigration as a phenomenon and a subject of study for historians, demographers, and other specialists appears in Russia only from the middle of the 19th century. It is from the middle of the 19th century that one can speak of such concepts as the Russian emigrant press and literature of the Russian diaspora. During the second half of the century before last and the beginning of the past, a fairly large Russian diaspora was formed in Europe and America, with its infrastructure of emigrant institutions, newspaper and magazine editorial offices, archives and libraries. It should be noted that pre-revolutionary emigration XIX - beginning of XX centuries was the largest in size, compared with subsequent emigrations, the number of people who left Russia in this period exceeds 7 million people. This is largely due to the fact that pre-revolutionary emigration was longer in time and was not caused by any political cataclysms, in contrast to subsequent emigrations. Moreover, in tsarist Russia, emigration was not regulated by law. The transfer of Russian citizens to another citizenship was forbidden, and the period of stay abroad was limited to five years, after which it was necessary to apply for an extension of the term, otherwise the person was considered to have lost citizenship, and his property would be transferred to the guardian board, and he, returning to Russia, subject to eternal exile. Thus, until 1917, emigration from Russia was semi-legal in nature and in fact was not officially regulated in any way ...
As shown above, pre-revolutionary period was dominated by labor or economic emigration. The peculiarity of the majority of emigrants (with the exception of the Dukhobors and Old Believers) was the desire to adapt to a new life as soon as possible, to find their place in a foreign country. Most of them settled in America.
The February Revolution of 1917 put an end to "anti-czarist" political emigration. In March 1917, the majority of revolutionaries of various political shades returned to Russia. To facilitate their repatriation, even Homecoming Committees were created. They acted in France, Switzerland, England, USA. But already in November 1917, the opposite phenomenon began to develop - emigration, bearing an anti-Soviet, anti-Bolshevik and anti-communist character. She received the name "White emigration", or "The first wave of Russian emigration." It should be discussed in more detail, since it was the First Emigration that played a significant role in the development and preservation of Russian national culture and its spiritual roots.
Chapter from the book
“Emigration and repatriation in Russia”
V.A. Iontsev, N.M. Lebedeva,
M.V. Nazarov, A.V. Okorokov
One of the most difficult and intractable problems in Russian history was, is and remains emigration. Despite the apparent simplicity and regularity of it as a social phenomenon (everyone has the right to freely choose their place of residence), emigration often becomes a hostage to certain processes of a political, economic, spiritual or other nature, while losing its simplicity and independence. The revolution of 1917, the ensuing civil war and the reconstruction of the system of Russian society not only stimulated the process of Russian emigration, but also left an indelible imprint on it, giving it a politicized character. So, for the first time in history, the concept of “white emigration” appeared, which had a clearly expressed ideological orientation. At the same time, the fact was ignored that of the 4.5 million Russians who voluntarily or involuntarily found themselves abroad, only about 150 thousand were included in the so-called anti-Soviet activities. But the stigma put at that time on emigrants - "enemies of the people", for many years remained common to all of them. The same can be said of 1.5 million Russians (not counting citizens of other nationalities) who found themselves abroad during the years of World War II. There were, of course, among them accomplices of the Nazi occupiers, and deserters who fled abroad, fleeing fair retaliation, and other kind of renegades, but the basis was still made up of people languishing in German concentration camps and taken to Germany as free labor force. But the word - "traitors" - was the same for all of them
After the 1917 revolution, the party’s constant interference in art, the ban on freedom of speech and press, and the persecution of the old intelligentsia led to mass emigration of representatives of the Russian emigration in the first place. This was most clearly seen in the example of a culture that was divided into three camps. The first was made up of those who turned out to accept the revolution and left abroad. The second consisted of those who adopted socialism, glorified the revolution, thus acting as "singers" of the new government. The hesitant entered the third: they either emigrated, or returned to their homeland, making sure that a genuine artist could not create in isolation from his people. Their fate was different: some were able to adapt and survive under the conditions of Soviet power; others, like A. Kuprin, who lived in exile from 1919 to 1937, returned to die a natural death in their homeland; still others committed suicide; finally, the fourth were repressed.
In the first camp were cultural figures who formed the core of the so-called first wave of emigration. The first wave of Russian emigration is the most massive and significant in terms of its contribution to world culture of the 20th century. In 1918-1922, more than 2.5 million people left Russia - people from all classes and estates: clan nobility, state and other service people, petty and big bourgeoisie, clergy, intelligentsia - representatives of all art schools and trends (symbolists and acmeists , cubists and futurists). Artists who emigrated in the first wave of emigration are usually attributed to the Russian abroad. Russian abroad is a literary, artistic, philosophical and cultural movement in Russian culture of the 1920s and 1940s, developed by emigration figures in European countries and directed against official Soviet art, ideology and politics.
The problems of Russian emigration to one degree or another were considered by many historians. However, the largest number of studies appeared only in last years after the collapse of the totalitarian regime in the USSR, when there was a change in the very view of the causes and role of Russian emigration.
Especially many books and albums on the history of Russian emigration began to appear, in which photographic material either constitutes the main content, or is an important addition to the text. Of particular note is the brilliant work of Alexander Vasiliev, “Beauty in Exile,” dedicated to the art and fashion of Russian emigration of the first wave and counting more than 800 (!) Photographs, the vast majority of which are unique archival material. However, for all the value of these publications, it should be recognized that their illustrative part reveals only one or two sides of the life and work of the Russian emigration. And a special place in this series is occupied by the luxurious album “Russian emigration in photographs. France, 1917-1947. " This is essentially the first attempt, and undoubtedly successful, to compose a visible chronicle of the life of the Russian emigration. 240 photographs arranged in chronological and thematic order cover almost all areas of cultural and social life of Russians in France between the two world wars. The most important of these areas, as we see it, are as follows: a volunteer army in exile, children's and youth organizations, charitable activities, the Russian Church and RSHD, writers, artists, Russian ballet, theater and cinema.
At the same time, a rather small number of scientific and historical studies devoted to the problems of Russian emigration should be noted. In this regard, one cannot fail to single out the work “The Fates of Russian Second-Wave Immigrants in America”. In addition, it should be noted the work of the Russian immigrants themselves, mainly of the first wave, who examined these processes. Of particular interest in this regard is the work of Professor G.N. Pio-Ulsky (1938) "Russian emigration and its significance in the cultural life of other peoples."
1. REASONS AND FATES OF EMMIGRATION AFTER THE REVOLUTION OF 1917
In the full bloom of their creative forces, many prominent representatives of the Russian intelligentsia met the proletarian revolution. Some of them very soon realized that under the new conditions, Russian cultural traditions would either be crushed or placed under the control of the new government. Appreciating above all freedom of creativity, they have chosen the destiny of emigrants.
In the Czech Republic, Germany, France, they were arranged as chauffeurs, waiters, dishwashers, musicians in small restaurants, continuing to consider themselves the bearers of great Russian culture. Gradually, the specialization of the cultural centers of Russian emigration stood out; Berlin was a publishing center, Prague a scientific center, Paris a literary center.
It should be noted that the ways of Russian emigration were different. Some did not immediately accept Soviet power and went abroad. Others were or forcibly deported.
The old intelligentsia, which did not accept the ideology of Bolshevism, but also did not take an active part in political activity, came under the harsh pressure of punitive bodies. In 1921, over 200 people were arrested in the case of the so-called Petrograd organization preparing the “coup”. Its active participants were a group of famous scientists and cultural figures. 61 people were shot, among them the scientist-chemist M. M. Tikhvinsky, the poet N. Gumilev.
In 1922, on the instructions of V. Lenin, preparations began for the expulsion of representatives of the old Russian intelligentsia abroad. In the summer, up to 200 people were arrested in Russian cities. - economists, mathematicians, philosophers, historians, and others. Among those arrested were stars of the first magnitude of not only domestic but also world science — philosophers N. Berdyaev, S. Frank, N. Lossky, and others; rectors of Moscow and St. Petersburg universities: zoologist M. Novikov, philosopher L. Karsavin, mathematician VV Stratonov, sociologist P. Sorokin, historians A. Kizevetter, A. Bogolepov and others. The decision to expel was made without trial.
The Russians were not abroad because they dreamed of wealth and fame. They are abroad because their ancestors, grandfathers and grandmothers could not agree with the experiment that was conducted on the Russian people, the persecution of everything Russian and the destruction of the Church. We must not forget that in the early days of the revolution the word "Russia" was forbidden and a new "international" society was being built.
So the emigrants were always against the authorities in their homeland, but they always passionately loved their homeland and fatherland and dreamed of returning there. They kept the Russian flag and the truth about Russia. Truly Russian literature, poetry, philosophy and faith continued to live in foreign Russia. The main goal was for everyone to “bring the candle to their homeland”, to preserve Russian culture and the unworthy Russian Orthodox faith for the future free Russia.
Russians abroad believe that Russia is approximately the territory that was called Russia before the revolution. Before the revolution, Russians were divided by adverb into Great Russians, Little Russians, and Belarusians. All of them considered themselves Russian. Not only they, but also other nationalities also considered themselves Russian. For example, a Tatar said: I am a Tatar, but I am Russian. Among the emigration there are many such cases to this day, and they all consider themselves Russian. In addition, Serbian, German, Swedish, and other non-Russian surnames are often found among emigrants. These are all descendants of foreigners who came to Russia, Russified and consider themselves Russian. They all love Russia, Russians, Russian culture and the Orthodox faith.
Emigrant life is basically a pre-revolutionary Russian Orthodox life. Emigration does not celebrate November 7th, but organizes mourning meetings “Intransigence Days” and serves funeral services for the repose of millions of dead people. May 1 and March 8 are unknown to anyone. The feast of the holidays is Easter, the Bright Resurrection of Christ. In addition to Easter, Christmas, Ascension, Trinity are celebrated and fasting is observed. For children, a Christmas Tree is arranged with Santa Claus and gifts, and in no case a Christmas Tree. Congratulations on the "Resurrection of Christ" (Easter) and on the "Christmas and New Year", and not just on the "New Year". Before Great Lent, a carnival is arranged and pancakes are eaten. For Easter, Easter cakes are baked and a cheese Easter is made. Angel Day is celebrated, and almost no birthday. New Year is not considered a Russian holiday. In their homes they have icons everywhere, they consecrate houses and a priest goes to Baptism with holy water and sanctifies houses, and they also often carry a miraculous icon. They are good family people, few have divorces, good workers, their children study well, and morality is at a high level. Many families pray before and after meals.
As a result of emigration abroad, there were approximately 500 large scientists who headed departments and entire scientific areas (S.N. Vinogradsky, V.K. Agafonov, K.N. Davydov, P.A. Sorokin, etc.). An impressive list of departed figures of literature and art (F. I. Chaliapin, S. V. Rakhmaninov, K. A. Korovin, Yu. P. Annenkov, I. A. Bunin, etc.). Such a brain drain could not but lead to a serious decrease in the spiritual potential of Russian culture. In the literary abroad, experts distinguish two groups of writers - those who formed as creative personalities before emigration, in Russia, and gained fame already abroad. The first includes the most prominent Russian writers and poets L. Andreev, K. Balmont, I. Bunin, 3. Gippius, B. Zaitsev, A. Kuprin, D. Merezhkovsky, A. Remizov, I. Shmelev, V. Khodasevich, M. Tsvetaeva, Sasha Cherny. The second group consisted of writers who printed nothing or almost nothing in Russia, but fully matured only outside its borders. These are B, Nabokov, V. Varshavsky, G. Gazdanov, A. Ginger, B. Poplavsky. The most outstanding among them was V.V. Nabokov. Not only writers, but also outstanding Russian philosophers found themselves in exile; N, Berdyaev, S. Bulgakov, S, Frank, A. Izgoev, P. Struve, N. Lossky, etc.
During the years 1921-1952. Over 170 periodicals in Russian were published abroad, mainly on history, law, philosophy and culture.
The most productive and popular thinker in Europe was N. A. Berdyaev (1874-1948), who had a huge impact on the development of European philosophy. In Berlin, Berdyaev organized the Religious and Philosophical Academy, participates in the creation of the Russian Scientific Institute, and contributes to the formation of the Russian Student Christian Movement (RSHD). In 1924 he moved to France, where he became editor of the journal Put, which he founded (1925-1940), the most important philosophical organ of Russian emigration. Wide European fame allowed Berdyaev to fulfill a very specific role - to serve as an intermediary between Russian and Western cultures. He meets leading Western thinkers (M. Scheler, Keyserling, J. Maritain, G. O. Marcel, L. Lavelle and others), arranges interfaith meetings of Catholics, Protestants and Orthodox (1926–1928), regular interviews with Catholic philosophers (30s), participates in philosophical meetings and congresses. According to his books, the Western intelligentsia became acquainted with Russian Marxism and Russian culture.
But, probably one of the most prominent representatives of Russian emigration was Pitirim Alexandrovich Sorokin (1889-1968), who is known to many as a prominent sociologist. But he is still speaking (albeit a short time) and as a politician. A feasible participation in the revolutionary movement led him after the overthrow of the autocracy as secretary of the head of the Provisional Government, A.F. Kerensky. This happened in June 1917, and by October P.A. Sorokin was already a prominent member of the Socialist Revolutionary Party.
He came to power of the Bolsheviks almost with despair. P. Sorokin responded to the October events by a series of articles in the newspaper Volya Naroda, the editor of which he was, and was not afraid to sign them in his own name. In these articles, written largely under the influence of rumors of atrocities committed during the storming of the Winter Palace, the new rulers of Russia were described as murderers, rapists and robbers. However, Sorokin, like other socialist revolutionaries, does not lose hope that the power of the Bolsheviks-this is not for long. A few days after October, he noted in his diary that "the workers are at the first stage of" sobering up ", the Bolshevik paradise is beginning to fade." And the events that happened to him himself seemed to confirm this conclusion: the workers rescued him several times from arrest. All this inspired hope that the power of the Bolsheviks could soon be taken away with the help of the Constituent Assembly.
However, this did not happen. One of the lectures “On the Current Moment” was delivered by P.A. Sorokin in the city of Yarensk on June 13, 1918. First of all, Sorokin announced to the audience that, “in his deep conviction, with a careful study of the psychology and spiritual growth of his people, it was clear to him that there would be nothing good if the Bolsheviks became in power ... our people have not yet passed that stage of development of the human spirit. the stage of patriotism, the consciousness of the unity of the nation and the power of its people, without which it is impossible to enter the doors of socialism. " However, "the inexorable course of history - this suffering ... has become inevitable." Now, ”Sorokin continued,“ we see and feel on ourselves that the tempting slogans of the October 25 revolution were not only not implemented, but completely trampled on, and we even lost them politically ”; the freedoms and conquests that were held before ”. The promised socialization of the land is not carried out, the state is torn to shreds, the Bolsheviks "entered into relations with the German bourgeoisie, which is robbing an already poor country."
P.A. Sorokin predicted that the continuation of such a policy would lead to civil war: “The promised bread is not only not given, but by the last decree must by force be taken away by the armed workers from the half-starved peasant. The workers know that by such a extraction of bread the peasants will finally be scattered from the workers and the two working classes will rise the war one against the other. ” Somewhat earlier, Sorokin emotionally noted in his diary: “The seventeenth year gave us the Revolution, but what it brought to my country, except for destruction and shame. The revealed face of the revolution is the face of the beast, the vicious and sinful prostitute, and not the pure face of the goddess, which was painted by historians of other revolutions. ”
However, despite the disappointment that at that moment swept many politicians who were waiting and approaching the seventeenth year in Russia. Pitirim Alexandrovich believed that the situation was not at all hopeless, because "we have reached a state that cannot be worse than that, and we must think that it will be better next." He tried to reinforce this unsteady basis of his optimism with hopes for the help of Russia's allies in the Entente.
Activities P.A. Sorokina did not go unnoticed. When the power of the Bolsheviks in the north of Russia was strengthened, Sorokin in late June 1918 decided to join N.V., Tchaikovsky - the future head of the White Guard government in Arkhangelsk. But, having not reached Arkhangelsk, Pitirim Alexandrovich returned to Veliky Ustyug in order to prepare there the overthrow of the local Bolshevik government. However, anti-communist groups in Veliky Ustyug did not have enough forces for this action. And Sorokin and his comrades fell into a difficult situation - the Chekists followed on his heels and was arrested. In prison, Sorokin wrote a letter to the Severo-Dvinsk executive committee, where he announced the resignation of his parliamentary powers, the withdrawal from the Socialist Revolutionary Party and the intention to devote himself to work in the field of science and public education. In December 1918, P.A. Sorokin was released from prison, and he did not return to active political activity. In December 1918, he again began his pedagogical activities in Petrograd, in September 1922 he left for Berlin, and a year later he moved to the USA and never returned to Russia.
2. IDEOLOGICAL THOUGHT OF “RUSSIAN FOREIGN”
The First World War and the revolution in Russia immediately found deep reflection in cultural thought. The most striking and at the same time optimistic understanding of the new era of historical development of culture has become the ideas of the so-called “Eurasians”. The largest figures among them were: philosopher and theologian G.V. Florovsky, historian G.V. Vernadsky, linguist and culturologist N. S. Trubetskoy, geographer and political scientist P.N. Savitsky, publicist V.P. Suvchinsky, lawyer and philosopher L.P. Karsavin. The Eurasians had the courage to tell the compatriots expelled from Russia that the revolution was not absurd, not the end of Russian history, but its new page full of tragedy. The answer to such words was accusations of complicity with the Bolsheviks and even in cooperation with the OGPU.
However, we are dealing with an ideological movement related to Slavophilism, soil cultivation, and especially with the Pushkin tradition in Russian public thought represented by the names of Gogol, Tyutchev, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Leontiev, with an ideological movement preparing a new, updated look at Russia, its history and culture. First of all, the formula “East - West - Russia” worked out in the philosophy of history was rethought. Based on the fact that Eurasia is that geographic region endowed with natural borders, which in the spontaneous historical process was destined, ultimately, to master the Russian people - the heir to the Scythians, Sarmatians, Goths, Huns, Avars, Khazars, Kama Bulgarians and Mongols. G.V. Vernadsky said that the history of the spread of the Russian state is to a large extent the history of the adaptation of the Russian people to their local development - Eurasia, as well as the adaptation of the entire space of Eurasia to the economic and historical needs of the Russian people.
GV Florovsky, who departed from the Eurasian movement, argued that the fate of Eurasianism was a history of spiritual failure. This path leads nowhere. You need to return to the starting point. The will and taste for the revolution that has taken place, love and faith in the elements, in the organic laws of natural growth, the idea of \u200b\u200bhistory as a powerful force process block the fact that history is creativity and feat, and it is only necessary to accept what happened and accomplished as a sign and judgment God's like a formidable call for human freedom.
The theme of freedom is the main one in the work of N. A. Berdyaev, the most famous representative of Russian philosophical and cultural thought in the West. If liberalism - in its most general definition - is an ideology of freedom, then it can be argued that creativity and the worldview of this Russian thinker, at least in his Philosophy of Freedom (1911), clearly takes on a Christian-liberal coloring. From Marxism (with a passion for which he began his career) in his worldview, a belief in progress and an Eurocentric orientation that has not been overcome was preserved. A powerful Hegelian stratum is also present in its cultural studies.
If, according to Hegel, movement world history carried out by the forces of individual peoples, asserting in their spiritual culture (in principle and idea) various sides or moments of the world spirit in an absolute idea, then Berdyaev, criticizing the concept of "international civilization", believed that there is only one historical path to achieving higher inhumanity, to the unity of mankind - the path of national growth and development, national creativity. Mankind does not exist by itself, it is revealed only in the images of individual nationalities. Moreover, nationality, culture of the people is conceived not as a “mechanical formless mass”, but as an integral spiritual “organism”. The political aspect of the cultural and historical life of peoples is revealed by Berdyaev’s formula “one-many-all”, in which the Hegelian despotism, republic and monarchy are replaced by autocratic, liberal and socialist states. From Chicherin, Berdyaev borrowed the idea of \u200b\u200b“organic” and “critical” eras in the development of culture.
The “comprehensible image” of Russia, which Berdyaev sought in his historical cultural reflection, was completed in the “Russian Idea” (1946). The Russian people are characterized in it as a "highly polarized people", as a combination of the opposites of statism and anarchy, despotism and liberty, cruelty and kindness, the search for God and militant atheism. Berdyaev explains the inconsistency and complexity of the “Russian soul” (and the Russian culture emerging from this) by the fact that two streams of world history — East and West — collide and come into interaction in Russia. The Russian people are not purely European, but they are not Asian people. Russian culture connects two worlds. She is the "vast East-West." Due to the struggle of the western and eastern principles, the Russian cultural and historical process reveals a moment of discontinuity and even catastrophic. Russian culture has already left behind five independent periods of images (Kiev, Tatar, Moscow, Peter's and Soviet) and, perhaps, the thinker thought, “there will be a new Russia”.
In the work of G. P. Fedotov “Russia and Freedom”, created simultaneously with the “Russian Idea” by Berdyaev, the question of the fate of freedom in Russia, raised in a cultural context, is discussed. The answer to it can be obtained, according to the author, only after clarifying whether "Russia belongs to the circle of peoples western culture"Or to the East (and if to the east, then in what sense)? A thinker believing that Russia knew the East in two guises: “filthy” (pagan) and Orthodox (Christian). At the same time, Russian culture was created on the periphery of two cultural worlds: East and West. The relationship with them in the thousand-year-old cultural and historical tradition of Russia took four main forms.
Kiev Russia freely perceived the cultural influences of Byzantium, the West and the East. The time of the Mongol yoke is the time of the artificial isolation of Russian culture, the time of the painful choice between the West (Lithuania) and the East (Horde). Russian culture in the era of the Muscovite kingdom was essentially connected with socio-political relations of the eastern type (although already from the 17th century a clear rapprochement between Russia and the West was noticeable). The new era comes into its own on the historical stretch from Peter I to the revolution. It represents the triumph of Western civilization on Russian soil. However, the antagonism between the nobility and the people, the gap between them in the field of culture, predetermined, Fedotov believes, the failure of Europeanization and the liberation movement. Already in the 60s. XIX century., When the decisive step was taken of the social and spiritual emancipation of Russia, the most energetic part of the Westernizing, liberation movement went along the "anti-liberal course." As a result of this, the entire newest social and cultural development of Russia appeared to be a “dangerous run for speed”: what will prevent - the liberation Europeanization or the Moscow riot, which will flood and wash away young freedom with a wave of popular anger? The answer is known.
By the middle of the 20th century Russian philosophical classics, which took shape in the context of disputes between Westerners and Slavophiles and under the influence of the creative impulse of Vl. Solovyova, came to an end. A special place in the atom of the last segment of classical Russian thought is occupied by I. A. Ilyin. Despite the enormous and deep spiritual heritage, Ilyin is the least known and studied thinker of the Russian diaspora. In the relation that interests us, the most significant is its metaphysical and historical interpretation of the Russian idea.
Ilyin believed that not a single nation had such a burden and such a task as the Russian people. The Russian task, which has found comprehensive expression in life and thought, in history and culture, is defined by the thinker as follows: the Russian idea is the idea of \u200b\u200bthe heart. The idea of \u200b\u200ba contemplative heart. A heart contemplating freely in objectively conveying its vision to the will for action and thought for awareness and word. The general meaning of this idea is that Russia historically perceived from Christianity. Namely: in the belief that "God is love." At the same time, Russian spiritual culture is a product of both the primary forces of the people (heart, contemplation, freedom, conscience), and the secondary forces grown on their basis, expressing the will, thought, form and organization in culture and in public life. In religious, artistic, scientific and legal fields, Ilyin discovers a freely and objectively contemplating Russian heart, i.e. Russian idea.
A general view of the Russian cultural-historical process developed was determined by Ilyin by his understanding of the Russian idea as the idea of \u200b\u200bOrthodox Christianity. The Russian people as a subject of historical life appears in its descriptions (relating to the initial, prehistoric era, and the processes of state building) in a characteristic that is quite close to the Slavophil. He lives in conditions of tribal and community life (with the veche system in the power of princes). He is the bearer of both centripetal and centrifugal tendencies; in his activity a constructive, but expensive and destructive beginning is manifested. At all stages of the cultural and historical development of Ilyin, aging and the establishment of the monarchical principle of power are interested. The post-Petrine era, which gave a new synthesis of Orthodoxy and secular civilization, a strong over-class power and the great reforms of the 60s, is highly appreciated. XIX century Despite the establishment of the Soviet system, Ilyin believed in the revival of Russia.
Emigration of more than a million former citizens of Russia was experienced and interpreted in different ways. Perhaps the most common point of view towards the end of the 1920s was the belief in the special mission of the Russian foreign countries, designed to preserve and develop all the life-giving principles of historical Russia.
The first wave of Russian emigration, having experienced its peak at the turn of the 20s and 30s, came to naught in the 40s. Its representatives proved that Russian culture can exist outside of Russia. Russian emigration accomplished a real feat - it preserved and enriched the traditions of Russian culture in extremely difficult conditions.
The era of perestroika and reorganization of Russian society, which began in the late 80s, opened a new path in solving the problem of Russian emigration. For the first time in history, Russian citizens were granted the right to freely travel abroad through various channels. Previous assessments of Russian emigration were also revised. At the same time, along with the positive aspects in this direction, some new problems arose in emigration.
Predicting the future of Russian emigration, we can state with sufficient certainty that this process will go on and on, acquiring new features and forms. For example, in the near future, a new "mass emigration" may appear, that is, the departure of entire groups of people or even peoples abroad (like "Jewish emigration"). It is also possible that “backward emigration” can occur — the return to Russia of people who had previously left the USSR and had not found themselves in the West. An aggravation of the problem with “near emigration” is possible, which also needs to be prepared in advance.
And finally, the most important thing - it is necessary to remember that 15 million Russians abroad are our compatriots who have the same Fatherland with us - Russia!