Reasons for the path of the first wave of emigration. Five waves of Russian emigration

The first wave of Russian emigration was a phenomenon resulting from the Civil War, which began in 1917 and lasted almost six years. Nobles, military men, factory owners, intellectuals, clergy and government officials left their homeland. More than two million people left Russia in the period 1917-1922.

Reasons for the first wave of Russian emigration

People leave their homeland for economic, political, social reasons. Migration is a process that has occurred to varying degrees throughout history. But it is characteristic primarily of the era of wars and revolutions.

The first wave of Russian emigration is a phenomenon that has no analogue in world history. The ships were overcrowded. People were ready to endure unbearable conditions in order to leave the country in which the Bolsheviks had won.

After the revolution, members of noble families were subjected to repression. Those who did not manage to escape abroad died. There were, of course, exceptions, for example, Alexei Tolstoy, who managed to adapt to the new regime. The nobles who did not have time or did not want to leave Russia changed their names and went into hiding. Some managed to live under a false name for many years. Others, having been exposed, ended up in Stalin's camps.

Since 1917, writers, entrepreneurs, and artists left Russia. There is an opinion that European art of the 20th century is unthinkable without Russian emigrants. The fate of people cut off from their native land was tragic. Among the representatives of the first wave of Russian emigration, many famous writers, poets, scientists. But recognition does not always bring happiness.

What was the reason for the first wave of Russian emigration? A new government that showed sympathy for the proletariat and hated the intelligentsia.

Among the representatives of the first wave of Russian emigration are not only creative people, but also entrepreneurs who managed to make fortunes through their own labor. Among the factory owners there were those who at first rejoiced at the revolution. But not for long. They soon realized that they had no place in the new state. Factories, enterprises, plants were nationalized in Soviet Russia.

In the era of the first wave of Russian emigration, fate ordinary people few people were interested. The new government was not worried about the so-called brain drain. The people who found themselves at the helm believed that in order to create something new, everything old should be destroyed. The Soviet state did not need talented writers, poets, artists, or musicians. New masters of words have appeared, ready to convey new ideals to the people.

Let us consider in more detail the reasons and features of the first wave of Russian emigration. The short biographies presented below will create a complete picture of a phenomenon that had dire consequences both for the fate of individuals and for the entire country.

Famous emigrants

Russian writers of the first wave of emigration - Vladimir Nabokov, Ivan Bunin, Ivan Shmelev, Leonid Andreev, Arkady Averchenko, Alexander Kuprin, Sasha Cherny, Teffi, Nina Berberova, Vladislav Khodasevich. The works of many of them are permeated with nostalgia.

After the Revolution, such outstanding artists as Fyodor Chaliapin, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Wassily Kandinsky, Igor Stravinsky, and Marc Chagall left their homeland. Representatives of the first wave of Russian emigration are also aircraft designer engineer Vladimir Zvorykin, chemist Vladimir Ipatyev, hydraulic scientist Nikolai Fedorov.

Ivan Bunin

When we're talking about When it comes to Russian writers of the first wave of emigration, his name is remembered first. Ivan Bunin met the October events in Moscow. Until 1920, he kept a diary, which he later published under the title “Cursed Days.” The writer did not accept Soviet power. In relation to revolutionary events, Bunin is often contrasted with Blok. In his autobiographical work, the last Russian classic, and this is what the author of “Cursed Days” is called, argued with the creator of the poem “The Twelve.” Critic Igor Sukhikh said: “If Blok heard the music of revolution in the events of 1917, then Bunin heard the cacophony of rebellion.”

Before emigrating, the writer lived for some time with his wife in Odessa. In January 1920, they boarded the ship Sparta, which was heading to Constantinople. In March, Bunin was already in Paris - in the city in which many representatives of the first wave of Russian emigration spent their last years.

The writer's fate cannot be called tragic. He worked a lot in Paris, and it was here that he wrote the work for which he received Nobel Prize. But Bunin's most famous cycle - "Dark Alleys" - is permeated with longing for Russia. Nevertheless, he did not accept the offer to return to their homeland, which many Russian emigrants received after World War II. The last Russian classic died in 1953.

Ivan Shmelev

Not all representatives of the intelligentsia heard the “cacophony of rebellion” during the October events. Many perceived the revolution as a victory of justice and goodness. At first he was happy about the October events and, however, he quickly became disillusioned with those who were in power. And in 1920, an event occurred after which the writer could no longer believe in the ideals of the revolution. Only son Shmeleva - officer tsarist army- was shot by the Bolsheviks.

In 1922, the writer and his wife left Russia. By that time, Bunin was already in Paris and in correspondence more than once promised to help him. Shmelev spent several months in Berlin, then went to France, where he spent the rest of his life.

One of the greatest Russian writers spent his last years in poverty. He died at the age of 77. He was buried, like Bunin, in Sainte-Genevieve-des-Bois. Found in this Parisian cemetery last refuge famous writers, poets - Dmitry Merezhkovsky, Zinaida Gippius, Teffi.

Leonid Andreev

This writer initially accepted the revolution, but later changed his views. Latest works Andreeva are imbued with hatred of the Bolsheviks. He found himself in exile after the separation of Finland from Russia. But he did not live abroad for long. In 1919, Leonid Andreev died of a heart attack.

The writer's grave is located in St. Petersburg, at the Volkovskoye cemetery. Andreev's ashes were reburied thirty years after his death.

Vladimir Nabokov

The writer came from a wealthy aristocratic family. In 1919, shortly before the Bolsheviks captured Crimea, Nabokov left Russia forever. They managed to bring out part of what saved them from poverty and hunger, to which many Russian emigrants were doomed.

Vladimir Nabokov graduated from Cambridge University. In 1922 he moved to Berlin, where he earned his living by teaching English. Sometimes he published his stories in local newspapers. Among Nabokov's heroes there are many Russian emigrants ("The Defense of Luzhin", "Mashenka").

In 1925, Nabokov married a girl from a Jewish-Russian family. She worked as an editor. In 1936 she was fired - an anti-Semitic campaign began. The Nabokovs went to France, settled in the capital, and often visited Menton and Cannes. In 1940, they managed to escape from Paris, which a few weeks after their departure was occupied by German troops. On the liner Champlain, Russian emigrants reached the shores of the New World.

Nabokov lectured in the United States. He wrote in both Russian and English. In 1960 he returned to Europe and settled in Switzerland. The Russian writer died in 1977. Vladimir Nabokov's grave is located in the Clarens cemetery, located in Montreux.

Alexander Kuprin

After the end of the Great Patriotic War a wave of re-emigration began. Those who left Russia in the early twenties were promised Soviet passports, jobs, housing and other benefits. However, many emigrants who returned to their homeland became victims Stalin's repressions. Kuprin returned before the war. Fortunately, he did not suffer the fate of most emigrants of the first wave.

Alexander Kuprin left immediately after the October Revolution. In France, at first I was mainly engaged in translations. He returned to Russia in 1937. Kuprin was known in Europe, the Soviet authorities could not do with him as they did with most of them. However, the writer, being by that time a sick and old man, became a tool in the hands of propagandists. They made him into the image of a repentant writer who returned to glorify a happy Soviet life.

Alexander Kuprin died in 1938 from cancer. He was buried at the Volkovskoye cemetery.

Arkady Averchenko

Before the revolution, the writer’s life was going well. He was the editor-in-chief of a humor magazine, which was extremely popular. But in 1918 everything changed dramatically. The publishing house was closed. Averchenko took a negative position towards the new government. With difficulty he managed to get to Sevastopol - the city in which he was born and spent early years. The writer sailed to Constantinople on one of the last ships a few days before Crimea was taken by the Reds.

At first Averchenko lived in Sofia, then in Belgorod. In 1922 he left for Prague. It was difficult for him to live away from Russia. Most of the works written in exile are permeated with the melancholy of a person forced to live far from his homeland and only occasionally hear his native speech. However, it quickly gained popularity in the Czech Republic.

In 1925, Arkady Averchenko fell ill. He spent several weeks in the Prague City Hospital. Died March 12, 1925.

Teffi

The Russian writer of the first wave of emigration left her homeland in 1919. In Novorossiysk she boarded a ship that was heading to Turkey. From there I got to Paris. Nadezhda Lokhvitskaya (this is the real name of the writer and poetess) lived in Germany for three years. She published abroad and already organized a literary salon in 1920. Teffi died in 1952 in Paris.

Nina Berberova

In 1922, together with her husband, poet Vladislav Khodasevich, the writer left Soviet Russia for Germany. Here they spent three months. They lived in Czechoslovakia, Italy and, from 1925, in Paris. Berberova was published in the emigrant publication "Russian Thought". In 1932, the writer divorced Khodasevich. After 18 years she left for the USA. She lived in New York, where she published the almanac "Commonwealth". Since 1958, Berberova taught at Yale University. She died in 1993.

Sasha Cherny

The real name of the poet, one of the representatives of the Silver Age, is Alexander Glikberg. He emigrated in 1920. Lived in Lithuania, Rome, Berlin. In 1924, Sasha Cherny left for France, where he spent his last years. He had a house in the town of La Favière, where Russian artists, writers, and musicians often gathered. Sasha Cherny died of a heart attack in 1932.

Fyodor Chaliapin

The famous opera singer left Russia, one might say, not of his own free will. In 1922, he was on tour, which, as it seemed to the authorities, was delayed. Long performances in Europe and the United States aroused suspicion. Vladimir Mayakovsky immediately reacted by writing an angry poem, which included the following words: “I’ll be the first to shout - go back!”

In 1927, the singer donated proceeds from one of his concerts to the children of Russian emigrants. In Soviet Russia this was perceived as support for the White Guards. In August 1927, Chaliapin was deprived of Soviet citizenship.

In exile, he performed a lot, even starred in a film. But in 1937 he was diagnosed with leukemia. On April 12 of the same year, the famous Russian opera singer died. He was buried in the Batignolles cemetery in Paris.

The tragedy and glory of the wave of the first Russian emigration (1920s)

1. Emigration of the first wave: concept and numbers

The revolutionary events of 1917 and the subsequent Civil War led to the emergence huge number refugees from Russia. Emigration for political reasons has happened before, but such a mass exodus has never happened.

There is no exact data on the number of people who left their homeland at that time. Traditionally (since the 1920s) it was believed that there were about 2 million of our compatriots in exile. P.E. Kovalevsky, a major researcher of the culture of Russian Abroad, speaks of 1,160 thousand emigrants. However, modern researchers (A.V. Kvakin) believe that there were no more than 800-900 thousand people. According to the F. Nansen Committee at the League of Nations - 450 thousand people.

The exodus of refugees from Russia after 1917 to the end of the 1930s is usually called the emigration of the first wave. It should be noted that the massive outflow of emigrants continued until the mid-1920s, then it stopped, and a Russian society in exile arose far from the homeland, essentially a second Russia, where all layers of Russian pre-revolutionary society were represented. Modern research shows that the social composition of the first wave of emigration was actually quite varied. The intelligentsia made up no more than a third of the flow, but it was they who made up the glory of the Russian Abroad.

The emigration of the first wave is a phenomenal phenomenon. It differs in that the majority of emigrants (85-90%) did not subsequently return to Russia and did not integrate into the society of their country of residence. All of them were confident of a quick return to their homeland and sought to preserve the language, culture, traditions, and way of life. Living in their own world, they tried to isolate themselves from the alien environment and consciously tried to lead life as if nothing had happened. Of course, the emigrants understood that they were stateless and “patriots without a fatherland.” But the common fate of the exiles, despite social, political, economic and other differences in their former life, the awareness of a common origin, belonging to one people, one culture created the spiritual foundation of the entire Russian Abroad, special world without physical and legal boundaries. In a certain sense, he really was an extraterritorial “foreign Russia.”

The collapse of a state and a change in borders do not yet mean the loss of the Fatherland. People, regardless of their location, can consider themselves compatriots, representatives of the same people. The split of the Fatherland occurs as a result of disintegration into nations. As long as the people realize themselves as one whole, the Fatherland is one. Culture of Russian Abroad and Soviet culture– these are two inseparable parts of a single great Russian culture.

In emigration, spiritual creativity for the intelligentsia becomes not only a way of survival, but also the fulfillment of a huge historical mission - to preserve for future Russia pre-revolutionary Russian culture and its traditions. The intelligentsia could not be content with their status as refugees and forced waiting favorable conditions for return. The meaning of staying abroad was seen by its representatives to be used for the good of the Fatherland and thereby justify their break with the people. For future Russia, they believed, “it will make a great difference whether foreign Russia will return to its homeland without the new cultural reserves Russia needs, or whether it will appear like a swarm of bees in its native hive, heavily loaded with nutritious juices collected from the best flowers of a foreign culture.”

The Russian Abroad is a complex and contradictory phenomenon. For a number of reasons, the entire color of the domestic intellectual elite ended up here, and this is also its specificity. The culture of the Russian Abroad is a worthy contribution to the treasury of world culture. Speaking in the US Congress, President Roosevelt said that Russia had fully paid off the world community for the debts of the tsarist government, giving the world S. Rachmaninov, A. Pavlov, F. Chaliapin and many others.

2. Reasons for emigration

It is quite natural to ask about the reasons for mass emigration after 1917. It is impossible to answer it unequivocally. The departure of that part of the population that linked its fate with the anti-Bolshevik struggle during the Civil War or lost a huge fortune during the revolution is understandable. But it is much more difficult to explain the reasons for the emigration of neutral or even apolitical layers. Of course, some of those who left ended up abroad by accident, and it was they who later formed the main backbone of those who returned. But for the majority, leaving Russia was the result of a meaningful choice.

As already noted, emigration began immediately after the February Revolution, when aristocrats, bankers and big bourgeois left in the hope of staying abroad until better times. After the October Revolution, the flow of people leaving increased, but the majority still did not go abroad, but to the south, where it was more nourishing and calmer, or to the whites.
And yet, material problems were not the main reasons for emigration. Many people understood that they were involved in the war and hoped for a change in the situation after its end. The same F.I. Chaliapin recalled that when thinking about leaving, he said to himself: “...This will not be good. After all, I wanted a revolution, I wore a red ribbon in my buttonhole, I ate revolutionary porridge to “accumulate strength,” but when the time came when there was no porridge and only chaff left, I had to run away?! Bad".

For many emigrants, the reason for their forced departure from Russia is fear for their own lives and the lives of their loved ones. It is known that during times of social cataclysms (war, revolution), public consciousness changes. Human life loses its value, and if peacetime While murder is considered an extraordinary event, in war conditions it is an ordinary occurrence. Not only is morality in society changing, but the state can no longer carry out its inherent function of protecting public order. Crime is rising sharply.
When naming the reasons for emigration, it is necessary to take into account the influence of caste and family factors, the influence of the usual way of life. In the letters of emigrants and their diaries, phrases like “all of us left”, “we were left alone” are often found. That is why when after the Civil War in Russia the first signs of restoration appear normal life, some emigrants raise the question of returning.

Let us dwell in some detail on the reasons for the emigration of the intelligentsia. It is known that among the motives of individual behavior, the professional factor plays a huge role. The loss of their previous position in society and the inability to go about their business become one of the main reasons for emigration.

Of course, it is difficult to answer unambiguously the question of the reasons for the emigration of this or that representative of the intelligentsia. As A.V. Kvakin writes, “most likely a whole complex of both primary and secondary reasons was at work here.” But still, it seems to us that the main reasons for the emigration of the intelligentsia are the ill-conceived, ignorant policy of the young Soviet state in the field of public education and culture, the establishment of the ideological monopoly of the Bolsheviks, the fight against dissent, and the priority of class interests over spiritual ones.

3. Activities Orthodox Church in the process of adaptation of the first wave of Russian emigration.

The authorities of most countries did everything possible to receive and accommodate Russian refugees. One of the figures of the Russian Orthodox Church who provided real help The first wave of emigrants (who found work and placed them in apartments) was Archpriest Georgy Florovsky. Representatives of the first wave of emigrants noted: Many returned to church. Belonging to the intelligentsia, previously treating religion with indifference, as an outdated institution and in the hands of the ossified and reactionary, they suddenly discovered eternal beauty in the church, discovered mysticism, to which the Russian people have always been disposed and which could be interpreted and accepted. .. the way the soul wants, I think. The return of the Russian intelligentsia to the fold of the church was characteristic phenomenon emigration. The temples were overcrowded. People, as P. Kovalevsky recalled, went there... as if to a refuge from an alien world, from the difficulties of life. There were some who went there because of a secret subconscious feeling of their guilt in what happened to the Motherland. From secret subconscious repentance, both personal and public.

For Russians, the church became not only a place of turning to God, but also a kind of center. Coming to church, emigrants exchanged news, talked about politics, and discussed the prospects of returning to their homeland

The news of the Nobel Prize in Literature being awarded to Ivan Bunin spread throughout the world—the Russian emigration experienced a common “non-fictional national holiday.” United by a common impulse, Bunin's famous and unknown compatriots who found themselves abroad cried with joy, as if they had learned of victory at the front; “It was as if we were on trial and suddenly acquitted,” as one of the congratulations said. The newspapers, jubilantly, trumpeted the victory of Russian literature and Russian emigration: “there was nothing behind Bunin,” claimed the poet and literary critic Georgy Adamovich, “no ambassadors, no academies, no publishing trusts of any kind... Nothing. No real power.<…>But this was enough for the celebration.”

The newly minted laureate goes to the “capital of the Russian diaspora” - Paris, where celebrations and banquets followed each other with carnival speed in an atmosphere of general joyful intoxication. A trip with his retinue to Stockholm, where Bunin delighted the reserved Swedes with his royal-aristocratic habits and almost lost his Nobel diploma and check, was the end of the holiday. Part of the money was distributed - first of all to poor writer friends (and not only friends: Marina Tsvetaeva, who did not favor the “arrogant master,” was not deprived), but most of the money was wasted; The collection of works undertaken by the Nobel laureate turned out to be unprofitable. And now again the familiar sound of wheels, and Bunin travels to different parts of Europe to read his stories and grace banquets in his own honor with his presence, and again fights literally “for every penny” of the fee, adding new works to emigrant periodicals.

Bunin's Nobel Prize was the first summing up of the entire emigration during the dozen years of its post-revolutionary dispersion. For the first time in the history of the award, a “stateless person” became a laureate.

The emigration was preceded by refugees caused by the Civil War. The February revolution, on which so many hopes were pinned, was not a victory for democracy and liberalism. The slogan of the Provisional Government was “War to a victorious end,” but the soldiers were tired of fighting. Lenin promised peace to the peoples, land to the peasants, plants and factories to the workers, and won over to his side primarily the working population. After the October Revolution, the country split into reds and whites, and the fratricidal war turned out to be merciless.

The Red Terror drove many out of the country. Hundreds of thousands of refugees who settled on foreign shores are usually called in Russian historiography the first wave of emigration.

Emigration, preferred to terror, daily arrests, expropriation, is not a rational miscalculation of life strategies, it is flight, a desire to hide in a safe place, to wait until better times. Among those who left their homeland after October 1917, there were many outstanding representatives of Russian literature, musicians and artists, actors and philosophers. Let us list the main reasons that prompted them to leave or even flee.

Firstly, a sharp rejection of the Bolshevik government, rejection not only of its ideology, but also of its main figures: for example, Bunin and Kuprin became famous for such sharp anti-Bolshevik journalism that staying for them meant voluntarily standing up to the wall. Remaining in Petrograd and waiting, even continuing to write, Dmitry Merezhkovsky and Zinaida Gippius later came to the same decision and became equally harsh critics of the new government. The Bolshevik revolution was not accepted by many - it was a conscious choice, creative and ideological. Without taking any obvious anti-Bolshevik steps, Vyacheslav Ivanov went to Italy with lectures; “for treatment” (this was a convenient wording for many fugitives, supported by the People’s Commissar of Education Lunacharsky), the writer Alexei Remizov left for Berlin. Both did not return.

Secondly, physical survival. For many literary and artistic workers, the revolution and the Civil War meant the end of their professional activities. Not everyone was satisfied with performing in front of the Red Army soldiers for meager rations, writing propaganda and painting posters. Rachmaninov and Prokofiev left Russia to conquer America: the great fame of the virtuoso pianist forever detained Sergei Rachmaninov in exile, and Sergei Prokofiev, who worked fruitfully as a composer, returned to his homeland and organically joined the ideologized Soviet art, creating, for example, -mer, “Zdravitsa” to Stalin. The Moscow Art Theater artists, having gone on long tours, did not all return - the troupe split. The stars of the pre-revolutionary Russian screen also left. The pride of the domestic satire Teffi went on tour - to earn money, read comic poetry and sketches; This tour ended in Paris.

Thirdly, the Soviet government could make enemies of recent supporters. Even without resorting to extreme measures, the Soviet government got rid of too independent minds by expelling them from the country. On the so-called philosophical steamship (in fact there were two of them: “Oberburgomaster Haken” and “Prussia”), more than 160 intellectuals and their families arrived at the end of 1922 in the German port of Stettin. Those expelled were not enemies of Soviet power, but their dissent was too obvious.

Fourthly, the borders of Soviet Russia were greatly reduced compared to pre-revolutionary ones, new states emerged, and traditionally dacha places ended up abroad - in Finland, Leonid Andreev and Ilya Repin, and in Estonia, Igor Severyanin. In the Baltic states, large Russian diasporas of people who never left, born and raised in Riga or Dorpat (Tartu), have formed. Many Russians lived in Poland and Harbin, in China.

There was a fifth: Marina Tsvetaeva, who, thanks to her talent and character, fit perfectly into the creative environment of post-revolutionary Moscow in the 1920s, went to Prague, where her husband Sergei Efron, a White emigrant, lived. Difficult case Gorky, the organizer of Bolshevik cultural politics, who left due to disagreements with new government and having no connections with emigration - influenced other destinies: Vladislav Khodasevich and Nina Berberova went to him, but never returned.

Finally, the younger generation of emigration: the young men who found themselves in the White Army had their way to Russia cut off. Their destinies turned out to be different: Gaito Gazdanov became a writer; Alexey Durakov - a poet who died in the Serbian Resistance; Ilya Golenishchev-Kutuzov, also a poet and also a Serbian partisan, returned to Russia after World War II and became a major scientist, an expert on the work of Dante. However, his parents took him away - just like Vladimir Nabokov, whose father was one of the leaders of the Kadet Party. It is impossible to imagine Nabokov as a Soviet writer; the appearance of “Lolita” in the USSR completely exceeds all conceivable assumptions.

Most emigrants did not imagine that emigration would be their destiny. Some writers and cultural figures continued to live with Soviet passports, write sympathetically about Soviet literature and culture, and bear the nickname “Bolshevisans” (like Mikhail Osorgin). But general hopes for the fragility of the Bolsheviks quickly faded, since 1924 everything more countries recognized the USSR, and contacts with friends and relatives came to naught, since correspondence with foreign countries threatened Soviet citizens with serious persecution. Classical historian Mikhail Rostovtsev warned Bunin:

“To Russia? We'll never get there. We'll die here. It always seems that way to people who don’t remember history well. But how often have you read, for example: “Not even 25 years have passed, so and so has changed?” It will be the same with us. Not even 25 years will pass before the Bolsheviks fall, and maybe 50 - but for you and me, Ivan Alekseevich, this is an eternity.”

The post-revolutionary emigration had one strategy: survival. The direction of refugee determined the nature of emigration. The remnants of the White Army were evacuated from Crimea and Odessa; The civilian population—military families—went with them; Those who, in the eyes of the victorious Bolsheviks, looked like “counterpart”, undefeated bourgeois, left. “Tra-ta-ta,” sung by Blok in “The Twelve” (“Eh, eh, without a cross!”) infuriated Bunin; he was among those who did not accept Bolshevism not just politically, but also psychophysically: “some grunts with wet hands” did not convince him either as future rulers of the state, or as listeners of sublime poetry.

The first stop was Constantinople, the Turkish capital. The French occupation authorities, horrified by the size of the arriving Russian army, sent the military to camps on the bare islands of Gallipoli and Lemnos, and even further to the Tunisian Bizerte. Concerts were held in the island camps, plays were staged, and the daily newspaper was not published on paper, but sounded from a loudspeaker. Concerned about the excellent training and high spirits of the Russian soldiers, the French hastened to send them to work in Slavic countries, primarily Serbia and Bulgaria.

Russian refugees were sheltered by the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (since 1929 - the Kingdom of Yugoslavia), and a Russian diaspora arose in the Balkans. It was mostly monarchist, and even more patriotic and anti-Bolshevik emigration. After the war, the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy and Ottoman Empire the newly formed kingdom was in dire need of qualified personnel - doctors, teachers, lawyers. Russian emigrants turned out to be extremely useful: they taught at universities and schools, worked as doctors and medical personnel at all levels, paved roads and built cities. In the presence royal family On April 9, 1933, the Russian House named after Emperor Nicholas II was opened: “Don’t be arrogant, foolish Europe, / We have our own culture: / Russian House, pancakes with caviar, / Dostoevsky and Tolstoy!”

Meanwhile, the Russian House owes its appearance to the adoption among the Russian emigration of the provision about “Russian Athens,” that is, about the development of a national emigrant culture that was supposed to return to Russia. “Poor, old, shaggy Russian professors filled foreign departments and universities with books, like the Greeks once did, after the fall of Constantinople,” recalled the poet Milos Crnyansky.

There was no complete emigration anywhere, and the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes was no exception: the majority of Russians remained in the land of the South Slavs, they did not necessarily assimilate, but Belgrade or Skopje became their new homeland. Russian architects rebuilt the new Belgrade with all its recognizable buildings: royal residences (built by Nikolai Krasnov, creator of the Crimean Livadia), new churches in the Serbian-Byzantine style (designed by Grigory Samoilov), theaters, banks and hotels, including the best hotels in Belgrade “Moscow” and “Excelsior”. More than three hundred architects and civil engineers who emigrated from post-revolutionary Russia worked in Yugoslavia.

If in the Balkans the diaspora was predominantly “undemocratic”, Orthodox-monarchical, then Prague was destined to become the center of “progressive Russians”. From 1921 to 1932, the government-initiated “Russian Action” operated in Czechoslovakia. The funds allocated for the preservation of “the remnant of the cultural forces of Russia” (the words of the President of Czechoslovakia Masaryk) were allocated very significant, but the receiving party was guided not only by humanism - training personnel for the future Russia - but also by pragmatism: Russian cultural and scientific institutions established and developed by em-grants, served the prestige of Czechoslovakia.

“Russian Oxford” brought together students from all over the world, providing them with scholarships. This is how Sergei Efron, the husband of Marina Tsvetaeva, came to Prague. The intelligentsia - professors, teachers, engineers, writers and journalists - were provided with benefits. Even poetry circles took on a strict academic appearance: for example, the “Skete of Poets” was headed by Professor Alfred Bem, and real historical and philological readings took place there.

Literary Prague competed with Paris; Mark Slonim, who headed the literary department at the magazine “Volya Rossii,” did not divide Russian literature into Soviet and emigrant literature, but invariably gave preference to the former. It is worth comparing the atmosphere of Prague, which was widely read by Soviet writers, with Belgrade: when Golenishchev-Kutuzov published articles in Belgrade about the first volume of Sholokhov’s “Virgin Soil Upturned” and Alexei Tolstoy’s novel “Peter I,” the magazine’s issues were confiscated by the Yugoslav police, and the author was arrested for “Soviet propaganda.”

The Russian citizens of Prague, who dreamed of “returning with their heads held high,” failed to return victoriously; many faced a dramatic fate after World War II, including arrest and death, like Alfred Boehm. The “Eurasian temptation” ended in a split into right and left groups. Left Eurasians sought to join the Soviet Union, believing in the ideas of communism. Sergei Efron and Dmitry Svyatopolk-Mirsky paid for their faith with their lives (both were arrested and died).

After the “Clamard split” (at the turn of 1928-1929), Eurasianism was headed by a representative of the right wing, Petr Savitsky, and before the occupation of Czechoslovakia, Eurasian historiosophy intensively developed, but Hitler’s government banned the movement, imposed veto on the latest “Eurasian Chronicle”, already prepared for publication. After the victory, Savitsky was arrested and served time in Mordovian camps; His epistolary acquaintance with Lev Gumilev dates back to this time; later active correspondence, exchange of ideas and mutual influence began.

Literary and theatrical Prague was the center of several cultures, into which Russian culture organically merged. If in other centers of the Russian dispersion emigrations felt like strangers in an alien and incomprehensible world, then in Prague, on the contrary, there was a mutual attraction between the intelligentsia of the two Slavic peoples. Special national pride The emigrants were the Prague troupe of the Moscow Art Theater: it included actors who did not return to the USSR after touring abroad.

If Constantinople once became a kind of gigantic transit point, where yesterday’s citizens of a huge powerful country had to get used to the status of emigrants, then in Berlin, which in 1921-1923 played the role of one of the centers of Russian cultural life, paths crossed for a brief historical moment those who will remain in exile and those who will return to their homeland. Andrei Bely, Alexey Remizov, Ilya Erenburg, Vladislav Khodasevich, Viktor Shklovsky, Boris Pasternak, Boris Pilnyak, Sergei Yesenin stayed in Berlin for a long time or temporarily.

The German mark fell, and life was attractively cheap. It was the economic benefits that determined the scale of the publishing business: from 1918 to 1928, 188 Russian publishing houses were registered in Berlin. The most famous among them are “Zinoviy Grzhebin Publishing House”, “Ladyzhnikov Publishing House”, “Znanie”, “Helikon”, “Petropolis”, “Slovo”. The editor of the magazine "Russian Book" (later - "New Russian Book") Alexander Yashchenko formulated the principle of the unity of Russian literature - without division into Soviet and emigrant.

The Berlin press ran the gamut: from Socialist Revolutionary newspapers to the Beseda magazine, whose editorial board included Khodasevich and Gorky, who had left “for treatment.” As if there was no censorship, new works by Fyodor Sologub, Mikhail Bulgakov, Evgeny Zamyatin, Konstantin Fedin were printed in Berlin, and copies were sent to Russia.

In the House of Arts, restored according to the Petrograd model, writers appeared on the stage, who in a few years were destined to part forever. Almost everything he wrote in Russian in poetry and prose during the interwar period dates back to the Berlin period of Nabokov’s life (from 1922 to 1937), who entered literature under the pseudonym Sirin. Lost among the Germans with their dreary potato salad and terrifying communal singing, the Russians, it seemed to Nabokov, glided through Berlin life like a “deadly bright crowd” of extras in a silent movie, something that many emigrants were not guilty of doing part-time for “ten marks a piece,” as he describes in the novel "Mashenka". Russian faces were captured on film in the silent films “Metropolis”, “Faust”, “Golem”, “The Last Man”.

Under the surface, there was an active process of mutual enrichment of cultures, rapid acquaintance with modern aesthetic and intellectual trends, many of which were brought to Berlin by emigrants: the Russian avant-garde in art, formalism in literary criticism, from which European structuralism would subsequently emerge. Exhibitions of Russian artists succeeded each other: Goncharova, Korovin, Benois, Somov, Kandinsky, Jawlensky, Chagall.

The few years of the existence of Russian Berlin became a kind of respite, a time of self-determination for the Russian creative elite who found themselves there. Those who chose emigration soon left Germany: most to Paris, some to Prague, others to the Baltic countries. The experiment ended, Charlottengrad, where everyone spoke Russian, ceased to exist.

As you know, Russia consists of a capital and a province. This is exactly how the world of Russian dispersion turned out to be structured. The cosmopolitan capital after World War I was Paris. Paris, the city to which all thinking Russian people aspired for a century and a half, also became the capital of the Russian Diaspora. Thanks to the policy of the Third Republic, which was favorable to Russian refugees, Russian emigrants literally poured onto the banks of the Seine.

After short stay In Constantinople and Sofia in March 1920, Bunin also arrived in Paris, who quickly began to play the role of a literary master. “I like Paris,” the writer’s wife Vera Muromtseva-Bunina wrote in her diary. And sadly added:

“There is almost no hope of getting settled in Paris.<…>During this week I hardly saw Paris, but I saw a lot of Russians. Only the servants remind us that we are not in Russia.”

The almost impenetrable existence of two worlds, French and Russian, continued until the Second World War: exhausted by the “Great” - World War I - War, Paris rejoiced in the rapture of victory, from the Versailles Peace Treaty, which imposed an exorbitant indemnity against Germany, and was indifferent to the Russians. Many of yesterday’s “Wrang-Leftists” and “Denikinites”, career officers, agreed to take any job: unskilled workers at the Peugeot and Renault factories, loaders, taxi drivers. The Russian intelligentsia, aristocracy, bourgeoisie, military and bureaucratic class in France rapidly became impoverished and proletarianized, joining the ranks of lackeys, waiters, and dishwashers.

Paris became the main literary center of the Russian diaspora. The Russian “town,” as Teffi called it, gathered all the best, viable creative forces of emigration. Paris is already in late XIX centuries was a Mecca for artists and musicians. In the pre-revolutionary decade, Sergei Diaghilev's Russian Seasons conquered Paris and the entire cultural world. The musical and theatrical life of Russian Paris would take many pages just to list names and events.

But cultural heritage Russian diaspora is primarily logocentric, which is manifested in publishing activities, in the diversity of periodicals, in the diversity of fiction, poetry and prose, and documentary literature - memoirs, diaries, letters. To this should be added philosophical treatises, criticism and journalism. And if metaphorically Russian emigration can be defined as a text, then its main pages were written in Paris.--

“We are not in exile, we are in a message,” Nina Berberova once remarked. Having completed the traditions of classical Russian prose in the works of Bunin and the poetic Silver Age in the works of Georgy Ivanov and Marina Tsvetaeva, having created the myth of Orthodox Rus' in the epics of Ivan Shmelev, giving Russian bookishness and folklore archaism modern features in the works of Alexei Remizov, Russian diaspora replenished Russian literature of the 20th century, recreating its integrity.

The emigrants held on to the knowledge that they had chosen freedom, that in abandoned Russia creative personality humiliated and oppressed by the political regime and social order. It seemed to Georgy Adamovich that Soviet literature had been simplified to lubok, and Khodasevich saw the “happiness” prescribed by socialist realism as something like a stranglehold - as society approaches communism, “literature will suffocate from happiness.”

The culture of Russian emigration in many ways turned out to be compensatory in relation to the Soviet one - not only in words, but also in ballet or in fine arts. This happened in everything: religious philosophy against scientific communism, literary modernity and poeticization of Russian antiquity against the avant-garde of the 20s and socialist realism of the 30s, loneliness and freedom against dictatorship and censorship. For most masters of Russian literature abroad, Soviet reality and Soviet culture evoked disgust and rejection. Zinaida Gippius suggested:

“Has it really not occurred to anyone, leaving aside all “politics”, all the horrors, destruction, suffocation, blood (this is also called “politics”), to look at what is happening in Russia and at the Soviet rulers only from an aesthetic point of view? vision?<…>Give it a try. If there may still be debaters about all other sides (“politics”), then there is no doubt: never before has the world seen such complete, such flat, such stinking ugliness.”

Soviet people frightened emigrants even in photographs: they walked around without socks (in the summer). It seemed, however, that the ugliness would pass, that Russia would return to its traditions, and then it would turn out that emigration had become a connecting bridge between the past and the future. In Paris in 1924, Bunin gave a speech “The Mission of Russian Emigration.” The writer spoke about the death of Russia, meaning thousand-year-old Russia with its right-to-glorious faith, the established social structure with the tsar at the head of the state, with historical conquests, victories and great cultural achievements. The mission of the Russian emigration was seen as preserving this continuity. But how to do this - neither politicians, nor writers, nor philosophers, nor especially young ballerinas could give an answer.

The majority had no motivation to live in a foreign country. Return for lordly life and national fame? Alexei Tolstoy succeeded, and Sergei Prokofiev died in communal apartment. The old and sick Kuprin left to die in his homeland; Gorky was almost kidnapped - he was an iconic figure, and the writer was obliged to continue to serve the revolution. Bu-nin, even after the war, in the euphoria of victory, did not dare to return. His Russia no longer existed - and he did not know the new one.

The emigration did not have any strategies - it was survival. “We were all so scattered around the world, / That there wasn’t enough paper to fill out the form,” Larissa Andersen defined the Russian wandering fate of the 20th century. When the poet died at the age of 102, the metaphor arose on its own - the last petal of the eastern, Harbin branch of emigration flew away. “Writing poetry in Russian, living among foreigners (and all my life I have been writing only in my native language) is the same as dancing in front of an empty hall,” the poetess admitted.

Religious emigration from Russia deserves a separate discussion. It began in the middle of the 17th century and lasted for three centuries. The most convenient way to track religious emigration is through the history of each movement.
Thus, the Doukhobors, for example, deny all church rituals and military service. Their emigration began in 1841. Russian Doukhobors moved mainly to Georgia and Azerbaijan; over 4 years, more than 5 thousand Doukhobors were resettled. In 1887, universal conscription was introduced in the Caucasus, and in 1895, unrest began among the Doukhobors.

On the night of June 28-29, several thousand Doukhobors collected the weapons they had, doused them with kerosene and set them on fire while singing psalms. Then the issue of emigration became an issue. Financial assistance The emigrant Doukhobors were supported by Leo Tolstoy, his friend Vladimir Chertkov and Pyotr Kropotkin.

To help the Doukhobors, Leo Tolstoy even specially completed the previously postponed novel “Resurrection.” In 1898-1899, more than 8,000 Doukhobors emigrated to Canada, to the undeveloped areas of the province of Saskatchewan. The elders of the Doukhobor community prophesied: “If the king lets the Doukhobors leave his country, he will lose his throne, because God will leave with the Doukhobors.”

The Mennonites had their own path to emigration. They lived in Russia since the reign of Catherine II. The Empress promised the Germans and Dutch, who formed the basis of the community, freedom of religion, but the idyll ended in 1874, when the law on universal conscription was passed. From one Tauride province, about 900 Mennonite families moved to the United States before 1876, and almost the same number from Ekaterinoslav. Mennonites settled in compact communities in Oklahoma, Kansas, North and South Dakota. Their main occupation, as in Russia, was agriculture. It must be said that the Mennonites did not forget about their former homeland: in 1919, they sent aid to those in need - monetary donations and things worth 75 thousand dollars.

In the middle of the 19th century, the persecution of the Molokans began. They referred to the Caucasus from the Voronezh, Tambov and Saratov provinces. Their emigration began in 1874, when universal conscription was announced. Molokans could not serve in the army due to their convictions. To collect information, the Molokans sent their “walkers” to the USA and Canada. They brought varied information about life abroad, but in 1902 the Molokan community nevertheless decided to emigrate to the United States.

The Russian authorities showed relative loyalty to the Molokans: about 60% of the community members received foreign passports, the remaining 40% of families had children subject to military service, and they were refused to leave the country. These Molokans had to illegally cross the border with Turkey and Persia.

Serious assistance in emigration was provided by Old Believers merchants, committees of the Russian intelligentsia, and writers Leo Tolstoy and Maxim Gorky. They covered 75% of the costs of relocating the Molokans. Most of the Molokans settled on the west coast of the United States, in California.

Following the principle “thou shalt not kill” and considering themselves “citizens of the heavenly empire,” the Molokans rejected soldiery and war, and therefore avoided accepting American citizenship.

Religious emigration continued in Soviet era. Already in Khrushchev’s time, in 1961, a resident of Chernogorsk, Grigory Vashchenko, and several other Pentecostals were convicted of creating a group whose activities “involved harm to the health of citizens.”

In October 1962, the convict's cousin, Peter, along with his wife Augustina and two children tried to get into the US Embassy with a request for political asylum, but they were detained by the police and sent back to Chernogorsk. From October 1962 to May 1968, Pentecostals in various compositions made several more attempts to emigrate. Finally, on April 20, 1978, Peter Vashchenko and his wife received an invitation to the United States from a Presbyterian pastor from Alabama. In June 1978, seven Pentecostals again rushed to the Embassy. The Vashchenko family met with Ambassador Thune, American senators and congressmen. Eighty members of the US House of Representatives sent a letter to Leonid Brezhnev asking him to allow Pentecostals to leave. In April 1983, Lydia was allowed to emigrate to Israel. From there she sent a challenge to the remaining family members, and in 1985 the “Siberian Seven” settled in Washington state. It took the Vashchenko family more than twenty years to fulfill their dream.

“The second emigration refers to those who took the opportunity to flee to the West during World War II - primarily to Germany, and then, in the early 50s, mostly emigrated to the United States. Unlike the first wave, they did not know the West. Although many of them have passed Soviet camps and only a few supported Germany's fight against the Soviet Union (in the hope of liberating Russia from Bolshevism)"

The second, or, as they call it, post-war emigration, began in 1942 in Hitler’s Germany, more precisely, in its camps for Russian prisoners of war and in the Ostrov and refugee camps. And after the end of the war, mainly in defeated Germany, an unexpected, strange and incomprehensible problem arose, called by the English-speaking victors DP (Displaced Persons), that is, displaced persons, of whom, also unexpectedly, there were many. It was from this multitude of “persons” that the second wave of Russian emigration then arose.

A feature of the emigration processes of this period was, firstly, that a significant part of the emigrants (including the first wave) left Europe overseas - to the USA, Canada, Australia, South America; secondly, the fact that some of the “old” emigrants after the Second World War ended up in territories ceded to the USSR or included in the zone of Soviet influence.

If we try to leave ideological assessments behind the scenes, we can pay attention to some specific features of the second emigration.

* Emigration was forced, political, anti-Soviet in nature. However, unlike the first emigration, some people became political opponents of the Soviet regime not in the Soviet Union, but much later, for example, after being captured or being forcibly taken to Germany.

* Fear of returning home. Some of the future emigrants were not active opponents of the regime, but it was not without reason that they feared reprisals in the event of a possible return home.

* The second outcome was already Soviet. These were citizens of the USSR, had experience of life under Soviet rule and knew the real Soviet reality,

which left clear “imprints” of the Soviet way of thinking and behavior in the actions of the emigrants.

* The main part of the second emigration, before it was outside Soviet Union, recognized the legitimacy of the existing political regime in Russia, but subsequently questioned this.

* In the second emigration (unlike the first), there was already a desire to “break out” of the closed country. The occupation was the occasion that made it possible to open the borders closed by the Bolsheviks.

* The second emigration, with the help and assistance of representatives of the first emigration, managed to create an ideological platform for the overthrow of the Soviet regime.

At the beginning of the war, everything painful in the structure of the Soviet state was revealed. The cruelty of the Stalinist regime towards people living in the German-occupied territories of the USSR led to numerous people defecting to the side of the enemy. This was the greatest tragedy in the history of wars, the tragedy of a large state. People were afraid of cruel repressions and inhumane treatment of their destinies. The thirst for revenge, the desire for liberation from the Stalinist regime forced some soldiers and officers of the Red Army to participate in military operations as part of the German army.

The second wave of emigration was caused by events related to the Second World War. It was mainly composed of persons displaced beyond the borders of the USSR during the war ("ostarbeiters", prisoners of war, refugees) and who evaded repatriation. According to official data, the number of displaced persons who did not return to their homeland amounted to 130 thousand people, according to some experts - 500-700 thousand people.

Prisoners of war captured by German troops during the war with the USSR. Of these, by May 1945, 1.15 million people remained alive.

Refugees. Many of those who had previously had trouble with the authorities or were afraid of ending up again in the hands of the NKVD took advantage of the German occupation to escape from the USSR.

Those who decided to fight against the Red Army or help the Germans in the fight against it. From 800 thousand to a million people volunteered to help the occupiers of their homeland. It is interesting to note that the Soviet Union became the only European country, almost a million of whose citizens enlisted in the enemy army.

Migrants in these categories were declared by the Soviet government to be “traitors” who deserved “severe punishment.” At his insistence, on February 11, 1945 in Yalta, during the Crimean Conference of the leaders of the three allied powers - the USSR, the USA and Great Britain - identical, although separate agreements were concluded with the governments of the United Kingdom and the United States of America on the extradition of all Soviet citizens to representatives of the Soviet Union , both prisoners of war and civilians “liberated” by the Anglo-American armies. Soviet citizens were forcibly loaded onto trains to be sent to the Soviet zone of occupation, and from there transported to the USSR, and those who were not shot immediately upon arrival joined the population of the Gulag. Many future displaced persons ended up in German camps from Soviet camps. For example, among the writers - Sergei Maksimov3, Nikolai Ulyanov4, Boris Filippov5 And the poet Vladimir Markov6 and the artist Vladimir Odinokov7 “tasted” life in the terrible German camps for Russian prisoners of war.

The Yalta meeting of the three - Roosevelt, Stalin and Churchill, which took place in February 1945, became fateful. At this meeting among important issues At that time, only a small part of the busy program of the Yalta conference was devoted to repatriation. This question, of course, was very important both for Stalin and for the Russians who found themselves abroad. True, many then did not believe that Roosevelt and Churchill would agree to Stalin’s demand to return - of course, to death - everyone who lived in the Soviet Union before 1939. Return, regardless of their will. However, the Yalta troika reached general agreement on such an action. The “Yalta Agreement” legalized the forced repatriation of all Soviet citizens in Western countries. In May 1945, the repatriation document was re-signed in the Saxon city of Halle (the birthplace of the famous German composer George Handel). General de Gaulle did not participate in the Yalta conference, but being in

Moscow back in 1944, signed a similar agreement there on the mandatory repatriation of all Soviet citizens

As a result of the second wave of emigration, the Union of Struggle for the Liberation of the Peoples of Russia (SBONR) was founded - a political organization that embarked on the path of open opposition to the Stalinist system. It created the Russian Library in Munich, which became a center of Russian culture in Germany in the late 40s. Its representatives organized church parishes, providing much-needed spiritual assistance to all persecuted people at that time. They created the largest scientific and publishing institution that has ever existed in emigration - the Institute for the Study of History and Culture of the USSR in Munich, which existed until 1972. The Museum of Russian Culture in San Francisco, Homeland Society Museum in Lakewood - this is also the merit of the “second” emigration.

Numerous organizations of Russian emigrants were located in Munich: the National Labor Union (NTS), the Central Association of Political Emigrants from the USSR (COPE), radio stations broadcasting to Russia. In Munich, the Institute for the Study of History and Culture of the USSR was actively functioning, publishing the works of many Russian emigrants. The “magazine of literature, art and social thought” “Grani” began publishing here in 1946. In 1951-1954, the literary criticism magazine (almanac) Literary Contemporary was published in Munich. In 1958, the publishing house TSOPE published the anthology collection “Literary Abroad” with works by I. Elagin, S. Maksimov, D. Klenovsky, L. Rzhevsky and others.

As for America, along with the New Journal, which continued to publish, which eagerly published writers of the second wave of emigration, there were several large publishing houses of Russian books; including the publishing house named after Chekhov, which published in 1953 the anthology “In the West” (compiled by Yu. Ivask), which included poems by O. Anstey, I. Elagin, O. Ilyinsky, D. Klenovsky, V. Markov, N. Morshen, B. Nartsisov, B. Filippov, I. Chinnova.

It is difficult to accurately determine the number of people who returned home voluntarily or involuntarily. In the article “About the Dipian past” Lyudmila Obolenskaya-Flam gives total figure 5,218,000, which she took from Tatyana Ulyankina’s book “The Wild Historical Strip”11. But he immediately clarifies that Nikolai Tolstoy12 in his book “Victims of Yalta” increases this figure by 300 thousand people.