In modern historical science a generally accepted periodization has emerged, including pre-revolutionary, post-revolutionary (after 1917), called the “first” wave; post-war, called the “second” wave of emigration; “third” within the period of 1960-1980s; and the “fourth” - modern (after 1991) wave, coinciding with the post-Soviet period in the history of our country. At the same time, a number domestic researchers take a different point of view on the problem of periodization. First of all, among historians of American studies, it is customary to consider the mass pre-revolutionary emigration overseas, mainly for labor, as the first wave.
Russian emigration toXIX - beginningXX V.
Flows of Russian emigrants throughout the 19th - 20th centuries. are fickle, pulsating in nature, and are closely related to the peculiarities of the political and economic development of Russia. But, if at the beginning of the 19th century. individuals emigrated, then since the middle of the century we can observe certain patterns. The most significant components of the pre-revolutionary migration flow from Russia in the second half of the 19th and early 20th centuries, which determined the face of the Russian diaspora of the pre-revolutionary era, were political, revolutionary emigration to Europe, developing around university centers, labor migration to the USA and national (with elements of religious) emigration . In the 1870-1880s, Russian emigrant centers were formed in most countries Western Europe, USA, Japan. Russian labor migrants contributed to the colonization of the New World (USA, Canada, Brazil and Argentina) and the Far East outside Russia (China). In the 80s XIX century They were joined by numerous representatives of national emigration from Russia: Jews, Poles, Finns, Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians. A fairly large group of Russian intelligentsia left their homeland forever after the events of the 1905 revolution. According to information official statistics in the period from 1828 to the outbreak of the First World War, the number of Russians who left the empire amounted to 4.5 million people.
"First" wave.
The revolutionary events of 1917 and the subsequent Civil War led to the emergence of a large number of refugees from Russia. 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. It should be noted that the mass outflow of emigrants continued until the mid-1920s, then it stopped. Geographically, this emigration from Russia was primarily directed to the countries of Western Europe. The main centers of Russian emigration of the first wave were Paris, Berlin, Prague, Belgrade, and Sofia. A significant part of the emigrants also settled in Harbin. In the USA, inventors and scientists and others were able to realize their outstanding talents. The inventor of television was called the “Russian gift to America.” The emigration of the first wave represents unique phenomenon, because the most of emigrants (85-90%) did not subsequently return to Russia and did not integrate into the society of their country of residence. Separately, it is worth mentioning the well-known action of the Soviet government in 1922: two famous “” brought about 50 outstanding Russian humanitarians (together with their family members - approximately 115 people) from Petrograd to Germany (Stettin). After the RSFSR decree of 1921 depriving them of citizenship, confirmed and amended in 1924, the door to Russia was forever closed for them. But most of them were confident of a quick return to their homeland and sought to preserve the language, culture, traditions, and way of life. 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. Post-revolutionary emigration quite successfully claimed the role of the main bearer of the image of Russia in the world; the ideological and cultural confrontation between the Russian diaspora and the USSR for many decades ensured such a perception of emigration by a significant part of the Russian foreign and foreign community.
In addition to the White emigration, the first post-revolutionary decade also saw fragments of ethnic (and, at the same time, religious) emigration - Jewish (about 100,000, almost all to Palestine) and German (about 20-25 thousand people), and the most massive type of emigration was labor , so characteristic of Russia before the First World War, was discontinued after 1917.
"Second" wave.
Forced emigrants from the USSR during the Second World War represented a completely different social cross-section compared to post-revolutionary emigration. These are the residents Soviet Union and annexed territories that, for one reason or another, left the Soviet Union as a result of World War II. Among them were collaborators. In order to avoid forced repatriation and obtain refugee status, some Soviet citizens changed documents and surnames, hiding their origin. In total, total number Soviet citizens located outside the USSR amounted to about 7 million people. Their fate was decided at the Yalta Conference in 1945, and at the request of the Soviet Union they had to return to their homeland. During several years large groups displaced persons lived in special camps in the American, British and French occupation zones; in most cases they were sent back to the USSR. Moreover, the Allies handed over to the Soviet side former Russians, found themselves on opposite side front (like, for example, several thousand Cossacks in Lienz in 1945, who found themselves in the British zone of occupation). They were repressed in the USSR.
At least 300 thousand displaced people never returned to their homeland. The bulk of those who avoided returning to the Soviet Union, or fled from Soviet troops from Eastern and Southeastern Europe, went to the United States and Latin America. A large number of scientists left for the USA - they were helped, in particular, by the famous Tolstoy Foundation, created by Alexandra Lvovna Tolsta. And many of those whom international authorities classified as collaborators left for Latin America. The mentality of these people for the most part was significantly different from the Russian emigrants of the “first” wave; they were mainly afraid of reprisals. On the one hand, there was a certain rapprochement between them, but the merger into a single whole never happened.
"Third" wave.
Third wave Russian emigration fell on the era of "". movement and cold war became the reason that many people voluntarily left the country, although everything was quite limited by the authorities. In total, this wave involved more than 500 thousand people. Her ethnic composition It was formed not only by Jews and Germans, who were the majority, but also by representatives of other peoples with their own statehood (Greeks, Poles, Finns, Spaniards). Also among them were those who fled from the Soviet Union during business trips or tours or were forcibly expelled from the country, the so-called. "defectors". This is exactly how they ran: the outstanding ballet soloist M. Baryshnikov, and the hockey player A. Mogilny. Of particular note is the signing of the USSR. It was from this moment that citizens of the Soviet Union had legal grounds to leave the country, justifying this not on family or ethnic grounds. Unlike emigrants of the first and second waves, representatives of the third left legally and were not criminals in the eyes of Soviet state and could correspond and call back with family and friends. However, the principle was strictly observed: a person who voluntarily left the USSR could not subsequently come even to the funeral of his closest relatives. An important incentive for many Soviet citizens who left for the United States in the 1970s-1990s was the myth of the “great American dream" IN popular culture The ironic name “sausage emigration” was assigned to such emigration, but there were also representatives of the intelligentsia in it. Among its most prominent representatives are I. Brodsky, V. Aksenov, N. Korzhavin, A. Sinyavsky, B. Paramonov, F. Gorenshtein, V. Maksimov, A. Zinoviev, V. Nekrasov, S. Davlatov. In addition, the third wave of emigration included prominent dissidents of that time, primarily A.I. Solzhenitsyn. The figures of the third wave devoted a lot of effort and time to expressing, through publishing houses, almanacs, and magazines that they led, various points of view on the past, present and future of Russia that did not have the right to expression in the USSR.
"Fourth" wave.
The last, fourth stage of emigration is associated with politics in the USSR and the entry into force of new exit rules in 1986, significantly simplifying the emigration procedure (Resolution of the USSR Council of Ministers of August 28, 1986 No. 1064), as well as the adoption of the law “On the procedure for leaving and entering the USSR citizens of the USSR into the USSR,” which came into force on January 1, 1993. Unlike all three previous emigrations, the fourth did not (and does not have) any internal restrictions on the part of the Soviet, and subsequently - Russian government. During the period from 1990 to 2000, approximately 1.1 million people left Russia alone, including not only representatives of different ethnic groups, but also the Russian population. This migration flow had a clear geographical component: from 90 to 95% of all migrants were sent to Germany, Israel and the United States. This direction was set by the presence of generous repatriation programs in the first two countries and programs for the reception of refugees and scientists from former USSR in the last one. Unlike the Soviet period, people no longer burned bridges behind them. Many can be called emigrants at a stretch, since they plan to return or live “in two houses.” Another feature of the latest emigration is the absence of any noticeable attempts on its part to political activity in relation to the country of origin, in contrast to previous waves.
In the second half of the 1990s and early 2000s, there was a process of re-emigration to Russian Federation scientists and specialists who left their homeland earlier.
In the 2000s, a new stage in the history of Russian emigration began. Currently, this is predominantly economic emigration, which follows global trends and is regulated by the laws of those countries that accept migrants. The political component no longer plays a special role. In total, the number of emigrants from Russia from 2003 to the present has exceeded 500 thousand people.
The first wave of Russian emigrants who left Russia after the October Revolution had the most tragic fate. Now the fourth generation of their descendants lives, which has largely lost ties with their historical homeland.
Unknown continent
The Russian emigration of the first post-revolutionary war, also called the White War, is an epoch-making phenomenon that has no analogues in history not only in its scale, but also in its contribution to world culture. Literature, music, ballet, painting, like many scientific achievements of the 20th century, are unthinkable without Russian emigrants of the first wave.
This was the last emigration exodus, when more than just citizens ended up abroad Russian Empire, but bearers of Russian identity without subsequent “Soviet” impurities. Subsequently, they created and inhabited a continent that is not on any map of the world - its name is “Russian Abroad”.
The main direction of white emigration is the countries of Western Europe with centers in Prague, Berlin, Paris, Sofia, and Belgrade. A significant part settled in Chinese Harbin - by 1924 there were up to 100 thousand Russian emigrants here. As Archbishop Nathanael (Lvov) wrote, “Harbin was an exceptional phenomenon at that time. Built by Russians on Chinese territory, it remained a typical Russian provincial town for another 25 years after the revolution."
According to estimates by the American Red Cross, on November 1, 1920, the total number of emigrants from Russia was 1 million 194 thousand people. The League of Nations provides data as of August 1921 - 1.4 million refugees. Historian Vladimir Kabuzan estimates the number of people who emigrated from Russia in the period from 1918 to 1924 to be at least 5 million people.
Short-term separation
The first wave of emigrants did not expect to spend their entire lives in exile. They expected that the Soviet regime would collapse and they would be able to see their homeland again. Such sentiments explain their opposition to assimilation and their intention to limit their lives to the confines of an emigrant colony.
Publicist and emigrant of the first won Sergei Rafalsky wrote about this: “Somehow that brilliant era when emigration still smelled of dust, gunpowder and blood of the Don steppes, and its elite could imagine replacing it at any call at midnight, was somehow erased in foreign memory.” usurpers" and full set The Council of Ministers, and the necessary quorum of the Legislative Chambers, and the General Staff, and the Corps of Gendarmes, and the Detective Department, and the Chamber of Commerce, and the Holy Synod, and the Governing Senate, not to mention the professors and representatives of the arts, especially literature.”
In the first wave of emigration, in addition to large quantity The cultural elite of Russian pre-revolutionary society had a significant share of the military. According to the League of Nations, about a quarter of all post-revolutionary emigrants belonged to the white armies that left Russia in different time from different fronts.
Europe
In 1926, according to the League of Nations Refugee Service, 958.5 thousand Russian refugees were officially registered in Europe. Of these, about 200 thousand were received by France, about 300 thousand by the Republic of Turkey. Yugoslavia, Latvia, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria and Greece each had approximately 30-40 thousand emigrants.
In the first years, Constantinople played the role of a transshipment base for Russian emigration, but over time its functions were transferred to other centers - Paris, Berlin, Belgrade and Sofia. So, according to some sources, in 1921 Russian population Berlin reached 200 thousand people - it was this city that was primarily affected by economic crisis, and by 1925 no more than 30 thousand people remained there.
Prague and Paris are gradually emerging as the main centers of Russian emigration; in particular, the latter is rightly considered the cultural capital of the first wave of emigration. Special place Among the Parisian emigrants, the Don Military Association played a role, the chairman of which was one of the leaders white movement Venedikt Romanov. After the National Socialists came to power in Germany in 1933, and especially during World War II, the outflow of Russian emigrants from Europe to the United States sharply increased.
China
On the eve of the revolution, the number of Russian diaspora in Manchuria reached 200 thousand people, after the start of emigration it increased by another 80 thousand. Throughout the entire period of the Civil War Far East(1918-1922) in connection with mobilization, the active movement of the Russian population of Manchuria began.
After the defeat of the white movement, emigration to Northern China sharply intensified. By 1923, the number of Russians here was estimated at approximately 400 thousand people. Of this number, about 100 thousand received Soviet passports, many of them decided to repatriate to the RSFSR. The amnesty announced to ordinary members of the White Guard formations played a role here.
The period of the 1920s was marked by active re-emigration of Russians from China to other countries. This especially affected young people heading to study at universities in the USA, South America, Europe and Australia.
Stateless persons
On December 15, 1921, the RSFSR adopted a decree according to which many categories of former subjects of the Russian Empire were deprived of the rights to Russian citizenship, including those who had stayed abroad continuously for more than 5 years and did not receive foreign passports or relevant certificates in a timely manner from Soviet missions.
Thus, many Russian emigrants found themselves stateless. But their rights continued to be protected by the former Russian embassies and consulates as the corresponding states recognize the RSFSR, and then the USSR.
A number of issues concerning Russian emigrants could only be resolved through international level. For this purpose, the League of Nations decided to introduce the post of High Commissioner for Russian Refugees. It was the famous Norwegian polar explorer Fridtjof Nansen. In 1922, special “Nansen” passports appeared, which were issued to Russian emigrants.
Until the end of the 20th century different countries there were emigrants and their children living with “Nansen” passports. Thus, the elder of the Russian community in Tunisia, Anastasia Aleksandrovna Shirinskaya-Manstein, received a new Russian passport only in 1997.
“I was waiting for Russian citizenship. I didn't want anything Soviet. Then I waited for the passport to have a double-headed eagle - the embassy offered it with the coat of arms of the international, I waited with the eagle. I’m such a stubborn old woman,” admitted Anastasia Alexandrovna.
The fate of emigration
Many figures of Russian culture and science met the proletarian revolution in the prime of their lives. Hundreds of scientists, writers, philosophers, musicians, artists who could make up the color Soviet nation, but due to circumstances they revealed their talent only in emigration.
But the overwhelming majority of emigrants were forced to find work as drivers, waiters, dishwashers, auxiliary workers, and musicians in small restaurants, nevertheless continuing to consider themselves bearers of the great Russian culture.
The paths of Russian emigration were different. Some initially did not accept Soviet power, others were forcibly expelled abroad. The ideological conflict essentially split the Russian emigration. This became especially acute during the Second World War. Part of the Russian diaspora believed that in order to fight fascism it was worth entering into an alliance with the communists, while others refused to support both totalitarian regimes. But there were also those who were ready to fight against the hated Soviets on the side of the fascists.
White emigrants from Nice addressed the representatives of the USSR with a petition:
“We deeply mourned that at the time of Germany’s treacherous attack on our homeland there were
physically deprived of the opportunity to be in the ranks of the valiant Red Army. But we
helped our Motherland by working underground.” And in France, according to the calculations of the emigrants themselves, every tenth representative of the Resistance Movement was Russian.
Dissolving in a foreign environment
The first wave of Russian emigration, having experienced a peak in the first 10 years after the revolution, began to decline in the 1930s, and by the 1940s it completely disappeared. Many descendants of the first wave of emigrants have long forgotten about their ancestral home, but the traditions of preserving Russian culture that were once laid are largely alive to this day.
A descendant of a noble family, Count Andrei Musin-Pushkin, sadly stated: “Emigration was doomed to disappearance or assimilation. The old people died, the young gradually disappeared into the local environment, turning into French, Americans, Germans, Italians... Sometimes it seems that only beautiful, sonorous surnames and titles remain from the past: counts, princes, Naryshkins, Sheremetyevs, Romanovs, Musins-Pushkins.” .
Thus, at the transit points of the first wave of Russian emigration, no one was left alive. The last was Anastasia Shirinskaya-Manstein, who died in Bizerte, Tunisia, in 2009.
The situation with the Russian language, which at the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries found itself in an ambiguous position in the Russian diaspora, was also difficult. Natalya Bashmakova, a professor of Russian literature living in Finland, a descendant of emigrants who fled St. Petersburg in 1918, notes that in some families the Russian language lives even in the fourth generation, in others it died many decades ago.
“The problem of languages is sad for me personally,” says the scientist, “because I emotionally feel Russian better, but I’m not always sure of using certain expressions; Swedish sits deep in me, but, of course, I’ve forgotten it now. Emotionally, it is closer to me than Finnish.”
Today in Adelaide, Australia, there live many descendants of the first wave of emigrants who left Russia because of the Bolsheviks. They still have Russian surnames and even Russian names, but their native language is already English. Their homeland is Australia, they do not consider themselves emigrants and have little interest in Russia.
Most of those who have Russian roots currently live in Germany - about 3.7 million people, in the USA - 3 million, in France - 500 thousand, in Argentina - 300 thousand, in Australia - 67 thousand Several waves of emigration from Russia mixed here. But, as surveys have shown, the descendants of the first wave of emigrants in least degree feel a connection with the homeland of their ancestors.
The third wave of Russian emigration differed significantly from the first two in that its representatives were born already in the years Soviet power, their childhood and youth passed in the conditions of the so-called socialist society with all its advantages and vices. The upbringing itself was sharply different from their predecessors. Most of the future emigrants witnessed the victory Soviet people over world fascism, experienced pride in their country, the pain of loss. Many of them were affected Stalin's repressions. During the “thaw”, those who would form the backbone of the third wave of emigration began to write and formed.
At first, no one thought about any emigration. Yes, perhaps, except for A. Solzhenitsyn, no one was going to overthrow Soviet society. The generation of the “sixties” firmly believed in, as they said then, “Leninist norms of party and state life.”
However, by the beginning of the 60s it became obvious that there would be no fundamental change in politics and the life of the people. N. Khrushchev's visit to the exhibition of artists in the Manege and his meeting with writers and artists in 1963 marked the beginning of the curtailment of freedom in the country, including freedom of creativity. The next twenty years of stagnation became a difficult test for the creative intelligentsia. If venerable writers still managed to break through the obstacles of censorship, not without losses, then, of course, for most authors the road to the reader was closed. Some writers, despite opposition from state security agencies, transferred their works to the West, where they were published and then returned to the country (“tamizdat”). Numerous literature lovers then printed them out on typewriters and photocopiers, and these tattered homemade books passed from hand to hand (“samizdat”). There were widespread meetings between underground writers and readers in various research institutes, clubs, universities, and cafes. The authorities were unable to stop this process.
Persecution began against A. Solzhenitsyn (after 1966, not a single one of his works was published in his homeland) and V. Nekrasov (he was expelled from the party, the KGB carried out searches at his apartment). I. Brodsky was arrested and exiled to forced labor. V. Aksenov, A. Galich, S. Dovlatov were intimidated in the KGB. even if the author did not write on current topics, but was only engaged in formal research, he was in trouble.
The consequence of this was a revision by the most persecuted writers of many previously undisputed values, resentment (if not anger) towards their homeland and forced emigration.
The first person officially allowed to travel abroad in 1966 was the writer and journalist Valery Tarsis (who had previously spent several years in KGB psychiatric hospitals). Following him, Vasily Aksenov, Joseph Brodsky, Georgy Vladimov, Vladimir Voinovich, Alexander Galich, Sergey Dovlatov, Alexander Zinoviev, Viktor Nekrasov, Sasha Sokolov, Andrei Sinyavsky, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Dina Rubina and many other writers went abroad.
The only thing that brought them closer to the emigrants of the first two waves was their complete rejection of Soviet power and the Soviet state. Otherwise they were completely different from their predecessors. They had no religious upbringing, they had no nostalgia, they did not know the life of the Russian diaspora and essentially continued what they were doing in their homeland. Their tragedy was that they had to reject the system in which they sacredly believed, and thus, the representatives of the third wave of emigration found themselves in a vacuum: there was no connection with the past, ties with the present were severed. Many, in connection with this, gained faith and returned to the religion of their fathers, which in Russia at that time was a crime.
The old Russian emigration created the “Magic Reserve of the Russian Language” Maria Rozanova, carefully preserving the wonderful Russian speech for descendants. But she could not understand the linguistic changes that had occurred in her homeland during the 70 years of Soviet power, and literature could not help but reflect the real state in which society lived. The third wave brought to emigration the language of Soviet society and related life concepts(even if rejected by them), was distinguished by its attention to the avant-garde and post-avant-garde (which are a reaction to the current non-standard, new, chaotic situation, completely alien to older generations), many of their books were combined with the experience of world literature of the twentieth century. According to Z. Shakhovskaya, “is there anything specifically emigrant? ?? the author’s italics did not have time to appear in the books that appeared here” Z. Shakhovskaya “One or two Russian literatures?” - P.59, they “cannot be counted among emigrant literature...” there, all emigrants continue to do the same things they did in their homeland.
The largest and, perhaps, outside of all directions, writer of the third wave of Russian emigration is, undoubtedly, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, although he himself stubbornly refuses to consider himself an emigrant, in every possible way emphasizing the violent, forced nature of his departure from Russia.
The main and essentially the only art book Solzhenitsyn, created abroad, is the epic “The Red Wheel,” which describes the most important events from August 1914 to April 1917. The writer makes the 1914 disaster the center of his novels. East Prussia and the fate of Stolypin, the October unrest of 1916 in Russia and Lenin’s actions during this period, February revolution with its paradoxes, and, finally, the preparation of the October Revolution. A huge number of documents were used to write the novel. And everything is united by the multi-valued metaphor of the fiery wheel: “WHEEL! - rolls, illuminated by fire! independent! unstoppable! everything is oppressive!” Biographies and biographies of real historical figures are adjacent to the story about the life of fictional characters, among whom the closest to the author are student Sanya Lazhenitsin and intellectual officer Vorotyntsev.
Thus, the main theme of Solzhenitsyn, like many other representatives of the third wave, was hatred of the system, but not of the homeland itself, the theme of history and thoughts about the Russian people.
Having emigrated, Solzhenitsyn did not lose touch with his homeland. Despite the fact that he was accused of treason, slandered, and slandered (his literary and journalistic activities irritated many representatives of Soviet society), the writer did not become embittered and did not break ties with his homeland, which had driven him out of the country. Moreover, a few years later (in 1994) he returned, but to a different homeland - free and highly appreciative of the writer’s work.
The literature of the third wave of Russian emigration is multifaceted, multifaceted and multi-styled. Sometimes the reader cannot find common ground in the works of writers of this period. Despite the fact that they are united by time, upbringing, the basic principles of the system, instilled from birth, creative people scattered throughout the globe, finding their own style, their own special genre, their own language. The former concentration of Russians in foreign countries no longer existed, the old “Russia in miniature” abroad disappeared, emigrants became more disunited, settled alone or in small groups in various remote parts of the globe: North America began to be widely settled by Russians, large Russian regions appeared in New York and others major cities USA. The goal of preserving the original Russian culture and language disappeared; new trends, forms, and genres appeared and took shape.
On the verge of realistic and post-avant-garde prose is the work of Sergei Dovlatov (1941-1990), who emigrated to the USA in 1978. The writer defiantly refused the role of a life teacher and acts as a narrator of fascinating, funny, touching stories life " little man”, causing both joy and sadness. His stories are imbued with a love for people mixed with a smile, which brings him closer to Teffi.
His relaxed manner of talking about good people The writer preserved ideas that overcome the absurdity of life in his works about Russian emigration, the best of which is the story “The Foreigner” (1986). “We are six brick buildings around a supermarket, inhabited mainly by Russians. That is, recently by Soviet citizens. Or, as the newspapers write, third-wave emigrants.” The writer tells a funny and at the same time sad story about the everyday life of emigrants. “In the Union, Zyama was a lawyer. In America, from the very first days I worked as a loader at the base” - this is the sad reality. And this is the fate of everyone: in order to survive in a new society of money and material assets, our writers and critics became taxi drivers, artists and architects became janitors or loaders. Some tried to continue what they started in their homeland, but what they wrote “sold sluggishly.”
“There was no freedom at home, but there were readers. There was enough freedom here, but there were no readers” - this is the main tragedy of all third-wave emigrants. For many, emigration was “not salvation, but death” Naum Korzhavin:
I know myself:
There is also sky here.
But he died there
And I won’t rise again here
Every day I
I get up in a foreign country, -
Naum Korzhavin writes bitterly in the poem “Now light, now shadow...”, or:
There are friends there - I’m eager to see them today,
Remembering with sadness:
At least now I’ll go to Paris and Rome,
They won't let you into Omsk.
Thus, the creative emigrant of the third wave is not tormented by nostalgia, longing for his homeland, he does not dream of white birch trees; they do not know pre-revolutionary Russia, do not idealize it like their predecessors, but also Soviet homeland remains a mystery to them; they know little about it, since they left another Russia. Thus, they found themselves in emptiness, in a vacuum, they had no roots. Their main tragedy was that they could not express themselves; few people were interested in their work. Abroad, they were able to spread their wings, but there was nowhere to fly - such is the paradox of the creativity of the third wave of emigrants.
To summarize, we should once again note the main problems and the most important differences in the creativity of representatives of the 1st, 2nd and 3rd “wave” of emigration.
Most of the writers of the first and second waves of Russian creative emigration saw themselves as guardians and successors of Russian national culture. The Russian idea of conciliarity, the merging of man with the world, society, nature, and space, was present in the works of the older generation of writers from Russia abroad.
The running theme of all Russian literature abroad is the theme of Russia, longing for it; everything that has passed away seems beautiful and whole. Emigrant writers idealized Russia, the “Russian home,” and their works were imbued with nostalgic motifs.
Some authors devoted their works to understanding the causes of the revolution. All representatives of creative emigration categorically did not accept new system at home, they sharply rejected new trends and could not get along with them.
The most common theme of literature abroad was the life of the emigration itself. The tragedy of existence and ways to at least temporarily overcome it, the painful search for God, the meaning of life and human destiny constituted the content of many books.
The third wave of Russian emigration differed significantly from the first two in that its representatives were brought up during the years of Soviet power, their childhood and youth were spent in the conditions of the so-called socialist society. She brought to emigration the language of a Soviet society that was new to her predecessors and the life concepts associated with it.
The only thing that brought them closer to the emigrants of the first two waves was their complete rejection of Soviet power and the Soviet state. Otherwise they were completely different. They had no religious upbringing, they had no nostalgia, nostalgia for their homeland. Their tragedy was that they had to reject the system in which they sacredly believed, and thus, representatives of the third wave of emigration found themselves deprived of both the past and the present, and lost their roots.
This means that for the entire Russian creative diaspora, emigration was not salvation, but destruction, spiritual death.
“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 went through 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 Ostov 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 winners 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 out of the equation, we can pay attention to some specific features 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 bulk of the second emigration, before it found itself outside the 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 territories of the USSR covered by the Germans resulted in numerous people defecting to the side of the enemy. It was greatest tragedy in the history of wars, tragedy big 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 German troops during the years of 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 in the hands of the NKVD again took advantage of 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 Crimean Conference leaders of three allied powers- USSR, 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 to representatives of the Soviet Union of all Soviet citizens, both prisoners of war and civilians “liberated” by the Anglo-American armies. Soviet citizens were forcibly loaded onto trains to be sent to Soviet zone occupation, and from there they were 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 the important problems of that time, only a small part of the rich program Yalta conference was dedicated 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 - political organization, which 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 one of the scientific and publishing institutions that has ever existed in emigration is 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, the Rodina 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 “On the Deepian Past,” Lyudmila Obolenskaya-Flam gives a total figure of 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.
Mass emigration is closely connected with the history of the Russian Empire at the beginning of the twentieth century. First World War, revolution, collapse political regimes were the reasons for the resettlement of masses of people. But if at the turn of the century emigration from Russia was predominantly economic or religious in nature, then during the First World War political trends began to prevail in it. After the October Revolution and the associated civil war Millions of its citizens fled from Russia. This was the so-called “first wave” of mass emigration precisely for political reasons. Who was it and how many of them left the former Russian Empire?
Russian emigration of the first post-revolutionary wave, often called “White,” is a unique phenomenon unparalleled in world history. And not only by its scale, but also by its contribution to world and Russian culture. The first wave of emigrants not only preserved, but also increased many traditions Russian culture. It was they who wrote many brilliant pages in the history of world literature, science, ballet, theater, cinema, painting, etc. It was they who created the “mainland”, not indicated on any map of the world, with the name “Russian Abroad”.
The first emigration consisted of the most cultured strata of Russian pre-revolutionary society, with a disproportionately large share of military personnel. According to the League of Nations, a total of 1 million 160 thousand refugees left Russia after the revolution. About a quarter of them belonged to the White armies, which emigrated at different times from different fronts. In 1921, the League of Nations and the Red Cross Society made the first attempt to register Russian refugees in the Slavic countries, Romania and Turkey. There were about 800 thousand of them. Modern historians assume that at least 2 million people left Russia. By the way, Lenin called this figure in his time. There is no complete data on the number of military personnel who left Russia.
Geographically, this emigration from Russia was primarily directed to the countries of Western Europe. The main centers of Russian emigration of the first wave were Paris, Berlin, Prague, Belgrade, and Sofia. At the same time, the Russian emigration chose France as the unifying country, and Paris as its capital. “The main reasons for such a decision were political, economic and moral. But the most important thing was the fact that for many years there were stable contacts between Russia and France, which influenced the formation of two cultures - Russian and French. France was the only country", which recognized the Wrangel government. She signed an agreement according to which her representative took Russian refugees under his protection on behalf of the country." The first wave of emigrants considered their exile to be a forced and short-term episode, hoping for a quick return to Russia after what they thought was a quick collapse of the Soviet state.
The famous polar explorer Nansen was appointed Commissioner for Russian Refugees by the League of Nations. Nansen put forward a project to create temporary identity cards for immigrants from Russia. In 1926, more than 30 countries agreed to extradition Nansen passport. It was a temporary identity document that replaced the passports of stateless persons and refugees. These passports greatly eased their situation in various countries. All immigrants from Russia received refugee status only in 1926, when persons of Russian origin who did not enjoy the protection of the USSR and did not become subjects of another state began to be considered Russian refugees. It should be noted that many refugees deliberately did not accept another citizenship, hoping to return to Russia. But the position of the Soviet government towards them became tougher from year to year. According to the Decree, the following were deprived of citizenship:
a) persons who have stayed abroad continuously for more than five years and have not received Soviet passports before June 1, 1921;
c) persons who voluntarily fought in the armies that fought against Soviet power, or were members of counter-revolutionary organizations,” etc., etc.
Among the emigrants were such outstanding figures as: I. Bunin, A. Kuprin (until 1937), M. Tsvetaeva (until 1939), Chaliapin, Rachmaninov, Zvorykin and others.
Several thousand people entered the French Foreign Legion, becoming its most “disciplined and combat-ready and most valued part.” “Russian legionnaires bore the brunt of the fight against the Rifans, Kabyls, Tuaregs, Druze and other rebel tribes in the period 1925-1927. In the hot sands of Morocco, on the rocky ridges of Syria and Lebanon, in the stuffy gorges of Indo-China, Russian bones are scattered everywhere
The first years of emigration were also difficult for civilians. “Except for a few bankers, restaurant owners, doctors and lawyers, Russian refugees lived in extreme poverty, in impossible conditions; some died of hunger,” having no money, no work, no social rights- this is how the German researcher X.-E. Volkmann describes the situation in post-war Germany, where already in 1919 the main stream of emigrants poured. The emergence of many emigrants there trade unions was dictated primarily by the desire for mutual assistance. But they all depended on charitable organizations, of which the main ones were the Russian Red Cross (which stored pre-revolutionary funds abroad for the care of prisoners of war) and, of course, foreign institutions: the International Red Cross (the American one especially helped) and the Catholic Church (which did not hide that in addition to the charitable goal it also pursues another: “encouragement to convert to the union” and even directly to Catholicism; for this purpose, already in 1917, the “Papal Oriental Institute"; however, as Volkman notes, success was not achieved in this field).
In 1921 - 1924, the Republican-Democratic Association (RDO) of Russian emigrants was created, uniting in its ranks a wide political spectrum of Russian liberal democrats from the Cadets to the right Socialist Revolutionaries and Socialists. The organization was headed by a prominent figure of the Cadet Party P.
N. Milyukov. Both associations claimed to be the flagship political life Russian diaspora, sought to extend its influence to the military formations of the emigration, youth, developing and trying to implement plans for creating an underground movement in Soviet Russia.
An important factor stimulating political activity emigration, there were changes in the internal policy of the Soviet government. The transition to NEP aroused special hopes and expectations among the Russian emigration. Speaking at a rally in December 1927 in Prague, one of the leaders of the RDO and " Peasant Russia" S.S. Maslov said: "Since 1921, when the NEP was introduced, communism began to die, because the communist party, having abandoned the primitive forced economy of leveling, thereby refused to implement its communist ideology and program. A decrease in national income is inevitable the failure of the slogan of industrialization and the growing accumulation of private commercial capital in private trade turnover - these are the mines and those knots that the Soviet government cannot cut.
In 1924, speaking at a rally in Prague, one of the leaders of the RDO group B.N. Evreinov stated: “Currently, the entire center of gravity of the counter-revolutionary struggle against Soviet power comes down to discrediting it before foreign powers and inflating all sorts of sensational rumors about communists and about the USSR It is advisable to send these rumors to Russia in the form of printed messages, so that when reading them, the population believes that this is the real truth, hidden from them.”
In general, it is important to note the following main characteristics of the first emigration:
* Emigration was forced, political, anti-Bolshevik in nature. For the majority, refusal to emigrate meant physical destruction in their homeland. Emigration is associated with the military defeat and retreat of the White Army.
* The first outcome is active anti-communists and opponents of the Soviet regime, who offer all kinds of resistance to it, including armed resistance (White movement) and, for the most part, do not recognize it
legitimacy. Political and military target- overthrow of the Soviet regime.
* The first wave is still legally subjects of the Russian Empire.
* The overwhelming majority of the first emigration were Orthodox, which generally determined their system of values and behavioral orientations. From here arose the mission of preserving the Orthodox religious experience and Orthodox values, which was actively recognized by the “cultural layer” of the first emigration. Orthodoxy acted as the basis of worldview and at the same time as component ideology. And in many ways political split in emigration was associated with an underestimation of the role of Orthodoxy, neglect or rejection of Orthodoxy by some political elite emigration.
* The idea of temporary stay abroad. A significant part of the first emigration did not intend to settle abroad forever and actively supported the idea of returning to Russia.
* Specifics of the composition of the first emigration. A significant layer of bearers of Russian culture left for on a massive scale. This made it possible to build a Russia Abroad.
* Transfer of political movements and parties from Russia to Russian abroad. The consequence was a significant political split in the ranks of the first emigration, which was never overcome.
Return of some emigrants
There were several reasons that became the prerequisites for this turn of events:
Another form of political agitation. The Bolsheviks spoke of “come to their senses” and “repentant” supporters of emigration, who expressed a desire to return to Russia and were generously accepted into their historical homeland.
The USSR was considered the main winner of Nazi Germany, which significantly increased its “popularity” in the eyes of former emigrants.
Victory in World War II became a great reason for supporters of migration to forgive the Bolsheviks, and this even applied to many White Guards.