Emigration from the Russian Empire to the USA. What happened to the Russians from the first wave of emigration

There was no emigration as a legal concept in pre-revolutionary Russian legislation. Citizens of Russia were forbidden to change their citizenship. Those who violated the law, regardless of class, were waiting for eternal exile in Siberia and the loss of property. The fate of the waves of Russian emigration from the Middle Ages to the end of the twentieth century was traced by the historian Yaroslav Zverev. Emigrants disembark from a steamboat on Ellis Island, New York, where in the 1910s-1930s there was the largest filtration point for emigrants from Europe. Today there is a museum of emigrants!

In medieval Russia, the opportunity to change one's place of residence depended on one's class and economic status. The power of the medieval state, the very stability of the agrarian society was determined by the amount of land and the number of people inhabiting this land. However, Russia was distinguished by underpopulation: there was a lot of free land, and there were not enough people to cultivate it. So instead of emigration, the territory of the principalities was actually expanding into the previously unoccupied territories of the northeast, where people flocked from the south, frightened by the raids of nomads and attracted by relative safety.

Simultaneously with the movement of the agricultural population, people of the military class, the princely combatants, also moved. For them, the basis of existence was the service of the princes, and the change of residence did not represent such a shock as for a plowman burdened with inventory, livestock and seeds.

At the beginning of the XIV century, military people left the southern principalities devastated by the Mongol conquerors and moved to the northeast - to Moscow or to the northwest - to the lands of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. This was not a political emigration - they spoke Russian in Lithuania, the Orthodox Church was not persecuted for a long time, and the Chernigov or Bryansk combatants did not feel political connection with Moscow. On the other hand, noble political immigrants came from Lithuania to Russia - the famous Dovmont, who was defeated in the struggle for power in Lithuania and found a place for himself in Pskov, or Andrei, Dmitry and Vladimir Olgerdovichi, sons of the Grand Duke of Lithuania.

A new situation arises in the 15th century as the Russian lands were united and the Muscovite state was formed. If earlier a serviceman could leave the service at the appointed time and "move off" to another prince, now only one sovereign remained in Russia - the Grand Duke of Moscow and All Russia. The Moscow sovereign claimed power over all the possessions of the Rurikovichs and perceived the departure of his subjects to the possessions of a direct competitor as a betrayal. Among the princes who came from the newly annexed lands, this attitude caused an internal protest.

The situation escalated in the middle of the 16th century, when Ivan the Terrible began to strengthen the royal power by despotic methods, and the aristocrats, accustomed to personal freedom, turned into slaves who could be tortured and executed at any moment along with their families at the will of the sovereign. Some of them could not stand it and fled to hostile Lithuania, saving their lives from an imaginary or real threat. It was to Lithuania that the future impostor and former nobleman Grigory Otrepyev fled, who unsuccessfully signed up as serfs for the defeated Romanov boyars.

Another direction of emigration was the south. If in the XI-XV centuries in the southern Russian steppes the Polovtsian and then the Horde khans reigned supreme, then in the XV century, with the fall of the Horde, settlements of Cossacks appeared on the Don - people who spoke Russian, but did not recognize the power of Moscow. Those who did not want to recognize the authority of the state over themselves, ruined service people and peasants who could not withstand the tax flocked to the Cossack settlements on the Don. On the Don and Volga, a special culture of semi-immigrants was formed - people who left Russia, but did not want to lose touch with it. However, these were not people who wanted to leave their homeland forever - they were simply looking for a better life away from the authorities.

In the 17th century, a steady stream of emigration was generated by a church schism. For the persecuted Old Believer, there was not much difference in who exactly deprives him of the old faith - the Moscow tsar, the Polish king or the Turkish sultan. On the contrary, in a state hostile to the tsar, he could count on a more favorable reception as an oppositionist. In 1685, a group of Old Believers-priests founded the settlement of Vetka in the Belarusian Polesie, under the rule of the Polish king. Vetka served as a center of attraction for the Old Believer emigration and turned into a city of 40,000.

After the defeat of Vetka by Russian troops in 1764, part of the Old Believers moved from it even further, to the borders of the Austrian Empire. Even earlier, part of the Old Believers went to Moldavia and the Danube, under the hand of the Turkish Sultan.

In 1708, fleeing the tsar's wrath, the Don Nekrasov Cossacks, participants in the crushed uprising of K. Bulavin, left for Turkey. They settled first in the Kuban, and then on the Danube next to the Lipovans of the Old Believers.

In 1709, the Zaporozhye Cossacks, who supported the rebellious hetman I. Mazepa, also came under the rule of Turkey and the Crimean Khan. Then part of the Cossacks returned, but in 1775 Catherine II finally abolished the Sich, and a significant part of the Cossacks also went under the authority of the Sultan, who settled them on the Danube. Some of these Cossacks returned to Russia during Kutuzov's victorious campaign in 1811-1812, another part - in 1828.

Along with the "grassroots" religious emigration, there was also an emigration of representatives of the upper strata of society. However, for them the situation was complicated by the fact that, unlike the Old Believers who placed themselves outside the Russian society, the nobles were obliged to serve the sovereign, and the decree on the freedom of the nobility changed little here. Emigration was banned forever. To travel abroad and even to marry a foreigner, it was necessary to obtain permission from the emperor. The nobleman was obliged to return to Russia after the expiration of the five-year period, if he was abroad, and the "defector" was considered a traitor, his possessions were confiscated. Therefore, in most cases, such actual emigration was formalized as a temporary trip: this is how Count A. G. Orlov, who was fleeing from the wrath of Paul I, left. In his case, the trip was temporary, and after the change of reign, Orlov returned to Russia.

A special form of emigration was the permitted non-return of Russian diplomats: for example, after the resignation, the Russian ambassador S. R. Vorontsov lived in London for many years, and A. K. Razumovsky lived in Vienna.

If those who chose a “cultural way of life” settled in Europe, then people went to the New World who sought to start life from scratch in a new young world without serfdom and the conventions of the old society - this is how it appeared in the descriptions of a few travelers and fiction of the 19th century . But there were few such Russian emigrants. When, in 1856, Colonel I. V. Turchaninov decided to start a new life in the United States, he did not submit his resignation, but simply did not return from abroad, and he was formally expelled from service only after two years of absence.

However, even up to the middle of the 19th century, the number of people arriving in Russia invariably exceeded the number of people leaving it. And only after the reforms of 1861 did emigration become massive. By its nature, its main part was labor or economic. During 1861-1915, Russia with its agrarian overpopulation left 4.3 million people: peasants, artisans and laborers. True, the overwhelming majority of pre-revolutionary emigrants were themselves foreign subjects, mostly from Germany, Persia, Austria-Hungary and Turkey. And most of the emigrants did not leave Russia within its current borders, but from the western provinces - Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, the Baltic countries.

The First World War led to a sharp decline in international migrations (at the same time, internal migrations increased sharply, which is primarily due to the flows of refugees and evacuees). Immediately after the October Revolution (1918-1922), mass emigration (from 1.5 to 3 million people) of the most diverse social groups of the Russian population began from Russia, some of which was forced.

The next stage of emigration from Russia (1948-1989/1990) is the emigration of the Cold War period, when approximately 1.5 million people left. They traveled mainly to Germany, Israel and the USA.

In 1991, Soviet President Gorbachev adopted a law on the procedure for entry and exit from the USSR of Soviet citizens, and from that moment, in fact, for the first time in the history of Russia, emigration becomes legal. By its nature and motivation, it is similar to the global one and is determined primarily by the economic factor: the search for work, the desire to improve the quality of life.

Basic concepts

Migrations, or spatial displacement of the population, are one of the most complex historical and demographic phenomena that determine many features of modern social, as well as political and economic life.

In the context of demographic science, migrations are identical mechanical movement of the population and imply one or another ratio of the outflow and inflow of the population in a particular place (balance of migration). Along with the ratio of births and deaths, or the natural movement of the population, migration, or the mechanical movement of the population, are two components that determine the dynamics of the population.

An essential feature of migration is their nature - voluntary or forced, legal or illegal etc. This is especially true for the 20th century, which was so replete with manifestations of violence and cruelty, which manifested themselves noticeably in migration processes.

At the same time, migrations differ internal carried out within the same state, and external, or international, implying the crossing of state borders by migrants and, as a rule, a significant change in their status. With regard to external migrations, the outflow of the population is associated with emigration, while the inflow is associated with immigration. In addition, there are such varieties of external migration as repatriation and option.

Emigration(from the Latin “emigro” - “I am evicted”) is the departure of citizens from their country to another for permanent residence or for a more or less long period for political, economic or other reasons. Like any type of migration, it can be either forced or voluntary.

Respectively, emigrants- these are those who left or who had to leave their native country and live away from it for a long time, sometimes the rest of their lives. So to speak, “seconded” (for example, diplomats), although they also spend a long time abroad, are not included in the number of emigrants. They also do not include those (as a rule, these are representatives of the wealthy nobility, scientific and artistic intelligentsia) who traveled abroad for study or treatment for several months or even years, or simply preferred to live or work abroad from time to time.

Immigration(from Latin " immigro”-“ I move in ”) is the installation in a certain host state of citizens of another state, which they were forced to leave for a long time or forever for political, religious, economic or other reasons. Accordingly, immigrants are those who came to one or another, alien to him, country and settled in it.

The factors that push people out of one country and the factors that pull them to another country are infinitely variable and form innumerable combinations. The motives for emigration, as well as the motives for immigration, of course, lend themselves to group interpretation and classification (economic, political, religious, national), but there has always been and will always be a personal, purely individual motive - and often decisive.

A form of immigration is repatriation(from Latin " repatriation”-“ return to their homeland”), or return to their homeland and restoration of the rights of citizenship of emigrants from a particular country - its former citizens or representatives of the peoples inhabiting it. Repatriates can be both persons who emigrated directly from this country at one time, as well as their children and other descendants. Therefore, in relation to repatriation, they often operate with the concept of “historical homeland”, or “homeland of ancestors”, which is used to justify, in particular, the immigration of Jews or Armenians from all countries of the world to Israel or the Armenian SSR, or ethnic Germans from the countries of the former USSR , Poland and Romania in Germany,

Another type of international (external) migration that is essential in our case is options(from Latin " optatio” - “desire”), or resettlement due to the need for the population to self-determine and choose citizenship and place of residence. As a rule, this happens when a state is liquidated or the borders of two neighboring states are changed, which poses the problem of choosing whether to belong to the old or new statehood, and in some cases, the problem of leaving their homes . Accordingly, the same problem also arises in the mutual exchange of territories between neighboring states, which, of course, also affects the population.

Emigration from the Russian Empire

It is customary to trace the beginning of the history of Russian emigration to the 16th century - to the time of Ivan the Terrible: the first political emigrant in this case was Prince Kurbsky. The 17th century was also marked by the first "defectors": they, apparently, were those young nobles whom Boris Godunov sent to Europe to study, but they did not return to Russia. The most famous Russian emigrants of the pre-revolutionary period are, perhaps, Gogol, Herzen, Turgenev (France and Germany, 1847-1883), Mechnikov (Paris, 1888-1916), Pirogov, Lenin and Gorky, and the most famous “business traveler” is most likely Tyutchev.

As a legal concept, emigration was absent in pre-revolutionary Russian legislation. The transfer of Russians to another citizenship was prohibited, and the period of stay abroad was limited to five years, after which it was necessary to apply for an extension of the period. Otherwise, the person lost citizenship and was subject, in case of return, to arrest and eternal exile; his property was automatically transferred to the Board of Trustees. Beginning in 1892, emigration was allowed only in relation to the Jews: but in this case, they were categorically forbidden any form of repatriation.

There were no other emigration regulators. Accordingly, there was no adequate accounting for it either. The statistics recorded only persons with legitimate passports who legally crossed the borders of the empire.

But it must be said that until the middle of the 19th century, cases of emigration themselves were almost isolated. Then they became somewhat more frequent (mainly for political reasons), but the number of those arriving in Russia invariably exceeded the number of those leaving it. And only on the eve, and especially after the serf reform of 1861, did the situation seriously change: travel abroad of Russia, and therefore emigration, became a truly mass phenomenon.

Although fitting into these time frames, such a non-trivial case as the mass emigration to Turkey of the so-called "Muhajirs" - mountaineers from the conquered Western Caucasus, still stands somewhat apart. In 1863-1864, 398,000 Circassians, Abaza and Nogais left for Turkey from the Kuban region, whose descendants still live both in Turkey and in other countries of the Middle East, Western Europe and the USA.

Unlike post-revolutionary emigration, pre-revolutionary emigration is usually divided not into chronological waves, but into four typological groups with mixed division bases: labor (or economic), religious, Jewish, and political (or revolutionary). In the first three groups, intercontinental emigration unconditionally prevailed (mainly to the USA and Canada), and in the case of political emigration - from Herzen to Lenin - the European direction always dominated.

Labor, or economic emigration, was undoubtedly the most massive. For 1851-1915. Russia, with its agrarian overpopulation, left 4.5 million people, mostly peasants, artisans and laborers. At the same time, the growth of emigration for some time was not accompanied by the formation and growth of the Russian diaspora, since the vast majority of pre-revolutionary emigrants were themselves foreign nationals, mainly immigrants from Germany (more than 1400 thousand people), Persia (850 thousand), Austria-Hungary (800 thousand) and Turkey (400 thousand people). The same is echoed by the data of V. Obolensky (Osinsky): in 1861-1915, 4.3 million people left the Russian Empire, including almost 2.7 million back in the 19th century. True, most of the emigrants did not leave Russia within its current borders, but from its western provinces - today's Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, and the Baltic countries.

Starting from the 1870s, the European and Asian directions of emigration were replaced by American ones (from 2/3 to 4/5 of those who left). During 1871-1920, about 4 million people moved to Canada, the USA and other countries of the New World. The rate of repatriation of emigrants, according to some estimates, was 18%.

Quantitatively religious emigration, which mainly affected Doukhobors, Molokan and Old Believers, was insignificant. It unfolded at the very end of the 19th century, when about 7.5 thousand Doukhobors moved to Canada and the USA. In the 1900s, 3.5 thousand Molokans moved to the United States (mainly to California).

Emigration Jews from the territory of Russia began after 1870, and from the very beginning it focused on the New World, and primarily on the United States, where, from the moment the American constitution was proclaimed, Jews enjoyed exactly the same civil and religious rights as Christians. Jews made up more than 40% of emigrants from Russia. Among the 1732.5 thousand natives of Russia recorded in the United States by the 1910 census, they accounted for 838, Poles - 418, Lithuanians - 137, Germans - 121, and Russians - only 40.5 thousand people

From this point of view, it is not easy to separate Jewish emigration from, say, labor emigration. It also contained elements of religious and, to a large extent, political emigration. At the same time, the commitment of Jewish emigrants from Russia to the traditions of Russian culture and the Russian language was also something not quite ordinary at that time.

American researcher C. Gitelman rightly notes: " No group of Jews migrated as often, in such large numbers and with such serious consequences as the Jews of Russia and the former USSR. The mass emigration of Russian/Soviet Jews played an important role in the formation of the two largest Jewish communities in the world - the United States and Israel" .

In 1880-1890, 0.6 million Jews arrived in the United States, in 1900-1914 - another 1.5 million, and in total in 1880-1924 - 2.5 million Jews from Eastern Europe, mainly from Russia. Of the 3.7 million Jews living in the United States in 1930, at least 80% came from Eastern Europe, of which the lion's share (from 60% and above) were Jews from Russia, mainly from shtetls. All this was mainly young people, and if by profession, then artisans, small merchants and musicians prevailed among them. In America, many of them retrained as hired workers, which, by the way, led to the formation of a large Jewish proletariat and strong trade unions. The newcomers were greatly assisted by their relatives, as well as Jewish philanthropic organizations created by representatives of Jewish immigrants of the previous wave.

During the years 1870-1890, 176.9 thousand Russian Jews moved to the United States, and by 1905 their number reached 1.3 million. In total, in 1881-1912, according to Ts. Gitelman, 1889 thousand Jews emigrated from Russia, of which 84 % to the USA, 8.5% to England, 2.2% to Canada and 2.1% to Palestine. During this period, we recall, Russian Jews accounted for about 4% of the population of the Russian Empire, but they accounted for up to 70% of all Jewish emigration to the United States, 48% of all immigration to the United States from Russia and 44% of all emigration from Russia.

The majority of Jewish immigrants from Russia settled, in general, in the same place as their predecessors from the previous (“German”) wave: they lived mainly in the northeast of the country - in the states of New York (over 45%), Pennsylvania (about 10%), New Jersey (5%), as well as in Chicago and other cities. At the same time, they lived, as a rule, in uncomfortable and overcrowded slums, in a kind of ghetto with their own customs and traditions; "Russian" Jews at the local level almost did not mix with "German" Jews.

The quantitative peak of Jewish emigration from Russia to the United States occurred in the 1900s - 704.2 thousand people. From the end of the 19th century, Jewish emigration to Canada increased - 70 thousand people in 1898-1920, which amounted to about 50% of immigration from Russia and 80% of Jewish immigration to Canada. Approximately the same number of Jews emigrated to Palestine before 1914.

Political emigration from Russia was, perhaps, not so numerous (corresponding statistics, of course, no one kept), as complex and representative of the whole wide, difficult to classify, spectrum of political opposition forces in Russia. At the same time, like no other, it was internally well organized and structured: suffice it to note that in Europe alone, political emigrants from Russia published between 1855 and 1917 287 titles of newspapers and magazines! Moreover, incomparably better than emigration from pre-revolutionary Russia as a whole, it lends itself to conditional periodization. A.V. Popov, in particular, distinguishes two stages: 1) populist, leading from the emigration in 1847 by Herzen and ending in 1883 with the formation in Geneva of the Marxist group "Emancipation of Labor", and 2) proletarian(or more precisely, socialist), much more massive and more complex structured (more than 150 parties of various orientations).

The Russian government tried in every possible way to prevent political emigration, to stop or hinder its "subversive" activities abroad; with a number of countries (in particular, with the United States), it concluded agreements on the mutual extradition of political emigrants, which actually put them outside the law.

The First World War led to a sharp decline in international migration, primarily labor and especially intercontinental (at the same time, internal migration increased sharply, which is primarily due to the flows of refugees and evacuees fleeing the advancing enemy troops: their subsequent return was, as a rule, only partial). She sharply accelerated the revolutionary situation and thereby made her "contribution" to the victory of the Bolsheviks and the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries. Immediately after the October Revolution, the mass emigration of the most diverse social groups of the Russian population began, having no reason to identify themselves with the class whose dictatorship was proclaimed.

Waves of emigration from the USSR

In general terms, the traditional scheme of periodization of Russian emigration after 1917, emigration from the Soviet Union, has already taken shape and is generally recognized. It consisted, as it were, of four emigration waves”, sharply differing from each other in terms of reasons, geographical structure, duration and intensity of emigration, the degree of participation of Jews in them, etc.

This is more figurative than scientific concept - "wave". It is widespread and terminologically well-established, but at the same time, it does not easily withstand the burden of a scientific concept and term. It would probably be more correct to call them not waves, but periods corresponding to one or another chronological framework; per waves but it would be necessary to preserve a slightly different, more characteristic load - intervals of concentrated manifestation of the phenomenon itself, or, in other words, bursts, outbreaks or peaks of emigration.

Therefore, denoting in brackets the chronological framework of a particular wave, one must be aware that they indicate no more than the time of the actual resettlement, that is, the first phase of emigration. At the same time, there are other phases, or stages, no less important in their significance than the first, and they have a different chronological framework. For example, the phase of consolidation of emigrants, the formation of their public organizations and the press, or the phase of their socio-economic integration into the life of the host state, in relation to which they are no longer emigrants, but immigrants, etc.

First wave (1918-1922)- military and civilians who fled from the Soviet power that won during the revolution and the Civil Wave, as well as from hunger. Emigration from Bolshevik Russia, according to various estimates, ranged from 1.5 to 3 million people. However (with the possible exception of the “philosophical ships” with a hundred and fifty souls on board), these were still refugees, not deportees. Here, of course, the optional transfers of the population are not taken into account, due to the fact that parts of the territory of the former Russian Empire as a result of the First World War and revolutionary events either went to neighboring states (like Bessarabia to Romania), or became independent states, like Finland, Poland and the countries Baltic States (here we should also mention Ukraine, Belarus, the countries of Transcaucasia and Central Asia, and even the Far Eastern Republic - states with some of which Russia even had option agreements; however, their implementation most often lagged behind the annexation of these countries by the RSFSR).

In 1921, under the auspices of the League of Nations, the Refugees Settlement Commission was established, chaired by Fridtjof Nansen. In 1931, the so-called "Nansen Office" (Nansen-Amt) was founded, and in 1933 the refugee convention was concluded. International (so-called “Nansen”) passports, together with the help of the Nansen Foundation and other organizations, have helped millions of people survive and assimilate, including Jewish refugees from Germany.

Second wave (1941-1944)- persons displaced outside the borders of the USSR during the Second World War and evaded repatriation to their homeland (“defectors”). Our analysis of the forced repatriation of Soviet citizens led us to an estimate of the number of “defectors” at no more than 0.5-0.7 million people, including citizens of the Baltic republics (but not including the Poles, who repatriated from the territory of the USSR shortly after the war).

Third wave (1948 - 1989/1990)- this is, in fact, all the emigration of the Cold War period, so to speak, between the late Stalin and the early Gorbachev. Quantitatively, it fits into approximately half a million people, that is, it is close to the results of the “second wave”.

Fourth wave (1990 - present)- this is, in fact, the first more or less civilized emigration in Russian history. As Zh.A. Zayochkovskaya, " ... it is increasingly characterized by features that are typical of emigration from many countries in our time, it is predetermined not by political, as before, but by economic factors that push people to go to other countries in search of higher earnings, prestigious work, a different quality of life, etc. P.". Its quantitative estimates need to be updated annually, since this wave, although not in full swing, is far from over yet.

A. Akhiezer proposed the following six-link periodization scheme for emigration from Russia - three stages before the revolution and three stages after, namely: 1) before 1861; 2) 1861-1890s; 3) 1890s - 1914; 4) 1917-1952; 5) 1952 - 1992 and 6) after January 1, 1993 - the date of entry into force of the Law on Entry and Exit, adopted by the People's Deputies of the USSR in 1991. Obviously, the fourth stage corresponds to the so-called "first and second waves" of emigration from Soviet Russia, the fifth - the "third wave", the sixth - the "fourth" (partially). It seems that the unification of the first two “waves” into one period is hardly historically justified, as well as the countdown of the last - post-totalitarian - period since 1993: the mentioned Law was more or less pro forma, - Gorbachev's liberalization became a much more significant event from a practical point of view ethnic migrations as early as at the turn of 1986-1987, which led to a sharp jump in emigration already in 1987 and to its very real “boom” already in 1990.

Emigration and Revolution (“First Wave”)

Let's start, of course, with First immigrant wave. She is also called White emigration, and it is clear why. After the defeats of the White Army in the North-West, the first military emigrants were parts of the army of General Yudenich, interned in 1918 in Estonia. After the defeats in the East, another center of the emigration diaspora (approximately 400 thousand people) was formed in Manchuria with its center in Harbin. After the defeats in the South, steamships departing from the Black Sea ports in the rear of the retreating Denikin and Wrangel troops (mainly Novorossiysk, Sevastopol and Odessa), as a rule, headed for Constantinople, which for a time became “Little Russia”.

Before the revolution, the size of the Russian colony in Manchuria was at least 200-220 thousand people, and by November 1920 - already at least 288 thousand people. With the abolition of the status of extraterritoriality for Russian citizens in China on September 23, 1920, the entire Russian population in it, including refugees, moved to the unenviable position of unenviable emigrants in a foreign state, that is, to the position of an actual diaspora. Throughout the entire turbulent period of the Civil War in the Far East (1918-1922), there was a significant mechanical movement of the population, which, however, consisted not only in the influx of the population, but also in its significant outflow - due to Kolchak, Semenov and other mobilizations, re-emigration and repatriation to Bolshevik Russia.

The first serious flow of Russian refugees in the Far East dates back to the beginning of 1920 - the time when the Omsk directory had already fallen; the second - in October-November 1920, when the army of the so-called "Russian Eastern Outskirts" under the command of Ataman G.M. Semenov (his regular troops alone numbered more than 20 thousand people; they were disarmed and interned in the so-called "Qiqihar camps", after which they were resettled by the Chinese in the Grodekovo region in the south of Primorye); finally, the third - at the end of 1922, when Soviet power was finally established in the region (only a few thousand people left by sea, the main flow of refugees was sent from Primorye to Manchuria and Korea, to China, they were not allowed to enter the CER, with some exceptions; some even sent to Soviet Russia).

It is necessary to point out the curious circumstance that, along with the “white” emigration in China, in particular, in 1918-1922 in Shanghai, for some time there was also a “red” emigration, however, not numerous (about 1 thousand people). After the end of the civil war in Primorye, most of the revolutionaries returned to the Far East. In November 1922, as if to “replace” them, 4.5 thousand white emigrants arrived on the ships of the squadrons of Rear Admirals Stark and Bezoir; in September 1923, they were joined by the remnants of the Far Eastern flotilla with refugees on board. The situation of the emigrant colony in Shanghai, in comparison with Europe and Harbin, was incomparably more difficult, also due to the impossibility of competition with the Chinese in the field of unskilled labor. The second largest, but perhaps the first in terms of enterprise, Russian emigrant colony in inner China was the community in Tianjin. In the 1920s, about two thousand Russians lived here, and in the 1930s there were already about 6 thousand Russians. Several hundred Russian emigrants settled in Beijing and Hangzhou.

At the same time, in China, namely in Xinjiang in the north-west of the country, there was another significant (more than 5.5 thousand people) Russian colony, which consisted of the Cossacks of General Bakich and former officials of the White Army, who retreated here after the defeats in the Urals and in Semirechye: they settled in the countryside and were engaged in agricultural labor.

The total population of the Russian colonies in Manchuria and China in 1923, when the war had already ended, was estimated at approximately 400 thousand people. Of this number, at least 100 thousand received Soviet passports in 1922-1923, many of them - at least 100 thousand people - were repatriated to the RSFSR (the amnesty announced on November 3, 1921 for ordinary members of the White Guard formations also played a role here). Significant (sometimes up to tens of thousands of people a year) were during the 1920s the re-emigration of Russians to other countries, especially young people aspiring to universities (in particular, to the USA, Australia and South America, as well as Europe).

The first influx of refugees South of Russia also took place at the beginning of 1920. Back in May 1920, General Wrangel established the so-called "Emigration Council", a year later renamed the Council for the Settlement of Russian Refugees. Civilian and military refugees were settled in camps near Constantinople, on the Princes' Islands and in Bulgaria; military camps at Gallipoli, Chataldzha and Lemnos (Kuban camp) were under British or French administration. The last operations to evacuate the Wrangel army took place from November 11 to 14, 1920: 15 thousand Cossacks, 12 thousand officers and 4-5 thousand soldiers of regular units, 10 thousand cadets, 7 thousand wounded officers, more than 30 thousand officers and officials were loaded onto the ships rear and up to 60 thousand civilians, mainly members of the families of officers and officials. It was this, Crimean, wave of evacuees who found emigration especially hard.

At the end of 1920, the card file of the Main Information (or Registration) Bureau already had 190 thousand names with addresses. At the same time, the number of military men was estimated at 50-60 thousand people, and civilian refugees - at 130-150 thousand people.

The most prominent "refugees" (aristocrats, officials and merchants) were usually able to pay for tickets, visas and other fees. Within one or two weeks in Constantinople, they settled all the formalities and went on to Europe, mainly to France and Germany: by the beginning of November 1920, according to the Red Army intelligence, their number had reached 35-40 thousand people.

By the end of the winter of 1921, only the poorest and poorest, as well as the military, remained in Constantinople. Spontaneous re-evacuation began, especially of peasants and captured Red Army soldiers who did not fear reprisals. By February 1921, the number of such re-emigrants had reached 5,000. In March, another 6.5 thousand Cossacks were added to them. Over time, it took on organized forms.

In the spring of 1921, General Wrangel turned to the Bulgarian and Yugoslav governments with a request for the possibility of resettling the Russian army on their territory. In August, consent was received: Yugoslavia (the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes) accepted the Barbovich Cavalry Division, Kuban and part of the Don Cossacks (with weapons; their duties included border service and government work), and Bulgaria - the entire 1- th corps, military schools and part of the Don Cossacks (without weapons). At the same time, about 20% of the army personnel left the army and moved to the position of refugees.

About 35 thousand Russian emigrants (mostly military) were settled in various, mainly Balkan countries: 22 thousand ended up in Serbia, 5 thousand in Tunisia (port of Bizerte), 4 thousand in Bulgaria and 2 thousand each in Romania and Greece.

Worthy of being mentioned statistically insignificant, but politically"loud" emigration action of Soviet Russia as the deportation of humanitarian scientists in 1922. It took place in the autumn of 1922: two famous “ philosophical steamer” brought from Petrograd to Germany (Stettin) about 50 outstanding Russian humanitarians (together with members of their families - about 115 people). Similarly, such prominent politicians as Dan, Kuskova, Prokopovich, Peshekhonov, Ladyzhensky were expelled from the USSR. And to those and to others, apparently, the Decree of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee “On Administrative Expulsion” of August 10, 1922 was applied.

The League of Nations achieved some success in helping Russian emigrants. F. Nansen, the famous Norwegian polar explorer, appointed in February 1921 as Commissioner for Russian Refugees, introduced special identification cards for them (the so-called “Nansen passports”), eventually recognized in 31 countries of the world. With the help of the organization created by Nansen (Refugees Settlement Commission), about 25 thousand refugees were employed (mainly in the USA, Austria, Belgium, Germany, Hungary and Czechoslovakia).

The total number of emigrants from Russia, on November 1, 1920, according to the estimates of the American Red Cross, was 1,194 thousand people; later this estimate was increased to 2092 thousand people. The most authoritative estimate of the number of "white emigration", given by A. and E. Kulischer, also speaks of 1.5-2.0 million people. It was based, among other things, on selective data from the League of Nations, which recorded, as of August 1921, more than 1.4 million refugees from Russia. This number also included 100,000 German colonists, 65,000 Latvians, 55,000 Greeks and 12,000 Karelians. By countries of arrival, emigrants were distributed as follows (thousand people): Poland - 650, Germany - 300, France - 250, Romania - 100, Yugoslavia - 50, Greece - 31, Bulgaria - 30, Finland - 19, Turkey - 11 and Egypt - 3 .

At the same time, V. Kabuzan estimates the total number of those who emigrated from Russia in 1918-1924 at no less than 5 million people, including about 2 million. optants, that is, residents of the former Russian (Polish and Baltic) provinces that became part of the newly formed sovereign states

Separating emigration from option is a very difficult, but still important task: in 1918-1922, the total number of emigrants and repatriates was (for a number of countries, selectively): to Poland - 4.1 million people, to Latvia - 130 thousand people, to Lithuania - 215 thousand people. Many, especially in Poland, were in fact emigrants in transit and did not stay there for long.

In 1922, according to N.A. Struve, the total number of Russian emigration was 863 thousand people, in 1930 it decreased to 630 thousand and in 1937 to 450 thousand people. The territorial distribution of Russian emigration is presented in Table. one.

Table 1. Distribution of Russian emigration by countries and regions (1922-1937, %)

COUNTRIES AND REGIONS
Far East
Germany
Balkan countries
Finland and the Baltic States
Countries Center. Europe
Other European countries

A source: STRUVE; 1996, p.300-301

According to incomplete data from the Refugee Service of the League of Nations, in 1926, 755.3 thousand Russian and 205.7 thousand Armenian refugees were officially registered. More than half of the Russians - about 400 thousand people - were then accepted by France; in China there were 76 thousand of them, in Yugoslavia, Latvia, Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria approximately 30-40 thousand people each (in 1926 there were about 220 thousand immigrants from Russia in Bulgaria). Most of the Armenians found refuge in Syria, Greece and Bulgaria (respectively, about 124, 42 and 20 thousand people).

Acting as the main transshipment base for emigration, Constantinople eventually lost its significance. The recognized centers of the “first emigration” (it is also called White) were, at its next stage, Berlin and Harbin (before its occupation by the Japanese in 1936), as well as Belgrade and Sofia. The Russian population of Berlin in 1921 numbered about 200 thousand people, it was especially affected during the years of the economic crisis, and by 1925 there were only 30 thousand people left. Later, Prague and Paris came to the fore. The coming to power of the Nazis even more pushed the Russian emigrants away from Germany. Prague and, in particular, Paris moved to the first places in emigration. Even on the eve of the Second World War, but especially during the hostilities and soon after the war, there was a tendency for some of the first emigration to move to the United States.

Thus, despite the tangible Asian part, the first emigration can be described without exaggeration as predominantly European. The question of its ethnic composition cannot be quantified, but the noticeable predominance of Russians and other Slavs is also quite obvious. Compared with the pre-revolutionary emigration from Russia, the participation of Jews in the "first wave" is rather modest: the emigration of Jews took place not on ethnic, but rather on general socio-political grounds.

As a historical phenomenon, the “first emigration” is unique both quantitatively and qualitatively. It became, firstly, one of the largest emigration movements in world history, which took place in an unusually short time. Secondly, it marked the transfer to foreign soil of a whole socio-cultural layer, for the existence of which there were no sufficient prerequisites in the homeland: such key concepts and categories as monarchism, class, churchness were preserved and saved by the incredible exertion of forces in exile. and private property. “ Now in exile- W. Davatz wrote, - all the elements of a territorialless Russian statehood were found, not only not in a friendly, but in a hostile environment. This whole mass of people outside the homeland has become a true "Russia in the small", that new phenomenon that does not fit into the usual framework.”.

Thirdly, the widespread behavioral paradigm of this wave (partly due to the unjustified hope that it would be forced and short-lived) was a closure to one’s own environment, a focus on recreating in its composition as many as possible the public institutions that existed in the homeland and the actual (and, of course, temporary) ) refusal to integrate into the new society . Fourthly, the polarization of the emigrant mass itself and, in a broad sense, the degradation of a significant part of it with an amazing predisposition to internal conflicts and strife were also regrettable conclusions that have to be ascertained.

Emigration between the Civil and Patriotic Wars

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 thousand people, almost all to Palestine) and German (about 20-25 thousand people), and the most massive type of emigration - labor, so characteristic of Russia before the First World War, after 1917 on the territory of the USSR practically ceased, or, more precisely, was discontinued.

According to some data, between 1923 and 1926, about 20 thousand Germans (mostly Mennonites) emigrated to Canada, and according to others, about 24 thousand people emigrated in 1925-1930, of which 21 thousand went to Canada, and the rest - to South America. In 1922-1924, about 20 thousand German families living in Ukraine applied for emigration to Germany, but only 8 thousand received permission from the German authorities. At the same time, the statistics of the immigration of Soviet Germans to Germany in 1918-1933, according to the German Foreign Ministry, is as follows: about 3 thousand people entered in 1918-1922, about 20 thousand in 1923-1928 and about 6 thousand in 1929-1933. There is evidence of mass "campaigns" in the 1920s of thousands of German families seeking to leave the USSR, to Moscow, to the embassies of countries that refuse to admit them: in 1923 - to the German embassy (16 thousand people), and at the end of 1929 year - to the Embassy of Canada (18 thousand people). The appeal of the Dukhobors and Molokans of the Salsk district to leave for the same Canada was also rejected.

Speaking about the 1920s, one should also mention individual "echoes" of the Civil War, which was waged in certain regions of Central Asia until the mid-1930s. So, in the early 1920s (no later than 1924), about 40 thousand dekhan (peasant) households from Tajikistan (or approximately 200-250 thousand people) emigrated to the northern provinces of Afghanistan, which constituted a significant part of the population of Eastern Bukhara and led to to a sharp reduction in cotton crops. Of these, during 1925-1927, only about 7 thousand households, or approximately 40 thousand people, were repatriated. It is significant that the returnees were settled not where they fled from, but mainly in the Vakhsh valley, which was dictated by the interests of the state in its development.

Serious factors of emigration in the 1930s. (at least in Central Asia and Kazakhstan, where the regime of borders was still more or less conventional) were collectivization and the resulting famine. Thus, an extremely difficult situation developed in 1933 in Kazakhstan, where, as a result of famine and collectivization, the livestock population decreased by 90%. The "Great Leap Forward" in animal husbandry (up to the general socialization of livestock, even small ones) and the policy of forced " subsidence"the nomadic and semi-nomadic Kazakh people turned into not only starvation and death from 1 to 2 million people, but also mass migration of Kazakhs. According to Zelenin, it covered at least 400 thousand families, or about 2 million people, and according to Abylkhozhin and others - 1030 thousand people, of which 414 thousand returned to Kazakhstan, about the same settled in the RSFSR and the republics of Central Asia, and the remaining 200 thousand went abroad - to China, Mongolia, Afghanistan, Iran and Turkey. Of course, this was a rather lengthy process that began at the end of 1931 and grew from the spring of 1932 to the spring of 1933.

Emigration and the Great Patriotic War ("Second Wave")

As for Soviet citizens proper, never before had so many of them found themselves abroad at the same time as during the years of the Great Patriotic War. True, this happened in most cases not only against the will of the state, but also against their own will.

We can talk about approximately 5.45 million civilians, one way or another displaced from the territory that belonged to the Soviet Union before the war, to the territory that belonged or was controlled before the war by the Third Reich or its allies. Taking into account 3.25 million prisoners of war, the total number of Soviet citizens deported outside the USSR was, in our estimation, about 8.7 million people

Table 2. Persons who lived on the territory of the USSR before the war and were displaced during the war abroad (to the territory of Germany, its allies or countries occupied by them)

		population
		million people
	Civil internees
	Prisoners of war
	Ostovtsy (Ostarbeiters - “Easterners”)
	"Westerners"
	Volksdeutsche
	Ingrian Finns
	"Refugees"
	"Evacuees"

Note

A source: Polyan P.M. Victims of two dictatorships: life, labor, humiliation and death of Soviet prisoners of war and Ostarbeiters in a foreign land and at home / Foreword. D. Granina. M.: ROSSPEN, 2002. (Ed. 2nd, revised and supplemented), pp. 135-136.

Let us consider individual contingents of citizens of the USSR who found themselves during the war years in Germany and on the territory of its allies or countries occupied by it (see Table 2). First, this Soviet prisoners of war. Secondly and thirdly, civilians forcibly taken to the Reich: this ostovtsy, or Ostarbeiters, in the German sense of the term, which corresponds to the Soviet term Ostarbeiters-“Easterners”(that is, workers taken out of the old Soviet regions), and Ostarbeiter-“Westernizers” who lived in areas annexed by the USSR in accordance with the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Fourth, this Volksdeutsche and Volksfinns, that is, the Germans and Finns are Soviet citizens, whom the NKVD simply did not have time to deport after the majority of their fellow tribesmen, who became “special settlers” for many years. Fifth and sixth, these are the so-called “refugees and evacuees”, that is, Soviet civilians who were taken out or independently rushed to Germany after (or rather, in front of) the retreating Wehrmacht. The refugees were mainly people who in one way or another collaborated with the German administration and for this reason had no particular illusions about their future after the restoration of Soviet power; the evacuees, on the contrary, were taken away by force no less than the classic “Ostarbeiters”, thereby clearing the territory left to the enemy from the population, which, otherwise, could be used against the Germans. Nevertheless, in the scanty statistics that we have about them, both categories are usually combined. The seventh, and if in chronological terms - then the first, category was civilian internees- that is, diplomats, employees of trade and other missions and delegations of the USSR, sailors, railway workers, etc. etc., caught by the outbreak of war in Germany and interned (as a rule, directly on June 22, 1941) on its territory. Quantitatively, this category is negligible.

Some of these people did not live to see the victory (especially many of these among prisoners of war), most of them repatriated to their homeland, but many evaded repatriation and remained in the West, becoming the core of the so-called “Second wave” of emigration from the USSR. The maximum quantitative estimate of this wave is approximately 500-700 thousand people, most of them come from Western Ukraine and the Baltic states. (participation in this emigration of the Jews, for obvious reasons, was a vanishingly small value).

Initially concentrated entirely in Europe as part of a larger mass of "DP" or displaced persons, many of the second wave left the Old World during 1945-1951 and moved to Australia, South America, Canada, but especially the USA. The proportion of those who ultimately remained in Europe can only be estimated, but in any case it is by no means more than a third or a quarter. Thus, in the second wave, in comparison with the first, the level of "Europeanness" is significantly lower.

Thus, we can talk about approximately 5.45 million civilians, one way or another displaced from the territory that belonged to the Soviet Union before the war, to the territory that belonged or was controlled before the war by the Third Reich or its allies. Taking into account 3.25 million prisoners of war, the total number of Soviet citizens deported outside the USSR was, in our estimation, about 8.7 million people

Let us try, at least approximately, to bring the demographic balance of forced deportations of Soviet citizens to Germany and their repatriation. Data for a correct comparison of the degree of repatriation for all indicated in Table. We do not have 3 categories, so the following table is compiled largely by experts.

Table 3. Persons who lived on the territory of the USSR before the war and ended up on the territory of Germany and its allied countries during the war, in relation to repatriation to the USSR

		population
		million people
	TOTAL, including
	Died or killed
	Repatriated by the Germans (“returners”)
	Self-repatriated
	repatriated by the state
	Avoided repatriation (“defectors”)

Note: Calculations are estimated and not final.

A source: Polyan P.M. Victims of two dictatorships: life, labor, humiliation and death of Soviet prisoners of war and Ostarbeiters in a foreign land and at home / Foreword. D. Granina. M.: ROSSPEN, 2002. (Ed. 2nd, revised and additional), p.143.

How many "defectors" of Soviet origin remained after the Second World War in the West?

According to one of the official estimates made by the Office for Repatriation on the basis of incomplete data, by January 1, 1952, 451,561 Soviet citizens still remained abroad. Our estimate - about 700 thousand people - is based on the realistic assumption that a significant part of DP acted at their own peril and risk and tried in every possible way to avoid registration and assistance even from international organizations.

If in 1946 more than 80% of the defectors were inside the western occupation zones in Germany and Austria, now they accounted for only about 23% of their number. So, in all six western zones of Germany and Austria there were 103.7 thousand people, while in England alone - 100.0, Australia - 50.3, Canada - 38.4, USA - 35.3, Sweden - 27, 6, France - 19.7 and Belgium - 14.7 thousand "temporarily not repatriated". In this regard, the ethnic structure of defectors is very expressive. Most of them were Ukrainians - 144934 people (or 32.1%), followed by three Baltic peoples - Latvians (109214 people, or 24.2%), Lithuanians (63401, or 14.0%) and Estonians (58924, or 13.0%). All of them, together with 9856 Belarusians (2.2%), accounted for 85.5% of the registered defectors. Actually, this is, with some coarsening and overestimation, the quota of "Westerners" (in Zemskov's terminology) in the structure of this contingent. According to V.N. Zemskov, "Westerners" accounted for 3/4, and "Easterners" - only 1/4 of the number of defectors. But most likely the proportion of “Westerners” is even higher, especially if we assume that a sufficient number of Poles have crept into the “other” category (33,528 people, or 7.4%). There are only 31,704 Russians among the defectors, or 7.0%.

In light of this, the scale of Western estimates of the number of defectors becomes understandable, an order of magnitude lower than the Soviet ones and, as it were, oriented towards the number of Russians by nationality in this environment. So, according to M. Proudfoot, about 35 thousand former Soviet citizens are officially registered as "remaining in the West".

But be that as it may, Stalin's fears were justified and tens and hundreds of thousands of former Soviet or sub-Soviet citizens one way or another, by hook or by crook, but avoided repatriation and nevertheless made up the so-called " second emigration”.

Emigration and the Cold War (“Third Wave”)

Third wave (1948-1986)- this is, in fact, all the emigration of the Cold War period, so to speak, between the late Stalin and the early Gorbachev. Quantitatively, it fits into approximately half a million people, that is, it is close to the results of the “second wave”.

Qualitatively, it consists of two very dissimilar terms: the first is made up of not quite standard emigrants - forcibly deported ("expelled") and defectors, the second - "normal" emigrants, although "normality" for that time was a thing so specific and exhausting (with extortions for education, with incriminating meetings of labor and even school groups and other types of harassment) that it did not fit well with real democratic norms.

Special and very specific immigrants were all sorts of defectors and defectors. “Wanted list of the KGB” for 470 people, 201 of them - to Germany (including the American zone - 120, the English - 66, the French - 5), 59 to Austria. Most of them got jobs in the USA - 107, in Germany - 88, in Canada - 42, in Sweden - 28, in England - 25, etc. Since 1965, “trials in absentia” of defectors have been replaced by “decrees on arrest”.

Quantitatively dominated, of course, "normal" emigrants. The total indicators of the third wave, according to S. Heitman, are as follows: in 1948-1986, about 290,000 Jews left the USSR, 105,000 Soviet Germans and 52,000 Armenians. Within this period, S. Heitman distinguishes three specific sub-stages: 1948-1970, 1971-1980 and 1980-1985 (see Table 4):

Table 4. Emigration from the USSR of Jews, Germans and Armenians (1948-1985)

Periods	Jews, pers.	Jews, %	Germans, pers.	Germans, %	Armenians, pers.	Armenians, %	Total, pers.	Total,%	Average

A source: Heitman S. The Third Soviet Emigration: Jewish, German and Armenian Emigration from the USSR since World War II // Berichte des Bundesinstituts für ostwissenschaftliche und internationale Studien No. 21, 1987, p.24 (numbers rounded).

Until the 1980s, Jews constituted the majority, and more often the decisive majority of emigrants from the USSR. At the first sub-stage, which gave only 9% of the "third emigration", although the Jewish emigration was in the lead, it did not dominate (only a 2-fold advantage over the Armenian and quite insignificant - over the German emigration). But on the most massive second m sub-stage (which gave 86% of Jewish emigration for the entire period), even with a friendly, almost 3-fold increase in German and Armenian emigration, Jewish emigration firmly dominated (with a share of 72%), and only in the third sub-stage did it for the first time give way to the leadership of German emigration. .

In some years (for example, in 1980), the number of Armenian emigrants almost did not yield to German emigrants, and unofficial emigration was characteristic of them (the channel of which most likely was non-return after a guest trip to relatives) .

At the first sub-stage, almost all Jews rushed to the "promised land" - Israel, of which about 14 thousand people did not directly, but through Poland. In the second, the picture changed: only 62.8% of Jewish emigrants went to Israel, the rest preferred the United States (33.5%) or other countries (primarily Canada and European countries). At the same time, the number of those who traveled directly with an American visa was relatively small (during 1972-1979 it never exceeded 1,000 people). The majority left with an Israeli visa, but with the actual right to choose between Israel and the United States during a transit stop in Vienna: here the bill was no longer hundreds, but thousands of human souls. It was then that many Soviet Jews also settled in major European capitals, primarily in Vienna and Rome, which served as a kind of transit base for Jewish emigration in the 1970s and 1980s; later, the flow was also directed through Budapest, Bucharest and other cities (but there were also many who, having arrived in Israel, moved from there to the USA).

It is interesting that Jews from Georgia and from the USSR-annexed Baltic states, Western Ukraine and Northern Bukovina (mainly from cities - primarily Riga, Lvov, Chernivtsi, etc.), where - with the exception of Georgia - anti-Semitism was especially "in honor". As a rule, these were deeply religious Jews, often with uninterrupted family ties in the West.

Since the late 1970s, the purely Jewish emigration has been split in two and almost equally, even with some margin in favor of the United States, especially when you consider those who moved there from Israel. The US championship lasted from 1978 to 1989, that is, in those years when the flow of Jewish emigrants in itself was small or negligible. But the huge “backlog” of people on the waiting list and refuseniks, accumulated over previous years, predetermined that, starting from 1990, when Israel accounted for 85% of Jewish emigration, it is again and firmly in the lead. (However, this leadership came to an end only 12 years later, when in 2002 - for the first time in the history of Jewish immigration from the USSR - Germany took the first place among the receiving countries!)

At the same time, in general, the third wave can be considered the most ethnicized (there were simply no other mechanisms to leave, except along Jewish, German or Armenian lines) and at the same time the least European of all of the above: its leaders were alternately Israel and the United States. And only in the 1980s, when the Jewish ethnic migration was overtaken by the German one, did the turn of its course towards “Europeanization” become apparent - a trend that manifested itself to an even greater extent in the “fourth wave” (specific also to the new - German - direction of the Jewish emigration).

Emigration and perestroika (“The Fourth Wave”)

The beginning of this period should be counted from the era of M.S. Gorbachev, but, by the way, not from his very first steps, but rather from the “second”, among which the most important were the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, the liberalization of the press and the rules for entering and leaving the country. The actual beginning (more precisely, the resumption) of Jewish emigration under Gorbachev dates back to April 1987, but statistically this affected with some delay. Let us repeat that this period, in fact, continues now, so its quantitative estimates need to be updated annually.

In any case, they turned out to be much more modest than those apocalyptic forecasts about the "ninth wave" of emigration from the former USSR allegedly rolling over Europe with a capacity, according to various estimates, from 3 to 20 million people - an influx that the West even purely economically could not afford endure. In fact, nothing “terrible” happened in the West. Legal emigration from the USSR turned out to be well protected by the laws of all Western countries and is still limited to representatives of only a few nationalities, for which - again, only in a few host countries - a certain legal and social infrastructure has been created.

We are talking primarily about ethnic Germans and Jews (to a lesser extent - about the Greeks and Armenians, to an even lesser extent and most recently - about Poles and Koreans). In particular, Israel created legal guarantees for the immigration (repatriation) of Jews, and Germany - for the immigration of Germans and Jews living in the territory of the b. THE USSR.

Thus, according to the German Constitution and the Law on the Exiles (Bundesvertriebenengesetz), the FRG undertook to accept for settlement and citizenship all persons of German nationality who were subjected to in the 40s. exile from their native lands and those living outside of Germany. They came and come either in the status of “expelled” (Vertriebene), or in the status of “settlers” or the so-called “late settlers” (Aussiedler or Spätaussiedler) and almost immediately, upon the first application, receive German citizenship.

In 1950, about 51,000 Germans lived in the FRG, who were born in the territory that until 1939 was part of the USSR. This turned out to be important for the start of German immigration from the Soviet Union, since at its first stage the Soviet side met halfway, mainly in cases of family reunification. Actually, German emigration from the USSR to the FRG began in 1951, when 1,721 ethnic Germans left for their homeland. On February 22, 1955, the Bundestag decided to recognize the German citizenship acquired during the war, which extended the “Law on the Expelled” to all Germans living in Eastern Europe. By May 1956, the German embassy in Moscow had accumulated about 80,000 applications from Soviet Germans to leave for the FRG. In 1958-1959, the number of German emigrants amounted to 4-5.5 thousand people. For a long time, the record was the result of 1976 (9704 immigrants). In 1987, the 10,000th milestone (14488 people) “fell”, after which almost every year the bar was raised to a new height (persons): 1988 - 47572, 1989 - 98134, 1990 - 147950, 1991 - 147320, 1992 - 195950, 1993 - 207347 and 1994 - 213214 people. In 1995, the bar resisted (209,409 people), and in 1996 it moved down (172,181 people), which is explained not so much by the policy of recreating favorable conditions for the Germans to live in Kazakhstan, Russia, etc., but by the tightening of the resettlement regulations undertaken by the German government , in particular, measures to attach settlers to the lands assigned to them (including the eastern ones, where about 20% now live), but in particular the obligation to take an exam for knowledge of the German language (Sprachtest) on the spot (at the exam, as a rule , “fails” at least 1/3 of those admitted to it).

Nevertheless, the 1990s became, in essence, the time of the most landslide exodus of Russian Germans from the republics of the former USSR. In total, 1,549,490 Germans and members of their families moved from there to Germany in 1951-1996. According to some estimates, the Germans “by passport” (that is, those who arrived on the basis of § 4 of the “Law on the Expelled”) make up about 4/5 among them: another 1/5 is their spouses, descendants and relatives (mainly Russians and Ukrainians ). By the beginning of 1997, according to the same estimates, less than 1/3 of the Germans who had previously lived there remained in Kazakhstan, 1/6 in Kyrgyzstan, and in Tajikistan the German contingent was practically exhausted. The intensity of German emigration from Russia is much lower; moreover, there is a noticeable German immigration from the Central Asian states to Russia.

Some results and trends

So, what do the Soviet emigration trends look like?

The first trend is internal political: there is an undoubted strengthening of the legitimacy (but still civilized!) of emigration. Cold War emigrants are still "traitors to the motherland", but they leave legally and sanctioned, according to certain rules: therefore, they do not need to be killed, but they can be poisoned and branded as much as you like.

The second trend is mental: from the cross of preserving and safeguarding the specific values ​​of Russian self-identity in exile (with a patriotic-monarchist bias) and from exile itself as a vessel, or a reserve (or even a ghetto) for the latter, to the cosmopolitan attitude of the Jewish (and , partly German) youth for accelerated integration into Western life and the maximum separation from Soviet values, partly still shared by the generation of their own parents, who also emigrated at the same time.

The third trend is cultural and geographical: Russian emigration began as emigration to Europe, but until the 1980s, the role of Europe in the Soviet emigration flow was steadily declining. If in the “first wave” it clearly dominated Asia and America, and internally it was widely represented (Serbia, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Germany or France), then in the “second wave” Europe served as nothing more than a springboard to the New World, mainly , to the USA, South America and Australia (by the way, representatives of the “first wave” also reached there at that time). The "de-Europeanization" of emigration from the USSR intensified even more in the "third wave", but only up to a certain time limit - the beginning of the 1980s, when the role of "Europeanizers" of the emigration flow was assumed by the Soviet Germans, who lived at that time, mainly in the Asian part of the USSR (in the 1990s, they were “joined” by Jews who began to receive Germany).

The position of the Russian Federation on the “migration” map is contradictory: it is referred both to the countries of immigration and to the countries of emigration. For the inhabitants of the former republics of the USSR, Russia is still more attractive and safer, it is they who provide 98% of the "entry" to the Russian Federation.

But in relation to the developed countries of the West, the Russian Federation traditionally acts as a country of “departure”. The emigration flow is significantly inferior to the immigration one. Nevertheless, it is quite important, because. usually the most active, educated, hardworking part of the population leaves. In addition, the analysis of recorded emigration indirectly characterizes hidden emigration. Specialists who go on long-term internships and work in Western firms usually seek to gain a foothold there and stay forever.

The size of emigration jumped noticeably in the late 1980s, when Gorbachev's liberalization of entry and exit to the USSR began to take effect. For the first time in the history of Russia's external migration, emigration acquired civilized features. Over the past 10-12 years, more than 1 million people left the Russian Federation for non-CIS countries only officially and for permanent residence. Annual emigration averaged between 80,000 and 100,000 people, that is, almost the same as in the previous decade from the entire USSR.

In the last two or three years, there has been a trend towards a reduction in entry and exit from Russia, which is accompanied by an increase in the share of Russia's close neighbors. Outbursts of emigration are directly related to crisis phenomena, and its growth is quite possible if these phenomena increase or persist.

The main flow of people leaving is in three countries - Germany, Israel and the United States. For most countries, the increase in entry from Russia took place during the periods of political and economic crises in 1991 and 1993, which pushed citizens who had not yet fully matured to make a decision to leave.

However, the peak of emigration turned out to be extended, for different countries it did not come at the same time. The reasons for this are the presence of large contingents of potential emigrants, legitimate for the three countries of immigration mentioned, and the immigration policy of these states, as well as the socio-economic situation within Russia itself.

The structure of emigration, however, also underwent other gradual changes. In 1990, Israel and Greece were the first to reach the peak of immigration from Russia, having accepted Soviet citizens who had long been “ready” for emigration. Then the peak came for the United States (1993), which smoothly regulated the immigration flow from the former USSR. Later than others, this happened with Germany. Less mobile than more urbanized Russian Jews and Greeks, Russian Germans most actively left Russia in 1993-1995.

The trend of the last two years is that, since 1997, there has been a decrease in the combined share of Germany, Israel and the United States - due to an increase in the share of other states. First of all, these are the closest neighbors of Russia, as well as countries whose fate in different historical periods was closely connected with the fate of the Russian state. Poles and Finns, in particular, reached their emigration maximum. Apparently not seeing any special prospects in Russia, they considered that it would be better for them in their ethnic homeland - in Poland or Finland.

The number of people leaving for Canada and Australia is growing especially noticeably, which is associated with the relatively liberal immigration policies of both countries.

In the past two years, another problem has been exposed - Chinese immigration from China (mainly to Primorye), which, according to official data, has increased sharply after the conclusion of a bilateral agreement on this issue, which, according to official data, was approximately twice as large as their departure back. The PRC has joined a small circle of countries, mainly developing countries (Afghanistan, Pakistan, Korea, Bulgaria), which have had a positive balance with the Russian Federation in the past two years, but differs from them in the significant size of the migration exchange with the Russian Federation.

One of the most important emigration factors is ethnicity. Among the countries of entry, there are states whose emigration is largely of an ethnic nature. This is primarily Germany and Israel, and Germany from the countries of the former USSR accepts not only Germans, but also Jews. The main share of rural emigration from Russia falls on Germany: these are Russian Germans from the Volga region, Western Siberia, and the North Caucasus.

The latter combines ethnic and religious principles and to a certain extent can also be considered as religious.
Kabuzan V. M. Russians in the World: Dynamics of Population and Settlement (1719-1989). Formation of ethnic and political boundaries of the Russian people. St. Petersburg: Blitz, 1996. And this is precisely the origin of the Kosovo Adygs, who repatriated to Russia in 1998 after the aggravation of the internal political situation in Kosovo.
Obolensky (Osinsky) V.V. International and intercontinental migrations in pre-war Russia and the USSR. M.: TsSU USSR, 1928, p. twenty.
Kabuzan, 1996, p.313.
Popov A.V. Russian Diaspora and Archives. Documents of the Russian emigration in the archives of Moscow: problems of identification, acquisition, description, use. M .: Historical and archive institute of the Russian State Humanitarian University, 1998, pp. 29-30.
With regard to the general periodization of Jewish immigration to the United States, which began on a modest scale back in the middle of the 17th century, this wave constituted its third and most massive stage, stretched by researchers from 1880 to 1924, when US immigration legislation was sharply tightened. The two previous stages were the immigration of Dutch, Spanish and Portuguese Sephardi Jews (from the middle of the 17th to the first quarter of the 19th centuries) and German, as well as Polish and Hungarian Ashkenazi Jews, who spoke mainly Yiddish (from the 1830s to the 1880s). gg.). Of the approximately 250,000 Jews in the United States in 1877, 200,000 were German Jews. More than half of them settled in New York and the northeastern states, 20% each in the north central and south Atlantic states, and another 10% in the western states. It is to this immigration wave of German Ashkenazim that the formation of the most modernized trend in Judaism (reformism) dates back. See: Nitoburg E.L. Jews in America at the turn of the 20th century. M.: Choro, 1996, p.4-8. Pushkareva N.L. Ways of formation of the Russian diaspora after 1945 // Ethnographic Review. - 1992. - No. 6. - P.18-19.
See: Felshtinsky Yu. On the history of our closeness. Legislative foundations of the Soviet immigration and emigration policy. London: Overseas Publications Interchange Ltd, 1988, p. 70-78, 83-97.
Polyan P.M. Victims of two dictatorships: life, labor, humiliation and death of Soviet prisoners of war and Ostarbeiters in a foreign land and at home / Foreword. D. Granina. M.: ROSSPEN, 2002. (Ed. 2nd, revised and additional)
Zayonchkovskaya Zh.A. Emigration to foreign countries // Demoscope Weekly No. 27-28, July 30 - August 12, 2001
This “wave” is the subject of a special article by ZhA.Zayonchkovskaya in this section of the monograph. Some of the latest trends in migration exchange with the so-called "far abroad", primarily Jewish and German emigration, are the subject of special articles by the author (Polyan P.M. "Westarbeiters": interned Germans in the USSR (prehistory, history, geography). Textbook for special course, Stavropol, Moscow, SSU Publishing House, 1999, P.M. Polyan, Not of his own free will, History and Geography of Forced Migration in the USSR, M., 2001a, etc.). See other articles by Zh.A. Zaionchkovskaya in this edition. - Ed.
Melikhov, 1997, p.195.
Melikhov, 1997, p.58.
Pivovar E.Yu., Gerasimov N.P. et al., Russian emigration in Turkey, Southeast and Central Europe in the 1920s (civilian refugees, the army, educational establishments). Textbook for students. M .: Historical and Archival Institute of the Russian State Humanitarian University, 1994, p.26, with reference to: GARF, f.5809, op.1, d.100, l.27.
RGVA, f.6, op.4, d.418, sheet 30-30v.; file 596, sheet 187-187; f.33988, op.2, d.213, l.307.
Pivovar, Gerasimova et al., 1994, p.10, with reference to: GARF, f.5809, op.1, d.98, l.189. Data for 1921 has not been preserved.
Of these, about 25 thousand children, 35 thousand women, up to 50 thousand men of military age (from 21 to 43 years old) and about 30 thousand elderly men (Pivovar, Gerasimova et al., 1994, p. 12, with reference on the: RGVA, f.33988, op.2, file 596, sheet 187v.; f.7, op.2, d.734, l.10; f.109, op.3, file 360, sheet 4v.; 373, l.20).
Pivovar, Gerasimova et al., 1994, p.11, with reference to: RGVA, f.101, op.1, d.148, l.58; f.102, op.3, d.584, l.89-90.
Pivovar, Gerasimova et al., 1994, p.13, with reference to: RGVA, f.7, op.2, d.386, l.4; f.109, op.3, file 365, sheet 4v.; d.373, l.22; f.33988, op.2, file 213, sheet 364ob.
Brewer, Gerasimova et al., 1994, p.19.
Pivovar, Gerasimova et al., 1994, p.14, with reference to: GARF, f.5809, op.1, d.87, l.1.
09/28/1922 sailed and 09/30/1922 sailed the ship "Oberburgomaster Haken" with scientists from Moscow and Kazan (30 or 33 people, with family members - about 70), and 11/15/1922 sailed and 11/18/1922 sailed the ship "Prussia" with scientists from Petrograd (17 people, with family members - 44). All the deportees were preliminarily arrested (see: Geller M., First warning: hit with a whip // Bulletin of the Russian Student Christian Movement. Paris, 1979, Issue 127. pp. 187-232; Horuzhy S.S. After the break. Ways of Russian philosophy SPb., 1994, pp. 188-208).
Felshtinsky, 1988, p.149.
Brewer, Gerasimova et al., 1994, p.35. In 1931, the so-called "Nansen Office" (Nansen-Amt) was founded, and in 1933 the refugee convention was concluded. The International Nansen Passports, together with the help of the Nansen Foundation, have helped millions of people survive and assimilate. Nansen-Amt worked until 1938, taking care of 800 thousand Russian and Ukrainian, as well as 170 thousand Armenian refugees from Turkey (later they had to deal with about 400 thousand Jewish refugees from Germany).
Pivovar, Gerasimova et al., 1994, p.12, with reference to: RGVA, f.7, op.2, d.730, l.208, 251v.; f.109, op.3, d.236, l.182; file 368, sheet 8ob.
Kulischer A., ​​Kulischer E.M. Kriege und Wanderzuge: Weltgeschichte als Volkerbewegung. Berlin, 1932. Following them, A. Polyakov and many other authors give the same assessment.
Kulischer E.M. Europe on the Move: War and Population Changes, 1917-1947. N.Y. Columbia UP, 1948, p.53-56. It is interesting that some of the emigrants were amnestied by the Soviet government and returned to the USSR, for example, 122 thousand Cossacks, led by General Slashchev, who returned in 1922. By 1938, the number of returnees amounted to almost 200 thousand people.
Reported by K. Stadnyuk (Donetsk).
At the beginning of 1930, Canada suspended the reception of Soviet Germans (reported by I. Silina, Barnaul).
Kurbanova Sh.I. Resettlement: how it was. Dushanbe: Irfon, 1993, p.56, with links to the Archive of the Communist Party of Tajikistan ( f.3, op.1, d.5, l.88 and f.3, op.5, d.3, l.187). The same author reports that in 1931 a considerable amount of foreign labor came from Afghanistan, Iran and India to build the Vakhsh irrigation system (Kurbanova, 1993, pp. 59-60).
It would be more correct to say - by "saddle"!
Abylkhozhaev Zh.B., Kozybaev M.K., Tatimov M.B. Kazakh tragedy // Questions of history. 1989, No. 7 p.67-69.
Polyan P.M. Victims of two dictatorships: life, labor, humiliation and death of Soviet prisoners of war and Ostarbeiters in a foreign land and at home. M, 2003, pp. 566-576.
GARF. F.9526, op. 1, d.7, p.3 (a similar figure is also known for October 1951). The method for calculating this figure is not disclosed in any way in the report, but it is possible that an attempt was made to somehow take into account those who happily escaped not only Soviet claims, but also Soviet registration. According to other - even less verifiable - information, the number of defectors ranged from 1.2 to 1.5 million people (which, on the contrary, seems to be a definitely overestimated figure).
GARF. F.9526, op. 1, d.7, p.3-4.
Polyan, 2002, pp. 823-825. In addition, 4172 people remained in the European socialist countries (GARF. F. 9526, op. 1, d. 7, pp. 3-6).
Polyan, 2002, p. 823-825.
Because of the "Easterners" posing as "Westerners" (the opposite cases, we believe, are conceivable only in cases of sending intelligence officers to the USSR).
Zemskov V.N. On the question of the repatriation of Soviet citizens in 1944-1951. // History of the USSR No. 4 1990, pp. 37-38.
See: Proudfoot M.J. European Refugees. 1939-1952. A Study on Forced Population Movement. London, 1957, p. 217-218.
The death of Stalin led to a certain softening of the regime. On September 1, 1953, the Special Meeting of the NKVD-MGB of the USSR was abolished, condemning 442,531 people for incomplete 19 years of its existence, of which 10,101 people were to be shot. (RGANI , f.89, op.18, d.33, l.1-5). The majority (360,921 people) were sentenced to various terms of imprisonment, another 67,539 people to exile and deportation within the USSR, and 3,970 people to other penalties, including forced deportation abroad (See note C dated December 1953 Kruglov and R. Rudenko N. Khrushchev). The most famous deportee is, apparently, Trotsky.
Data from the emigrant magazine "Posev".
Petrov N. Soviet defectors // Sowing No. 1, 1987, pp. 56-60.
Heitman S. The Third Soviet Emigration: Jewish, German and Armenian Emigration from the USSR since World War II // Berichte des Bundesinstituts für ostwissenschaftliche und internationale Studien No. 21, 1987.
It is interesting that, according to some estimates, the number of Armenians who left the USSR in 1989 and 1990 ranged from 50 to 60 thousand people (summary table compiled by M. Feshbakh according to the data of the Israeli Embassy in the USA; the Ministry of Absorption of Israel; HIAS; the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Internal Affairs Germany; the reception center in Friedland; the Association of Russian Germans; the US State Department and S. Heitman).
According to E.L. Nitoburg, there are a total of 200 thousand people in the United States who actually retain dual citizenship (Nitoburg, 1996, p. 128).
Gitelman, 1995.
It should be noted that earlier Armenian emigration played a more significant role than now. In the 1950s, 12,000 people emigrated to France, and over the next 30 years, 40,000 people emigrated to the United States (see: Heitman . ,1987).
Krieger V. At the beginning of the journey. Part 3: Demographic and migration processes among the German population of the USSR (CIS) // Orient Express (Ahlen) No. 8, 1997 p. 5.
Quoted from: Krieger, 1997.

Russian emigration and repatriation in Russian America in 1917-1920s

Vorobieva Oksana Viktorovna

Candidate of Historical Sciences, Associate Professor, Department of Public Relations, Russian State University of Tourism and Service.

In the last quarter of the XIX - early XX centuries. In North America, a large Russian diaspora was formed, the bulk of which were labor migrants (mainly from the territory of Ukraine and Belarus), as well as representatives of the left-liberal and social democratic opposition intelligentsia, who left Russia in the 1880s-1890s. and after the first Russian revolution of 1905-1907. for political reasons. Among the Russian political emigrants of the pre-revolutionary era in the United States and Canada, there were people of various professions and social backgrounds - from professional revolutionaries to former officers of the tsarist army. In addition, the world of Russian America included communities of Old Believers and other religious movements. In 1910, according to official figures, 1,184,000 immigrants from Russia lived in the United States.

On the American continent there was a significant number of emigrants from Russia, who linked their return home with the fall of tsarism. They were eager to apply their strength and experience in the cause of the revolutionary transformation of the country, building a new society. In the first years after the revolution and the end of the World War, a repatriation movement arose in the community of Russian emigrants in the United States. Encouraged by the news about the events in their homeland, they quit their jobs in the provinces and gathered in New York, where lists of future repatriates were compiled, rumors circulated on the ships that the Provisional Government should send. According to eyewitnesses, these days in New York one could often hear Russian speech, see groups of protesters: "New York was seething and worried along with St. Petersburg."

Initiative groups for re-emigration were created at the Russian consulates in Seattle, San Francisco and Honolulu. However, only a few who wished managed to return to their homeland because of the high cost of moving and transporting agricultural implements (a condition of the Soviet government). From California, in particular, about 400 people were repatriated, mostly peasants. A departure to Russia for Molokans was also organized. On February 23, 1923, a resolution of the STO of the RSFSR was issued on the allocation of 220 acres of land in the South of Russia and the Volga region for repatriates, who founded 18 agricultural communes. (In the 1930s, most of the settlers were repressed). In addition, in the 1920s many Russian Americans refused to return to their homeland because of fears for their future, which appeared with the arrival of "white" emigrants and the dissemination of information in the foreign press about the actions of the Bolshevik regime.

The Soviet government was also not interested in repatriation from the United States. “There was a time when it seemed that the moment of our return to our homeland was about to become a fait accompli (it was said that even the Russian government would help us in this direction by sending ships). When a myriad of good words and slogans were spent, and when it seemed that the dreams of the best sons of the earth would come true, and we would all live a good happy life - but this time has come and gone, leaving us with broken dreams. Since then, the obstacles to returning to Russia have increased even more, and the thoughts from this have become even more nightmarish. Somehow I don't want to believe that the government would not let its own citizens into their native country. But it is so. We hear the voices of our own relatives, wives and children, imploring us to return to them, but we are not allowed to step over the threshold of the tightly closed iron door that separates us from them. And it hurts my soul from the realization that we, Russians, are some unfortunate stepchildren of life in a foreign land: we cannot get used to a foreign land, they are not allowed to go home, and our life is not going as it should be ... as we would like ... " , - V. Shekhov wrote in the beginning of 1926 to the Zarnitsa magazine.

Simultaneously with the repatriation movement, the flow of immigrants from Russia increased, including participants in the armed struggle against Bolshevism in the era of 1917-1922 and civilian refugees.

Russian post-revolutionary immigration to the United States was influenced by the immigration law of 1917, according to which persons who did not pass the literacy exam and who did not meet a number of mental, moral, physical and economic standards were not allowed into the country. As early as 1882, entry from Japan and China was closed without special invitations and guarantees. Political restrictions on persons entering the United States were imposed by the Anarchist Act of 1918. Immigration to the United States during the period under review was based on the system of national quotas approved in 1921 and took into account not citizenship, but the place of birth of the immigrant. Permission to enter was given strictly individually, as a rule, at the invitation of universities, various companies or corporations, public institutions. Visas for entry into the United States during the period under review were issued by American consuls in various countries without the intervention of the US Department of Foreign Affairs. In particular, B.A. Bakhmetiev, after his resignation and the closure of the Russian embassy in Washington, had to leave for England, where he received a visa to return to the United States as a private person.

In addition, the quota laws of 1921 and 1924 twice reduced the allowable number of annual entry of immigrants into the United States. The law of 1921 allowed the entry of professional actors, musicians, teachers, professors and nurses in excess of the quota, but later the Immigration Commission tightened its requirements.

An obstacle to entry into the United States could be the lack of livelihood or guarantors. For Russian refugees, additional problems sometimes arose due to the fact that national quotas were determined by place of birth. In particular, the Russian emigrant Yerarsky, who arrived in the United States in November 1923, spent several days in the isolation ward because the city of Kovno was indicated in his passport as the place of birth, and in the eyes of American officials he was a Lithuanian; meanwhile, the Lithuanian quota for this year has already been exhausted.

It is curious that neither the Russian consul in New York, nor the YMCA representative who took care of the immigrants could solve his problem. However, after a series of articles in American newspapers, which created the image of a suffering "Russian giant" of more than six feet, who was allegedly "the closest employee of the Tsar", and described all the difficulties and dangers of the long voyage of Russian refugees, the risk of forced repatriation in case of return to Turkey, etc., permission was obtained from Washington for a temporary visa on a bail of $1,000.

In 1924-1929. the total immigration flow amounted to 300 thousand people a year against more than 1 million before the First World War. In 1935, the annual quota for natives of Russia and the USSR was only 2,172 people, most of them arrived through the countries of Europe and the Far East, including using the mechanism of guarantee and recommendations, special visas, etc. evacuation of the Crimea in 1920 in Constantinople in extremely difficult conditions. It is believed that during the interwar period, an average of 2-3 thousand Russians arrived in the United States annually. According to American researchers, the number of immigrants from Russia who arrived in the United States in 1918-1945. is 30-40 thousand people.

The representatives of the “white emigration” who arrived in the USA and Canada after 1917, in turn, dreamed of returning to their homeland, linking it with the fall of the Bolshevik regime. Some of them tried to simply wait out the difficult times abroad, without making any special efforts to settle down, tried to exist at the expense of charity, which did not at all coincide with the American approach to the refugee problem. So, in the report of N.I. Astrov to the general meeting of the Russian Zemstvo-City Committee on January 25, 1924, a curious fact is cited that an American, with whose assistance several dozen Russians were transported from Germany, expresses dissatisfaction with their “insufficient energy”. His patrons are said to enjoy his hospitality (he provided them with his house) and do not aggressively seek work.

It should be noted that this trend was still not dominant in the emigrant environment, both in North America and in other centers of foreign Russia. As numerous memoir sources and scientific studies show, the vast majority of Russian emigrants in various countries and regions of the world in the 1920s-1930s. showed exceptional perseverance and diligence in the struggle for survival, sought to restore and improve the social status and financial situation lost as a result of the revolution, receive education, etc.

A significant part of Russian refugees already in the early 1920s. realized the need for a more solid settlement abroad. As stated in a note from one of the employees of the Committee for the Resettlement of Russian Refugees in Constantinople, “the state of refugee is a slow spiritual, moral and ethical death.” Existing in poverty, on meager charitable benefits or meager earnings, without any prospects, forced the refugees and the humanitarian organizations that assisted them to make every effort to move to other countries. At the same time, many turned their hopes to America, as a country in which "even an emigrant enjoys all the rights of a member of society and state protection of sacred human rights."

According to the results of a survey of Russian refugees who applied to leave Constantinople for the United States in 1922, it turned out that this element of the colony was “one of the most vital of the refugee mass and gave the best people”, namely: despite unemployment, all of them lived by their own labor and even made some savings. The professional composition of those leaving was the most diverse - from artists and artists to laborers.

On the whole, Russian refugees who went to the United States and Canada did not shy away from any kind of work and could offer the immigration authorities a fairly wide range of specialties, including workers. Thus, in the documents of the Committee for the Resettlement of Russian Refugees, there were records of questions that interested those who were going to leave for Canada. In particular, they inquired about employment opportunities as a draftsman, bricklayer, mechanic, driver, milling turner, locksmith, experienced horseman, etc. Women would like to get a job as a house tutor or a seamstress. Such a list does not seem to correspond to the usual ideas about the post-revolutionary emigration, as a mass of, basically, educated intelligent people. However, it is necessary to take into account the fact that quite a lot of former prisoners of war and other persons who ended up abroad in connection with the events of the First World War and did not want to return to Russia accumulated in Constantinople during this period. In addition, some managed to get new specialties at professional courses that were opened for refugees.

Russian refugees who went to America sometimes became the object of criticism from the political and military leaders of foreign Russia, who were interested in preserving the idea of ​​​​an early return to their homeland, and in some cases, revanchist sentiments among the emigrants. (In Europe, these sentiments were fueled by the proximity of Russian borders and the opportunity for certain groups of refugees to exist at the expense of various kinds of charitable foundations). One of the correspondents of General A.S. Lukomsky reported from Detroit at the end of December 1926: “Everyone has split into groups-parties, each with an insignificant number of members - 40-50 people, or even less, arguing over trifles, forgetting the main goal - the restoration of the Motherland!”

Those who moved to America, on the one hand, involuntarily broke away from the problems of the European diaspora, on the other hand, after a very short period of support from humanitarian organizations, they had to rely only on their own strength. They sought to "leave the abnormal state of refugee as such and move into the difficult state of an emigrant who wants to work his way through life". At the same time, it cannot be said that the Russian refugees, making the decision to go overseas, were ready to irrevocably break with their homeland and assimilate in America. So, people who traveled to Canada were worried about the question of whether there was a Russian representation there and Russian educational institutions where their children could go.

Certain problems for immigrants from Russia in the period under review arose in the era of the “red psychosis” of 1919-1921, when the pro-communist pre-revolutionary emigration was subjected to police repressions, and the few anti-Bolshevik circles of the diaspora found themselves isolated from the bulk of the Russian colony, carried away by the revolutionary events in Russia. In a number of cases, emigrant public organizations encountered in their activities a negative reaction from the public and the country's authorities. For example, in November 1919, the Yonkers branch of the Nauka (social democratic pro-Soviet) society was attacked by Palmer agents, who forced the doors of the club, smashed a bookcase and took away some of the literature. This incident frightened the rank and file members of the organization, in which soon out of 125 only 7 people remained.

US anti-communist policy in the early 1920s. was welcomed in every possible way by the conservative layers of the post-revolutionary emigration - officer and monarchist societies, church circles, etc., but had practically no effect on their status or financial situation. Many representatives of the "white" emigration noted with chagrin the sympathy of the American public for the Soviet regime, their interest in revolutionary art, and so on. A.S. Lukomsky in his memoirs reports on the conflict (public dispute) of his daughter Sophia, who served in the early 1920s. in New York as a stenographer in the Methodist Church, with a bishop who praised the Soviet system. (Curiously, her employers later apologized for this episode.)

Political leaders and the public of the Russian emigration were concerned about the emerging in the late 1920s. US intentions to recognize the Bolshevik government. However, Russian Paris and other European centers of foreign Russia showed the main activity in this matter. Russian emigration to the United States from time to time carried out public actions against the Bolshevik government and the communist movement in America. For example, on October 5, 1930, an anti-communist rally took place in the Russian Club of New York. In 1931, the Russian National League, which united the conservative circles of Russian post-revolutionary emigration in the United States, issued an appeal to boycott Soviet goods, and so on.

Political leaders of foreign Russia in 1920 - early 1930s. repeatedly expressed fears in connection with the possible deportation to Soviet Russia of Russian refugees who were illegally in the United States. (Many entered the country on tourist or other temporary visas, entered the United States through the Mexican and Canadian borders). At the same time, the American authorities did not practice the expulsion from the country of persons in need of political asylum. Russian refugees in a number of cases ended up on Ellis Island (immigrant reception center near New York in 1892-1943, known for its cruel orders, because the “Isle of Tears”) until the circumstances were clarified. On the Isle of Tears, new arrivals were subjected to medical examinations and interviewed by immigration officials. Persons in doubt were detained in semi-prison conditions, the comfort of which depended on the class of ticket with which the immigrant arrived or, in some cases, on his social status. “This is where the dramas take place,” testified one of the Russian refugees. “One is detained because he came at someone else’s expense or with the help of charitable organizations, the other is detained until a relative or acquaintances come for him, to whom you can send a telegram with a challenge.” In 1933-1934. in the United States, a public campaign was conducted for a new law, according to which all Russian refugees who legally resided in the United States and arrived illegally before January 1, 1933, would have the right to be legalized on the spot. The corresponding law was passed on June 8, 1934, and about 600 "illegal immigrants" were revealed, of which 150 lived in California.

It should be emphasized that, in general, the Russian colony was not the object of special attention of the American immigration authorities and special services and enjoyed political freedoms on an equal basis with other immigrants, which to a large extent determined public sentiments within the diaspora, including a rather detached attitude to events in their homeland. .

Thus, the Russian emigration of the 1920s-1940s. in America had the greatest intensity in the first half of the 1920s, when refugees from Europe and the Far East arrived here in groups and individually. This emigration wave was represented by people of various professions and age groups, the majority ended up abroad as part of the evacuated anti-Bolshevik armed formations and the civilian population that followed them. Arising in 1917 - early 1920s. in Russian America, the repatriation movement actually remained unrealized and had almost no effect on the socio-political appearance and number of Russian diasporas in the United States and Canada.

In the early 1920s the main centers of the Russian post-revolutionary abroad were formed in the USA and Canada. Basically, they coincided with the geography of the pre-revolutionary colonies. Russian emigration has taken a prominent place in the ethnographic and socio-cultural palette of the North American continent. In large US cities, the existing Russian colonies not only increased in number, but also received an impetus for institutional development, which was due to the emergence of new socio-professional groups - representatives of white officers, sailors, lawyers, etc.

The main problems of Russian emigration in the 1920s-1940s. in the US and Canada, it was obtaining visas under quota laws, finding an initial livelihood, learning a language and then finding a job in a specialty. The targeted immigration policy of the United States in the period under review determined significant differences in the financial situation of various social groups of Russian emigrants, among which scientists, professors and qualified technical specialists were in the most advantageous position.

With rare exceptions, Russian post-revolutionary emigrants were not subjected to political persecution and had opportunities for the development of social life, cultural, educational and scientific activities, the publication of periodicals and books in Russian.

Literature

1. Postnikov F.A. Colonel-worker (from the life of Russian emigrants in America) / Ed. Russian Literary Circle. – Berkeley (California), n.d.

2. Russian calendar-almanac = Russian-American calendar-almanac: A Handbook for 1932 / Ed. K.F. Gordienko. - New Haven (New-Heven): Russian publishing house "Drug", 1931. (Further: Russian calendar-almanac ... for 1932).

3. Awakening: The Organ of Free Thought / Ed. Russian progressive organizations in the United States and Canada. - Detroit, 1927. April. No. 1. S. 26.

4. Khisamutdinov A.A. In the New World or the history of the Russian diaspora on the Pacific coast of North America and the Hawaiian Islands. Vladivostok, 2003. S.23-25.

5. Zarnitsa: Monthly literary and popular science magazine / Russian group Zarnitsa. - New York, 1926. February. T.2. No.9. P.28.

6. "Totally personal and confidential!" B.A. Bakhmetev - V.A. Maklakov. Correspondence. 1919-1951. In 3 volumes. M., 2004. V.3. P.189.

7. GARF. F.6425. Op.1. D.19. L.8.

8. GARF. F.6425. Op.1. D.19. L.10-11.

9. Ulyankina T.I. US immigration policy in the first half of the 20th century and its impact on the legal status of Russian refugees. - In: Legal status of Russian emigration in the 1920s-1930s: Collection of scientific papers. SPb., 2005. S.231-233.

10. Russian scientific emigration: twenty portraits / Ed. Academician Bongard-Levin G.M. and Zakharova V.E. - M., 2001. P. 110.

11. Adamic L.A. Nation of nations. N.Y., 1945. P. 195; Eubank N. The Russians in America. Minneapolis, 1973, p. 69; and etc.

12. Russian refugees. P.132.

13. GARF. F.6425. Op.1. D.19. L.5ob.

14. GARF. F.6425. Op.1. D.19. L.3ob.

16. GARF. F. 5826. Op.1. D. 126. L.72.

17. GARF. F.6425. Op.1. D.19. L.2ob.

18. GARF. F.6425. Op.1. D.20. L.116.

19. Russian calendar-almanac ... for 1932. New Haven, 1931.p.115.

20. GARF. F.5863. Op.1. D.45. L.20.

21. GARF. F.5829. Op.1. D.9. L.2.

Emigration from Russia until the middle of the XIX century. was a rather rare occurrence.

It was not easy to emigrate from Russia for a number of reasons:

 legal;

 socio-psychological;

 financial.

The situation changed in 1857, when a law was adopted that determined the procedure for going abroad for a temporary (5 years) stay, after which

he had to apply for an extension. Otherwise, th-

Lovek was considered to have lost his citizenship and his property passed into trusteeship, and he himself, having returned to Russia, was subject to eternal exile.

1892 received the right to officially leave Russia and not return.

The established procedures were also preserved by the Charter on Passports of 1903.

The introduction of relatively simplified rules for traveling abroad coincided with

the abolition of serfdom. After receiving freedom, some peasants decided to go abroad. A significant part of the Russians left on semi-legal grounds, using so-called legitimation passports instead of passports.

tickets - temporary certificates intended for residents of the border strip, which made it easier and cheaper to leave. First of all, such documents

used by Poles and Jews from the areas of the Pale of Settlement.

Calculations of the number of emigration are complicated - there was no strict accounting, moreover, there was no emigration as such (there was a temporary departure). pre-revolutionary

emigration is calculated from 4 million 6 (of which 40% are Jews) to 7 million 7 (citizens of the Russian Empire) people.

In exile in the second half of the XIX - early XX centuries. distinguish the following

large groups: labor, religious, national (mainly Jewish), political. Moreover, Jewish emigration includes religious, economic and political elements. In its classification, the chronological principle is not decisive.

6 Emigration and repatriation in Russia. M., 2001. S. 29.

7 Popov A.V. Russian Diaspora and Archives. M., 1998. S. 46.

Pre-revolutionary emigration, unlike the subsequent one, is not customary to divide

into waves, although some authors do this, having in mind primarily political emigration and linking this division, in accordance with Soviet historiography, with the "stages of the liberation movement." There are two periods

pre-revolutionary history of political emigration : 1) the first divides it very conditionally into two stages:

- populist (1847 - 1883),

- proletarian (1883 - 1917),

2) the second periodization is more complex, four or five waves are distinguished in it by different researchers (sometimes the third and fourth are combined):

- Decembrist, or noble (1825 - 1850s, center - Paris),

- the result of the abolition of serfdom and the Polish uprising (1860 - 1870s, center - London and Geneva),

- the result of the second revolutionary situation (end of 1870 - 1895, center -

- (1895 - 1905, centers - Geneva, Paris),

- revolutionary (1906 - 1917) (centers - Paris, cities of Switzerland, Austria, England) 8 .

8 See, for example: Pushkareva N.L. Ways of formation of the Russian diaspora after 1945

// EO. 1992. No. 6. S. 18 - 19.

The most massive among all pre-revolutionary emigration was labor

free (economic) emigration 9 . It consisted of landless peasants, artisans, unskilled workers. This emigration gained strength gradually, but by the 1890s it had already acquired impressive proportions. She went to the

new to the countries of the new world, primarily the United States. As in Russia, the peasantry abroad united mainly around church parishes, peasant

fraternities, mutual aid societies. There were few educated and literate people among this category of emigrants, so they left behind few documents, and therefore the study of this emigration group is extremely difficult.

The emigration of well-known figures of art, science and culture is partly connected with labor emigration. It is conditionally possible to call this group the emigration of the "creative intelligentsia". For some of them, living abroad was associated

but exclusively with lucrative contracts (sometimes quite long),

after which they returned to their homeland, so they can be attributed to the representatives of the so-called "pendulum migration". For many representatives of the creative intelligentsia, scientists, it was not so much earnings that were important, but recognition and the opportunity to work freely, which also served as another weighty argument.

ment in favor of living abroad. The events of the First World War

hindered free movement and led to the loss of ties with Russia.

9 See more about this: Tudoryanu N.L. Essays on Russian labor emigration in the period of imperialism (to Germany, the Scandinavian countries and the USA). Chisinau, 1986.

In the last third of the XIX century. became quite popular national emigrant-

tion from Russia (Ukrainians, Poles, Latvians, Lithuanians, Finns, Tatars, Germans, Jews). In many ways, this emigration was caused by the oppression of these nationalities by the law and the authorities.

Religious emigration in the pre-revolutionary period, it consisted mainly of sectarians: Doukhobors, Molokans, Stundists and Old Believers, who

settled primarily in Canada and the United States. The first mass movement for their

The resettlement dates back to the 1890s, the next surge refers to 1905. The number of religious emigration from 1826 to 1905 amounted to 26.5 thousand Orthodox and sectarians, of which 18 thousand left in the last decade of the 19th century. and in five pre-revolutionary years10.

10 Emigration and repatriation in Russia. M., 2001. S. 31.

One more group can be distinguished - the so-called " emigrants

le "who ended up abroad without leaving their homes. These were Russian citizens who became Americans in connection with the sale of Alaska to America in 1867. This group left behind a significant number of documents,

which was due to the existence on this territory of various Russian trading and other enterprises with their own office work, as well as the presence

a large number of Orthodox parishes that also maintained their documentation.

Number of sources left behind by various groups

emigration, unevenly. If economic emigration practically left no sources behind, like sectarians, then other groups, especially political ones, provide rich source study material for study, which must be actively involved in historical research.

Emigration is always a difficult life step associated with very serious changes in life. Even moving to a neighboring country with a similar mentality and language, migrants inevitably face a number of difficulties. Of course, this is not all in vain. In most cases, emigration makes it possible to seriously improve the quality of one's life, achieve desired goals, fulfill dreams, and sometimes simply escape from some imminent danger in one's homeland. Or just provide yourself and your children with a more peaceful and prosperous future.

Pros of emigration: why go abroad

Evaluation of a new life always follows from the values ​​of a particular person. Consider those life parameters that the move can improve.

First, it is climate and ecology. If you are unfortunate enough to be born in the Far North, in Siberia, or in a very rainy region, it is only natural that one day you may want to move to a warm country, perhaps by the sea or ocean. It is no coincidence that many residents of the northern regions of Russia, retiring early, buy a house in the Krasnodar Territory, Crimea, Bulgaria, Montenegro or Turkey. Here we can not ignore the environmental issues. It's hard to hope for good health if you live in an industrial city with a huge amount of gas emissions into the atmosphere and liquid waste into rivers. Many residents of Norilsk, Nizhny Tagil or Karabash will explain better than many how often they get sick or experience allergies. And the life expectancy in these places speaks for itself. As well as a high proportion of cancer, pneumonia and asthma.

Secondly, it is an opportunity to dramatically improve the standard of your life. If in Russia, doctors and nurses earn very modest money, then in many countries, such as the USA, Canada, Germany, Israel, this is one of the highest paid professions. You can do what you love and still be able to buy a very nice house, a couple of premium cars, pay for your children's education and fly on vacation anywhere in the world. Now compare this picture with any doctor in a Russian regional clinic.

But even if we take professions that do not require long-term professional education, we can say with confidence that any electrician or plumber can easily feed his family with children in the United States. Without qualifications, you can always go to truckers, and in the same way be able to buy yourself a house, a personal car, and other benefits.

Thirdly, safety. Like it or not, but most regions of Russia, by world standards, are a very dangerous place in terms of crime and the risk of being beaten or killed, simply because someone did not like your face, or did not have enough to buy a drink. Just think about it. The level of crimes in the same Canada, at least 10 times less than in Russia. Moreover, if something happens there, then most often it is theft or car theft, which does not threaten your health in any way. Moreover, all more or less large things and property are insured there. There are regions in Canada where not a single person is killed at all in a year. And the heaviest crimes there are committed on or near Indian reservations, and they almost never affect ordinary Canadians.

Fourth, education and prospects for your children. Your children will be able to grow up in a calm and prosperous environment and gain up-to-date knowledge in any profession they choose. By the way, it is the children of immigrants who are considered the most successful people among all categories of the population in developed countries. They have a drive and desire to take a high place in society, which almost invariably leads them to success, and sometimes to great wealth.

Fifthly, you can be sure that your property will always be your property, and it will not be taken away from you by the next reforms or redistribution of property. In Russia and on the territory of the former USSR, several times, during the 20th century, money, savings and family capital simply burned down. You can live in abundance and, at the end of your life, pass on what you have accumulated to your children, who will not have to start from scratch.

Sixth, you will have more opportunities for recreation and travel. If you settle in one of the countries of Europe, you will be able to travel around most of the European countries by car. If you settle in the US or Canada, you will have access to all the resorts of the Caribbean, which, in comparison with your new salary, will cost just ridiculous money. The Dominican Republic is an analogue of Turkey in the New World. Cheap, great hotels, beaches and activities.

Cons of emigration: what you need to remember

Let's be honest and talk about the cons and difficulties that most immigrants go through.

First, it will take you several years to fully integrate into society. The first months are almost always euphoria: a dream has come true, a new place of residence seems to be an exceptionally wonderful place, people, on average, are kinder and friendlier. But, starting from 3-6 months, almost everyone enters a depressive stage associated with personality restructuring and adaptation to new cultural norms, habits, ways of communication. People and events around start to annoy. Cons and shortcomings are very striking. Longing for the Motherland, friends and acquaintances begins. Sometimes it's hard to worry, but it passes. After that, a new, calm and joyful life begins.

Secondly, this is a lowering of social status and the need to start from scratch. With the exception of people who transfer within large international companies, as well as employees of the IT sector, many have to start with simple jobs. Work in a fast food restaurant, at a construction site, as drivers and couriers, or in starting office positions, such as taking calls or meeting guests. Some people have a hard time with this stage. They begin to spin thoughts: I was a big boss or a doctor of science. Why am I not appreciated here?

But, let's not forget that here you are just one of many foreigners who needs to prove their ability to solve problems, get along in a team. After the first odd job, 90% of people are already settled in, receive letters of recommendation and begin to make a full-fledged career. On average, your backlog will be 3-4 years. After this period, almost everyone makes up for their former position in society.

Thirdly, the need to put in a lot of effort. It is necessary to learn a lot about a foreign language, local traditions, ways of communication, laws and rules of the road, ways to seek medical help, and many other things. In another country, everything may be arranged completely differently than in your homeland. Some people have a hard time constantly smiling and having to maintain fleeting conversations - small talk.

Fourth, it is the need to make new acquaintances and friends. Yes, your friends and relatives will most likely not come with you. Many social connections will completely die out over time, you will lose common interests and subjects for conversation. Someone manages to find a social circle in immigrant circles and local diasporas. Someone finds friends in sports and dance sections, interest clubs or just among neighbors. Man is a social animal, and even the most unsociable introvert will need at least 2-3 friends.

Instead of clear conclusions

The main thing in the immigration process is honesty with yourself, an honest assessment of the pros and cons, your needs and what you are willing to pay for the opportunity to start a new life. Millions of people have overcome all difficulties before you. And millions of people will do it after you. Weigh the pros and cons carefully and act decisively. Everything will work out. In addition, there may be several attempts to move. One failure is never the end, and never the final verdict.