Emigration from Russia became massive in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The reasons for the exodus were mainly political, which was especially pronounced after the 1917 revolution. the site remembered the most famous Russian emigrants and "defectors".

Andrey Kurbsky

One of the first channel emigrants can be called Prince Andrei Kurbsky. During the Livonian War, the closest associate of Ivan the Terrible went to the service of King Sigismund-August. The latter transferred vast estates in Lithuania and Volhynia into the possession of a noble Russian fugitive. And soon the prince began to fight against Moscow.

Chorikov B. "Ivan the Terrible listens to a letter from Andrei Kurbsky"

Alexey Petrovich

In 1716, as a result of a conflict with his father, who wanted to remove him from the inheritance, Alexei secretly fled to Vienna, and then crossed to Naples, where he planned to wait for the death of Peter I and then, relying on the help of the Austrians, become the Russian Tsar. Soon the prince was tracked down and returned to Russia. Alexei was condemned to death as a traitor.

Orest Kiprensky

The illegitimate son of the landowner A. S. Dyakonov, at the first opportunity, went to Italy to comprehend the secrets of fine art. There he spent several years, making good money with portraits and enjoying well-deserved fame. After 6 years in Italy, Kiprensky was forced to return in 1823 to St. Petersburg. The cold reception at home, failures in work and the destruction of the canvases by critics led the artist to the idea of ​​​​returning to Italy. But even there difficulties awaited him. The Italian public, who had carried him in their arms not long before, managed to forget Kiprensky, Karl Bryullov now reigned over their minds. On October 17, 1836, Kiprensky died of pneumonia at the age of 54. The tombstone over his grave in the church of Sant'Andrea delle Fratte was put together by Russian artists who worked in Rome.

Burial place of Kiprensky

Alexander Herzen

Herzen became an emigrant after the death of his father, who left a decent fortune. Having gained financial independence, Herzen went to Europe with his family in 1847. Abroad, Herzen published the almanac "Polar Star" (1855-1868) and the newspaper "The Bell" (1857-1867). The latter became the mouthpiece of openly anti-Russian propaganda, which alienated many, even quite liberal readers, from Herzen.
In 1870, 57-year-old Herzen died in Paris from pleurisy. He was buried in the Pere Lachaise cemetery, then the ashes were transported to Nice, where he rests to this day.

Herzen against Herzen, double portrait. Paris, 1865

Ogaryov and Herzen, summer 1861

Ilya Mechnikov

In 1882, the scientist Ilya Mechnikov left Russia. He explained his departure by the lack of conditions for work, nit-picking by officials from the Ministry of Public Education. It was in Italy, observing the larvae of starfish, that Mechnikov literally stumbled upon his future field of scientific activity - medicine. On July 15, 1916, the great scientist died in Paris after a severe attack of cardiac asthma at the age of 71. The urn with his ashes is in the Pasteur Institute.

Mechnikov with his wife, 1914

Sofia Kovalevskaya

Kovalevskaya, wanting to get higher education(in Russia, women enter higher educational establishments was forbidden), married Vladimir Kovalevsky in order to travel abroad. Together they settled in Germany.

She died of pneumonia on January 29, 1891. The grave of the most famous female mathematician is located in the Northern Cemetery of the capital of Sweden.

Wassily Kandinsky

The founder of abstract art, the founder of the Blue Rider group, Wassily Kandinsky left Moscow in 1921 due to disagreement with the attitude of the newly arrived authorities to art. In Berlin, he taught painting and became a prominent theorist of the Bauhaus school. He soon gained worldwide recognition as one of the leaders in abstract art. In 1939, he fled the Nazis to Paris, where he received French citizenship. The "father of abstract art" died on December 13, 1944 in Neuilly-sur-Seine and was buried there.

Kandinsky at work

Kandinsky in front of his painting. Munich, 1913

Kandinsky with his son Vsevolod

Kandinsky with his cat Vaska, 1920s

Konstantin Balmont

The poet, whose work became one of the symbols of the beginning of the 20th century, left Russia and returned to his homeland more than once. In 1905, he plunged headlong into the element of rebellion. Realizing that he had gone too far and fearing arrest, Balmont left Russia on New Year's Eve 1906 and settled in the Parisian suburb of Passy. On May 5, 1913, Balmont returned to Moscow under an amnesty declared in connection with the 300th anniversary of the Romanov dynasty. The poet, like the vast majority of Russians, enthusiastically welcomed the February coup, but the October events horrified him. Life in Moscow was incredibly hard, hungry, almost beggarly. Having hardly obtained permission to go abroad for treatment, Balmont with his wife Elena and daughter Mirra left Russia on May 25, 1920. Now it's forever. After 1936, when Konstantin Dmitrievich was diagnosed with a mental illness, he lived in the town of Noisy-le-Grand, in the Russian House shelter. On the night of December 23, 1942, the 75-year-old poet passed away. He was buried in the local Catholic cemetery.

Balmont with his daughter, Paris

Balmont, 1920s

Balmont, 1938

Ivan Bunin

The writer for some time tried to "escape" from the Bolsheviks in his native country. In 1919, he moved from red Moscow to unoccupied Odessa, and only in 1920, when the Red Army approached the city, did he move to Paris. In France, Bunin will write his best works. In 1933, he, a stateless person, will be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature with the official wording "for the strict skill with which he develops the traditions of Russian classical prose."
On the night of November 8, 1953, the 83-year-old writer died in Paris and was buried in the cemetery of Saint-Genevieve-des-Bois.

Bunin. Paris, 1937

Bunin, 1950s

Sergei Rachmaninoff

The Russian composer and virtuoso pianist Sergei Rachmaninov emigrated from the country shortly after the 1917 revolution, taking advantage of an unexpected invitation to give a series of concerts in Stockholm. Abroad, Rachmaninov created 6 works, which were the pinnacle of Russian and world classics.

Ivan Bunin, Sergei Rachmaninov and Leonid Andreev

Rachmaninoff at the piano

Marina Tsvetaeva

In May 1922, Tsvetaeva was allowed to go abroad with her daughter Ariadna - to her husband, who, having survived the defeat of Denikin, as a white officer, became a student at Prague University. At first, Tsvetaeva and her daughter lived for a short time in Berlin, then for three years on the outskirts of Prague. In 1925, after the birth of their son George, the family moved to Paris. By 1939, the whole family returned to the USSR. However, soon Ariadne was arrested, and Efron was shot. After the start of the war, Tsvetaeva and her son were evacuated to Yelabuga, where the poetess hanged herself. The exact place of her burial is unknown.

Tsvetaeva, 1925

Sergei Efron and Marina Tsvetaeva with children, 1925

Marina Tsvetaeva with her son, 1930

Igor Sikorsky

The outstanding aircraft designer Igor Sikorsky created the world's first four-engine aircraft "Russian Knight" and "Ilya Muromets" in his homeland. Sikorsky's father adhered to monarchist views and was a Russian patriot. Because of the threat to his own life, the aircraft designer first emigrated to Europe, but, not seeing opportunities for the development of aviation, he decided to emigrate in 1919 to the United States, where he was forced to start from scratch. Sikorsky founded Sikorsky Aero Engineering. Until 1939, the aircraft designer created more than 15 types of aircraft, including the American Clipper, as well as a number of helicopter models, including the VS-300 with one main rotor and a small tail rotor, on the principle of which 90% of helicopters in the world are built today.
Igor Sikorsky died on October 26, 1972 at the age of 83 and was buried in Easton, Connecticut.

Sikorsky, 1940

Sikorsky, 1960s

Vladimir Nabokov

In April 1919, before the capture of the Crimea by the Bolsheviks, the Nabokov family left Russia forever. They managed to take some of the family jewels with them, and with this money the Nabokov family lived in Berlin, while Vladimir was educated at Cambridge University. With the outbreak of World War II, the writer and his wife fled to the United States, where they spent 20 years. Nabokov returned to Europe in 1960 - he settled in the Swiss Montreux, where he created his last novels. Nabokov died on July 2, 1977, and was buried in the cemetery in Clarence, near Montreux.

Nabokov with his wife

Sergei Diaghilev

The popularity of the Russian Seasons, which Diaghilev organized in Europe, was extremely high. The question of whether to return to his homeland after the revolution did not stand before Diaghilev in principle: he had long been a citizen of the world, and his exquisite art would hardly have been warmly received by the proletarian public. The great "man of art" died on August 19, 1929 in Venice from a stroke at the age of 57. His grave is on the island of San Michele.

Diaghilev in Venice, 1920

Diaghilev with an artist of the troupe of Russian Seasons

Jean Cocteau and Sergei Diaghilev, 1924

Anna Pavlova

In 1911, Pavloa, who by that time had already become a world ballet star, married Victor d'André. The couple settled in the suburbs of London in their own mansion. Living far from Russia, the ballerina did not forget about her homeland: during the First World War she sent medicines to soldiers, after the revolution she supplied food and money to students of the choreographic school and artists of the Mariinsky Theater. However, Pavlova was not going to return to Russia; she invariably spoke sharply negatively about the power of the Bolsheviks. The great ballerina died on the night of January 22-23, 1931, a week before her fiftieth birthday, in The Hague. Her last words were "Get me a Swan costume."

Pavlova, mid 1920s

Pavlova and Enrico Cecchetti.London, 1920s

Pavlova in the dressing room

Pavlova in Egypt, 1923

Pavlova and her husband arrived in Sydney, 1926

Fyodor Chaliapin

Since 1922, Chaliapin was on tour abroad, in particular in the United States. His long absence aroused suspicion and a negative attitude at home. In 1927, he was deprived of the title of People's Artist and the right to return to the USSR. In the spring of 1937, Chaliapin was diagnosed with leukemia, and on April 12, 1938, he died in Paris in the arms of his wife. He was buried in the Batignolles cemetery in Paris.

Chaliapin sculpts his bust

Chaliapin with his daughter Marina

Repin painting a portrait of Chaliapin, 1914

Chaliapin at Korovin's in his Paris studio, 1930

Chaliapin in concert, 1934

Chaliapin's Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame

Igor Stravinsky

The beginning of the First World War found the composer in Switzerland, where his wife was forced to undergo long-term treatment. The neutral country was surrounded by a ring of states hostile to Russia, so Stravinsky remained in it for the entire duration of the hostilities. Gradually, the composer finally assimilated into the European cultural environment and decided not to return to his homeland. In 1920, he moved to France, where he was initially taken in by Coco Chanel. In 1934, Stravinsky took French citizenship, which allowed him to freely tour around the world. A few years later, and after a series of tragic events in the family, Stravinsky moved to the United States, becoming a citizen of this country in 1945. Igor Fedorovich died on April 6, 1971 in New York at the age of 88. He was buried in Venice.

Stravinsky and Diaghilev at London Airport, 1926

Stravinsky, 1930

Stravinsky and Woody Herman

Rudolf Nureyev

On June 16, 1961, while on tour in Paris, Nureyev refused to return to the USSR, becoming a "defector". In this regard, he was convicted in the USSR for treason and sentenced to 7 years in absentia.
Nureyev soon began working with the Royal Ballet (Royal Theater Covent Garden) in London and quickly became a world celebrity. Received Austrian citizenship.

Nureyev and Baryshnikov

From 1983 to 1989, Nureyev was the director of the ballet troupe of the Paris Grand Opera. In the last years of his life he acted as a conductor.

Nureyev in his apartment in Paris

Nureyev in the dressing room

Joseph Brodsky

In the early 1970s, Brodsky was forced to leave the Soviet Union. Deprived of Soviet citizenship, he moved to Vienna and then to the United States, where he accepted the post of "guest poet" at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and taught intermittently until 1980. From that moment on, he completed incomplete 8 classes in the USSR high school Brodsky leads the life of a university teacher, over the next 24 years holding professorships in a total of six American and British universities, including Columbia and New York.

In 1977, Brodsky took American citizenship, in 1980 he finally moved to New York. The poet died of a heart attack on the night of January 28, 1996 in New York.

Brodsky with Dovlatov

Brodsky with Dovlatov

Brodsky with his wife

Sergey Dovlatov

In 1978, due to the persecution of the authorities, Dovlatov emigrated from the USSR, settled in the Forest Hills area in New York, where he became the editor-in-chief of the New American weekly newspaper. The newspaper quickly gained popularity among the emigrants. One after another, books of his prose were published. By the mid-1980s, he had achieved great reader success, published in the prestigious Partisan Review and The New Yorker magazines.

Dovlatov and Aksenov

During twelve years of emigration he published twelve books in the USA and Europe. In the USSR, the writer was known by samizdat and the author's broadcast on Radio Liberty. Sergey Dovlatov died on August 24, 1990 in New York from heart failure.

Vasily Aksenov

July 22, 1980 Aksyonov emigrated to the United States. He himself subsequently called his step not political, but cultural resistance. He was deprived of Soviet citizenship a year later. The writer was immediately invited to teach at the Kennan Institute, then worked at George Washington University and George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, collaborated with the Voice of America and Radio Liberty radio stations.

Evgeny Popov and Vasily Aksenov. Washington, 1990

Popov and Aksenov

Aksyonov with the Zolotnitskys at the opening of their exhibition in Washington

Already in the late 1980s, with the beginning of perestroika, it began to be widely printed in the USSR, and in 1990 Soviet citizenship was returned. Nevertheless, Aksyonov remained a citizen of the world - he lived with his family in France, the USA and Russia alternately. On July 6, 2009, he died in Moscow. Aksyonov was buried at the Vagankovsky cemetery.

Savely Kramarov

By the early 1970s, Kramarov was one of the most sought-after and beloved comedians in the USSR. However, a brilliant career came to naught as quickly as it began. After Kramarov's uncle emigrated to Israel, and the actor himself began to regularly attend the synagogue, the number of proposals began to decline sharply. The actor applied for travel to Israel. He was refused. Then Kramarov took a desperate step - he wrote a letter to US President Ronald Reagan "As an artist to an artist" and threw it over the fence of the American embassy. Only after the letter was heard three times on Voice of America did Kramarov manage to leave the USSR. He became an emigrant on October 31, 1981. The actor settled in Los Angeles.

On June 6, 1995, at the age of 61, Kramarov passed away. He is buried near San Francisco.

The first photo that Kramarov sent from America

Kramarov with his wife

Kramarov with his daughter

Savely Kramarov in the film Armed and Dangerous

Alexander Solzhenitsyn

On February 12, 1974, Solzhenitsyn was arrested and imprisoned in Lefortovo Prison. He was found guilty of high treason, deprived of his citizenship, and the next day he was sent by special plane to Germany. Since 1976, Solzhenitsyn lived in the United States near the city of Cavendish, Vermont. Despite the fact that Solzhenitsyn lived in America for about 20 years, he did not ask for American citizenship. During the years of emigration in Germany, the USA and France, the writer published many works. The writer was able to return to Russia only after perestroika - in 1994. Alexander Isaevich died on August 3, 2008 at the age of 90 at his dacha in Troitse-Lykovo from acute heart failure.

Nobel Prize awarded to Solzhenitsyn

Solzhenitsyn among US Senators. Washington, 1975

Mikhail Baryshnikov

In 1974, while on tour with the Bolshoi Theater in Canada, having accepted an invitation from his longtime friend Alexander Mints to join the American Ballet Theater troupe, Baryshnikov became a "defector".

Baryshnikov before leaving for the USA

Baryshnikov with Marina Vlady and Vladimir Vysotsky, 1976

Baryshnikov, Liza Minnelli and Elizabeth Taylor, 1976

Baryshnikov with Jessica Lange and their daughter Alexandra, 1981

During his time in American ballet, he had a significant impact on American and world choreography. Baryshnikov acted in many films, serials, played in the theater. Together with Brodsky, they opened the Russian Samovar restaurant in New York.

The first wave of Russian emigration is a phenomenon resulting from the Civil War, which began in 1917 and lasted for almost six years. Nobles, soldiers, manufacturers, intellectuals, clergy and civil servants left their homeland. More than two million people left Russia in the period 1917-1922.

Causes of the first wave of Russian emigration

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

The first wave of Russian emigration is a phenomenon that has no analogue in world history. The ships were full. People were ready to endure intolerable conditions, if only to leave the country in which the Bolsheviks won.

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

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

What is the reason for the first wave of Russian emigration? The new government, which showed sympathy for the proletariat and hated the intelligentsia.

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

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

Let us consider in more detail the causes and features of the first wave of Russian emigration. Brief biographies presented below will create a complete picture of the phenomenon, which had terrible consequences both for the fate of individuals and for the whole country.

Famous emigrants

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

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

Ivan Bunin

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

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

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

Ivan Shmelev

Not all members of the intelligentsia heard the "cacophony of revolt" in the days of the October events. Many perceived the revolution as a victory for justice and goodness. At first, he rejoiced at the October events and, however, quickly became disillusioned with those who were in power. And in 1920 an event occurred, after which the writer could no longer believe in the ideals of the revolution. The only son of Shmelev - an officer of the tsarist army - was shot by the Bolsheviks.

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

One of the greatest Russian writers spent his last years in poverty. He died at the age of 77. Buried, like Bunin, at Sainte-Genevieve-des-Bois. Famous writers and poets - Dmitry Merezhkovsky, Zinaida Gippius, Teffi - found their last resting place in this Parisian cemetery.

Leonid Andreev

This writer at first accepted the revolution, but later changed his views. Andreev's latest works are imbued with hatred for the Bolsheviks. He ended up in exile after the separation of Finland from Russia. But he did not live long abroad. In 1919, Leonid Andreev died of a heart attack.

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

Vladimir Nabokov

The writer came from a wealthy aristocratic family. In 1919, shortly before the Bolsheviks took over the Crimea, the Nabokovs left Russia for good. They managed to withdraw part of what saved them from poverty and hunger, to which many Russian emigrants were doomed.

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

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

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

Alexander Kuprin

After the end of the Great Patriotic War a wave of remigration began. Those who left Russia in the early twenties were promised Soviet passports, jobs, housing, and other benefits. However, many emigrants who returned to their homeland became victims of Stalinist repressions. Kuprin returned before the war. He, fortunately, did not suffer the fate of most of the emigrants of the first wave.

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

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

Arkady Averchenko

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

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

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

taffy

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

Nina Berberova

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

Sasha Black

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

Fyodor Chaliapin

The famous opera singer left Russia, one might say, not of his own free will. In 1922, he was on tour, which, as it seemed to the authorities, dragged on. Long performances in Europe and the United States aroused suspicion. Vladimir Mayakovsky immediately reacted, writing an angry poem in which there were such words: "I'll be the first to shout - roll back!"

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

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

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 due to 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, 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 1921 law allowed professional actors, musicians, teachers, professors and nurses to enter 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 arrived through Europe and Far East, including, using the mechanism of guarantees and recommendations, special visas, etc. America was especially desirable for Russian emigrants who, after the evacuation of the Crimea in 1920, found themselves 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. 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 increase the lost as a result of the revolution social status and financial situation, 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 most the best people”, namely: despite unemployment, they all 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 support from humanitarian organizations, 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 section 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 towards 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 numbers, 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.

One of the most complex and intractable problems in Russian history was, is and remains emigration. Despite its apparent simplicity and regularity as a social phenomenon (after all, every person is given the right to freely choose their place of residence), emigration often becomes a hostage to certain processes of a political, economic, spiritual or other nature, while losing its simplicity and independence. Revolution of 1917, followed by civil war and reconstruction of the system Russian society not only stimulated the process of Russian emigration, but also left their indelible imprint on it, giving it a politicized character. Thus, for the first time in history, the concept of “white emigration” appeared, which had a clearly defined ideological orientation. At the same time, the fact was ignored that of the 4.5 million Russians who voluntarily or involuntarily found themselves abroad, only about 150 thousand were involved in so-called anti-Soviet activities. But the stigma attached at that time to the emigrants - "enemies of the people", remained common to all of them for many years to come. The same can be said about the 1.5 million Russians (not counting citizens of other nationalities) who found themselves abroad during the Great Patriotic War. There were, of course, among them accomplices of the fascist invaders, and deserters who fled abroad, fleeing from just retribution, and other kinds of renegades, but the basis was still made up of people who languished in German concentration camps and were taken to Germany as free labor force. But the word - "traitors" - was the same for all of them.
After the revolution of 1917, the constant interference of the party in the affairs of art, the ban on freedom of speech and the press, and the persecution of the old intelligentsia led to a mass emigration of representatives, primarily of the Russian emigration. This was most clearly seen in the example of a culture that was divided into three camps. The first consisted of those who turned out to accept the revolution and went abroad. The second consisted of those who accepted socialism, glorified the revolution, thus acting as the "singers" of the new government. The third included those who hesitated: they either emigrated or returned to their homeland, convinced that a true artist cannot create in isolation from his people. Their fate was different: some were able to adapt and survive in the conditions of Soviet power; others, like A. Kuprin, who lived in exile from 1919 to 1937, returned to die a natural death in their homeland; still others committed suicide; finally, the fourth were repressed.

Cultural figures who formed the core of the so-called first wave of emigration ended up in the first camp. The first wave of Russian emigration is the most massive and significant in terms of its contribution to the world culture of the 20th century. In 1918-1922, more than 2.5 million people left Russia - people from all classes and estates: tribal nobility, state and other service people, petty and big bourgeoisie, clergy, intelligentsia - representatives of all art schools and trends (symbolists and acmeists , cubists and futurists). Artists who emigrated in the first wave of emigration are usually referred to as Russian abroad. The Russian diaspora is a literary, artistic, philosophical and cultural trend in Russian culture of the 1920s and 1940s, developed by emigrants in European countries and directed against official Soviet art, ideology and politics.
Many historians have considered the problems of Russian emigration to one degree or another. However, the largest number of studies appeared only in recent years after the collapse of the totalitarian regime in the USSR, when there was a change in the very view of the causes and role of Russian emigration.
Especially many books and albums began to appear on the history of Russian emigration, in which photographic material either constitutes the main content, or is an important addition to the text. Of particular note is the brilliant work of Alexander Vasiliev "Beauty in Exile", dedicated to the art and fashion of the Russian emigration of the first wave and numbering more than 800 (!) Photos, the vast majority of which are unique archival material. However, for all the value of the listed publications, it should be recognized that their illustrative part reveals only one or two aspects of the life and work of the Russian emigration. And a special place in this series is occupied by the luxurious album “Russian emigration in photographs. France, 1917-1947". This is essentially the first attempt, moreover, undoubtedly successful, to compile a visible chronicle of the life of the Russian emigration. 240 photographs, arranged in chronological and thematic order, cover almost all areas of the cultural and social life of Russians in France in the period between the two world wars. The most important of these areas, in our opinion, are the following: the Volunteer Army in Exile, children's and youth organizations, charitable activities, the Russian Church and the RSHD, writers, artists, Russian ballet, theater and cinema.
At the same time, it should be noted that there is a rather small number of scientific and historical studies devoted to the problems of Russian emigration. In this regard, it is impossible not to single out the work "The Fate of Russian Immigrants of the Second Wave in America". In addition, it should be noted the work of Russian immigrants themselves, mainly of the first wave, who considered these processes. Of particular interest in this regard is the work of Professor G.N. Pio-Ulsky (1938) "Russian emigration and its significance in the cultural life of other peoples".

1. REASONS AND FATE OF EMIGRATION AFTER THE 1917 REVOLUTION

Many prominent representatives of the Russian intelligentsia met the proletarian revolution in the full bloom of their creative forces. Some of them very soon realized that under the new conditions, Russian cultural traditions would either be trampled underfoot or brought under the control of the new government. Valued above all the freedom of creativity, they chose the lot of emigrants.
In the Czech Republic, Germany, France, they took jobs as drivers, waiters, dishwashers, musicians in small restaurants, continuing to consider themselves bearers of the great Russian culture. Gradually, the specialization of the cultural centers of the Russian emigration emerged; Berlin was a publishing center, Prague - scientific, Paris - literary.
It should be noted that the paths of Russian emigration were different. Some did not immediately accept Soviet power and went abroad. Others were or were forcibly deported.
The old intelligentsia, which did not accept the ideology of Bolshevism, but did not take an active part in political activities, fell under the harsh pressure of the punitive authorities. In 1921, over 200 people were arrested in connection with the case of the so-called Petrograd organization, which was preparing a "coup". A group of well-known scientists and cultural figures was announced as its active participants. 61 people were shot, among them the scientist-chemist M. M. Tikhvinsky, the poet N. Gumilyov.

In 1922, at the direction of V. Lenin, preparations began for the expulsion abroad of representatives of the old Russian intelligentsia. In the summer, up to 200 people were arrested in the cities of Russia. - economists, mathematicians, philosophers, historians, etc. Among those arrested were stars of the first magnitude not only in domestic, but also in world science - philosophers N. Berdyaev, S. Frank, N. Lossky and others; rectors of Moscow and St. Petersburg universities: zoologist M. Novikov, philosopher L. Karsavin, mathematician V. V. Stratonov, sociologist P. Sorokin, historians A. Kizevetter, A. Bogolepov and others. The decision to expel was made without trial.

Russians ended up abroad not because they dreamed of wealth and fame. They are abroad because their ancestors, grandparents could not agree with the experiment that was carried out on the Russian people, the persecution of everything Russian and the destruction of the Church. We must not forget that in the first days of the revolution the word "Russia" was banned and a new "international" society was being built.
So the emigrants were always against the authorities in their homeland, but they always passionately loved their homeland and fatherland and dreamed of returning there. They kept the Russian flag and the truth about Russia. Truly Russian literature, poetry, philosophy and faith continued to live in Foreign Russia. The main goal was for everyone to “bring a candle to the homeland”, to preserve Russian culture and the unspoiled Russian Orthodox faith for the future free Russia.
Russians abroad believe that Russia is approximately the territory that was called Russia before the revolution. Before the revolution, Russians were divided by dialect into Great Russians, Little Russians and Belarusians. They all considered themselves Russians. Not only they, but other nationalities also considered themselves Russians. For example, a Tatar would say: I am a Tatar, but I am a Russian. There are many such cases among the emigration to this day, and they all consider themselves Russians. In addition, Serbian, German, Swedish and other non-Russian surnames are often found among the emigration. These are all the descendants of foreigners who came to Russia, became Russified and consider themselves Russians. They all love Russia, Russians, Russian culture and the Orthodox faith.
Emigrant life is basically pre-revolutionary Russian Orthodox life. The emigration does not celebrate November 7, but organizes mourning meetings “Days of Intransigence” and serves memorial services for the repose of millions of dead people. May 1st and March 8th are unknown to anyone. They have a holiday of holidays Easter, the Bright Resurrection of Christ. In addition to Easter, Christmas, Ascension, Trinity are celebrated and fasting is observed. For children, a Christmas Tree is arranged with Santa Claus and gifts, and in no case a New Year Tree. Congratulations on the "Resurrection of Christ" (Easter) and on the "Christmas and New Year", and not just on the "New Year". Before Lent, a carnival is arranged and pancakes are eaten. Easter cakes are baked and cheese Easter is prepared. Angel Day is celebrated, but almost no birthday. New Year considered a non-Russian holiday. They have icons everywhere in their houses, they bless their houses and the priest goes to Baptism with holy water and blesses the houses, they also often carry a miraculous icon. They are good family men, they have few divorces, they are good workers, their children study well, and morality is on high level. In many families, a prayer is sung before and after meals.
As a result of emigration, about 500 prominent scientists ended up abroad, who headed departments and entire scientific areas (S. N. Vinogradsky, V. K. Agafonov, K. N. Davydov, P. A. Sorokin, and others). The list of figures of literature and art who left is impressive (F. I. Chaliapin, S. V. Rakhmaninov, K. A. Korovin, Yu. P. Annenkov, I. A. Bunin, etc.). Such a brain drain could not but lead to a serious decrease in the spiritual potential of the national culture. In the literary abroad, experts distinguish two groups of writers - those who were formed as creative personalities before emigration, in Russia, and who gained fame already abroad. The first includes the most prominent Russian writers and poets L. Andreev, K. Balmont, I. Bunin, Z. Gippius, B. Zaitsev, A. Kuprin, D. Merezhkovsky, A. Remizov, I. Shmelev, V. Khodasevich, M. Tsvetaeva, Sasha Cherny. The second group consisted of writers who published nothing or almost nothing in Russia, but fully matured only outside its borders. These are V. Nabokov, V. Varshavsky, G. Gazdanov, A. Ginger, B. Poplavsky. The most prominent among them was V. V. Nabokov. Not only writers, but also outstanding Russian philosophers ended up in exile; N. Berdyaev, S. Bulgakov, S. Frank, A. Izgoev, P. Struve, N. Lossky and others.
During 1921-1952. more than 170 periodicals in Russian were published abroad, mainly on history, law, philosophy and culture.
The most productive and popular thinker in Europe was N. A. Berdyaev (1874-1948), who had a huge impact on the development of European philosophy. In Berlin, Berdyaev organized the Religious and Philosophical Academy, participates in the creation of the Russian Scientific Institute, and contributes to the formation of the Russian Student Christian Movement (RSHD). In 1924 he moved to France, where he became the editor of the journal Put (1925-1940) founded by him, the most important philosophical body of the Russian emigration. Widespread European fame allowed Berdyaev to fulfill a very specific role - to serve as an intermediary between Russian and Western cultures. He meets leading Western thinkers (M. Scheler, Keyserling, J. Maritain, G. O. Marcel, L. Lavelle, etc.), arranges interfaith meetings of Catholics, Protestants and Orthodox (1926-1928), regular interviews with Catholic philosophers (30s), participates in philosophical meetings and congresses. Through his books, the Western intelligentsia became acquainted with Russian Marxism and Russian culture.

But, probably, one of the most prominent representatives of the Russian emigration was Pitirim Aleksandrovich Sorokin (1889-1968), who is known to many as a prominent sociologist. But he is also speaking (albeit for a short time) as a political figure. Feasible participation in the revolutionary movement led him after the overthrow of the autocracy to the post of secretary of the head of the Provisional Government A.F. Kerensky. This happened in June 1917, and by October P.A. Sorokin was already a prominent member of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party.
He met the Bolsheviks' coming to power almost with despair. P. Sorokin responded to the October events with a number of articles in the newspaper "Will of the People", the editor of which he was, and he was not afraid to sign them with his name. In these articles, written largely under the influence of rumors about the atrocities committed during the storming of the Winter Palace, the new rulers of Russia were characterized as murderers, rapists and robbers. However, Sorokin, like other socialist revolutionaries, does not lose hope that the power of the Bolsheviks is not for long. Already a few days after October, he noted in his diary that "the working people are in the first stage of 'sobering up', the Bolshevik paradise is beginning to fade." And the events that happened to him himself seemed to confirm this conclusion: the workers several times saved him from arrest. All this gave hope that power could soon be taken away from the Bolsheviks with the help of the Constituent Assembly.
However, this did not happen. One of the lectures "On the current moment" was read by P.A. Sorokin in the city of Yarensk on June 13, 1918. First of all, Sorokin announced to the audience that, “according to his deep conviction, with a careful study of the psychology and spiritual growth of his people, it was clear to him that nothing good would happen if the Bolsheviks came to power ... our people have not yet passed that stage in the development of the human spirit. the stage of patriotism, consciousness of the unity of the nation and the might of one's people, without which it is impossible to enter the doors of socialism. However, "by the inexorable course of history - this suffering ... became inevitable." Now, - continued Sorokin, - "we see and feel for ourselves that the tempting slogans of the October 25 revolution have not only not been implemented, but have been completely trampled on, and we have even lost those politically"; freedoms and conquests that they owned before. The promised socialization of the land is not carried out, the state is torn to shreds, the Bolsheviks "entered into relations with the German bourgeoisie, which is robbing an already poor country."
P.A. Sorokin predicted that the continuation of such a policy would lead to civil war: “The promised bread is not only not given, but by the last decree must be taken by force by armed workers from a half-starved peasant. The workers know that by such a loot of grain they will finally separate the peasants from the workers and start a war between two working classes one against the other. Somewhat earlier, Sorokin emotionally noted in his diary: “The seventeenth year gave us the Revolution, but what did it bring to my country, except for destruction and shame. The revealed face of the revolution is the face of a beast, a vicious and sinful prostitute, and not the pure face of a goddess, which was painted by historians of other revolutions.

However, despite the disappointment that at that moment seized many political figures who were waiting and approaching the seventeenth year in Russia. Pitirim Alexandrovich believed that the situation was not at all hopeless, because "we have reached a state that cannot be worse, and we must think that it will be better further." He tried to reinforce this shaky basis of his optimism with hopes for the help of Russia's allies in the Entente.
Activity P.A. Sorokin did not go unnoticed. When the power of the Bolsheviks in the north of Russia was consolidated, Sorokin at the end of June 1918 decided to join N.V. Tchaikovsky, the future head of the White Guard government in Arkhangelsk. But, before reaching Arkhangelsk, Pitirim Alexandrovich returned to Veliky Ustyug to prepare the overthrow of the local Bolshevik government there. However, the anti-communist groups in Veliky Ustyug were not strong enough for this action. And Sorokin and his comrades got into a difficult situation - the Chekists followed him on the heels and was arrested. In prison, Sorokin wrote a letter to the Severo-Dvinsk provincial executive committee, where he announced his resignation from his deputy powers, leaving the Socialist-Revolutionary Party and his intention to devote himself to work in the field of science and public education. In December 1918 P.A. Sorokin was released from prison, and he never returned to active political life. In December 1918, he again began teaching in Petrograd, in September 1922 he left for Berlin, and a year later he moved to the USA and never returned to Russia.

2. IDEOLOGICAL THOUGHT OF THE "RUSSIAN ABROAD"

The First World War and the revolution in Russia immediately found a deep reflection in cultural thought. The ideas of the so-called "Eurasians" became the brightest and at the same time optimistic comprehension of the new era of the historical development of culture. The largest figures among them were: the philosopher and theologian G.V. Florovsky, the historian G.V. Vernadsky, linguist and culturologist N. S. Trubetskoy, geographer and political scientist P.N. Savitsky, publicist V.P. Suvchinsky, lawyer and philosopher L.P. Karsavin. The Eurasianists had the courage to tell their compatriots expelled from Russia that the revolution was not absurd, not the end of Russian history, but a new page full of tragedy. The answer to such words was accusations of complicity with the Bolsheviks and even in cooperation with the OGPU.

However, we are dealing with an ideological movement that was in connection with Slavophilism, pochvenism, and especially with the Pushkin tradition in Russian social thought, represented by the names of Gogol, Tyutchev, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Leontiev, with an ideological movement that was preparing a new, updated view of Russia, its history and culture. First of all, the formula “East-West-Russia” worked out in the philosophy of history was rethought. Proceeding from the fact that Eurasia is that geographic region endowed with natural boundaries, which, in a spontaneous historical process, was destined, ultimately, to master the Russian people - the heir of the Scythians, Sarmatians, Goths, Huns, Avars, Khazars, Kama Bulgarians and Mongols. G. V. Vernadsky said that the history of the spread of the Russian state is to a large extent the history of the adaptation of the Russian people to their place of development - Eurasia, as well as the adaptation of the entire space of Eurasia to the economic and historical needs of the Russian people.
Departing from the Eurasian movement, GV Florovsky argued that the fate of Eurasianism was a history of spiritual failure. This path leads nowhere. We need to return to the starting point. The will and taste for the revolution that has taken place, love and faith in the elements, in the organic laws of natural growth, the idea of ​​​​history as a powerful forceful process close before the Eurasians the fact that history is creativity and a feat, and it is necessary to accept what happened and what happened only as a sign and judgment. God's, as a formidable call to human freedom.

The theme of freedom is the main one in the work of N. A. Berdyaev, the most famous representative of Russian philosophical and cultural thought in the West. If liberalism - in its most general definition - is the ideology of freedom, then it can be argued that the work and worldview of this Russian thinker, at least in his "Philosophy of Freedom" (1911), clearly acquires a Christian-liberal coloring. From Marxism (with the enthusiasm with which he began his creative path) in his worldview, faith in progress was preserved and the Eurocentric orientation that was never overcome. There is also a powerful Hegelian layer in his cultural constructions.
If, according to Hegel, the movement of world history is carried out by the forces of individual nations, affirming in their spiritual culture (in principle and idea) various aspects or moments of the world spirit in absolute ideas, then Berdyaev, criticizing the concept of "international civilization", believed that there is only there is only one historical path to the achievement of the highest inhumanity, to the unity of mankind—the path of national growth and development, of national creativity. All-humanity does not exist by itself, it is revealed only in the images of individual nationalities. At the same time, the nationality, the culture of the people is conceived not as a "mechanical formless mass", but as a holistic spiritual "organism". The political aspect of the cultural and historical life of peoples is revealed by Berdyaev with the formula "one - many - all", in which the Hegelian despotism, republic and monarchy are replaced by autocratic, liberal and socialist states. From Chicherin, Berdyaev borrowed the idea of ​​"organic" and "critical" epochs in the development of culture.
The “intelligible image” of Russia, which Berdyaev strove for in his historical and cultural reflection, received a complete expression in The Russian Idea (1946). The Russian people are characterized in it as "a highly polarized people", as a combination of opposites of statehood and anarchy, despotism and liberty, cruelty and kindness, the search for God and militant atheism. The inconsistency and complexity of the “Russian soul” (and the Russian culture that grows out of it) Berdyaev explains by the fact that in Russia two streams of world history collide and come into interaction - East and West. The Russian people are not purely European, but they are not an Asian people either. Russian culture connects two worlds. It is "the vast East-West". Due to the struggle between the Western and Eastern principles, the Russian cultural-historical process reveals a moment of discontinuity and even catastrophicity. Russian culture has already left behind five independent periods-images (Kyiv, Tatar, Moscow, Petrine and Soviet) and, perhaps, the thinker believed, “there will be a new Russia.”
G. P. Fedotov's work "Russia and Freedom", created simultaneously with Berdyaev's "Russian Idea", discusses the question of the fate of freedom in Russia, posed in a cultural context. The answer to it can be obtained, according to the author, only after understanding whether "Russia belongs to the circle of peoples of Western culture" or to the East (and if to the East, then in what sense)? Thinker believing that Russia knew the East in two guises: "nasty" (pagan) and Orthodox (Christian). At the same time, Russian culture was created on the periphery of two cultural worlds: East and West. Relations with them in the thousand-year cultural and historical tradition of Russia took four main forms.

Kievan Russia freely perceived the cultural influences of Byzantium, the West and the East. The time of the Mongol yoke is the time of artificial isolation of Russian culture, the time of a painful choice between the West (Lithuania) and the East (Horde). Russian culture in the era of the Muscovite kingdom was essentially connected with social and political relations of the eastern type (although since the 17th century, a clear rapprochement between Russia and the West has been noticeable). A new era comes into its own in the historical period from Peter I to the revolution. It represents the triumph of Western civilization on Russian soil. However, the antagonism between the nobility and the people, the gap between them in the field of culture, Fedotov believes, predetermined the failure of Europeanization and the liberation movement. Already in the 60s. In the 19th century, when a decisive step was taken in the social and spiritual emancipation of Russia, the most energetic part of the Westernizing, liberation movement went along the “anti-liberal channel”. As a result, the entire latest social and cultural development of Russia appeared as a "dangerous race for speed": what will forestall Europeanization of liberation or the Moscow revolt, which will flood and wash away the young freedom with a wave of popular anger? The answer is known.
By the middle of the XX century. Russian philosophical classics, developed in the context of disputes between Westerners and Slavophiles and under the influence of the creative impulse of Vl. Solovyov, came to its end. I. A. Ilyin occupies a special place in the last segment of classical Russian thought. Despite the huge and deep spiritual heritage, Ilyin is the least known and least studied thinker of the Russian diaspora. In the respect that interests us, his metaphysical and historical interpretation of the Russian idea is most significant.
Ilyin believed that no nation had such a burden and such a task as the Russian people. Russian task, which has found a comprehensive expression in life and thought, in history and culture, is defined by the thinker as follows: the Russian idea is the idea of ​​the heart. The idea of ​​a contemplative heart. A heart that contemplates freely in an objective way to transmitting its vision to the will for action and thought for awareness and words. The general meaning of this idea lies in the fact that Russia has historically taken over from Christianity. Namely: in the belief that "God is love." At the same time, Russian spiritual culture is the product of both the primary forces of the people (heart, contemplation, freedom, conscience), and secondary forces grown on their basis, expressing will, thought, form and organization in culture and in public life. In the religious, artistic, scientific and legal spheres, Ilyin discovers the Russian heart that freely and objectively contemplates, i.e. Russian idea.
Ilyin's general view of the Russian cultural and historical process was determined by his understanding of the Russian idea as the idea of ​​Orthodox Christianity. The Russian People, as a subject of historical life activity, appears in its descriptions (concerning both the initial, prehistoric era and the processes of state building) in a characterization quite close to the Slavophile one. He lives in the conditions of tribal and communal life (with a veche system in the power of princes). He is the bearer of both centripetal and centrifugal tendencies, in his activity a creative, but also destructive principle is manifested. At all stages of cultural and historical development, Ilyin is interested in the maturation and assertion of the monarchical principle of power. The post-Petrine era is highly valued, which gave a new synthesis of Orthodoxy and secular civilization, a strong supra-estate power and great reforms of the 60s. nineteenth century Despite the establishment of the Soviet system, Ilyin believed in the revival of Russia.

The emigration of more than a million former subjects of Russia was experienced and understood in different ways. Perhaps the most common point of view by the end of the 1920s was the belief in the special mission of the Russian diaspora, designed to preserve and develop all the life-giving principles of historical Russia.
The first wave of Russian emigration, having experienced its peak at the turn of the 20s and 30s, came to naught in the 40s. Its representatives proved that Russian culture can exist outside of Russia. The Russian emigration accomplished a real feat - it preserved and enriched the traditions of Russian culture in extremely difficult conditions.
The era of perestroika and reorganization of Russian society that began in the late 1980s opened a new path in solving the problem of Russian emigration. For the first time in history, Russian citizens were granted the right to freely travel abroad through various channels. Previous estimates of Russian emigration were also revised. At the same time, along with positive moments in this direction, some new problems in emigration have also appeared.
Predicting the future of Russian emigration, one can state with sufficient certainty that this process will go on and on, acquiring ever new features and forms. For example, in the near future, a new “mass emigration” may appear, that is, the departure of entire groups of the population or even peoples abroad (like “Jewish emigration”). The possibility of “reverse emigration” is also not ruled out - the return to Russia of persons who had previously left the USSR and did not find themselves in the West. It is possible that the problem with “near emigration” will worsen, for which it is also necessary to prepare in advance.
And finally, most importantly, it must be remembered that 15 million Russians abroad are our compatriots who share the same Fatherland with us - Russia!

We remember the terrible events of 95 years ago. The tragedy that happened in the country then was felt not only by adults. The children understood it in their own way, in a sense, clearer and sharper. Boys and girls in the 1920s. The voices of those children tell more and more truthfully, they do not know how to lie.

I can't lie

1917 as a turning point in the history of Russia and the fratricidal civil war that followed it for many years were the object of close attention not only from professional historians, but also from many contemporaries of those events. In essence, they began to “remember” almost immediately, almost simultaneously with what was happening. And this could not be explained only by the influence of the political situation: what happened in the country directly and directly affected each of its citizens, completely turned upside down, and sometimes simply broke their lives, forcing them to rethink the recent past again and again, looking for an answer to intractable or insoluble questions raised by the revolutionary epoch so unexpectedly and sharply. It may seem surprising, but the discordant “remembering” polyphony of the first post-revolutionary years was constantly woven into the voices of those who, it would seem, were difficult to hear there - children who happened to grow up in this difficult time.

Indeed, the boys and girls of the 1920s left behind a lot of written texts that dealt with what happened to themselves, to their parents, to other people close and not very close to them after the 1917 revolution. For the most part, such childhood memories have been preserved in the form of school essays. Without denying the fact that the influence of adults on this form of children's memoirs was quite large - even their appearance was initiated by adults - the significance of such memories can hardly be overestimated. Not only did observant children sometimes notice and fix what adults had not seen, not only did they offer their own, “childish” interpretations of many phenomena, facts and events, they wrote so frankly, so sincerely and openly that what they stated in simple notebook pages immediately turned into a kind of confession. “I don’t know how to lie, but I write what is true,” this confession of a 12-year-old girl from the Yaroslavl province could be extended to the vast majority of childhood memoirs written shortly after the end of the Civil War in Russia.

Children of 1917

The earliest childhood memories of the 1917 revolution dated back to the written culture of the "former" and were created by the children of the "strangers". These texts were clearly politicized, which is understandable: the past quickly turned for these children into a “lost paradise”, often along with the lost Motherland and the emigrant epilogue found - it was not for nothing that one of the Russian emigrant teachers, writer and publicist N. A. Tsurikov called them "little migratory birds". According to the estimates of the Pedagogical Bureau for the Affairs of the Middle and Lower Russian Schools Abroad, established in Prague in 1923 under the chairmanship of the outstanding theologian, philosopher and teacher V.V. Zenkovsky, by the mid-1920s there were about 20 thousand Russian children of only school age abroad . Of these, at least 12 thousand people studied at a foreign Russian school. Emigrant teachers believed, not without reason, that studying in Russian schools would contribute to the preservation of children's national identity, including through the preservation of their native language and the Orthodox faith. It should be noted that the Orthodox clergy, both personally and as leaders of public organizations, played a huge role in the creation and operation of Russian refugee schools. A significant contribution to the development of the psychological and pedagogical foundations for the upbringing and education of children and youth and directly to the life of the Russian school in exile was made by the religious thinker, theologian and philosopher G. V. Florovsky, the founder and First Hierarch of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad, Metropolitan Anthony (Khrapovitsky) and his future successor, Metropolitan Anastassy (Gribanovsky), Bishop of Prague Sergius (Korolev), his closest associate, who was entrusted primarily with teaching the Law of God in Russian emigre schools, Archimandrite Isaac (Vinogradov), honorary chairman of the Diocesan Administration of the Russian Orthodox Churches in Western Europe Metropolitan Evlogii (Georgievsky), head of the Russian Ecclesiastical Mission in China, Metropolitan Innokenty (Figurovsky) and many others. Under the auspices of the Russian Orthodox Church, various children's and youth organizations existed and operated abroad: scouts, falcons, children's choirs, orchestras and theater groups, the Days of Russian Culture were regularly held and the Days of the Russian Child celebrated on the Annunciation, during which funds were collected for the needs of children through church plate fees and subscription lists.

In December 1923, in one of the largest Russian émigré schools, the Russian gymnasium in Moravska Trzebov (Czechoslovakia), on the initiative of its director, two lessons were unexpectedly canceled and all students were asked to write an essay on the topic “My memories from 1917 to the day they entered the gymnasium "(among other participants in the survey was the daughter of Marina Tsvetaeva Ariadna Efron, which she wrote about in her memoirs many years later). Later, the Pedagogical Bureau extended this experience to a number of other Russian émigré schools in Bulgaria, Turkey, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia. As a result, by March 1, 1925, the Bureau had collected 2403 essays with a total volume of 6.5 thousand handwritten pages. The results of the analysis of the memoirs were published in several brochures, but the memoirs themselves were not published for a long time and were first stored in the Russian Foreign Historical Archive in Prague, and after it was transferred to Russia after the end of World War II, in the TsGAOR of the USSR (now the State Archive Russian Federation). Some of these documents (over 300) were published only in 1997 with the blessing of Archimandrite Kirill (Pavlov).

The collected essays were very different, which is no coincidence: after all, they were written by students of different ages, and the age range ranged from 8 (students of the preparatory classes) to 24 years (young people who resumed their studies after a forced break). Accordingly, these essays differed greatly from each other in their volume - from a few lines, derived with great difficulty by the smallest ones, to 20-page essays by high school students, written in a tight, small handwriting. As the child grew older and his written language improved, a natural complication of texts was traced, when the fixation of individual, often disparate autobiographical facts was replaced by attempts to comprehend the past, reasoning about the fate of the abandoned Motherland, and often patriotic moods and feelings were directly fed by the religious attitudes and religious consciousness of the writers. Russia and the Orthodox faith were intertwined, and it was in the faith of Christ that these children, rejected by the new Soviet government, saw hope for the resurrection of their Fatherland: “Let us ask God to take under his protection the desecrated and humiliated, but not forgotten, despite persecution, the Christian faith, our dear Holy Russia”; “Somewhere out there, in the depths of vast Russia, people of the old way will appear, who, with the name of God on their lips, will go to save Russia”; "I believe that truth will triumph and Russia will be saved by the light of the Christian Faith!"

God was with the children

With all their diversity, the bulk of childhood memories meaningfully and evaluatively fit into a fairly stable opposing scheme: “it was good - it became bad.” The pre-Bolshevik past appeared in the writings of the children of emigration as a beautiful, kind fairy tale, in which there was always a place for religion and God. Remembering the “golden”, “quiet”, “happy” childhood in Russia, the boys and girls described in detail with such impatience the expected “bright holidays” of Christmas and Easter, when they definitely went to church and received gifts, decorated the Christmas tree and painted Easter eggs, when there were parents and friends nearby, and also - "Someone Merciful, Who will forgive and not condemn." “...Christmas,” a 6th grade student writes English school for Russian boys in Erinkei (Turkey) Ivan Chumakov. - You study the troparion, you tell it to your father, mother, sisters, and even your younger brother, who still does not understand anything. And you will ask your mother to wake you up for matins three days in advance. In church you stand calmly, every minute you cross yourself and read the troparion. The church service is over. Not returning home, you run to “praise Christ.” There are sweets, gingerbread, pennies - all pockets. Then go home to break the fast. After that - again to praise, and so the whole day ... And soon Easter. It's a holiday... indescribable. All day long bell ringing, rolling eggs, “christening”, congratulations, gifts ... "

God was with the children, and the children were with God, not only on religious holidays, but constantly, daily, hourly. Some of them directly admitted to the "deep religiosity" inherited from their parents. Prayer invariably occupied its special, stable place in children’s routine daily practices: “The next morning I always woke up cheerful, dressed, washed, prayed to God and went to the dining room, where the table had already been set ... After tea, I went to study, solved several problems, wrote two calligraphy pages, etc.” God kept, God protected, God pacified, God gave hope: “Here are some pictures from my distant childhood. At night, in front of the image of the Mother of God, a lamp is lit, its trembling false light illuminates the all-forgiving face of the Charming Virgin, and it seems that her features are moving, living, and her lovely deep eyes are looking at me with affection and love. I, a little girl, am lying in bed in a long nightgown, I don’t want to sleep, I hear the snoring of my old nanny, and it seems to me in the silence of the night that I am alone in a vast world where there is not a single human soul, I get scared but, looking at the wonderful features of the Mother of God, my fears gradually disappear, and I imperceptibly fall asleep.

And suddenly, all of a sudden, in an instant, all this - so "own", so familiar, so settled - was destroyed, and godlessness, no matter how blasphemous it sounds, was elevated to the rank of a new faith, where they prayed to the new revolutionary apostles and followed the new revolutionary precepts . “The Bolsheviks preached that there is no God, that there is no beauty in life, and everything is permitted,” and they did not just preach, but put this permissiveness into practice. The ban on the teaching of the Law of God and the replacement of icons hanging in classrooms—“those trinkets,” as the red commissars called them—with portraits of the leaders of the revolution were perhaps the most innocuous of what the new authorities undertook. The desecration of religious shrines took place everywhere: even during searches witnessed by children (“Several drunken, unbridled sailors, hung from head to toe with weapons, bombs and machine-gun belts intertwined, burst into our apartment with loud screams and abuse: the search began ... Everything subjected to destruction and destruction, even the icons were torn down by these blasphemers, beaten with butts, trampled under foot”), and outside their home. “The Bolsheviks invaded the temples of God, killed the priests, took out the relics and scattered them around the church, swore in the Bolshevik way, laughed, but God endured and endured,” a 15-year-old student of the Russian gymnasium in Shumen (Bulgaria) testifies bitterly. “The light from the fire illuminated the church… hanged men swayed on the belfry; their black silhouettes cast a terrible shadow on the walls of the church,” recalls another. “On Easter, instead of ringing, shooting. It’s scary to go outside, ”writes a third. And there were many such testimonies.

It was in God that the children trusted in the most difficult, most terrible moments of their lives, when there was nothing to hope for, and it was to Him that they praised when the trials were already behind: “We were led into a large bright room (Cheka. - A.S.)… I remember that at that moment I was only praying. We did not sit long, a soldier came and led us somewhere; when asked what they would do to us, he, stroking my head, answered: “They will shoot me” ... We were led to the yard, where several Chinese were standing with guns ... It looked like a nightmare, and I just waited for it to end. I heard someone counting: “One, two” ... I saw my mother whispering: “Russia, Russia”, and my father squeezing my mother’s hand. We were waiting for death, but ... a sailor entered and stopped the soldiers ready to shoot. “These will come in handy,” he said, and told us to go home. Returning ... home, all three of us stood in front of the icons, and for the first time I prayed so fervently and sincerely. For many, prayer became the only source of vitality: “On the night before the Annunciation there was a terrible cannonade; I did not sleep and prayed all night”; “I had never prayed before, never remembered God, but when I was left alone (after the death of my brother), I began to pray; I prayed all the time - wherever the opportunity presented itself, and most of all I prayed in the cemetery, at the grave of my brother.

Have mercy on Russia, have mercy on me!

Meanwhile, among the children there were those who were completely desperate, who had lost their vital core, and with it, as it seemed to them, their faith in the Almighty: “I am worse than a wolf, faith has collapsed, morality has fallen”; “I ... noticed with horror that I don’t have anything that is holy, that good that dad and mom put into me. God ceased to exist for me as something distant, caring about me: the Gospel Christ. A new god arose before me, the god of life ... I became ... a complete egoist who is ready to sacrifice the happiness of others for his own happiness, who sees in life only the struggle for existence, who believes that the highest happiness on earth is money. It was these children and adolescents that V. V. Zenkovsky had in mind when, analyzing the writings, he argued that the “religious path of overcoming” was not yet open to everyone, and very painstaking work was needed to help children “come closer to the Church.”

In emigration, children were to some extent protected from the bloodthirsty revolutionary Moloch. They got back much of what they themselves would like to get back from the recent past. But, in their own words, even Christmas became somehow “sad”, not like in the abandoned Russia, which they could not forget and where they so wanted to return. No, they did not need a new Soviet fatherland, hostile and unusual for them "anti-world" of Soviet power and Bolshevism. They aspired to that former Russia, which they wrote about in their writings and which they depicted in their drawings: quiet, snow-covered noble estates, Kremlin walls and towers, small village churches. Among the surviving drawings, one is especially touching: domes Orthodox churches with crosses and a laconic inscription "I love Russia". Most of these children never achieved their dream. But they continued to believe and earnestly pray for the Motherland - as earnestly as for themselves: “God, will everything remain like this? Have mercy on Russia, have mercy on me!”

In preparing the article, materials from the books "Children of the Russian emigration (The book that exiles dreamed and could not publish)" (M.: TERRA, 1997) and "Children of emigration: Memoirs" (M.: Agraf, 2001), as well as monographs author of "Russian childhood in the twentieth century: History, theory and practice of research." (Kazan: Kazan State University, 2007).


Building Russian scouts. Marseilles. 1930

Music lessons with children in the Russian commune of Montgeron. Paris. 1926

Teachers and students of the gymnasium of the All-Russian Union of Cities in the Selimiye camp. 1920

Teachers and students of St. Sergius Theological Institute in Paris. 1945 In the centerSchemamonk Savvaty. To his right— Vladimir Weidle. Alexander Schmemann, Konstantin Andronikov and Sergei Verkhovsky. Far right- father Vasily Zenkovsky

Text: Alla SALNIKOVA