White Russian émigrés were Russians who emigrated from the territory of the former Russian Empire in the wake of the Russian Revolution (1917) and émigréRussian Civil War (1917–1923), and who were in opposition to the revolutionary Bolshevik communist Russian political climate. Many White Russian émigrés participated in the White movement or supported it. The term is often broadly applied to anyone who may have left the country due to the change in regimes.
Some Russian émigrés, like Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries, were opposed to the Bolsheviks but had not directly supported the White Russian movement; some were apolitical. The term is also applied to the descendants of those who left and who still retain a Russian Orthodox Christian identity while living abroad.
The term "émigré" is most commonly used in France, the United States, and the United Kingdom. A term preferred by the émigrés themselves was first-wave émigré (, ), "Russian émigrés" (, ) or "Russian military émigrés" (, ) if they participated in the White Russian movement. In the Soviet Union, white émigré (, ) generally had negative connotations.
Since the end of the 1980s, the term "first-wave émigré" has become more common in Russia. In East Asia, White Russian (, ; , or , ) is the term most commonly used for such Russian émigrés, although some have been of Ukrainian and other ethnicities, and were not culturally Russians.
Most white émigrés left Russia from 1917 to 1920 (estimates vary between 900,000 and 2 million). Some managed to leave during the 1920s and 1930s, or were expelled by the Soviet government (such as, for example, Pitirim Sorokin and Ivan Ilyin). They spanned all classes and included military soldiers and officers, Cossacks, intellectuals of various professions, dispossessed businessmen and landowners, as well as officials of the Russian Imperial government and of various anti-Bolshevik governments of the Russian Civil War period. They were not only ethnic Russians but belonged to other ethnic groups as well.
Distribution
Most émigrés initially fled from Southern Russia and Ukraine to Turkey and then moved to other Slavic countries in Europe (the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, and Poland). A large number also fled to Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Finland, Iran, Germany and France. Some émigrés also fled to Portugal, Spain, Romania, Belgium, Sweden, Switzerland, and Italy. Berlin and Paris developed thriving émigré communities.
Many military and civil officers living, stationed, or fighting the Red Army across Siberia and the Russian Far East moved together with their families to Harbin (see Harbin Russians), to Shanghai (see Shanghai Russians) and to other cities of China, Central Asia, and Western China. After the withdrawal of American and Japanese troops from Siberia, some émigrés traveled to Japan.
During and after World War II, many Russian émigrés moved to the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Peru, Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, South Africa, Taiwan and Australia – where many of their communities still exist in the 21st century. Many, estimated as being between the hundred thousands and a million, also served Germany in the Wehrmacht or in the Waffen-SS, often as interpreters.
Ideological inclinations
White émigrés were, generally speaking, anti-communist and did not consider the Soviet Union and its legacy to be representative of Russia but rather of an occupying force. They consider the period of 1917 to 1991 to have been a period of anti-Christian occupation by the Soviet regime. They used the pre-revolutionary tricolor (white-blue-red) as their flag, for example, and some organizations used the ensign of the Imperial Russian Navy.
A significant percentage of white émigrés may be described as monarchists, although many adopted a position of being "unpredetermined" ("nepredreshentsi"), believing that Russia's political structure should be determined by popular plebiscite.
Many white émigrés believed that their mission was to preserve the pre-revolutionary Russian culture and way of life while living abroad, in order to return this influence to Russian culture after the fall of the USSR. Many symbols of the White émigrés were reintroduced as symbols of the post-Soviet Russia, such as the Byzantine eagle and the Russian tricolor.
A religious mission to the outside world was another concept promoted by people such as Bishop John of Shanghai and San Francisco (canonized as a saint of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad) who said at the 1938 All-Diaspora Council: