Refugee history and refugees in Russia during and after the First World War

Jewish refugees occupied a specific place in contemporary discourse and policy. As already mentioned, the war led to the abolition of the Pale of Settlement, but this unexpected boon did little, according to Kirzhnits, to lessen the prejudice that Jewish refugees faced in the Russian interior [Kirzhnits 1927]. In Petrograd, a group of wealthy Jewish bankers and lawyers established the central Jewish committee for the relief of victims of war (Evreiskii komitet pomoshchi zhertvam voiny, EKOPO), backed by four influential organisations: the Society for the Propagation of Enlightenment among Russian Jews; the Society for Handicrafts; the Jewish Colonisation Association; and the Society for the Health of Jews. These exclusive bodies came up against a widespread provincial activism, which challenged established modes of conduct and emphasised the need to set aside political differences: `now, one flag has been raised, the Jewish banner. The wave of refugees has united all shades of Judaism and all languages'. Social and cultural differences between Jews from the shtetl and the Jewish professional intelligentsia had been eroded: `Jews who hitherto did not know or understand one another have been brought together. Mutual antagonisms have disappeared, to be replaced by excellent fraternal relations'. EKOPO maintained that `small oases have become major centres of Jewish settlement, and the newcomers have demanded the right to participate in communal life. However, this may have misjudged the extent to which class and status differences persisted -- and not just among the Jewish population of the Russian Empire [Zipperstein 1988; Gatrell 1999, pp. 145-150; Budnitskii, ed. 2005].

This feverish activity exposed the inadequacy of the relief efforts made on behalf of ethnic Russian refugees who reportedly found themselves at a disadvantage compared to non-Russians. From Ekaterinburg came the charge that Russian Orthodox refugees had been `cheated' in comparison with Jewish refugees who received money from several sources. `The Jewish refugee strolls around in a comfortable suit and in galoshes, whilst the Russian has to make do with cast-offs and felt boots. Right-wing nationalists drew attention to the prevalence of Russian refugees on the streets of Petrograd, a sure sign that they lacked the relief available to Jews, Poles, and Latvians. How could Russian society tol-erate this negligent state of affairs; `national pride' required nothing less than an adequate provision of relief to the peasant, beneath whose torn coat `the spark of God is alight and a true Russian heart is beating. A correspondent in Yaroslavl' found it shameful that Jews and Catholics had devoted resources to the relief of suffering amongst their flock, whereas the local Russian community displayed on such commitment: `can we call ourselves Christians?', she asked. It was shameful to call oneself a Russian, but do nothing to help [Gatrell 1999, p. 163].

The situation in Ukraine was a good deal more complicated, not least given the influx of Ukrainian refugees from Galicia, where opportunities before the war for political activity had been more extensive. These refugees were now taken under the wing of the `Russian People's Council for Carpathian Rus', a shady group whose leaders reportedly had close contacts with the Black Hundreds. The council dedicated itself to the promotion of loyalty to Russia, opening its doors to those `who willingly disclosed their Russian national consciousness (sic) or in some measure demonstrated that they were well disposed towards Russia and the Russian people. In reality, relief efforts fell far short of the rhetoric. In Rostov, Ukrainian refugees complained that they were given only cold food, that they were forced to sleep on cold floors, and that allowances arrived erratically. The local organizer of the Russian People's Council, blithely told a visiting journalist that `these are refugees after all, and they can hardly count on home comforts' [Gatrell 1999, p. 166].

Moderate and extreme Russian nationalists alike pounced on any attempt to draw attention to the Ukrainian-ness of refugees. A proposed Ukrainian society in Moscow aroused the ire of one newspaper editor, who demanded that it be renamed the `Little Russian society. To adopt the term Ukrainian meant accepting that they were a `non-Russian people'. Yet his anger and unease betrayed the fact that the war facilitated the dissemination of pro-Ukrainian views. In an article, `To flee or not to flee?', the author argued that there might be advantages in staying put if one were Ukrainian:

In favour of remaining behind is the centuries-old culture that previous generations have created there. Not everywhere will become a war zone. Our own culture will remain; so, too, should those people who can preserve it ... Even if the enemy should strike deeper, individuals may be killed and individual property may be destroyed, but the land, its culture ... these will survive [Ukrainskaia zhizn' 1915, pp. 84-85]

Generally speaking, collective action helped to bridge the gap between the educated national elite, refugee members of the national intelligentsia, and the `common' refugee. It was no longer possible to retain the conventional sharp distinction between members of the educated intelligentsia and the `dark' narod, because they had all suffered a common exposure to the dehumanising and debilitating consequences of refugeedom. The reiteration of a sense of loss and destruction of `national' assets acted as a unifying device. Non-refugee members of national minorities bound themselves together with `taxes' levied on the entire community. By virtue of the disruption caused to other relationships by war, refugeedom created a situation in which nationality could assume a peculiar significance, even becoming prior to other kinds of solidarity. Refugeedom conferred respectability upon the rhetoric of national consciousness and imparted vitality to actions that were couched in a national idiom. Refugees were mobilised for a crusade in support of national regeneration and, ultimately, the creation or restoration of nationhood. This was an ironic outcome of the war. The tsarist state subsidised national committees which repaid its largesse with ultimately subversive political conduct.

Revolution, refugees, and the aftermath of the First World War

Political changes inevitably affected the administration of refugee relief. In 1917 pressure mounted for reform. On the eve of the February Revolution a progressive newspaper editor wrote: `the ruling classes and the spokesmen of countless government departments keep telling us that the care of refugees, like the war itself, is a national affair. Well, if this is the case, give the people themselves the chance to speak their mind' [Gatrell 1999, p. 172]. Unsurprisingly, the Tatiana Committee had a hard job countering the call for its democra- tisation. Its leadership took steps to address its elite character, dropping Tatiana's name, introducing elections to key posts in spring 1917, and inviting refugees themselves to stand for office -- a radical departure, given that it has never been common practice to involve refugees in managing their own affairs [Trudy 1917, p. 80-87]. There followed a broadly-based congress devoted to refugees in April 1917 at which they were promised personal respect in return for espousing the doctrine of self-reliance, an acknowledgement not only of the new political atmosphere but also of the dwindling resources for refugee relief. Ad-ministrative changes did nothing to address the fundamental financial difficulties faced by aid agencies during the worsening economic crisis [Gatrell 1999, pp. 176-178].

Democratisation also influenced the stance taken by national committees. The political activism of the professional intelligentsia enabled them to claim a share in the leadership of the national movements that burgeoned after February 1917. The collapse of the old regime created a political space for Latvian, Lithuanian, Polish and other patriots to articulate a vision of freedom and greater autonomy. But it was heavily qualified, as is evident from the experience of Latvian activists who faced the dispersal of so many potential citizens: as one progressive newspaper put it, `the only people to have returned are men on the make, spivs and the kind of women who have a bad name ... Latvia is beset by lethargy, military discipline, money and cheap favours. There is only one solution, and that is for the Latvian intelligentsia to go back home'. Unfortunately, the late summer of 1917 brought further disaster. German troops entered Riga on 21 August, Russian forces retreated in disarray, and the number of refugees swelled yet again [Gatrell 1999, pp. 179-187; Bachmanis 1926; Priedite 2004]. The resulting political uncertainty continued after the October Revolution, which drew yet greater attention to divisions between the Bolsheviks, other socialists, liberals and conservatives as to the stance to adopt towards refugees.

Russia and Eastern Europe suffered from a prolonged period of war, revolution and civil war. Violence, economic distortions and socio-demographic upheaval characterised the entire region between 1914 and 1921. The Bolshevik decision to leave the war at the end of1917 was immediately followed by the outbreak of the Russian Civil War (including Allied intervention) and by the Soviet-Polish War. These brutal conflicts further complicated the already turbulent situation brought about by the displacement of refugees and prisoners of war [Rachamimov 2002].

Post-war population movements were a complex combination of treaties, administrative intervention and attempts on the part of prisoners of war and refugees to undertake a `spontaneous' repatriation. Between 1918 and 1920 mass migration occurred as a result of a mixture of factors including food and fuel shortages, de-urbanisation, re-mobilisation (the formation of the Red Army), the shifting contours of territorial control, and the emigration of the Bolsheviks' political opponents. As if this were not bad enough, the conclusion of peace between Soviet Russia and Poland coincided with a terrible famine that generated further movements of population. Although the military and political situation stabilised in 1921, it was not until the mid-1920s that these wartime population movements found some kind of resolution. As one university professor put it in 1922, `we have lived through so much these past seven years that it is a rare citizen of the [Russian] Republic who has not felt like a refugee, at least for a while' [Raleigh 2002, p. 187].

These population movements were in many instances directly related to the political upheavals of the time: the Russian Revolution, but also the redrawing of political borders and projects for colonisation and population exchange. These were inter-related phenomena: drawing new borders implied decisions about the political complexion of neighbouring states. This makes it impossible to study population movements without taking account of the geo-politics of `peace making'. Ideas of redrawing the map of Europe already gained currency during the First World War, as is clear from the German occupation of the Baltic and the enduring image of reshaping the nexus between land and population [Liulevicius 2000].

In Russia the process of managing the return of Prisoners of war and refugees was managed by the Central Committee for Prisoners of war and Refugees (Tsentroplenbezh), which had a central office and regional offices. In 1920 it was renamed Tsentrevak. Tsen- troplenbezh issued refugees with registration documents in the hope of running an organised schedule, but instead found that many refugees ignored the instructions -- hence another round of bureaucratic complaints about `spontaneity' (samotek). To complicate matters further, many refugees had lost personal documents. `Famine refugees' too attracted a good deal of attention. Writing in 1920, a Soviet official in the Urals described `the nightmare [of] children in the fields eating grass and any roots they can dig up ... people lying for days in railway wagons next to covered corpses. It is hard to imagine better conditions for an outbreak of infectious disease' [Kornilov 2004, p. 169; Utgof 2002].

Refugees along with prisoners of war made their way back home under their own steam during 1918 and 1919. Latvian refugees encountered suspicion on the part of the German military who occupied much of Latvia [Bartele and Shalde 2000]. Soviet officials reckoned that there were around 760,000 refugees on Russian territory on 1 December 1919, but this is certainly an underestimate, because so many refugees had never been registered. Refugees in Siberia and the Urals wanted desperately to return home to Poland or the Baltic States, but their journeys were made hazardous by the continuing military struggle between Reds and Whites for territorial control and by infectious disease in 1919-20. Shortages of food and the fuel and transport crisis only added to the problems. Railway stations were overcrowded. Some gave up any hope of travelling westwards and journeyed further east instead. In 1921-22 the Urals witnessed a further influx of people from the famine-struck regions of the Volga; many of these so-called `famine refugees' had already experienced displacement in 1915 [Kornilov 2004, p. 157].

At first sight, it might be thought that the conclusion of the Soviet-Polish War would have eased the plight of Polish refugees who had fled to the Russian interior in 1915. But this was a lengthy and complicated business. Repatriation was certainly not a politically neutral process. Soviet authorities hoped that the returnees would take with them a pro-Communist message and contribute to the creation of a revolutionary situation in Poland. For their part, Polish authorities were equally keen to ensure that returnees would demonstrate a commitment to the new bourgeois state. Around 1.1 million people left the territory of Soviet Russia for Poland between April 1921 and June 1924, including 200,000 from Ukraine. It is not clear how many of them had been displaced during the First World War, but it seems likely that the majority were refugees. This `repatriation' still left a large Polish population, of around 1.5 million, on Soviet soil, including 350,000 in Ukraine, many of whom held jobs in coal mining. By 1925 the total number of Polish citizens who had been repatriated from the Soviet Union stood at 1,265,000, of whom the majority returned to Poland between 1919 and 1922 [Stadnik 2004, pp. 135-136].

In addition to formal agreements between the relevant governments, numerous refugees returned under their own steam. But apart from the practical difficulties that attended `repatriation', the process was complicated by government concerns about the political opinions of the repatriates and the economic collapse that afflicted the entire region. A labyrinthine bureaucracy vetted the returnees to ensure that only those with the `correct' political opinions were admitted, that they were physically fit and preferably that they had practical skills to offer.

These discretionary arrangements meant that there was no entitlement to repatriation, and that those who were allowed to return had to spend time in quarantine. Contemporaries described how `armed sentries and barbed wire were everywhere ... the food was just enough to survive. For the first time in my life I tasted disgusting bread and coffee'. This comment draws attention to the collapse of the local Lithuanian economy. Polish returnees from Siberia -- many of whom were the children of Tsarist exiles and had never set foot on Polish soil -- were asked if they `felt Polish'. Ukrainians and Jews were discriminated against; the priority was to provide Polish refugees and Prisoners of war with land. Latvians and Lithuanians too, having been caught up in the maelstrom of the Bolshevik Revolution, faced tough questions from refugee control commissions about their political beliefs.

The voice of the individual emerges only intermittently in the immediate aftermath of the First World War. In May 1919 a group of Polish teachers in Ryazan' complained of their desperate material plight, but added that their wish to return to Poland was prompted by grander ambitions: `we have a natural wish to go back to our native country, where a new and brighter future awaits us in free Poland ... we are anxious to re-establish contact with our families who remained behind there, and we have a passionate desire to serve our homeland during the difficult time of its foundation' [Gatrell, 1999: 186]. In a diary entry, Alfreds Goba, a young Latvian refugee who moved back to `new Latvia' from his temporary domicile in Baku, wrote: `Now I am working. I am working towards building a new Latvia'.

Refugeedom helped train national elites in the conduct of politics and the practicalities of administration. This became evident in the aftermath of the peace treaties and the creation of the successor states. The first cabinet to be appointed in Latvia included Mikelis Valters (minister of the interior), Janis Goldmanis (minister of agriculture) and Janis Zalitis (minister of war), each of whom had played a prominent role in refugee relief work. Janis Cakste became president of Latvia.

Conclusions

References

44. Pichon-Bobrinskoy O. Action publique, action humanitaire pendant le premier conflit mondial: les zemstvos et les municipalitйs [Public action, humanitarian action during the first world war: zemstvos and municipalities]. Cahiers du monde russe [Russian World Notebooks]. 2005, volume 46, no. 4, pp. 699718. (In French)

45. Pollock J. The refugees at Kiev. Fortnightly Review, 1915, no. 585, September, pp. 476-479.

46. Priedite A. Latvian refugees and the Latvian nation state during and after World War One. Eds. N. P. Baron, P. Gatrell. Homelands: War, Population and Statehood in the Former Russian Empire, 1918-1924. London: Anthem Books, 2004, pp. 35-52.

47. Rachamimov A. Prisoners of War and the Great War: Captivity on the Eastern Front. Oxford: Berg, 2002, 256 p.

48. Raleigh D. Experiencing Russia's Civil War: Politics, Society, and Revolutionary Culture in Saratov, 1917-1922. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002, 464 p.

49. Rodogno D., Gauthier Sh., Piana F. International humanitarian associations in Poland, 1918-1923. Eds. D. Rodogno, B. Struck, J. Vogel, eds. Shaping the Transnational Sphere: the Transnational Networks of Experts (1840-1930). New York: Berghahn Books, 2014, pp. 259-78.

50. Sanborn J. A. Unsettling the empire: violent migrations and social disaster in Russia during World War I. Journal of Modern History. 2005, volume 77, no. 2, pp. 290-324.

51. Schechtman J. B, Adolph Lowe. European Population Transfers 1939-1945. New York: Oxford University Press, 1946, 532 p.

52. Schechtman J. B. Population Transfers in Asia. New York: Hallsby, 1949, 149 p.

53. Schechtman J. B. The Refugee in the World: Displacement and Integration. New York: Barnes and Co., 1963, 424 p.

54. Siegelbaum L. H., Moch L. P Broad is My Native Land: Repertoires and Regimes of Migration in Russia's Twentieth Century. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2014, 421 p.

55. Simbirskie eparkhial'nye vedomosti [Simbir Eparchal Register], 1916, 22 November, p. 572. (In Russian)

56. Simpson J. H. The Refugee Problem: Report of a Survey. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1939, 637 p.

57. Skran C. M. Refugees in Inter-War Europe: the Emergence of a Regime. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995, 336 p.

58. Soguk N. States and Strangers: Refugees and Displacements of Statecraft. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999, 344 p.

59. Stadnik K. The repatriation of Polish citizens from Soviet Ukraine to Poland in 1921-22. Eds. N. P Baron, P Gatrell. Homelands: War, Population and Statehood in the Former Russian Empire, 1918-1924. London: Anthem Books, 2004, pp. 119-137.

60. Stockdale M. Mobilizing the Russian Nation: Patriotism and Citizenship in the First World War. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016, 302 p.

61. Suny R. G. `They Can Live in the Desert but Nowhere Else': a History of the Armenian Genocide. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015, 490 p.

62. Thurstan V. The People Who Run: the Tragedy of the Refugees in Russia. New York: G. P Putnam's Sons, 1916.

63. Trudy Vtorogo Vserossiiskogo sezda predstavitelei mestnykh otdelenii Vserossiiskogo komiteta dliia okazaniia pomoshchi postradaiushchikh ot voiny (Tatiianskogo), 16-19 aprelia 1917 g. [Proceedings of the Second All-Russian Congress of Representatives of the Local Branch of the All-Russian Committee to Assist Victims of War (Tatiianskogo), 16-19 April 1917]. Petrograd: Gosudarstvennaia tipografiia [State printing house], 1917, 206 p. (In Russian)

64. Tumanova A. The public and the organisation of aid to refugees during World War 1: institutional and legal aspects. Russian Studies in History. 2012, volume 51, no. 3, pp. 81-107.

65. Ukrainskaia zhizn [Ukrainian Life]. 1915, no. 10, October, pp. 84-85. (In Russian)

66. Utgof V. S. Reevakuatsiia belorusskikh bezhentsev pervoi mirovoi voiny, nachal'nyi etap, struktury, formy, organizatsiia [Re-evacuation of Belarusian refugees of the First World War, the initial stage, structures, forms, organization]. Istochnik, istorik, istoriia [Source, historian, history]. Ed. by M. M. Krom. St. Petersburg: European University, 2002, pp. 396-416. (In Russian)

67. Volkov E. Z. Dinamika narodonaseleniia SSSR za vosemdesiatiletii [The dynamics of the population of the USSR over eighty years]. Moscow, Leningrad, Gosudarstvennoe izdatel'stvo, 1930, 271 p. (In Russian)

68. Vystavkina E. Ikh dushi [Their souls]. Sputnik bezhentsa [Refugee's satellite]. September-October, 1915 (In Russian)

69. Watenpaugh K. D. Bread from Stones: the Middle East and the Making of Modern Humanitarianism. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2015, 272 p.

70. White B. T. Refugees and the definition of Syria, 1920-1939. Past and Present. 2017. Available at: https://doi. org/10.1093/pastj/gtw048 (accessed 10.04.2017).

71. Wyman M. DPs: Europe's Displaced Persons, 1945-1951. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998, 256 p.

72. Zetter R. More labels, fewer refugees: remaking the refugee label in an era of globalization. Journal of Refugee Studies, 2007, volume 20, no. 2, pp. 172-192.

73. Zhvanko L. Bizhenstvo pershoi svitovoi viini v Ukraini: dokumenti i materiali (1914-1918 rr.) [Refugees of the First World War in Ukraine: Documents and Materials (1914-1918)]. Kharkiv: KhNAMG, 2009, 360 p. (In Ukrainian)

74. Zhvanko L. Bizhentsipershoi svitovoi viini: ukrains'kii vimir (1914-1918 rr.) [Refugees of the First World War (1914-1918), Figures for Ukraine], Kharkov: Aposotrof, 2012, 568 p. (In Ukrainian)

75. Zipperstein S. J. The politics of relief: the transformation of Russian Jewish communal life during the First World War. Studies in Contemporary Jewry. 1988, volume 4, pp. 22-40.

76. Zolberg A. R. Suhrke A., Aguayo S. Escape from Violence: Conflict and the Refugee Crisis in the Developing World. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989, 400 p.

Appendix

war population displacement

Table 1. Russian population, 1914-1917 (USSR pre-war territory), millions