The First Russian Political Emigré

The First Russian Political Emigré
Author: Vladimir Sergeevich Pecherin
Publisher:
Total Pages: 232
Release: 2008
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN:

This memoir by Vladimir Pecherin (or Petcherine) (1807-85) is a story of the life of a rebel against any form of despotism. Shortly after his appointment as Professor of Classics at Moscow University, Pecherin fled from Russia in 1836 to pursue radical politics in Europe. He was the first Russian political emigrant. In 1840, he suddenly and unexpectedly converted to Catholicism and entered the Redemptorist Order as a monk. After 20 years of service as a missionary, he parted ways with the Redemptorists and for the last 23 years of his life served as a chaplain at the Mater Hospital in Dublin. Pecherin wrote the memoir during his time in Dublin.His controversial memoir, poignantly critical of the Russian government and the Catholic Church of his time, was only published for the first time in Russia a hundred years after his death. It contains a vivid account of his adventures in Europe, mainly in Belgium, after leaving Russia, and his struggle against poverty. He was an exceptionally fine writer and talented poet.In this first translation of Pecherin's memoir into English the reader finds an engaging story of the individual who could have been a character in a novel by Dostoevsky, torn from his Russian soil.

The Russian Revolutionary Emigres, 1825-1870

The Russian Revolutionary Emigres, 1825-1870
Author: Martin A. Miller
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
Total Pages: 310
Release: 2019-12-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 9781421433790

When, two generations later, Lenin returned to Russia after decades in Europe and made this vision a reality, his actions built on the foundation laid by his nineteenth-century predecessors.

Utopia's Discontents

Utopia's Discontents
Author: Faith Hillis
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 361
Release: 2021
Genre: History
ISBN: 0190066334

Utopia's Discontents provides the first synthetic treatment of the Russian revolutionary emigration before the Revolution. It argues that neighborhoods created by Russian exiles became sites of revolutionary experimentation that offered their residents a taste of their anticipated utopian future.

The Russian Revolutionary Emigres, 1825-1870

The Russian Revolutionary Emigres, 1825-1870
Author: Martin A. Miller
Publisher: JHU Press
Total Pages: 325
Release: 2019-12-01
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 142143380X

Originally published in 1986. Martin A. Miller, author of the definitive biography of the exiled revolutionary Peter Kropotkin, traces the history of the first generations of Russians who went to Western Europe to devote their lives to anti-tsarist politics. Refusing to assimilate abroad and unable to return home, the émigrés political orientations were influenced by intellectual and social currents in both Russia and Europe. Miller undertakes a major reassessment of the émigré contribution to the Russian revolutionary movement. Starting with Nikolai Turgenev, who in 1825 was declared the first "émigré" by a special act of the Russian government, the exiles formed a unique social and political group. Miller takes a biographical approach in tracing the progression from a disparate community of intellectuals, unable to act together to promote their own program for change, to a more cohesive second émigré generation that provided the foundation for collective action and the development of a revolutionary ideology. The creation of the Russian émigré press, Miller argues, gave identity and momentum to the émigrés and helped promote their program of revolution and a new social order. The Russian Revolutionary Emigres, 1825-1870 concludes with the death in 1870 of the leading émigré figure, Alexander Herzen, and with an analysis of the impact upon the émigrés of the emergence of the populist revolutionary movement within Russia. The émigrés overcame the loss of their homeland through their version of a future Russia, one transformed into a new society where their ideals could be realized. When, two generations later, Lenin returned to Russia after decades in Europe and made this vision a reality, his actions built on the foundation laid by his nineteenth-century predecessors.

The Russian Roots of Nazism

The Russian Roots of Nazism
Author: Michael Kellogg
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 354
Release: 2005-02-03
Genre: History
ISBN: 9781139442992

This book examines the overlooked topic of the influence of anti-Bolshevik, anti-Semitic Russian exiles on Nazism. White émigrés contributed politically, financially, militarily, and ideologically to National Socialism. This work refutes the notion that Nazism developed as a peculiarly German phenomenon: it arose primarily from the cooperation between völkisch (nationalist/racist) Germans and vengeful White émigrés. From 1920–1923, Adolf Hitler collaborated with a conspiratorial far right German-White émigré organization, Aufbau (Reconstruction). Aufbau allied with Nazis to overthrow the German government and Bolshevik rule through terrorism and military-paramilitary schemes. This organization's warnings of the monstrous 'Jewish Bolshevik' peril helped to inspire Hitler to launch an invasion of the Soviet Union and to initiate the mass murder of European Jews. This book uses extensive archival materials from Germany and Russia, including recently declassified documents, and will prove invaluable reading for anyone interested in the international roots of National Socialism.

Russians Abroad

Russians Abroad
Author: Greta Nachtailer Slobin
Publisher:
Total Pages: 255
Release: 2013
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9781618112149

This book presents an array of perspectives on the vivid cultural and literary politics that marked the period immediately after the October Revolution of 1917, when Russian writers had to relocate to Berlin and Paris under harsh conditions. Divided amongst themselves and uncertain about the political and artistic directions of life in the diaspora, these writers carried on two simultaneous literary dialogues: with the emerging Soviet Union and with the dizzying world of European modernism that surrounded them in the West. The book's chapters address generational differences, literary polemics and experimentation, the heritage of pre-October Russian modernism, and the fate of individual writers and critics, offering a sweeping view of how exiles created a literary diaspora. The discussion moves beyond Russian studies to contribute to today's broad, cross-cultural study of the creative side of political and cultural displacement.

Russian Émigré Culture

Russian Émigré Culture
Author: Christoph Flamm
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Total Pages: 340
Release: 2014-07-08
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1443863661

A quarter of a century ago, glasnost opened the door for a new look at Russian émigré culture unimpeded by the sterile concepts of Cold War cultural politics. Easier access to archives and a comprehensive approach to culture as a multi-faceted phenomenon, not restricted to single phenomena or individuals, have since contributed to a better understanding of the processes within the émigré community, of its links with the lost home country, and of the interaction with the cultural life of the countries of adoption. This volume offers a collection of critical articles that resulted from the international interdisciplinary symposium which was held at Saarland University in November 2011 as part of a one-week festival, “Russian Music in Exile”. Scholars from around the world contributed essays reflecting current perspectives on Russian émigré culture, shedding new light on cultural diplomacy, literature, art, and music, and covering essentially the whole 20th century, from pre-revolutionary movements to the present. The interdisciplinary approach of the volume shows that émigré networks were not confined to a particular segment of culture, but united composers, artists, critics, and even diplomats. On the whole, the contributions to this volume document the fascinating diversity, the internal contradictions, as well as the impact that the largest and most durable émigré movement of the 20th century had on European cultural life.

The Compatriots

The Compatriots
Author: Andrei Soldatov
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Total Pages: 340
Release: 2019-10-08
Genre: History
ISBN: 1541730186

The authors of The Red Web examine the shifting role of Russian expatriates throughout history, and their complicated, unbreakable relationship with the mother country--be it antagonistic or far too chummy. The history of Russian espionage is soaked in blood, from a spontaneous pistol shot that killed a secret policeman in Romania in 1924 to the attempt to poison an exiled KGB colonel in Salisbury, England, in 2017. Russian émigrés have found themselves continually at the center of the mayhem. Russians began leaving the country in big numbers in the late nineteenth century, fleeing pogroms, tsarist secret police persecution, and the Revolution, then Stalin and the KGB--and creating the third-largest diaspora in the world. The exodus created a rare opportunity for the Kremlin. Moscow's masters and spymasters fostered networks of spies, many of whom were emigrants driven from Russia. By the 1930s and 1940s, dozens of spies were in New York City gathering information for Moscow. But the story did not end with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Some émigrés have turned into assets of the resurgent Russian nationalist state, while others have taken up the dissident challenge once more--at their personal peril. From Trotsky to Litvinenko, The Compatriots is the gripping history of Russian score-settling around the world.

Russia Abroad

Russia Abroad
Author: Catherine Andreyev
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 286
Release: 2004-01-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780300102345

In the wake of the Russian Revolution and the ensuing civil war, approximately one-and-a-half million Russians fled their country. Many settled in Prague, where they were welcomed and supported by the newly formed Czechoslovak Republic. This book presents the first full account of Prague's Russian emigre community from 1918 to 1938, when the Nazi invasion scattered the inhabitants yet again. Russia Abroad examines the life of this vibrant community, its activity, achievement, and importance. Catherine Andreyev and Ivan Savicky explore the reasons that Czechoslovakia embraced the Russian immigrants, the evolution of the Russian community, and why the original idea of supporting Russian emigres and creating an academic centre of progressive Russians had to be modified in the light of national and international politics. The story they tell not only illuminates aspects of Russian life and culture of the period but also offers insights into later diasporas in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

P. A. Stolypin

P. A. Stolypin
Author: Abraham Ascher
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 500
Release: 2002-02-01
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780804745475

This is the first comprehensive biography in any language of Russia's leading statesman in the period following the Revolution of 1905. Prime Minister and Minister of Internal Affairs from 1906 to 1911, when he was assassinated, in post-1905 Russia P. A. Stolypin was virtually the only man who seemed to have a clear notion of how to reform the socioeconomic and political system of the empire.