British Policy Towards Russian Refugees in the Aftermath of the Bolshevik Revolution Elina Hannele Multanen Ph.D. Thesis The School of Slavonic and East European Studies University College London University of London ProQuest Number: U120850 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. uest. ProQuest U120850 Published by ProQuest LLC(2016). Copyright of the Dissertation is held by the Author. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 ABSTRACT This thesis examines British government policy towards Russian refugees in the aftermath of the Bolshevik Revolution and the Civil War in Russia. As a consequence of these two events, approximately one million Russians opposing the Bolshevik rule escaped from Russia. The Russian refugee problem was one of the major political and humanitarian problems of inter-war Europe, affecting both individual countries of refuge, as well as the international community as a whole. The League of Nations had been formed in 1919 in order to promote international peace and security. The huge numbers of refugees from the former Russian Empire, on the other hand, were seen as a threat to the intemational stability. Consequently, the member states of the League for the first time recognised the need for intemational co-operative efforts to assist refugees, and the post of High Commissioner for Russian Refugees was established under the auspices of the League. Significantly, this action marked the beginning of the intemational refugee regime; the active co-operation of states in the field of refugee assistance. European countries, in addition to intemational co-operative efforts on behalf of Russian refugees, also took individual actions for their assistance by offering them asylum in their countries. However, there were big differences in the policies of various European countries. Britain had long enjoyed a reputation of being a country of liberal refuge, where political refugees and immigrants could find asylum. This liberalism, however, started to be undermined at the beginning of the Kf" century, particularly since the First World War. Although a principle that political refugees should be considered separately remained, my thesis will argue that this mle was not followed in the case of Russian refugees. From the very beginning the British government took a rigid attitude against the admission of Russian refugees to Britain, and strict provisions were set for the entry of individual refugees. Because of this, the number of Russian refugees in Britain was much smaller than in many other European countries, for example France or Germany. The policy of the British government towards Russian refugees thus offers a good example of the general decline of liberalism in Britain. CONTENTS Abstract 2 A note on Transliteration 5 List of Abbreviations 5 Chapter 1 : Introduction 6 Chapter 2: The Development of British Immigration and Refugee Policy 26 2.1. 19^ Century Developments 26 2.2. Towards Immigration Regulations: Aliens Act 1905 and Its Followers 36 2.3. Intemational Comparisons 51 2.4. Concluding Remarks: The Free Haven of Britain 56 Chapter 3: The Exodus From Russia Following the Civil War 58 3.1. British Involvement in the Civil War 58 3.2. From Prinkipo to the Change of Policy 72 3.3. The Refugee Problem 89 3.4. Concluding Remarks 100 Chapter 4: The British Government and the Russian Refugees 101 4.1. The Question of Entry to Britain 101 4.2. Refugees Maintained in the Balkans and Mediterranean 147 4.3. Concluding Remarks 162 Chapter 5: Searching for Solutions: The Establishment of the Intemational Refugee Regime 165 5.1. The Origins of the Regime 165 5.2. The Office of the High Commissioner for Russian Refugees: the Beginnings 174 5.3. The Constantinople Problem 184 5.4. Agreement Between the British Government and the High Commissioner 199 5.5. Successes and Failures in the Work of the High Commissioner 209 5.6. Concluding Remarks 223 Chapter 6: Russian Émigrés and British Society 227 6.1. The Legal Status of Russian Refugees 228 6.2. Russian and Anglo-Russian Organisations 239 6.3. Life of Russian Émigrés in Britain in the 1920s 260 6.4. Concluding Remarks 277 Chapter 7: Conclusion 279 Bibliography 295 A NOTE ON TRANSLITERATION In my thesis I have followed systematically the Library of Congress system of transliteration from Russian to English. In the footnotes and bibliography, however, the Russian names and words are given in the form they are presented in the sources and documents. LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS BCRRC British Committee of the Russian Red Cross BRRC British Russian Relief Committee CO Colonial Office CRC Central Russian Committee FO Foreign Office HO Home Office ICRC Intemational Committee of the Red Cross ILO Intemational Labour Organisation RRA Russian Refugees Relief Association RRCS Russian Red Cross Society (old organisation) RRF Russian Relief Fund RRRF Russian Relief and Reconstmction Fund URR Union for the Regeneration of Russia YMCA Young Men’s Christian Association WO War Office ZEMGOR Union of Zemstvos and Towns CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION Russian emigration in the aftermath of the First World War, the Bolshevik Revolution and the Civil War in Russia, constituted one of the major political and humanitarian problems of inter-war Europe, both for individual countries and for the intemational community as a whole. Between 1917 and 1923 over a million Russian refugees escaped from Bolshevik Russia and were scattered to a number of different European countries, as well as to the United States, the Far East and elsewhere. The post-revolutionary Russian emigration, unlike the earlier migrations from the Russian Empire, was concentrated in a period of a few years. The Soviet government started to restrict emigration fi*om 1922 onwards, and by mid-1923 the emigration to European countries had become virtually impossible by legal means. * Migration to the Far East continued until the mid-193 Os and some individual Soviet defectors continued to escape to the west, but the mass movement from Russia ended during the early 1920s." The estimates of the total number of Russian refugees have varied a lot. Early estimates mostly varied from one and a half to three million. The League of Nations estimated in 1922 that there were 1,5 million Russian refugees in Europe. According to the Central Information Office of Countess Bobrinskii, established in Constantinople in May 1920, there were slightly over one million Russian refugees in Europe in January 1921. The American Red Cross estimate in January 1922, on the other hand, was about two million. Even higher was the estimate of a German author, H. von Rimscha; his estimate for the total number of Russian refugees, including the Far East, was almost three million. A more critical examination of the records at the time of a survey by Sir John Simpson, The Refugee Problem: Report o f A Survey, which was taken at the behest of the Royal ^ Dowty, Alan. Closed Borders. The Contemporary Assault of the Freedom of Movement. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1987, p. 69; Marrus, Michael. The Unwanted. European Refugees in the Twentieth Century. New York 1985, pp. 59-60. 2 Skran, Claudena. Refugees in Inter-War Europe. The Emergence of a Regime. Oxford 1995, p. 36. On Soviet defectors see Gordon Brook-Shepherd. The Storm Petrels: The Flight o f First Soviet Defectors. New York 1977. 7 Institute of Intemational Affairs and published in 1939, resulted in a reduction of these estimates. In the survey it was pointed out that the earlier estimates, given at the time of the exodus, were often too high, as they were made at a time of chaotic conditions and constant flux of refugees from one country to another. Estimates of various countries were not simultaneous, which made the duplication of figures very probable. Neither was there any proper machinery for accurate statistical records in the countries of emigration.^ According to Dr. Izjumov, whose figures were published in Simpson’s survey, there were between 635,600 and 755,000 Russian refugees in Europe in January 1922.^ The figure does not, however, include those in the Far East. ^ The material consulted by Izjumov consisted largely of various documents relating to Russian emigration, deposited in the Russian archive in Prague Other documentation used by Simpson for compiling the survey were, for example, the documents of the Red Cross, statistics of the countries of asylum and various refugee organisations, as well as the League of Nations. According to Marc Raeff, one of the leading historians on Russian emigration, Simpson’s survey can be considered one of the most comprehensive and on the whole, reliable study on Russian emigration. He points out that Simpson and his collaborators, for example Dr. Izjumov, used all available documentation and nothing new has surfaced since. ^ Nevertheless, estimates in recent studies still vary a great deal. Heller and Nekrich (1986) cite figures ranging from 860,000 to two million and end up with an estimate that more than one million people left Russia. However, they also conclude that the exact figure can not be stated. * Michael Marrus (1985) estimates that the number of refugees numbered close to a million at the highest point, but that the total fell quite 3 Simpson, Sir John Hope. The Refugee Problem: Report o f A Survey. London 1939 (Issued under the auspices of the Royal Institute o f Intemational Affairs), pp.