Eurasian Imprints: Rediscovering and Remembering the Russian Émigré Community in Interwar Shanghai

• In Event: Russian Émigré Communities, Identities, and Belonging in the Interwar and Postwar Periods

Abstract

In the aftermath of the October Revolution and the Russian Civil War, many fled the crumbling old regime and sought refuge across Eurasia. This paper first explores the formation, growth, and dissolution of the Russian-speaking émigré community in Shanghai, a relatively understudied group within the Russian diaspora, from the late 1910s to the mid 1940s. It examines how Russian émigrés struggled to adapt to changes in local, regional, and international politics and managed to embed themselves in semi-colonial Shanghai as well as within the global Russian diaspora at large. The second part of the paper focuses on how Shanghai remembered the Russian community and its cultural and social imprints against the backdrop of the ever-changing Sino-Soviet relations during the Cold War. It highlights the challenges of writing Russian and Eurasian history within a transnational framework.

Author

• Liao Zhang, New York U Shanghai (China)