Who was a White Russian?: White Russians and Russian Refugees in Interwar Istanbul

• In Event: Migrants Negotiating Identity Beyond the Soviet Space: Central Asian and White Russian Experiences

Abstract

Who were the White Russians? Technically speaking, the term “White Russian” refers specifically to people who had fought against the “Red” Bolsheviks, namely the 150,000-strong army of Baron Wrangel, who led an armada of more than 100 ships from the Crimea in late November of 1919. Nevertheless, both before and after Wrangel’s flight, tens of thousands of civilians fled Russia for Istanbul. These individuals had left Russia for a variety of reasons, and came from quite diverse backgrounds. Far from conforming to the clichés of White Russians as taxi-driving ex-tsarist generals or waitresses who had once been ladies-in-waiting, most of the Russian refugees in Istanbul were agricultural or industrial laborers. The Turkish government, meanwhile, had its own bureaucratic, and therefore legal, definition of the term “White Russian” (“Beyaz Rus”), which conferred both privileges and obligations upon its bearer. Not only were Russian refugees diverse with respect to profession, education, wealth, and class, they were also diverse with respect to ethnicity and religion. Muslims who emigrated from Russia were not considered by Turkish officials to be “White Russians” or even “refugees” (“Mülteci”), but rather were classified as “immigrants” (“muhacirin”) and put on a fast track to citizenship. Ultimately, whether or not someone was considered a “White Russian” was not simply a semantic issue, but rather could have serious and tangible implications for the individuals involved.

Author

• James H. Meyer, Montana State U