All events · The World Wars

Displacement and the Emigre Exodus of the Russian Civil War

1917–1923 · Europe & Northern Eurasia

Displacement

Displaced

1.5 million

Siobhan Peeling, writing in 1914-1918-Online, records that estimates of the number of citizens of the former Russian Empire settled around the world by 1921 range from 1 to 3 million; Alexandre Sumpf notes about 200,000 in Berlin alone and 80,000 in France. Internal displacement was far larger and was never counted, since the war moved across the whole empire and coincided with the return of millions of wartime refugees, prisoners and demobilised soldiers. The evidence is League of Nations High Commission records, receiving-state registration and emigre organisations, all incomplete.

Share of the population affected

0.91%

of the population of the former Russian Empire at the outbreak of revolution, 1917

Open on the interactive map →

What happened

The civil war that followed the Bolshevik seizure of power drove the largest political emigration in Europe of the period. The evacuation of General Wrangel's army and accompanying civilians from the Crimea in November 1920 put some 150,000 people ashore at Constantinople; others left through the Baltic ports, through Poland and through Vladivostok and Harbin. Estimates of the number of former Russian subjects settled abroad by 1921 range from 1 to 3 million, concentrated in Berlin, Paris, Prague, Belgrade, Harbin and Constantinople. Soviet decrees of 1921-22 stripped most of them of citizenship, leaving them stateless, and the League of Nations responded by appointing Fridtjof Nansen High Commissioner for Refugees and creating the Nansen passport, an identity certificate that allowed stateless refugees to cross borders. The arrangement was the foundation of the modern international refugee regime, and Nansen received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1922 for this and for his work on prisoner repatriation and Russian famine relief.

Parties

The Bolshevik government, the White armies and the intervening powers fought across the former Russian Empire; defeated forces and civilians evacuated from the Crimea, the Baltic and the Far East and were resettled abroad under League of Nations arrangements

Disputed

The size of the emigration is genuinely uncertain, with defensible estimates spanning 1 to 3 million; the circumstances of departure, poor record keeping and the movement of emigres between countries make any single figure unreliable.

The denominator

The empire's population was about 166 million in 1914 on official estimates, and the territory of the future USSR held roughly 140-147 million in 1917-20. Estimates of the white emigration range from about 900,000 to 2 million, with the League of Nations Nansen office registering around 1.5 million Russian refugees in the early 1920s; total excess deaths from the civil war, famine and epidemics are put at 7-12 million.

The affected figure counts emigres only; internal displacement, famine flight in 1921-22 and the flight of Cossack and Jewish communities during the pogroms involved many millions more and are not in the numerator.

Where the baseline comes from

Russian Civil War — Wikipediaopen-edited
White émigré — Wikipediaopen-edited

On the death toll

Deaths in the civil war as a whole, including the terrors, the epidemics and the 1921-22 famine, are usually put at 7 to 12 million, but they are treated in the separate entries on the terrors and the famine. The emigration itself was not directly lethal, though many died of typhus and destitution in the transit camps around Constantinople and Gallipoli in 1920-21.

Documented forms of violence

Denationalization

Soviet decrees of 1921-22 deprived emigres of citizenship, rendering them stateless, which is the fact that produced the League of Nations Nansen passport arrangement.

Formal findings

League of Nations (1922) — Appointed Fridtjof Nansen High Commissioner for Russian Refugees in 1921 and adopted in July 1922 the arrangement creating the Nansen certificate of identity for stateless Russian refugees, the first international travel document for refugees. — source

Movements mapped

Evacuation of Wrangel's forces and civilians from the Crimea to Constantinople, November 1920150,000
Petrograd and the north-west -> Berlin200,000
Vladivostok and the Far East -> Harbin

Countries touched, on present-day borders

Russia, Bulgaria, Germany, China

Sources

This entry rests only on reference, press or open-edited sources. Treat its figures as indicative and follow the links before relying on them.