Refugee history and refugees in Russia during and after the First World War

Abstract

This article analyses the causes and consequences of mass population displacement in the Russian Empire during the First World War and its immediate aftermath. The wartime refugee crisis in Russia must be understood in broader conceptual and historiographical terms, to which the first part of the article is devoted. There follows a discussion of the origins, scale and impact of the movement of civilians from Russia’s western borderlands to the Russian interior, as it was understood by contemporaries and as it has been reflected in the historiography. The article also considers the political implications of the refugee crisis as manifested by the formation of governmental and non-governmental organisations. One particularly significant development was the emergence of national committees whose activities on behalf of ethnic minority refugees including Poles, Latvians, Jews and others, drew attention to ideas of ‘national’ suffering and persecution under the Tsarist regime. The final part of the article looks at the aftermath of the First World War, including the impact of the October Revolution and Civil War, and the formation of the first international refugee regime under the auspices of the League of Nations. The conclusion recapitulates the main points, emphasising the creation during the war of the category of the refugee as an object both of bureaucratic and humanitarian concern. Refs 75.