Photos from the life of the Russian opposition abroad in 1908

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Many people know that many Bolsheviks (and representatives of other Russian political trends) were in political emigration in Western countries before the revolution. But what did their life look like there? It turns out that there are photographic evidence. At least from 1908 Paris.

It is believed that the mass political emigration of Russians to Western countries began under Nicholas I. Not all of those who went abroad out of fear of political persecution were, I must say, real active oppositionists. For example, Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol spent a lot of time abroad, after the disapproving comments on "The Inspector General" he was jokingly frightened of further arrest for unreliability.

Moreover, he was always a devoted imperial up to such a twist of consciousness that he assumed the Ukrainian language unsuitable for literature. Like, is it Russian … Although just half a century before him, Russian was defamed in the same way by native speakers - is it good for anything other than talking with servants? Here is German and French - even write poetry, even scientific treatises!

By the early twentieth century, there were several types of Russian emigrants in France. The politicians referred to all sorts of socialists, including the Bolsheviks, anarchists and, unexpectedly, the Jesuits, who were banned in the Russian Empire and who, upon returning to their homeland, just like representatives of various unreliable ideologies, were threatened with arrest and exile. Religion was an important part of politics until the twentieth century.

Political emigrants from Russia were distinguished by high self-organization. They not only actively communicated, but also tried to solve many household and financial issues together. Russian political emigrants set up mutual aid funds, organized canteens where they could buy ready-made food without the same large mark-up as in restaurants, and, moreover, save their time and expensive firewood. We tried to celebrate the holidays together. We organized free lectures and reports, sharing their knowledge and understanding the total education and erudition.

The political émigrés of the early twentieth century lived financially more than modestly. Most of them worked in one way or another with texts, and in a volume that barely covered everyday needs, since the rest of the time, as implied, was needed to care about each other and the future of Russia.

Political emigrants often crammed into rooms for several people - more than the offered sleeping places. Slept in such cases on chairs or in turn. In order not to sit all day in cramped quarters, annoying each other, they tried to spend a lot of time in one way or another outside the house.

Even the Bolsheviks actively took advantage of the benefits of capitalism, such as the immediate orientation of the market to a potential target audience. For political emigrants, shops with Russian goods, Russian restaurants and other establishments were opened.

In 1907, a rumor spread that the Bolsheviks were fabulously rich. On February 13, in Butyrka's cell, Nikolai Shmit, a manufacturer sympathizing with communist ideas, was found dead. According to his will, 280,000 rubles went to the Bolsheviks. About this mysterious death, political emigrants said that Schmitt was killed for revolutionary activities by tsarism, and the conservatives said that the Bolsheviks themselves arranged his death for the sake of inheritance.

The sisters and brother of Nikolai, who also owed a share, became the administrators of the inheritance. In order for girls to become financially independent, they had to get married (otherwise they were not considered adults), so Elizabeth and Ekaterina Shmit urgently married Bolshevik acquaintances and entered into inheritance rights. This was followed by a fierce division of money. In the end, they were distributed both between the Schmitts and their new cousins, and to the party treasury, and to separate grants to specific individuals.

The grants slightly improved the standard of living of the political emigrants who received them, but the money made it possible to open three party schools - in Capri, in Bologna and near Paris. At the same time, the Bolsheviks actually broke with the RSDLP, a party that united several types of "left" movement among Russians at once. And this was the beginning of a completely new history of political emigration and Russian political movements.