Boris Godunov's Refugees and the Bolshevik Contagion of London: The History of the Russian Community in England
Boris Godunov's Refugees and the Bolshevik Contagion of London: The History of the Russian Community in England

Video: Boris Godunov's Refugees and the Bolshevik Contagion of London: The History of the Russian Community in England

Video: Boris Godunov's Refugees and the Bolshevik Contagion of London: The History of the Russian Community in England
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The Russian community in Great Britain prefers to count its history from the days when Tsar Peter lived and studied in England. There is even a monument to him at Deptford. And Ivan the Terrible wanted to move to England to live and wooed for this to Queen Elizabeth. But massively Russians began to live in Britain, of course, much later.

England became the first Western power to open an embassy in Moscow. Three years later, a reciprocal Russian embassy was sent to England on four ships. Alas, the ships were smashed by a storm somewhere near Scotland. Having robbed the surviving ambassador, the Scots friendly showed him the way to London. Then it went easier, and London still had its own Moskovitskaya Street (it still exists), and the two countries established permanent diplomatic and trade relations.

Moskovitskaya street
Moskovitskaya street

With the ambassadors from the Russian Kingdom, I must say, there was a misfortune. After the first one, the one that was robbed, the queen received a full-fledged embassy, in accordance with the tastes of the time, in the luxurious gardens laid out near the capital. The ambassadors complained about this to the king that they were, they say, received in the garden. They didn't even take us to the upper room …

Boris Godunov in the 17th century sent four young noblemen to study in London. They are considered to be the first defectors: they were called to their homeland, but they refused. But the students did not stay in London of their own free will. The turbulent Time of Troubles began in Muscovy. There was practically nowhere to return, it was easy to disappear along the way. In the meantime, the royal court stopped funding from life and education in Britain, and the young people found themselves in an unenviable position. In the end, they managed to somehow get a job in a new place … And all only so that centuries later they would be cursed as having abandoned their homeland for the sake of a sweet English piece.

The first Russian embassy arrived in a very incomplete composition
The first Russian embassy arrived in a very incomplete composition

A real wave of "political" from Russia swept London in the nineteenth century. Among those who lived in England for years there were nationalists of all stripes (Polish, Ukrainian, Russian), and anarchists, and socialists. London was not the only city where they "clustered together", but here it was very convenient to publish a press of any kind, without any censorship, and this attracted many.

The already legendary "Bell", "Bread and Freedom", "Narodovolets", "On the Eve" came out exactly here. Among the most famous “Russian Englishmen” of that time were Alexander Herzen, Nikolai Ogarev, Pyotr Kropotkin. It was in London at the very beginning of the twentieth century after the congress of the Social Democratic Party banned in Russia that the division into Bolsheviks and Mensheviks took place.

Alexander Herzen in London thought a lot about the fate of the Russian people
Alexander Herzen in London thought a lot about the fate of the Russian people

It is not surprising that after the October Revolution, a wave of migrants from the disintegrated Russian Empire barely touched Great Britain: it was steadily associated with the place from where the "Bolshevik infection" spread throughout the world. Nevertheless, there were people who preferred exactly London to Paris, Berlin, Prague or Shanghai.

Among them are Alexander Kerensky, head of the Provisional Government, Pavel Milyukov, chairman of the Cadet Party, and the young father of the famous British actress Helen Mirren, nee Elena Lydia Vasilyevna Mironova, at the time of the move. I must say that many famous British ancestors came from the Russian Empire, but not counting Russia and the once subordinate lands as their homeland - they were Jews who were looking for a new land after a series of pogroms, like the ancestors of Neil Gaiman, the cult children's writer. In London, the ballerina Anna Pavlova lived the last years of her life, as well as such ballerinas as Lopukhova and Karsavina.

Helen Mirren as Queen Elizabeth II
Helen Mirren as Queen Elizabeth II

Those who had arrived even before the revolution were organized in 1919 by a special Committee for Assistance to Russian Refugees. The record that the committee tried to keep shows who made up the bulk of the immigrants from the collapsed empire. Among them were a huge number of Denikin and Wrangelites - in the Civil War they fought against the Red Army together with the British and retreated with them.

However, the migrants failed to form a large diaspora. In the late twenties and early thirties, most of them either moved to the United States, or chose to join the Russian diaspora on the mainland. For a long time, the Russian community in Britain became something very small and rarely mentioned, until the English capital was chosen by the oligarchs and their children. Starting in the nineties, it became fashionable among wealthy families to send teenagers to study in English schools and universities, and a little later disgraced businessmen began to seek refuge there.

Their disgrace, however, aroused much less sympathy among Russians than in the times of Herzen and Kropotkin. And the British too. The word "Russian" in the nineties and further became associated with revelry, the most unbridled parties and attempts to buy literally everything for money, even that which is clearly stated that it cannot be sold for money. It seems that this series has a sequel for now.

Russian diasporas are literally scattered all over the world. Elos. As the Russian minority of China passed the plague, wars and hungweipings in order to remain themselves.

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