Preliminary Notes

Many Russian liberals fled the country, as the last White armies were defeated in the course of the Civil War. This flight opened the last page in the history of Russian liberalism, as some liberal politicians began the struggle for a united anti-Bolshevik émigré front. Their effort, continued through 1920s, resulted in several Congresses of “Russia Abroad” and this article is an attempt to analyze the proceedings of the Congresses as well as the documents of the Russian National Union and Committee in Paris.
The emigration represents a unique object of inquiry as its political language and practices combine old, imperial cliches with new émigré needs and ideas merging them into a complicated spectrum of ideologies that were produced in the European setting of the inter bellum period that was marked by liberal retreat and the rise of fascism. This rise of mass politics in Europe had an impact upon the exiles as well. However, Russian émigrés measured the utility of right wing politics by one single token: its ability to bring about the collapse of communism. Vocabularies of the “Greater Russia”, “One and Indivisible Russia”, and federalist and nationalist currents of liberal thought had to face challenges of the Bolshevik claim for the credit of restoration of the Russian statehood and bringing it to a new modern standing.
The collapse of the empire during the years of upheaval triggered different reactions and re-conceptualizations of national and political space (such as in the case of the Eurasianists or Iulii Semenov’s report on the newly independent states discussed below), suggesting new ways of thinking a multinational Russian state. At the same time, the intelligentsia’s older patterns of thinking about national identity and duty to the people came into conflict and merged with the patterns of rejection or acceptance of the Soviet regime. The always present, even if sometimes in peripheral, idea of a second, different, alternative Russia Abroad that went into exile had in equal measure to do with the moralizing visions of politics peculiar to intelligenty like Petr Struve, who insisted that the Russian exiles were more than just refugees, and with the emerging sense of an extraterritorial nationality that wished to be represented in one or another way institutionally and politically.
More importantly, despite numerous crises of liberal groups in exile (the case of Paul Miliukov’s “new tactics” that brought about the Republican Democratic Alliance and split the Kadets is most illustrative), the language and practice of politics was often bound by liberal professionalism in politics, trained in the years of the Duma experiment and numerous alliances of the Civil War. This professionalism guaranteed liberal predominance against many odds even when the situation was sliding to the right, such as in the case of the Congress of 1926. One of the tasks of this work is to demonstrate, through the analysis of the proceedings of the Congresses that liberals survived much longer in exile than historians presumed. This survival was paralleled by the move to the right, by the emergence of a more nationalist than liberal politics. And yet, their survival put an important mark on the political life of the Russian emigration and influenced émigrés’ ideas and practices.
English language does not denote the difference between russkii and rossiiskii, the difference that in today’s Russian language may signify ethnic vs. political nationalism as the first term refers to language and ethnicity and the second to the state, polity and citizenship. Remarkably enough, in many texts produced by the Russian National Committee the term russkii (Russian as applied to language and ethnicity) was often used in assimiliationist way. Thus, Iu. Semenov, the secretary of the Committee, appealed to all “Russian people (russkim liudiam) of all ethnic origins and confessions”.^[1] In this article, the expression “Russian emigration” refers to all members of the exile community, former subjects of the Russian Empire, who shared adherence to the Russian language, modern Russian culture and were interested in Russian politics. Among ethnic minorities of “Russia Abroad”, the most significant one in terms of cultural capital, activity and impact on the cultural and political life of the émigrés was the Jewish minority. Although many of Russian Jews in exile were members of the left wing of the emigration, some played an important role in right liberal groups. Their situation became especially precarious as the right liberals attempted to forge an alliance with the monarchist right, notorious for its anti-Semitism. Also, Ukrainian and Armenian minorities were significant as well.
The focus of this work is upon the rhetoric of representation and political strategies that assumed the existence of National Russia (Natsional’naia Rossia) and passionately struggled for its resurrection. Liberals’ persistence in this struggle shows that against many odds, not least from the liberal own rank and the European general mood, liberal politicians were able to withstand with some degree of success the overwhelmingly rightist feelings of the bulk of emigrants.

Speaking on Behalf of the Nation: In Search of Unity

The émigré part of the story of “national” mobilization began with attempts to form a national unit to represent the alternative Russian opinion. The Russian Council was formed in Constantinople under the auspices of Baron Wrangel. Paul Miliukov and Socialist Revolutionaries attempted to convene a meeting of the Constituent Assembly in Paris.^[2]
The idea of a unified émigré front against Bolshevism based upon a national ideology stemmed from the time of the civil war.^[3] In emigration, though, the split in the Kadet party cut off the left wing of the liberals. It was not accidental that the first attempt to convene a “national” congress followed the conference of the Kadet Party in 1921, which effectively divided the liberals into two groups. It was exactly the group that opposed Miliukov’s “New Tactic” and persisted in its struggle against Bolshevism that came to be the most outspoken nationalist agitator and professional political center of the nationalist minded part of the emigration.
In 1921, a group of right kadets, which included Vladimir Nabokov, Anton Kartashev, Mikhail Fedorov, a former right SR Vladimir Burtsev, Petr Struve, Baron Boris Nolde, Iulii Semenov and others, appalled by Miliukov’s disregard for his colleagues’ opinions and eager to continue what they perceived as a true Kadet policy despite Miliukov’s “New Tactics”, prepared the first Congress of the Russian National Union (Russkoe Natsional’noe Ob’edinenie). This organization, established at the congress, was supposed to unite all anti-Bolshevik forces on the platform of Struve’s dictum “nationalism vs. internationalism”^[4]. The first congress of the RNU in 1921 was still a kadet dominated venture and established its executive, the Russian National Committee in Paris (Russkii Natsionl’nyi Komitet), which was to become a focal point of many attempts to forge a united national front.
This first congress was convened in Paris, in the Hotel Majestic, (19, Avenue Kleber), from 5 to 12 June 1921. 131 delegates, 213 guests and a number of French politicians attended. In total, 385 people were registered at the congress. Anton Kartashev (theologian and former minister of the Provisional Government for Religious Affairs) was elected as chairman, with Vladimir Burtsev as his deputy. The Presidium included many well-known members of the Constitutional Democratic Party: Prince P. D. Dolgorukov, V. D. Kuz'’min-Karavaev, V. D. Nabokov, G. B. Sliozberg, S. A. Smirnov, N. V.Teslenko, M. M. Fedorov. Iulii Semenov, a right wing kadet active in Tiflis city Duma before the Revolution, was elected the secretary of the Congress. The Congress received certain publicity as Baron P. Wrangel, Russian imperial ambassadors and important émigré communities sent their welcome addresses.

<img src=http://abimperio.net/pics/Derso-2.jpg>

Sketches of the 1921 Congress by a Hungarian caricaturist Derso. Reprinted courtesy of the Bakhmeteff Archive and the Columbia University Libraries (Petr and Evgraf Kovalevskii papers, file “Rossiiskii Zarubezhnyi S'ezd”).

<img src=http://abimperio.net/pics/Derso1.jpg>

17 reports were presented to the congress. A. V. Kartashev attempted to outline a program of “national struggle” in his report on the tasks of the Russian National Union. A very interesting report by Iulii Semenov on the newly formed state units in the borderlands provided an analysis of the situation with Russian nationalities and became the basis for the RNC policies on the national question, putting emphasis upon federalist interpretations of the Russian statehood. Baron Boris Nolde reported on the legal status of Russians abroad and proposed the concept of Russia Abroad, which became well established with time, adding weight to the idea of an alternative locus of Russian nationhood, different from and opposed to Soviet power. A number of reports on Russian colonies in different European countries gave an impressive geographical picture of that locus. Of course, this congress paid much attention to the new economic policies of the Bolsheviks that triggered so many hopes among émigrés.
The Congress of 1921 also laid foundations for the future program of the Russian National Committee in Paris, mainly put together in Anton Kartashev’s report. Among these foundations, the policy of “nepredreshenchestvo”, that is, the idea that the émigrés should not attempt to impose a form of government on the future Russia but rather leave this task to the free will of the people became an important principle of the National Committee. The Congress declared a somewhat premature amnesty for all those who collaborated with the Soviet power (this excluded only those who would resist the anti-Bolshevik forces at the moment of transition). Notably, the Congress accepted social and property changes that occurred during the Revolution, in particular concerning the land question. The dissolution of the Empire was to some extent acknowledged by accepting the changes that occurred in the borderlands, including the independence of a number of newly formed states.^[5]
The Congress ended with a resolution that founded the Russian National Union and the Russian National Committee in Paris. Anton Kartashev became its chairman and Iulii Semenov its secretary. These two people (rather than Petr Struve), accompanied by M. M. Fedorov, who also headed a committee that supported Russian education abroad, became central figures in the chain of relentless attempts to unite the emigration on a “national” basis.
After the first Congress in 1921, a number of congresses and conferences were convened. For instance, in 1923 the second congress of the RNU took place in Paris. However, it lacked the representation of the first and the last congresses and I will not focus on its proceedings here. The only point of interest in this congress’ proceedings was Petr Struve’s report on “Major Streams of Thought in Russian Emigration”, in which Struve expressed most clearly his shift towards more conservative and monarchist politics.^[6] His aggressive tone towards the republican democratic alliance bears witness to this shift and seems to contradict a depiction of Struve as a champion of émigré unity.
In 1924, the Russian National Committee went through a series of crises. Often accused in becoming a channel for right wing monarchist groups, the Committee struggled to balance its policies without giving up the original program. For example, N. V. Teslenko, the Chairman of the Parisian Group of the Kadet Party resigned in 1924 due to his disagreements with the allegedly pro-monarchist policies of the Committee led by Kartashev and Semenov, who were also members of the Group.^[7] Kartashev and Semenov energetically denied the charges, arguing that they did not give up the main elements of the RNC program.^[8] On November 1, 1925, A. V. Kartashev made the following statement to the Committee:

Minimum of a program…The main [thesis], besides the struggle against Bolshevism, is that the form of government is decided by the people itself…A part of emigration is going to the Congress with the idea of restoring the monarchy and the land property relations…thus locking the door to Russia…We need to add a positive slogan of refusal to mechanically restore the old social and political regime to the negative slogan of giving to the people the right to establish the future form of government.^[9]

Through 1925, the organizational committee of the next Congress, under Petr Struve’s chairmanship, struggled to elaborate acceptable formulas and bring together different political groups.^[10] This painful labor was full of political maneuvering: the agreed upon coalition of the right and the moderates was several times in danger. Moderates claimed that it was endangered by the monarchists’ desire to use the congress to impose upon the emigration their own ideas and methods of political struggle, to elect the Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich as a national leader and establish a right monarchist executive body. At some point, moderates threatened to cease their participation altogether; Petr Struve resigned as the chairman of the organizational committee; and Poslednie Novosti, the most popular émigré newspaper edited by Paul Miliukov went from ridiculing the project to direct provocations, announcing from time to time that one or another influential group refused to participate in the Congress.^[11] And yet, the feeling that the Congress was a must and that the favorable conditions should be used was prevalent.
These favorable conditions existed mostly in imagination of émigrés and yet were felt strongly. By 1924, serious changes occurred in the situation of émigrés. On the one hand, the prospect of return home was becoming less and less realistic. On the other hand, it was expected that the NEP introduced by Lenin in March 1921 would eventually lead to a degeneration and embourgoisement of the Soviet power. The British and French recognition of the Soviet Union by 1924 in Britain’s case and by the end of 1924 in the French case left the émigrés without reasonable hopes for support from these countries in their struggle against Bolshevism.^[12]
However, the conservative government returned to power in Britain at the end of 1924 and was not pleased with Soviet attitudes toward the labor movement activities in Great Britain. Intervention in Russia seemed more realistic (or so it did for the émigrés only). The leaders of the Russian Military Union (Rossiiskii Obshchevoiskovoi Soiuz), who were often supported by right wing émigrés, played with the idea of proclaiming the Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich a “national leader” (vozhd’) and waging a military intervention.^[13]
The tensions grew and the émigré hopes grew with them. As Anton Kartashev reported to the Russian National Committee, “acute external events have posed the question of unity…Among these facts…first, there is a slow but clearly signified turn of the European governments in their attitudes toward communism in general and Soviet power in particular”. Kartashev believed that “the general situation is such that, particularly due to the colonial difficulties, there is a feeling of a possible action of the European powers against the Soviet power”. This, Kartashev explained, “requires the existence of an influential Russian center that would be able to speak on behalf of all Russia”.^[14]
The Congress of Russia Abroad in 1926 (a not too precise translation for S’ezd Russkogo Zarubezh’ia or Vserossiiskii Zarubezhnyi S’ezd) was the last in a line of sustained attempts to unite political groupings of the Russian post-Revolutionary emigration on the basis of a non-party, national program of resistance to the Bolshevik regime.^[15] The Congress gathered again in the Hotel Majestic, 19 Avenue Kleber, in Paris. It was very representative: more than 400 hundred delegates attended the meetings. Pierre Kovalevskii recalled that Struve addressed the Congress first; his father, Evgraf Kovalevskii, spoke on behalf of the moderates. By the evening, informs Kovalevskii, parties had formed and the struggles began.^[16] These struggles were unavoidable as many of extreme right figures of the emigration were present at the Congress. N. Markov II, notorious for his anti-Semitism and monarchism, represented monarchist groups and argued in favor of electing the Grand Duke as “national leader”.
The initial and fundamental aim of the Russian National Committee in unifying the émigrés on the national platform was the continuation of the armed struggle against Bolshevism. The necessity to secure support from the European countries dictated the imperative of unification: as a representative of the Berlin group of Kadets declared, the unity of the emigration is necessary because “we should not give an impression of us [to foreign observers – SG] being the people, who value their opinions, or even some nuances of their opinions, more than the destiny of their Motherland”.^[17] Nevertheless, the Berlin Kadets were not prepared for any kind of unity. Only two principles for unity would satisfy the Berlin Kadets: first, all organizations with the exception of extreme left and extreme right should be allowed to unite, and second, all those organizations, which are prepared to continue the armed struggle against Bolshevism. The representative of the Berlin Kadet group attacked the extreme left (meaning, in this case, P.N. Miliukov and his Republican-Democratic Alliance) and accused them in being “spiritual co-participants in Bolshevism”.^[18]
The role of Petr Struve, one of the most important “intellectual engines” of nationalism in emigration should be reconsidered in the light of his participation in the Congress proceedings and its preparation. In his attempt to serve as a liaison between the monarchist right wing of the emigration and the moderate right liberals, who dominated the RNC in Paris, Struve often made sacrifices that were viewed by many as a complete retreat in front of the right wing. On several occasions, Struve wrote notes to the Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich, requesting “instructions” and received none. In the eyes of many, Struve’s move to the right was a profound mistake. Quite interestingly, criticizing Petr Struve for his failure to run the newspaper “Vozrozhdenie”, Iu. Semenov complained in a letter to A. Kartashev that it was Struve's task “to configure the brains of the uncultured elements of the Russian emigration in the spirit of enlightened nationalism”. Struve, instead, brought with him the “language of guberniia officialdom and eparkhial'nyie vedomosti” (notorious Church run newspapers, known for their conservatism).^[19] Al. Teslenko wrote in a humorous open letter to Struve, published in “Vozrozhdenie” on November 14, 1925:

By the will of fate, our paths crossed…I am going slowly, as if on a milktrain, from the right camp to the left; and you are, in a fast moving carriage, proceeding in the opposite direction. And I would like to tell you: Petr Berngardovich! With the burning heart of a neophyte, you are going to a country, whose inhabitants are better known to me, than to you…These people want to hurt me, calling me “dynamite”; please, wish…that the whole congress might become such “dynamite”, so that there is some place for me as well…There, where you wish to go, disgusting customs rule and you will not be happy there, trust me…See you soon returning!^[20]

The supraparty, national unity propagated by Kartashev, Struve and others suspiciously resembled the language of early Italian fascism.^[21] Declaring that party politics became obsolete in emigration, they sought to substitute it with the imagery of national unity centered on the army and a national leader. Kartashev in particular sought to forge an ideology that would include his perceptions of the spirit of Gallipoli (a military refugee camp in Turkey, where the evacuated troops of Wrangel were stationed) and the army as the kernel of the nation. Although this rightist imagery focused on the military spirit and unity (not least because of many hopes placed by émigrés on the remnants of the Wrangel army, which was viewed by many as instrumental in any future struggle against Bolshevism), paradoxically the program and declarations adopted by the congress were often liberal and realistic. Despite many delegates’ excitement about electing the Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich “the national leader” (natsional’nyi vozhd’), the Congress put forward the main elements of the program of the Russian National Union formulated at the first Congress in 1921 and once again repeated that only the people themselves could resolve the question of the future Russian Government.
Despite a Prague newspaper, Narodni List, declaring that the Russian refugees were planning to gather a parliament in exile, to which the Wrangel army would give its oath, the organizers of the Congress felt obliged to concede that “the Russian National Union can not pretend to represent all Russian emigration, and yet it feels itself… to express a significant middle stream of Russian national thought in emigration”.^[22]
Bitterly divided, the emigration had to deal with the problem of its moral right to speak on behalf of the nation. This conflict unleashed a stream of argument concerning “the intimate unity of Russia in exile and Russia in suffering (Rossiia v izgnanii i Rossiia v stradanii)”, as Petr Struve put it.^[23]
What was the perceived right of the emigration to speak on behalf of the entire nation? To answer this question, one needs to address the self-perception of the émigrés as “cultured elements”, whose task was to assume the responsibility for the destiny of the Russian people oppressed by the Bolsheviks. In this, the old fashioned “intelligentsia's” patterns of thinking still prevailed. But now, it was not only the oppressive regime of the Tsar, which had to be broken down in search of the unity with the people. It was the “alien regime of the III International that occupied the country”. As Iu. Semenov questioned in his report on “The Essence of Russia Abroad”:

Has Russia Abroad fulfilled its duty so that it has the right to speak on behalf of Russia? …We can with all sincerity say that it has. Despite its divisions, the emigration keeps saying that the desire to represent Bolsheviks as a national Russian power is a self-illusion. Our position has prevented the Bolsheviks from getting recognition abroad, which in turn made it more difficult for them to acquire resources not only within but also outside the country. In this, the emigration has supported the peasantry [in its struggle against Bolsheviks], which did not realize that it had the support of Russia Abroad. But Russia Abroad acted consciously and realized fully that it had supported the peasantry inside the country…We have to declare … that Russia Abroad is united, and that it is united by the same spirit, which unites the peasantry in its struggle against Bolshevism; that, due to its spiritual bond with the people, Russia Abroad can speak on its behalf; that whatever is the national composition of the Soviet power, to whichever ethnic group its agents may belong, they remain foreigners and enemies for Russia and equally they are enemies for all other peoples. This is the indisputable part of the fact that Russia Abroad can speak on behalf of the Russian people, who, being overwhelmed, could not find out for himself what does he think of the future.”^[24]

The right of Russians in exile to represent the nation was thus explained not only through the fact that they were “powerful cultural elements of the nation” but also through the inability of the people to guide itself properly. The self-qualification as “cultured elements of the nation”, which the émigrés applied to themselves, the reflection upon the Revolution as these were presented in the émigré thought reveal the elitist character of émigré nationalism and suggest the limits of the popular appeal such nationalism could have.
More so, when the émigrés discussed the ways in which their struggle should be organized, the methods suggested strikingly reminded of those used by the Bolsheviks: in his report on the program of the Russian National Union, Anton Kartashev pointed out “the necessity to create a specific organ from decisive and courageous people who would maintain ties with internal Russia and support the opposition. This part of our activities will have a purely revolutionary character and will… include propaganda… and preparation of fighters able to sacrifice themselves in the brotherly gospel of struggle against communism…for the liberation of our Motherland”.^[25]
The right of Russia Abroad to speak on behalf of the nation was not a mere declaration. Many émigrés conceived themselves as the only protectors of Russian rights, national honor and dignity, while the Bolsheviks occupied Russia. It was already in 1921, during the first Congress, that A. Kartashev defined the tasks of the future national center abroad, in order to “secure the continuation of the struggle in Russia Abroad and protect the interests of Russia and Russians Abroad”.^[26]
The émigrés insisted on sending a representative to any international conference that might have relevance to Russian affairs and they attempted to guard with fervor Russian territorial integrity (with some striking exceptions). For instance, in 1924, Anton Kartashev dispatched a letter to Raymond Poincare on occasion of the French Parliament passing a law that would support the incorporation of Bukovina into Romania. In this letter, Kartashev declared that since there was no national government in Russia at the moment, the future Russian government would consider the question of Bukovina open.^[27]
Feeling themselves the natural leader in the people’s struggle against Bolshevism, the émigrés not only assumed the traditional role of intelligentsia and regained their moral stance as critics of the social order in Russia, émigré politicians found new ways to describe the spiritual bond between the people in Russia and the emigration. “The cultured elements” of the emigration were in a different position, they “had been entrusted to keep and guard the Russian culture, even if temporarily, and to bring it back to Russia when the time is ripe”. They felt they should communicate to Russia their plans and aspirations: “these forces of the Russian people (in Russia) should know that outside the Motherland there is a significant part of our common national wealth, the cultural elements of the Russian emigration…The Russian emigration did not disperse, in the opposite, it is uniting and will definitely play its role in the cultural construction of the new free Russia”^[28]
This self-perception was based upon a long tradition of liberal “guidance and education” of the people. Given the heated debate that accompanied the split in the Kadet Party in emigration, one can view the question of the failed political unification in emigration within the context of the history of Russian liberalism, in which questions of unity and national identity were rooted in intelligentsia’s elitist perceptions but challenged by the novelty of displacement and exile.
This novelty was reflected in the rhetoric of “extraterritorial nationality”, an émigré invention that combined the perception of the intelligentsia as “the most powerful cultured elements of the nation” with everyday realities of émigré life, in which the need for unity and action was as acute as never before.^[29]
At the same time, the processes in the emigration itself, such as structural and generational assimilation, unstable legal status and frustrations caused by repeated attempts of the Nansen office to establish relations with the Bolsheviks that were seen as partial by émigrés, the growing process of recognition of the Soviet Union by European governments played an increasingly important role in the politics of émigré nationalism. The need to define the role of Russia Abroad seemed to become the most important task in face of disappearance or turning into “human or ethnographic dust” as the phrase of the day put it. The chances of the Russian emigration to survive as a unity laid in its ability to forge a political and military struggle against Bolshevism, stressed the organizers of the Congress.^[30]
The attempts to represent Russia Abroad as the true bearer of Russian culture, as the focus of a nationhood alternative to Bolshevik Russia necessarily came into conflict with the realities of politics and everyday life. The exiles tended to think of themselves, even if not always explicitly, as an extraterritorial nationality, a diaspora, almost a separate nation.^[31] At the same time, their leaders wished to speak on behalf of the whole Russia. How can one be at one and the same time, the true bearer of Russian nationhood on guard of Russian national interests, and an exile without home and place? There is a bulk of material that witnesses these uneasy dilemmas.
Given the growing pressure of assimilation, the issue of national identity in emigration became highly contested ground: “the Russian emigration is, as a matter of fact, in a most unfavorable condition to preserve its national separateness. There are no sharp partitions that would prevent it from assimilation and separate it from those peoples, between whom it has to live. It suffers no real persecution on behalf of these peoples either”.^[32] Nicholas Trubetzkoy, an émigré linguist and a co-founder of the Eurasianist movement, who wrote these words, seemed to have almost regretted the absence of attacks on Russian émigrés because such attacks might have united Russians abroad. The case of an exile, who fears not the persecution but the absence of persecution against his own kind, reveals the extent to which the Russian emigration of the 1920s-1930s was a battlefield, in which struggles for national identities were fought. In these struggles, politics and culture were inseparable; philosophy was politics; and politics, as elusive and vainly as it existed, formed part of the émigré culture. Oscillating between the claim to represent the whole Russian nation and the feeling of a separate dispersed narodnost’, the Russian emigration is a remarkably telling example of the contingent, conditional and practice oriented process of national self-identification.
Facing challenges of everyday life that required unification and coherent action on behalf of a much more real group than the Russian nation at large, in particular in such matters as the legal status of Russian refugees, émigrés tended to represent themselves not only as the true bearers of Russian culture and statehood, but also as a separate nationality, which lacked territory or state, but nevertheless retained the unity of spirit and consciousness.
This representation was a matter of fact: émigré children, growing up in foreign lands, were becoming “denationalized”, as émigré writers put it. The fear of “denationalization” of children in emigration reached sufficient degree of tension by the time the Congress of 1926 was convened. In the appeal of the Congress to the Russian emigration the organizers suggested the following words: “…We have learned (at the Congress) about those horrifying and already not rare cases of denationalization of Russian children, of them turning away from the belief of their fathers, and in many cases from any belief at all, we have learned of many more difficult, horrifying, joyless, threatening and depressing things…”^[33]
Although the feelings of despair are quite understandable in the conditions of the immense human tragedy of exile, these processes of generational assimilation that were described in the appeal were logical in an émigré situation. And yet, the feeling of a catastrophe of the national consciousness, the fear of turning into “ethnographic dust” was very strong among Russian exiles. The fact that the émigrés belonged to the higher classes of Russian society, that they possessed over skills and qualities that made them into the engine of national consciousness, made it much more difficult to accept the fact of assimilation. Moreover, their task as they saw it was exactly in avoiding assimilation, it was in preserving their national identity and their Russianness. As the appeal to the Russian emigration put it, “the bearers of the centuries long Russian culture, highly qualified specialists in different spheres of science, art, technology, bearers of knowledge, experience and talent that might have been used in cultural work for the sake of Russia’s well being, are forced to work for the enrichment of alien lands, to work without using their specialized knowledge, to fulfill simple work just to make a living, the work that can be done by any half literate person…”^[34]
Analyzing possible comparisons between the pre-Revolutionary and post-Revolutionary Russian emigrations, Iu. Semenov argued at the Congress that their relation to each other was the same as a relation of a party to the people. The pre-Revolutionary emigration, Semenov argued, was a political group; the post-Revolutionary one was an inseparable part of the nation due to its diverse social components. And yet, on the same page of his report, he went on to argue that “thus…from the former mass of refugees in panic, some sort of an organized nationality gradually came into being, dispersed in many countries, a nationality that does not have its own territory, but is united by internal spiritual bond, a nationality, that has no rights in those places where it lives, but the one that is working out its own, new law, a nationality that is not governed by anyone or anything, but the one that contains in itself some organs of administration…that are to some extent recognized both within and outside this nationality…”. He continued to describe the building of émigré schools and institutions, its societal activities and its perspectives. His conclusion was that only through the united struggle against Bolshevism can the emigration preserve its “national face”, its individuality and identity.
The term Russia Abroad (Zarubezhnaia Rossia) suggests that there are two Russias, one internal and one abroad. However, there was more to it than just the words. In 1921 and the 1924, the Soviet government issued decrees depriving the émigrés of Russian citizenship, thus institutionalizing their exile.^[35] The transfer of the old Tsarist embassies to the Soviet Government by those countries that recognized Soviet Russia de-jure deprived hundreds of thousands émigrés of their last protection in these countries.^[36]
More than the numbers, the social composition, cultural activities and political life of the emigration are significant to our topic. To begin with, as Marc Raeff pointed out, the social composition of the emigration presented the society of the late imperial Russia in reversed order, with peasantry being a tiny minority and army officers, nobility, intelligentsia and bureaucracy constituting the majority of the émigrés.^[37] According to Raeff, the most precise figures available are those collected by the Royal Institute for International Affairs and published by Sir John Hope Simpson in 1939. Particularly in the Balkans and in Eastern Europe (except for Baltic States), there was a disproportionately high percentage of single men between 18 and 40. Being a result of the military emigration of the defeated White armies, this specific fact played a role in the future development of the emigration.
Large numbers of young single males were bound to become assimilated according to the patterns of marital assimilation or, dying or aging, to cause the diminishing of the population of Russia Abroad. According to an investigation made in 1921 in Yugoslavia, 69% of the émigrés were men, 66% were between 19 and 45 years old, and 70 % of men were single, although almost all women were married. Émigré communities had low proportion of children, and, especially in the 1920s, their life expectancy was very.^[38] Thus the emigration contained in itself a built-in social mechanism of slow dissolution. The level of mortality was extremely high, which caused a necessity to provide aid for aged people. Since this aid was delivered mainly through religious organizations, religious dimension and reinforcement of religious feeling played an important role putting the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad at the focus of local émigré life.^[39]
Besides the specific gender composition, the emigration contained a disproportionately high numbers of those who previously belonged to upper or upper middle classes. Although one would encounter difficulties in establishing the precise percentage of one or another pre-Revolutionary social group representation in the emigration, one might draw some conclusions from the percentage of literate people among the émigrés. According to Sir John Hopkins' census, about two thirds of the émigrés had had some secondary education, almost all had a basic elementary education, and one-seventh had a university degree.^[40]
This social composition and the amount of cultural capital in emigration facilitated the exchange of ideas and helped the intensification of the feelings of assimilation and dispersion. Longing and belonging, the hallmarks of the exile’s existence, were translated into the rhetoric of extraterritorial nationality that nevertheless had the right and even sacred duty to speak on behalf of the Russian nation.
At the same time, in emigration, there emerged a different situation that allowed the right to re-establish itself after 1921. The basis of this resurrection of the right was in the generally monarchist convictions of the émigré masses as well as in the popularity of right politics in interwar Europe. If Paul Miliukov thought that almost 80 % of the émigrés shared monarchist ideas, Struve argued that the figure was 90 %. This remarkable agreement between two otherwise irreconcilable adversaries can signify the degree of the right wing presence. The persistence of political professionalism in exile was paralleled by the growth of émigré disinterest in political solutions of the liberal breed; the rise of the mass politics in Europe, home to Russian exiles, coincided in a peculiar way with the remnants of the old imperial conservative monarchism (not necessarily so desperately pre-modern as we would like to think about it), producing remarkable political combinations and shaping nationalist imagining in specific patterns.^[41] A number of ideologies, ranging from Kazem-Bek’s Russian fascists to the Changing Landmarks movement, can serve as illustrations of this process.^[42] The ease with which the rhetoric of “the national leader” was appropriated by the Russian émigré right may serve as an additional incentive to re-consider our views of the right-wing politics of the pre-Revolutionary period and to view it as a part of a broader European current.
Nevertheless, the position of the right was now quite different from what it was in Russia. First, there was no Tsarist government. Second, they were often blamed for the disaster of the civil war, even if the Whites were not all that monarchist in general. Finally, the setting of interwar Europe with the rise of right wing mass politics suggested some new forms for the émigré right as well. Thus, the idea with which the right came to the Congress of 1926 (they were not present at the 1921 Congress) was the idea of the national leader (vozhd'), which obviously resembles the form of government that would be adopted in some European states within the following decade.
The idea of electing Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich as a national leader emerged, most probably, in the minds of Generals Kutepov, Miller, and their subordinates in the Russian Military Union Abroad (ROVS). It was very well received by émigré communities, maybe due to the preparatory work of different right ideologies of the emigration. It was whole-heartedly supported by some members of the organizational committee of the congress, in particular, Ia. Savich and A. F. Trepov (both belonged to high ranks of the pre-Revolutionary Tsarist bureaucracy and were active in émigré monarchist groups). Petr Struve, largely due to his impracticability in politics and his newly embraced shift towards the right, was drawn into this program. However, Struve oscillated between moderates (represented first of all by the Russian National Committee) and the right. Yet, it was Struve who tried to wage a war of formulas during the preparatory work and tried to solve the controversy of a nationalist language and a liberal program.
The major struggle between right and moderate forces revealed itself in the attempt to formulate the invitation to the Congress. In the politically heated atmosphere this largely technical document that was supposed to inform the émigré communities of the planned event and invite them to send representatives to the congress, became the program statement on the future of Russia. A. F. Trepov came up with the following formula that posed the aims of the congress and invoked the language of Black Hundreds:

The Congress of Russia Abroad must gather and unite in one political force all Russian people (russkikh liudei), who strive to wage active struggle for the overthrow of the yoke of the Third International, which has enslaved our Motherland, and for the restoration of Russia as a great power, on the centuries long historical foundations.^[43]

For tactical reasons, Struve accepted this formula as a provisional document. He and Iu. F. Semenov have already decided to use the Congress as an instrument of direct political mobilization. As Semenov noted at the organizational meeting, “we need…to proceed quickly as the main task of the Congress is to create an army for the leader (sozdat’ armiu dlia vozhdia)”.^[44] However, this approach was not acceptable to the moderates. They wished either to renounce the monarchist past altogether, or to limit the last part of Trepov's formula with some additions, such as “national and rule of law based state, that would be built taking into account all changes that occurred in Russia” (the issue of the changes was a focus of political affiliation and was seen as a signifier).^[45] Finally, the formula suggested by Struve was accepted and reflected a compromise. Struve's invitation mentioned the tremendous damage to the Russian culture and statehood caused by the Revolution, revoked the best traditions of Greater Russia and suggested a thorough consideration of the changes that happened in the country.^[46]
Already in 1925 Mikhail Fedorov produced a memorandum that outlined the principles that liberals thought should serve as a basis for negotiations with the right:
The conditions for unity:

1. Equal division of representatives to the Congress into three parts, left, right, center. If the left refused to participate, the right and the center should each have 50% of the delegates.
2. Broad coalition and absence of pressure on minority by majority.
3. Generally accepted program-minimum, obligatory for all participants (each group can have its own program that goes beyond the minimum).

Principles of the program:

a) continuation of the struggle against Bolshevism;
b) the Congress can not decide on the future form of government in Russia;
c) the Congress should formulate its attitude to the land ownership question;
d) the Congress should declare broad autonomy to all peoples that inhabit Russia;
e) the Congress should declare broad amnesty that will cover, after the overthrow of the communist power, the Red Army and Navy;
f) the question of the leadership of the emigration can not be decided by the Congress.^[47]

Attitude towards the idea of the national leader became a matter of controversy as well. The moderates strongly opposed any premature “elections” and suggested that the Congress should only welcome the patriotic activities of the Grand Duke. Although suspected by many liberal émigrés of trying to impose absolute monarchy as the emigrants’ political goal, it seems that the Grand Duke himself, who shared many ideas expressed by the moderates, tended to support them.^[48] Nevertheless, as Pierre Kovalevskii recalls in his diaries, the public exploded with applause every time the name of the Grand Duke was mentioned during the Congress.^[49] The ceremonial pilgrimage of the Congress’ delegates to Choigny, a Paris suburb where the Grand Duke resided, was a part of the right and monarchist symbolic dear to many exiles.^[50]

After the Empire: Congresses on Nationalities Question and the Soviet Power

However, the rightist excitement about the leader did not prevent moderates from passing their views and turning them into resolutions. The Congresses’ proceedings on the nationality problem in Russia can serve as a good example of the differences between the right and the moderates and the latter's prevalence. Iu. Semenov's report on the question of the borderlands delivered in 1921 (it remained the basis for the Congress of 1926 program and resolutions) is a striking example. Addressing the question of whether Russia collapsed as a nation during the Revolution and the Civil War, Semenov argued that it did not. Two regions crucial for the unity of the Russian nation he referred to were Ukraine and the Cossack oblasti. The cause of Russia's survival, he believed, laid in the inability of the local elites to express the interests of the peasantry.
The case of Ukraine he took to be exemplary and explained that the nationalists' alignment with the Germans alienated the peasantry and led to the lack of mass support for the nationalist movement. Although Semenov did not exclude the possibility that a representative organ respected by the population as well as new, national traditions and habits would emerge in Ukraine in the struggle against Bolshevism, he insisted that so far such developments found no place. Another borderland (together with Ukraine) crucial for “the unity of the Russian nation” was, according to Semenov, the regions populated by Cossacks. Here, Semenov claimed, one can find an authentic local democracy and traditions. It was due to these authentic democratic traditions developed by the Cossacks that the latter pursued a policy based upon regionalist ideology while accepting the unity of Russia. According to Semenov, the Cossack regions were ready made forms for the future federal state of Russia.
The future relations with Georgia, Semenov argued, were destined to be based upon mutual economic dependency between Russia and Georgia. Any attempt to impose an alien form of government there will result in a disaster since Georgia possessed not only local self-government but also the experience of genuine independence. Such was the case of the Baltic states as well (“the North-Western borderlands”, in Semenov's usage): the principle of self-determination was imposed upon the Baltic peoples by the Germans, but they managed to turn it back against the Germans. Thus, when the Bolsheviks came, the Baltic States had their own responsible governments and a feeling of national unity, which allowed them to protect their freedom.
In the case of the Armenians, Semenov argued, their incorporation into the Soviet state was a result of a clear-cut choice. If the Bolsheviks represented a danger, the Turks, on the other hand, represented a deadly danger. Left by Russian troops, the Armenians faced Turkish invasion and had to turn elsewhere for protection. In Azerbaijan, correspondingly, there was hardly any feeling of a national unity. City dwellers, for instance, strongly opposed any independence. And yet, according to Semenov, in the future relations with Azerbaijan, Russia should be interested in the oil fields alone. For the rest, there was no need to try to bring the territory back.
Discussing the future organization of Russia on national lines, Semenov argued that there is no way to bring the peoples of the empire back to what it had been before. One would have to negotiate a solution based upon economic necessities in each particular case. The problem of a plebiscite, according to Semenov, should not be taken too seriously. “It would be a true irony”, he remarked in a quite imperialistic fashion, “if two million illiterate Azerbaijani peasants, who might have never seen a factory pipe, have to decide in a plebiscite whether the industries of the 150 million strong Russian people should be cut off from their oil supplies”.^[51] Therefore, Semenov concluded, the future organization of the Russian state should preferably be based upon a federation and negotiations and agreements with the governments of the new states rather than upon plebiscites.
This analysis of the situation in the borderlands stands in striking opposition to the idea of one and indivisible Russia that was the battle cry of the White movement.^[52] At the same time, it was in opposition to the desires of the right wing émigrés, whose slogan was the restoration of Russia on the basis of its “centuries long historical state tradition”.
S. S. Ol'denburg, a conservative historian who produced the only sympathetic work on Nicholas II, voiced a different perception of Russia's nationalities question at the Congress of 1926, thus reflecting the growth of right wing popularity and influence. His reaction focused upon the fact that the government of the Bolsheviks cannot claim to be a national government even if it managed to gather some of the imperial lands. In Ol'denburg’s view, Ustrialov’s idea of the Bolsheviks as heirs to the traditions of the Russian statehood is misleading. “Remember, argued Ol'denburg, that the incorporation of Bessarabia into Soviet Moldavian Republic with the Romanian language has nothing to do with the Russian statehood. The Bolsheviks drive is not a national drive for the sake of Russia. Is their hunger for the world mastery that is apparent here”.
Ol’denburg would not trust the policy of “raising the nationalities” either: “The Soviet power has broken Russia into different states (shtaty) with different languages; it is artificially growing and cultivating local languages and extinguishes generally Russian state cohesion. The Soviet power has a dual aim: on the one hand, it exterminates the tradition of Russian national statehood that it detests so deeply and on the other hand it attracts sympathies of some layers of the non-Russian population. The contradiction between the cultivation of nationalities and internationalism is a mirage because “smaller” nationalities cannot rise to the level of a powerful national statehood that could become dangerous for the powerful internationalist center. These unconscious elements (the nationalities) are given a toy of their own language in administration to entertain themselves”.^[53]
Ol'denburg’s conservative view did not become an essential in the Congress' resolutions. Many conservative émigrés undoubtedly shared it and yet Semenov's views of 1921 dominated the official decisions. As the program of the Congress put it:

P.11. The Provisional power … must guarantee … to all nationalities that populate Russia …the possibility of free development of their national cultural life;
P.12. Those regions that possess over historically developed specific conditions will be given broad local self-government.^[54]

The Congress also acknowledged the independence of Georgia and Armenia (which, ironically, were firmly incorporated into the Soviet Union by the time the Congress was convened). Whether this was a result of a consensus on the importance of nationalities in any political struggle in modern Russia remains to be researched. What we can see in this exchange is that Ol'denburg represented views and values of the more conservative part of the emigration and Semenov voiced the opinion of “realists”, who believed that one should concede to nationalities a certain degree of autonomy and independence, while accepting the changes that occurred during the Revolution.
By 1926, the emigration had gone through several ideological influences that reflected its vulnerable social and political situation. From 1921, the Changing Landmarks ideology and the practice of “vozvrashchenchestvo” (returnism) as well as the Eurasianist movement had been propagating a full acceptance of the Bolshevik regime in case of the former and a more nuanced attitude towards Moscow in case of the latter. The decisions of the Congress to declare amnesty for everyone, who collaborated with the Red Army or the Soviet power in general, were a symptom of the émigré frustration rather than a sign of senile politics.^[55]
The Bolsheviks' successes, in particular in the military field, raised the question whether the Red Army was a “true national army”, a part of the Russian people. The question of the Army clearly reflected the émigrés' dubious position in respect to what many perceived to be the Bolsheviks' successes in state building. A national program of the émigrés put the tradition of statehood in the center of their construct. Moreover, a number of ideologies in emigration suggested that the tradition of the Vekhi movement should be perpetuated, but this time one should cooperate with the Soviet power because it is the lawful heir to the imperial state.

Conclusion

In conclusion, we can try to briefly outline the development of nationalist liberalism among Russian émigrés in the 1920s. As a result of the catastrophic defeat in the Civil War, many liberals finally came to the conclusion that economic and social changes in Russia were irreversible. Liberal émigrés also accepted the policy of nepredreshenchestvo (non-predetermination) as far as the future form of government was concerned, leaving this matter to the future democratic choice of the population. Federalist visions of the nationality question of Russia often prevailed as well, probably as a result of the realization of the important role played by nationalities in the Civil War. The notion of “order” often referred to by émigré liberal nationalists embraced an understanding of a future democratic Russian state with respect for private property and personal rights.
The politics of liberal nationalism in Russian emigration was defined by the intelligentsia worldview. The emigration perceived itself to be the true bearer of the Russian national idea and assumed the right and the duty to speak on behalf of the nation as a whole. Despite the presence of extreme right ideologies in the emigration and the influence of the European right movements upon the émigrés, the language and politics of émigré nationalism was not always essentially rightist: liberal programs were often central to émigré meetings. And yet, under the pressure of external events and the emigration’s general shift to the right, many liberal nationalists sought to forge an alliance with the right wing of the emigration. Such an alliance often led to liberal nationalists becoming more nationalist rather than nationalist monarchists becoming more liberal.
The social composition of the emigration, its cultural investment and capital and the processes of assimilation influenced the emerging idea of the extraterritorial nationality. While speaking on behalf of the nation, émigrés tended to perceive themselves as being a different nationality (narodnost'), dispersed in the world and struggling to retain its Russian identity.
The political divisions in the emigration, the contradiction between the right to speak on behalf of the nation and the feeling of extraterritorial nationality, institutional and geographic separation from Russia – all prevented the émigrés from forging a united front of national resistance to Bolshevism. And yet, one has to admit that their program was not always a restorationist program that was often depicted by Soviet historians. Nor were they a group of apolitical professors and dancers, an image one can sometimes get from a more sympathetic Western account. Political activity was present and authentic, programs differed and political struggles were fought. Among different visions of the current situation and Russia's post-Bolshevik future, a more liberal and realistic vision often prevailed, even in the atmosphere of the general shift to the right both in the European political thinking in general and in the émigré mood in particular. However, the limits of what Benedict Anderson called “long-distance nationalism” were effective enough to prevent émigrés from exercising any significant influence.