Revolution, Emigration, and Anger: Angry Exile Groups in the Aftermath of the French and Russian Revolutions
Frank Jacob
Anger is an essential part of emigration movements. Especially so, since the new environment is usually productive of tensions that are the consequence of misunderstandings, cultural differences, stereotypes, and fears for the future. Europe is currently experiencing emigration movements that are the consequence of the so-called Arab Spring (Danahar, 2015) and the reshaping of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. The decline and fall of the regimes in Libya (Prashad, 2012), Tunisia (Willis, 2014), and Egypt (Korany & El-Mahdi, 2014), as well as the Syrian Civil War, are producing waves of refugees trying to cross the Mediterranean to find a safe harbor and a possible future in Europe. This both causes and has caused anger on both sides. The European states and their governments, who are trying to delegate management of the stream of human beings to member territories (Geddes, 2008), and the European populations, fearing an increase in terrorism as a consequence of the arrival of hidden terrorists (Newton, 2015) as part of the refugee groups—all are struck by a fear that also causes anger. On the other hand, those who have risked their lives to reach the “promised land” of Europe also manifest anger, especially when they are treated in an inappropriate way, accused on the basis of stereotypes, and told to return to fight the Islamic State in Syria instead of trying to survive (Stone, 2015).
The elemental changes that have been achieved during the last five years in the MENA region deserve to be denominated revolutionary. It is not surprising that emigration and anger are the results. Historical examples show us that both of these factors are highly interrelated and usually appear as a consequence of revolutions. The French Revolution of 1789 and the Russian Revolution of 1917 produced anger in several ways. The aim of the current chapter is to analyze why and how anger was created in the course of these two major events in the “long nineteenth century” (Rosenberg, 1995). I will first try to give a short definition of the three interrelated factors of emigration, anger, and revolution. The emigration movements that were caused by the French Revolution in the late 18th century as well as those caused by the Russian Revolution in the early 20th century will then be analyzed and compared. This comparative approach will help us understand the basic interconnectedness of revolutions, emigration movements, and the creation of several different types of anger. In addition, it will also help us better understand the roots of the actual emigration movement from the MENA region to Europe, and hopefully explain the anger on both sides.
Emigration, Anger, and Revolution
Nancy L. Green has highlighted that “emigration even more than immigration defines the outer boundaries of the state” (2005, p. 266), and thereby also provokes a struggle at these borders. Although emigration seems to be the sole solution for refugees, states are frequently restrictive in sharing their idea of a nation, as well as its physical and legal expression, the nation state, with other interest groups. In other cases, existing nation states seek to prevent their citizens emigrating, whether for political or economic reasons. In general, there are different forms of emigration (Weiner, 1995) that can be created by the economic, political, religious, and/or social aims of the emigration group. The 19th and 20th centuries saw major migration movements, caused by war and persecution; however, as the present chapter will show, emigration extends much back further, yet is still a severe problem for international relations and with regard to the humanitarian needs of the refugees (Green, 2005).
Green states that the “history of emigration … needs to range from the laws governing departure and the formal ties that bind (such as passports, consulates, and military service) to research into attitudes on the part of those who stay home” (2005, p. 269; on passports, cf. Torpey, 2000); it also has to consider the personal and emotional experiences of emigration and its consequences. Anger is one of the human emotions that is stimulated on both sides. Those who become refugees can feel it just as much as those who ought rather to welcome refugees with open arms, but instead, driven by selfish fears and the unreasonable arguments of (modern) demagogues, direct their anger against the exiled people. It has to be made clear that revolutionary emigration is a form of forced exile for those who are leaving, whether due to lack of resources, political threats, or the loss of hope in the new regime, as is the case at the end of so many revolutionary developments.
For those who are forced to emigrate, it is a necessity to leave in order to survive. In 1816, the Allgemeine Zeitung of Augsburg (Germany) described the situation in which refugees might find themselves in a foreign exile: “Emigration is a form of suicide because it separates a person from all that life gives except the material wants of simple animal existence” (as quoted in Green, 2005, p. 279). It consequently seems only natural that anger should develop among many people who are forced to emigrate, who search for hope in exile and finally settle in a sometimes hostile and disillusioning environment abroad.
Anger
There is nothing new in claiming “that emotions such as fear and anger can contribute to political attitude formation” and that “anger is elicited when the out-group’s actions are perceived as unjust and as deviating from acceptable norms” (Halperin, Russell, Dweck, & Gross, 2011, p. 275). Consequently, anger in many cases is a reaction to changes that seem to be unacceptable by an individual or a particular interest group. It therefore is responsible for the constitution of “a significant emotional barrier to negotiation, compromise, and forgiveness” (Halperin et al., 2011, p. 275), meaning that it limits the altruistic feelings that are usually esteemed in modern societies. Evolutionary biologists, however, have also shown that anger is a basic part of human behavior that “spontaneously appears in infancy, [and] is effectively universal in its distribution across cultures and individuals” (Sell, Tooby, Cosmides, & Orians, 2009, p. 15073). Its function as a human emotion “is to orchestrate behavior in the angry individual that create[s] incentives in the target of the anger to recalibrate upwards the weight he or she puts on the welfare of the angry individual” (Sell et al., 2009, p. 15073).
Where anger and its expression are accepted in a society, this is usually based on cultural tradition and existing social norms (Zagacki & Boleyn-Fitzgerald, 2006, p. 290). It therefore “is sometimes the emotion we expect people to feel or the rhetorical response we expect them to display and evoke in others” (Zagacki & Boleyn-Fitzgerald, 2006, p. 290), but the image and the appropriateness of such cultural expressions are changeable through time. While numerous philosophers in antiquity seemed to be rather hostile to anger, which was seen as a sign of a loss of self-control, others, such as Aristotle, believed that this particular human emotion could have some positive impact in preventing injustice; attention could be drawn to the latter by the angry reaction of someone who expressed his disagreement with an unjust situation (Kemp & Strongman, 1995). In medieval times, anger was divided into a beastly and a rational form (Kemp & Strongman, 1995).
Revolutions offer plenty of options to develop anger as a reaction to specific developments. It can express “restraint, the blocking or interrupting of goal-directed activity, aversive stimulation, being misled or unjustly hurt, and moral indignation” (Kemp & Strongman, 1995).1 It is usually stimulated by harm, loss, or threat, especially “a demeaning offence against me and mine” (Lazarus, 1991, p. 221). Revolutions therefore provide plenty of possibilities to develop one or another form of anger for all those who are involved in the revolutionary process.
Revolution
Following my theoretical phase model for revolutions (Jacob & Altieri, 2015), the revolutionary circle or process consists of the following 10 steps:
a) Ignorance
b) Compromise
c) Violence
There are plenty of points within this theoretical model where anger is able to evolve. It can be triggered by the disagreement (2) of the people whose rights are violated by a government, individual ruler, or ruling elite who, from the perspective of the ruled, is abusing power for an unjust cause. Anger can also be the result of the ignorance about or violence against (4a, c) the protesters on the part of the ruling power. The struggle between both parties (6) is definitely influenced by anger, as is the internal power struggle (8), during which different factions fight for the right of interpretation of the revolutionary events and the form of the new government that has to be established after the successful struggle against the “old regime.”
A revolution, however, can also stimulate emigration at several points of the cycle elaborated above. Whereas the violation of rights (1) can lead to emigration on an individual level, the struggle (6) creates fear, leading to an exodus by privileged classes that might fear political turmoil. Those who resist early emigration can be eventually persuaded to leave when the new political system is installed (7), or if they become targets during the internal struggle (8) between the revolutionaries and their political antagonists and former enemies. The fear of violence, as in modern times, might then be the driving force behind an incipient mass migration. It consequently seems to be more than obvious that emigration, anger, and revolution form a trinity of interrelated factors. The analysis of two specific case studies will make this interrelation even more obvious.
The French Revolution
The French Revolution as a historical process would determine European and global history for decades to come. It is therefore also a complex series of events, at the center of which lies a specific problem, namely emigration (Darricau-Lugat, 2001). During the different periods of the revolution, numerous people decided to leave France, hoping that a solution to the political crisis would allow them to return safely as soon as the situation became stable again. The revolutionary events, including the reign of terror by the Jacobins and Maximilien Robespierre (1758–1794), created “victims of change, refugees from readjustment, fugitives from violence, disorder, and economic stress” (Greer, 1966). Most of the emigrants would return to France after the revolution, but the reasons to leave and the time abroad were sufficient to stimulate anger. Having to leave one’s home country, with an insecure future ahead, naturally created an anger that was directed against those who were in favor of the radicalization of the revolution.
Emigration was debated in revolutionary France, however, especially because it led to a “tension between human rights and the sovereignty of the nation” (Boroumand, 2000, p. 70). Even in 1791, before the revolution finally radicalized with the execution of the king and the transformation of France into a republic, a discussion arose about the status of the emigrants, who were claimed in the radical political circles to be traitors. These accusations were also stimulated by the idea that the emigrants were plotting against the revolution from the outside. They were reported to have established connections to the king’s relatives, and to be demanding an invasion of France to stop the revolution and reestablish the king as the highest and unquestioned authority in the country (Aulard, 1889–1897, Vol. 2, pp. 75–78). The accusations created anger inside and outside France. Those who were still in France, believing such accusations, became angry about those who had emigrated; those who had emigrated were angry about their own image as traitors to the home country.
As a consequence of these debates, some Jacobins demanded stronger legislation to prevent people from leaving the country. The radical political clubs were paranoid about a fifth column inside France that would cooperate with those who had left the country to gain foreign support against the revolution. Pressure was put on the National Assembly by using the anger of the population for political purposes. Public opinion needed to be changed to support an anti-emigration law and a common anger seemed to be the most suitable force to achieve this aim (Boroumand, 2000, p. 74). The rumors of a possible plot by the emigrants never turned out to be real, even though they were cited again and again in the debates of the National Assembly.2 It might have been an amalgamation of anger at those who left and a projected fear about the emigrants’ anger at having to leave that stimulated such controversies.
However, there were also voices that criticized the reasons that had made people leave their fatherland. Jacques Mallet du Pan considered it shameful that people should be forced by fear to leave the country of their birth. (See Mercure de France, March 5, June 4, September 3, and October 22, 1791.) As stated above with regard to the relationship between revolution and anger, the French Revolution also provided a number of reasons to become angry: about the need to leave, about those who left, about those who forced others to leave, and so forth. In February 1791 and in July of the same year the National Assembly debated emigration. Because the aunts of King Louis XVI had recently left for Rome, the fear of a plot animated the discussion. Hence it was the king himself who finally crystallized the discussion about the role of the emigrants as a possible dagger against the revolution from abroad.
When Louis XVI tried to escape from France and was arrested in Varennes on June 20, 1791, the assembly decided to prohibit emigration. A law was agreed upon in August 1791 and those who had left the country already were punished by taxes three times higher than the norm (Boroumand, 2000). A month later, however, the freedom to emigrate was restored when the members agreed that such a law would be contrary to the existing constitution. The discussion continued, and emigration again became a matter of high importance when the revolution further radicalized. The king was against a restriction with regard to the right of emigration, but was forced to sign a law that did exactly that in January 1792. Another step in April 1792 allowed the government to confiscate the property of those who had already left the country. Yet while emigration was always considered by the radicals to be dangerous for the revolution, it never actually was.
Those people who had left were “demographically inconsequential, socially disparate, ideologically divided, and militarily weak” (Boroumand, 2000, p. 68). They might have been angry about their fate, but since the emigration took place in several waves, the emigration movement was never politically and socially united enough to pose a threat against Paris.3 The emigrant groups and their destinations were far too different to reconquer France with a united front.
The first wave of emigrants consisted mainly of French noblemen who feared for their lives. No doubt they were angry about their material losses and their new lives in a foreign environment far from home. These were reasons for them to try to get into contact with the noblemen of their new homes to persuade them to invade France and re-establish the old order (Darricau-Lugat, 2001, p. 232). Of the around 150,000 emigrants (Greer, 1966, p. 18), however, the noblemen never comprised the largest group, and we would do better to understand French emigration in the aftermath of the revolution as a heterogeneous movement. Different levels of fear forced different people to leave the country at different points of the revolutionary cycle (Greer, 1966, p. 3). The emigration lists that were produced by the revolutionary officials were not always accurate, but the noble “fugitives from the burning chateaux” (Greer, 1966, p. 22) were just one group. There were also provinces in France from which a comparatively high number of people emigrated, such as Burgundy, Franche-Comté, Dauphiné, and Languedoc.
As the revolutionary radicalism increased, so did the number of refugees from the terreur in France. Those noblemen who had already left certainly stimulated further emigration because they tried to persuade their friends and relatives to leave the country as well. After the king’s attempt to escape and his arrest in Varennes, many of the noble officers of the time also fled. Just six weeks after the events, around 6,000 officers, three-quarters of the French officer corps, had reached foreign soil (Greer, 1966, p. 26). The open spots would be later filled by young ambitious officers such as Napoleon Bonaparte, who was more than grateful for the chance the revolution had provided him to pursue his own aims of promotion. A law was signed on November 9, 1791, that demanded the return of all emigrants, under penalty of death for those who refused. The date by which the emigrants had to return was January 1, 1792, but the actual events made most of those who had left stay longer outside France.
Another group that left the country during the revolutionary cycle was those who served the church. Between 1792 and 1795, 5,000 people emigrated from France, most of them forced to do so by their unwillingness to swear loyalty to the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, established in 1790 (Hill, 2004). The secularization of the former church land was acceptable to many members of the clergy, but when the new constitution and the oath came into play, many church representatives considered it to be a danger for the traditional clerical privileges. Consequently, many of them left the country, especially for the British Isles (Burke, 1792, as cited in Greer, 1966). When the Jacobins intensified their rule by using violence as a political tool, the masses also started to leave France—when the revolution began to feed on its own children. Donald Greer was right when he claimed that “No social group was immune to panic” (1966, p. 35), but some panicked earlier than others. Those who had the most to lose were those who left first. The noblemen were followed by the clerics, leaving the wealthy members of the former Third Estate and the commons, who might have accepted the revolution at first, but were driven into exile when they recognized the danger.
In exile those different groups met again. They were angry about the Jacobins and the revolution, angry about their personal loss, and even angry about their fellow emigrants, who might have left earlier or wealthier, or for other reasons. Whereas some had supported the revolution but were forced out by radicalization, others might have detested all the events since 1789, not accepting the late-coming emigrants as equals. The different centers of French emigration consequently became melting pots of different French ideas composed of emigrants of different migration waves in the years after 1789.
The emigration centers in Europe and North America were as disparate as the ideas they contained. Brussels, London, and Hamburg became centers of French exiles, attracted by the urban centers and their infrastructure (Baret, 1935). The counter revolution and its supporters tried to establish a network of support for those who would leave France in the future, in order to influence the nobility abroad to intervene for the sake of the conservative powers in Paris, and to survive as comfortably as possible. However, political hesitation, distance from the homeland, and the cultural differences they faced created several forms of anger. Although Hamburg, for example, was an urban center at the time, it was no Paris (Greer, 1966). The emigrants were consequently disappointed. Hence, another geographical location arose for possible French exile, which transpired to be the most disappointing: the United States (Childs, 1940).
In France the first eruption of the anger of the revolution was directed against the aristocrats, because the members of this class were “the embodiment of everything that was oppressive, unjust, and humiliating in the order of things that was coming to an end, [and they] merited nothing better than hanging, that is, death and dishonor” (Hasanyi, 2010, p. 4). The need to escape death, especially among those who were wealthy, fulfills all the preconditions of exile from a more global perspective. The United States had “offered Europe an ideal chance to export all its virtues and none of its vices” (Hasanyi, 2010, p. 41). There was, consequently, a positive image of the United States in France, and the moderate intellectuals who left as a consequence of fear thought it apt to be a “laboratory for social and political experiments” (Hasanyi, 2010, p. 41). A few years before the revolution, Benjamin Franklin (1784) had written a guide for those interested in immigrating to the United States, and this had been well received. He pointed out that “all who became Americans, acquired precisely the qualities hailed as exemplary by enlightened opinion in France” (Hasanyi, 2010, p. 43). Everyone in France who was looking for democratic and constitutional ideals was attracted by the United States. Moderate and enlightened aristocrats, therefore, tried to leave for the New World to escape the dangers of the old.
The French Revolution was seen as a possibility to create a new form of government. Camille Desmoulins demanded “Neither a despotic republic, nor an aristocratic republic, nor a federative republic … We want something unknown until this day” (Aulard, 1901, p. 81). However, instead, it created fear, hate, violence, and anger. The United States was, therefore, an alternative means to achieve the original aims of the revolution that had been corrupted by the radical elements, that is, the Jacobins. The Scioto-Valley Company was founded and tried to buy land in the Ohio River valley, where French emigrants would be offered the possibility to find a new home abroad. Officers of the French army were attracted by the company and took a leave of absence to immigrate to the New World. Other emigrant groups followed, but almost all of them would be disappointed. Far from an enlightened utopia, they found a life that was circumscribed by the hardships of rural work, and battles with the Native Americans who were already living in the new settlement. Anger must have been the natural consequence. Most of the French settler colonists consequently “lost heart and deserted … in the face of these unexpected hardships” (Hasanyi, 2010, p. 49).
Other exile experiences were not as disastrous as the one in the United States. Britain provided a better environment for the French nobility, especially because London was internationally well connected and a financial center of the world. It, therefore, could offer all the pleasures a French nobleman could demand. However, the struggle of the exiles was not only related to the place of exile, but also those who shared the fate of emigration. The fact that the emigrants left France in several waves also indicates a variation in political ideas. Doina Pasca Hasanyi points out that “Political defeat, followed by persecutions at the hands of the Jacobin government, lack of money, insecurity, and anxiety over the fate of family members left behind, could have very well embittered the most gracious and stoic nobleman on the run” (Hasanyi, 2010, p. 51). However, some of these men left later than others because they had believed in the ideals of the revolution. When the different political ideas now met in exile, they could elicit anger from within the heterogeneous exile group. The emigrants of the second wave would, therefore, find a situation where they were under pressure both from France and the already existing exile community. Consequently, “feelings of outrage and disappointment” (Hasanyi, 2010, p. 52) must have been common in such an environment.
The French Revolution was an event that caused tremendous changes to the course of human history, but it was also a force that created several forms of anger within and outside of France, within the French population, among the exiles themselves, and in their new environment. The French Revolution is far from the only event in world history that caused such a development. At the end of the “long nineteenth century,” the Russian Revolution had similar effects that should be examined in detail.
The Russian Revolution
The Russian Revolution is not only an essential part of the history of the First World War; it also had an impact on the history of 20th century as a whole. Like the French Revolution before, it caused massive emigration; between 1918 and 1921, around one million people left Russia (Johnston, 1988, p. 3). The interrelationship between the revolution and a large exodus of another heterogeneous emigration group between 1918 is clear. Despite the fact that the group of exiles was usually depicted following a stereotype of a former rich aristocrat who is now struggling with his life in exile,4 the group itself was as heterogeneous as in the French case. In the crisis after World War I, a Russian refugee was defined as “any person of Russian origin who does not enjoy, or who no longer enjoys, the protection of the Government of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and who has not acquired another nationality” (Johnston, 1988, p. 4). A large number of exiles resulted from the victory of the Bolsheviks in Russia. Consequently, the “Russian Civil War exiles represented the defeated, the first of the twentieth-century Europe’s lost causes” (Johnston, 1988, p. 4).
Before Wrangel’s army collapsed at the end of the Civil War and, therefore, destroyed all hope for a return to pre-revolutionary conditions in the near future, those in fear of the new regime left Russia by the thousands. However, the Russian emigrants also saw their exile as a temporary one, because the “political and cultural leaders who got away tended to see themselves, in the early years at least, as constituting a ‘Russia Abroad’ (zarubezhnaia Rossiia), the temporary guardians of their country’s interests until the Bolshevik perversion had run its brief, murderous course” (Johnston, 1988, p. 5). They would be disappointed. The exile would last much longer than they thought.
Anger was a natural consequence, especially when the emigrants recognized that they had no way of returning home. Against their wishes, they had to get accustomed to their new situation abroad, even though they were unwilling to integrate and sought to keep their Russian heritage alive, hoping for a possible return to Russian soil in the future. Although large emigration communities were established, as in Paris, where 120,000 emigrants were heading, the majority of those who fled remain unknown, because they were dealing with the “sheer task of surviving” (Johnston, 1988, p. 6). Because many intellectuals left Russia after the revolution, we have plenty of descriptions of the hardships of emigration. Vladimir Nabokov later described the exodus of Russia’s intelligentsia in terms heavy with meaning: “The tremendous outflow of intellectuals that formed such a prominent part of the general exodus from Soviet Russia in the first years of the Bolshevist Revolution seems today like the wanderings of some mythical tribe whose bird-signs and moon-signs I must now retrieve from the desert dust” (Nabokov, 1963, p. 8).
The newly founded League of Nations determined the status of those who had emigrated from Russia as “citizens without fatherland” and, in the Western diaspora, the former Russian citizens assimilated pretty quickly (Kotenev, 1934, p. 563). However, the group itself was as heterogeneous as the emigrants of the French Revolution, leading to anger between the different parts of Russian emigration in exile as well.5
The liberal Kadets, as the members of the Constitutional Democratic Party were called, were one part of the Russian emigration wave. After the revolution, their network spread among London, Paris, Berlin, and Constantinople, where leading members had found shelter from the new Russian regime (Weiss, 2001, p. 510). These members were able to establish a personal network sufficient for them to partially influence politics in their new host countries. In Germany, this group was especially active.6 In Berlin, they founded the daily newspaper Rul in 1920, and Russian intellectuals established the Russkij klub in March 1921 (Weiss, 2001). The paper had between 10,000 and 20,000 readers in Europe and the new club provided the Russian intelligentsia with a way to stay in regular contact. When Paris took over the role of the most important Russian emigration center in the late 1920s, the activities in Berlin decreased, but the network of the Kadets still remained active.
Another exile group was the leading Mensheviks, who left Russia in high numbers as soon as the Bolsheviks established their rule and began to extinguish their political enemies. Until 1940, the Mensheviks still acted as a party from exile, especially in the council meetings of the Labour and Socialist International parties. The Mensheviks were bonded by their “social status as intelligents in a working-class party,” although that led to antagonism from other elements of the early revolution in exile, who saw them as not pure enough to act on behalf of proletarian interests (Liebich, 1995, p. 6). André Liebich sums up the fate of the Mensheviks in exile pretty well when he states that:
As Jews, as socialists, and as a defeated party, the Mensheviks were indeed estranged from Russia, past and present. Thanks to their discipline, their resourcefulness, and their ideological faith they succeeded more easily than others in making themselves at home among foreigners. The Mensheviks’ survival as a coherent group in exile enabled them to render service to Russia even after their defeat. (Liebich, 1995, p. 13)
The third, larger, exile group consisted of former members of Wrangel’s White Army. Although the general demanded the loyalty of all Russian emigrants, he could really rely only on his army (Raeff, 1990, p. 34). This army was not dissolved when it had to leave Russia after the collapse. Even international intervention could not stop the victory of the Bolshevik army against its internal enemies, which is why Wrangel, accompanied by what was left of his force, needed to go into exile as well. The White Army may have been reduced in size, but it still existed abroad until 1927 (Robinson, 2005, p. 720). Once they were abroad, a struggle began between the Zemgor (Russian Zemstvo and Towns Relief Committee) and Wrangel for humanitarian aid, as the Zemgor was interested in providing equal support to all Russian émigrés while Wrangel wanted to use the available resources exclusively for his military personnel (Robinson, 2005, p. 723).
The League of Nations reacted to this struggle by creating the position of a High Commissioner for Refugees, and appointing Fridtjof Nansen to the role. Nansen hoped to solve the refugee crisis by repatriation of the Russian emigrants to Russia, something Wrangel criticized because he did not favor repatriation without a return to the political status quo ante of the Russian Revolution. Anger was the consequence, and the heterogeneity of the exiled Russians assisted the nascent Soviet Union, which had nothing to fear from a disunited refugee movement abroad. The only successful cooperation between the army and Zemgor was achieved with regard to the integration of large parts of the Russian White Army into the armies of Bulgaria and Yugoslavia in 1921. This particular story of the cooperation between the different exile organizations “was a very rare case of everybody pulling together in the same direction, and it brought positive results, enabling the transfer of elements of the Russian Army to Yugoslavia to take place smoothly and without undue complications” (Robinson, 2005, p. 730). As in the case of the French emigration after 1789, we have seen that the Russian emigration consisted of different, sometimes antagonistic elements that in most cases were not able to cooperate, sometimes because of anger. The situations in which the emigration movement as a whole found itself was as diverse as the geographical destinations of the Russian émigrés.
On November 14, 1920, a fleet of Russian ships with around 150,000 Russian refugees crossed the Black Sea from Sebastopol to Constantinople. They were desperate: “ahead, unperceived, loomed a life of exile and an exile’s eternal ‘what ifs’ and ‘if onlys.’ ” (Johnston, 1988, p. 9). With the final victory of the Bolsheviks, more and more refugees would follow their lead. The sheer number of refugees “presented the continent with human tragedy on a colossal scale” (Johnston, 1988, p. 10) and, therefore, caused anger on both sides. At the beginning most of the refugees who had crossed the Black Sea were brought to refugee camps in Constantinople or the Gallipoli Peninsula—something that might remind us of the current refugee crisis in Europe. As today, the living conditions in those camps were anything but pleasant and, thus, the levels of anger naturally increased. And while the refugees were suffering these conditions, the rest of Europe was discussing what to do. Like today, “it was just the sort of international emergency calculated to test the willingness of member states to match with deeds the promises made in setting up the League of Nations” (Johnston, 1988, p. 12). A return to the Soviet Union was impossible without risking one’s life, but the actual situation in the rest of Europe was no cause for hope. Anger was natural, especially because the Russian emigrants had lost everything at home and were facing an insecure future. The approximately 800,000 Russians in Europe at the end of the 1920s would finally find new homes in all its countries. Not a few also left for the United States to start a new life there.
In the early 1920s, Berlin became a center of Russian exiles where, as described above, they found new ways of communication with the exile groups in other parts of Europe. Later in the 1920s, the center of Russian emigration in Europe moved to Paris, which would play a “sixteen-year long role as brain and heart of the Russian exile world” (Johnston, 1988, p. 15). Another European city that was famous for the presence of Russian academics and intellectuals after the events of the Russian Revolution was Prague, which would become known as the “Russian Oxford” (Johnson, 2007, p. 372). The new government of Czechoslovakia, led by President Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, was not entirely altruistic in accepting the large number of Russian exiles. Masaryk believed that Bolshevism would soon collapse and hoped to inculcate pro-Czechoslovakian attitudes among the new leaders who had found shelter in his country. A democratic Russia would be a Czechoslovakian construct and would therefore have no choice but to support the future plans of Prague (Johnson, 2007, pp. 377–381). Sam Johnson brought this interrelationship into focus when he stated that the “Czechoslovak government felt itself incumbent to make practical preparations for the future Russia. The emigration, albeit a human tragedy, could be utilised for the advantage of Russia and the world” (Johnson, 2007, p. 382). The same author described the agricultural and economic measures that were taken to prepare for this future dependence:
Russian peasants were to be schooled in Czechoslovakia’s advanced agricultural technology, new knowledge that would instigate unheard-of progress in the Russian countryside. There was a final aim in Czechoslovakia’s policy towards peasant refugees. In directly invigorating Russian agriculture and dragging it out of its medieval past, Czechoslovakia would reap further future benefits by ensuring economic links between the two states. (Johnson, 2007, p. 383)
Another country that had an interest in Russian emigration was Yugoslavia, where the remaining parts of Wrangel’s army—alongside those that went to Bulgaria—would be incorporated in the postwar military of King Alexander. The king had also been in favor of the conservative values of Russia as they were presented by many refugees after the civil war (Johnston, 1988, p. 14; Raeff, 1990, pp. 20–21). The integration of the emigrants posed no problems, as linguistic and cultural similarities were greater than in other parts of the world. The positive attitude of the government with regard to integration also provided the Russian exiles with a new home that received them positively, even if it was still considered a temporary one. Other parts of the world were much more hostile to the Russian refugees, and provoked anger accordingly.
In China—to be more specific, the Manchurian town of Harbin—the Russians had much more reason to become angry. Those who had to flee from the Eastern parts of Russia used the Manchurian borderland as a means to escape the reach of the Bolshevik prosecutors. Despite having reached a safe environment, the refugees now faced new problems. The Chinese government treated the Russians as aliens, leaving them without any legal rights (Kotenev, 1934, p. 564; Raeff, 1990, pp. 22–23). Geographically separated from the other spheres of Russian exile, they were also not able to establish steady contact and an exchange of ideas with the other emigration centers in Europe or the United States. Living in a foreign and rather hostile environment, their anger must have been much stronger than in European Russia.
All in all the Russian emigrants, as the French ones before them, considered their exile to be temporary. They were not only exiles, but they were also refugees who had been forced to leave their home country. Although this already might have led to anger, the situation in the new environment and the treatment of the Russian emigrants played a key role in stimulating anger, or at least preventing already existent anger from dissipating. The hope for a swift return to Russia decreased step by step, and the fear of being de-Russified in the future increased. The Russian emigrants tried hard to keep their heritage alive, still dreaming of a Russia that could recover from Bolshevist rule. As has been shown, the Russian exiles were as heterogeneous as the French exiles before them. Religious, ethnic, intellectual, and economic differences led to tension among the different elements of the emigrants’ community, stimulating anger within it. As in the French case, it might have been this disunity that made united action against the revolutionary government impossible. But angry or not, at some point the emigrants simply had to accept their fate.
Conclusion
Refugees in the aftermath of a revolution need “massive help from foreign rescue organizations” (Raeff, 1990, p. 18). European politicians today could learn a lot with regard to the current refugee crisis by considering the Russian and French revolutions. First of all, anger is always associated with any form of revolution, showing itself in the different phases of the revolutionary circle. Although anger was a reason for the outbreak of the revolutions itself, in the course of events it reappeared in several forms and levels. The fact that the refugees had to leave their possessions is definitely an aspect that created anger. The second source of anger relates to their new places of shelter; but if the foreign environment allows the forced emigrants to continue their lives and professions, it may rather quickly be accepted as a new home, and anger might not become a problem.
In contrast, an environment that is hostile to refugees will create anger on both sides, among the refugees as well as within the native population in the emigrants’ new sphere of life. The treatment in refugee camps especially caused tension between those who lost everything and those who were not willing to dare to provide the former group with hope for the future. Finally, a particular form of anger inside the emigration movements can be traced. Based on the timing of their exodus, the different exile groups accused each other of political antagonism, or simply competed for the limited resources available in the new environment. The pressure put on the exile community by the host governments in such a situation could also lead to anger against those who, solely by their existence, might worsen the treatment of an already existing emigrant group.
To conclude: Anger is always a cause, component, and consequence of revolutions. It is closely connected to emigration, and different forms of anger evolve therein in relation to a range of factors faced by emigrants. Depending on how host governments manage these factors, levels of anger can be mitigated or exacerbated. What we have to consider with regard to the actual refugee crisis in Europe today are ways to decrease the anger level in the exiled communities to better integrate them and to find ways to make them feel more welcome in our modern, multicultural, and hopefully tolerant societies. In so doing, we would be well advised to draw lessons from successful strategies at anger containment from former revolutions and refugee crises.
Notes
1. Kemp and Strongman (1995, p. 409) name the following reasons for “antecedents of anger: the failure of friends, the failure of strangers, inappropriate rewards, the failure of relatives, inconvenience, and the failure to reach goals.” In the particular context of personal relationships, they point to “unjust treatment, the violation of norms, and damage to property.”
2. An example would be the works that were published in the journal Révolutions de Paris (1789–1793 [1794]).
3. On the different political positions of the emigrants, see Higonnet (1981, pp. 293–295).
4. This image was a construction of the 1920s and was expressed in works such as that of Joseph Kessel (1927).
5. Johnston (1988, p. 11) falsely claimed that the heterogeneity of the Russian emigrants was different in contrast to the French emigration movement.
6. For a survey on Russian emigrants in Germany, see Karl Schlögel (1999).
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