Russia, Ukraine and the forgotten exiles of the 1920s

At the end of 1920, a mass exodus of Russians from their homeland after the Russian civil war created a humanitarian catastrophe. ‘Never in the history of Europe has a political cataclysm torn such huge numbers of people from their mother country and their homes’ remarked émigré journalist Ariadna Tyrkova Willams. In the West there were widespread concerns about how European nations would cope with the massive new influx of refugees.

Today, a century later, the war in Ukraine has prompted an equivalent number of politically disaffected Russians to leave their country – in barely half that time.

History seems to be repeating itself. And the great exodus of Russians in 1920 holds many parallels for the exiles of today – both from Russia and Ukraine – who will be facing the similar trauma of leaving their country behind.

Those who could manage to get out in the first days of the Bolshevik revolution were mainly members of the aristocracy.