Authors

Discussion

For decades, Russian political exiles living in the United Kingdom had engaged in a productive transnational exchange with their homeland. Through smuggling networks that dotted the continent, and sympathetic allies in cities, towns and villages across thousands of kilometers, Russian émigrés had effectively challenged the Tsarist government’s attempt to isolate them from the Russian empire and those subjects supporting the cause of revolution. But as the world went to war in August of 1914, transnational exchanges became extraordinarily more difficult. Radical collaborators became enemy aliens and battlefields made transnational movement perilous. This was disappointingly clear once the long-awaited Russian revolution materialized in February 1917. Desperate to return home to take part in the political transformation to which they had dedicated their lives, Russian émigrés not only had to negotiate security concerns but also the political qualms of the Entente governments who realized the tumultuous potential of returning radical refugees. 

This paper explores the diplomatic negotiations and public appeals that preceded the repatriation of Russian refugees in the final stages of the First World War. Through a focus on the experience of individual political exiles, this paper examines how broad concepts of the Russian revolutionary movement, as well as military demands and necessity, affected the personal experience of men and women desperate to return to Russia as their home country stood on the precipice of a new age.