"Not so long ago, these people lived a full and independent working life. They had the right to be just like us - that is, indolent, rude,and ungrateful. Now they have lost this prerogative; their poverty and helplessness oblige them to be meek and grateful, to smile at people they don't like, to answer each and every question, without the right of asking questions in turn, to submit to the authority of people they don't respect and have no wish to know, to accept disadvantageous terms from anyone who seeks to exploit their mishaps and destitution." This quote from p. 207 eloquently sums the "soul" of the refugee, in Russia a century ago or the present second.
Professor Gatrell's study of WW I refugees in the Russian Empire is groundbreaking social history; for as marginal populations refugees were written out of the mainstream as well. Gatrell rediscovers them, their voice, and their hidden power to act upon their environment as harshly as it buffeted them. Gatrell is careful not to stereotype the refugee: sharply divided by class, ethnicity, and politics, they nevertheless did share common attributes as DPs. These commonalities did not translate into a broader refugee consciousness - Poles and Jews rarely saw eye to eye, even if displaced from the same town. Gattrell does not equate refugee dislocation with revolution as such; but there's no doubt that the refugees were symptomatic of the general social unraveling of the old empire, and contributed indirectly at least to the malaise that overcame it. For many refugees, their participation in history was of course more than indirect: millions of persons with nothing left to lose because they'd lost it all were often willing to go for broke, to complete the destruction of a half-rubbled social order. Add to these the numerous POWs "liberated" by the civil war, and we can see how Russia's rootless stratum nearly submerged its structure.
This does raise other questions: to what extent did authoritarianism become "necessary" to govern such a rootless population? Recalling Stalin's paranoia over "rootless cosmopolitans," one must wonder how his memories of this period shaped his own restructuring of Russian society. The processes of revolution and civil war would add to this refugee population, of course: perhaps, in some places, old refugees found a niche in a new society as they displaced the former "settled people" who'd so scorned them. There is also the issue of how alienation from the new regime produced a population of "spiritual refugees," even if they stayed put where they'd always been. Perhaps those who could flee seemed the "lucky" ones.
On a personal note: my wife's family are descended from Armenian refugees fleeing eastern Turkey in 1915. They too were among the "lucky": deported to Central Asia, they joined the Armenian community of Samarkand in what is now Uzbekistan. As such they were more easily integrated into broader Soviet culture, considering themselves Armenian by official nationality - including a taste for Ararat cognac - but completely Russian-speaking at home. This integration into new environments closed the door to historical memory: unlike "official" immigrants, few refugee descendants seem to want to recall lost villages or habitats. The shame of flight was buried in reconstructed identities and renewed hopes.
ISBN-13:
978-0253336446
ISBN-10:
0253336449
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