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Russian Émigré Funds in Switzerland, 1916: An Okhrana Report

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 January 2013

Alfred Erich Senn
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When war came to Europe in August 1914, several thousand Russians were caught by surprise in Switzerland, and their number increased with the influx of refugees from Austria and Germany. Cut off from their homeland and temporarily unable to exchange their money, they faced great hardship. Self-help societies sprang up everywhere; some groups experimented with organizing cheap or free kitchens. Swiss newspapers continually carried notices of benefit concerts or literary evenings. The Russian mission in Bern offered assistance, and the degree of cooperation which briefly sprang up between Russian émigré organizations and the Russian legation was subsequently to prove an embarrassment for both sides.

Type
Documents
Information
International Review of Social History , Volume 13 , Issue 1 , April 1968 , pp. 76 - 84
Copyright
Copyright © Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis 1968

References

page 76 note 1 According to the Swiss census of 1910, there were 4607 residents of Switzerland whose native language was Russian, and another 2047 listed Polish as their native tongue. In all, 8458 persons were listed as coming from European Russia, of whom 3933 were men and 4525 women. See Die Ergebnisse der eidgenossi-schen Volkszählung vom 1. Dezember 1910 (Schweizerische Statistik, 195. Lieferung), I (Bern, 1915), pp. 65, 74.

page 76 note 2 Cf. Trotskii, L., Voina i revoliutsiia (Moscow, 1923), I, p. 60.Google Scholar

page 76 note 3 Cf. the archives of the Liga schweizerischer Hilfsvereine für russische Gefan-gene und Verbannte, IISG, Amsterdam.

page 76 note 4 Szittya, Emil, Das Kuriositäten-Kabinett (Konstanz, 1923), p. 200.Google Scholar

page 76 note 5 Archives, Okhrana, Hoover Institution, Stanford, California, XVIIa, f. 5.Google Scholar The original is in Russian. The Okhrana Archives, obtained by the Hoover Institution in 1927, were opened to the public in 1964.

page 77 note 1 Lebidova, S. M. and Pavlotskaia, S. A., Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaia (Leningrad, 1962), pp. 114–16.Google Scholar See also Krupskaya, N. K., Reminiscences of Lenin (Moscow, 1959), pp. 333–34.Google Scholar

page 77 note 2 See Agafonov, Valerian Konstantinovich, Zagranichnaia okhranka (Petrograd, 1918), pp. 309, 381.Google Scholar

page 77 note 3 Gemeindegesetz, (Kanton Zürich) betreffend das Gemeindewesen vom 27. Juni 1875, Zürich, Staatsarchiv, III Pa 222.Google Scholar

page 78 note 1 See the record of Lenin's Toleranz in Zürich, No 2242, granted on May 22, 1916, in Zürich, Stadtarchiv, Abt. V, Eb No 439 (Toleranz). Lenin's bond was posted by Stadtrat O. Lang and Fritz Platten.

page 78 note 2 See the dossiers on Axelrod and Lenin in Bern, Bundesarchiv, E 4320, Polizei-dienst (1889–1920), Bände 241, 267. These files, it should be noted, are remarkably brief, testifying to the limited activity of the Swiss Federal Fremdenpolizei.

page 78 note 3 The translation of the document intends to reproduce as carefully as possible the style – sometimes unpolished, sometimes chancellary-like – of the original, which accounts for any awkwardness in the English text.

page 78 note 4 Most of the reports mentioned can be found in the Okhrana Archive, Xiiib (1).

page 79 note 1 On Kornblum, cf. Istoricheskii Arkhiv, 1959, No 3, p. 42.

page 79 note 2 On Kristi, cf. Pis'ma P. B. Aksel'roda i Yu. O. Martova (Berlin, 1924), p. 124. On Bukhgolts, , or Buchholz, Wilhelm, cf. Brachmann, Botho, Russische Sozial-demokraten in Berlin 1895–1914 (Berlin, 1962).Google Scholar

page 79 note 3 On Abramovich, cf. Lenin, , Poln. Sobr. Soch., izd. 5-oe, Vol. 49 (Moscow, 1964), p. 613.Google Scholar

page 79 note 4 On Olga Ravich, who was the wife of V. A. Karpinsky, the librarian of the Geneva Bolshevik group, see ibid., p. 659.

page 79 note 6 Vperëd was a journal published in Geneva during the war by A. V. Luna-charskii. See Ostroukhova, K., “Gruppa ‘Vpered’ (1909–1917)”, in: Proletarskaia Revoliutsiia, 1925, No 1 (36), 217.Google Scholar On Divilkovskii, cf. Tiutiukin, S. V., “Leninskie referaty o voine (osen' 1914)”, in: Istoriia SSSR, 1967, No 2, p. 37.Google Scholar

page 80 note 1 “Social patriots” were organized at this time around the newspaper Prizyv, published in Paris.

page 80 note 2 On Kon, see Gankin, Olga Hess and Fisher, H. H., The Bolsheviks and the World War (Stanford, 1960), p. 789.Google Scholar

page 81 note 1 Foreign Socialists in Zürich could belong to the Swiss Social Democratic Party through membership in such organizations as the Eintracht Society.

page 81 note 2 Mensheviks formerly gathered around Plekhanov. The Partiitsy split on the war issue in defensists and internationalists.

page 83 note 1 This report was not found in the Okhrana archive.