Drugaia Rossiia is a diverse collection of previously published and new articles about the “other Russia,” the Russian emigration in the twentieth century. Despite the expansive title, only one short introductory chapter, a general history of the emigration, presents a broad view of this topic. Oleg Budnitskii instead uses this volume to make available sundry items, mostly from research in US archives. This book is therefore not a monograph with a clear narrative or overarching conceptual framework but a repository of primary sources and focused studies of specific individuals and themes. Although well written, accessible, and insightful, it will be most useful for readers interested in such topics and not those who seek a broad analysis of the emigration.
The book is divided into topical groupings containing short, focused chapters filled with Budnitskii's straightforward prose and a significant amount of primary source and archival documents. The first grouping treats Vasilii A. Maklakov and Boris A. Bakhmetev (Bakhmeteff), important figures from the stranded imperial diplomatic corps who helped organize the lives of Russian émigrés in Europe and the US after the revolution. The second section describes how tsarist financial assets were organized to support the various émigré institutions and operations. Of special note here is Budnitskii's discussion of the “Vrangel silver,” Petrogradskaia Ssudnaia Kazna (Petrograd Loan Treasury) holdings that ended up in Serbia. A third set of chapters contains material on the search for an “exit,” that is, émigré plans for a post-Bolshevik Russia. These are likewise highly focused, with chapters on Vladimir L. Burtsev, the anti-Bolshevik terrorist Bratstvo Russkoi Pravdy (Brotherhood of Russian Truth, or BRP), and a selection of correspondence between Maklakov and Oscar O. Gruzenberg. There are several chapters on the Second World War, a theme that Budnitskii considers “one of the most important topics of the volume” (11). A grab bag of miscellany rounds out the last hundred pages.
Budnitskii has written Drugaia Rossiia for “anyone interested in Russian history and culture” (11), but the book remains oddly narrow despite its 632-page bulk and grand title. The section topics, for example, are not linked by analysis but serve mostly as devices to arrange often-disparate sources, and those sources reflect the ideas of very familiar notable personalities who were leading lights of the emigration. There is little analysis of the broader institutions, political groups, and social aspects of the emigration or their broader relationships with host nations or the Soviet regime, both of which were important. What the book does offer, in the end, is unique access to many interesting archival texts and Budnitskii's engaging analysis.
A significant portion of the book consists of the publication of primary sources, many from the Hoover archive in Stanford, California. Especially useful for interested scholars and appealing to general readers will be the extensive correspondence between various émigré personalities, including Burtsev, Maklakov, Gruzenberg, Boris L. Gershun, Nina N. Berberova, and Lidiia O. Dan, among others. The book contains an extensive collection, for example, of letters between the energetic publicist Burtsev and a who's who of émigré public figures: Anton I. Denikin, Ivan A. Bunin, Leonid N. Andreev, Piotr N. Vrangel΄, and Ekaterina D. Kuskova. There are twenty pages of photographs; some are interesting, but many seem unconnected to the text.
