ROMSO Cyprus Knowledge Base

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The White Cossacks in the Balkans are servicemen of the Cossack troops and members of their families, who during the Civil War in Russia and after it settled in the countries of the Balkan Peninsula.

Emigration and resettlement to the Balkans

Situation before mass resettlement

The evacuation of whites from Crimea was the last and most massive exodus of the population from the South of Russia. It has completed almost two years of organized emigration from Russia of a significant number of people. In the course of three major waves of resettlement and formed a Russian group of immigrants in the Balkans, a significant part of which was the Cossacks. This process began in April 1919 after the defeat and retreat of the French interventionists, who together with the anti-Bolshevik Russian armies fought against the Bolsheviks during the Civil War. The second wave of emigrants appeared in the Balkans less than a year later, during January-March 1920, after the defeat of the Armed Forces of the South of Russia under the command of A. I. Denikin. The third wave of migration followed the defeat of the Russian army of Baron P. N. Wrangel and the evacuation of the Crimean ports in November 1920. All other refugee movements in the Balkans were internal migrations. However, even after this time, small groups of Russian emigrants came to the Balkan countries, but can no longer be classified as organized mass waves.

It should be noted that until the spring of 1919, Russian citizens lived on the territory of the Balkan Peninsula. These include:
Soldiers of the Russian Imperial Army. There were many Cossacks among them.
Former diplomats of the Russian Empire. It was on their shoulders that the burden of protecting the interests of refugees fell before the governments of the Balkan countries.
Russian soldiers who fought on the Salonika and Romanian fronts.
The only refugees who left Russia after the events of October 1917.

The exact number of representatives of all four groups is unknown. Most of them returned to their homeland after the Civil War, some moved to other European countries. In 1918, there were about 4,000–5,000 people in the Kingdom of the CHS. However, only a small part of them remained in the kingdom, so there is no need to talk about the formation of a full-fledged Russian diaspora in this country. There were several reasons for this. Many former prisoners of war returned to Russia after World War I. Second, after the Revolution and the Civil War, those who decided to emigrate from Russia preferred to settle in the more stable, rich and economically developed countries of Europe and the United States. Formed in December 1918, the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes did not have a high standard of living, and emigrants left it in search of a better life in Western Europe and North America.

The first wave of immigrants

Mass resettlement from Russia began even before the evacuation of Wrangel's army. The first large group of refugees numbering from 15 to 20 thousand people left Russia during the evacuation of Odessa in April 1919.