Émigré Dystopias

Abstract

This chapter examines the collapse of émigré utopias in the 1890s and 1900s. Beginning in the 1870s, small groups of tsarist apologists active abroad—both Russians and Europeans—mobilized to change continental society’s generally positive views of Russians. By the 1880s, the Russian secret police, or Okhrana, joined this effort, engaging in informal public relations campaigns as well as violent provocations intended to divide émigrés and to undermine their reputations. By about 1890, these campaigns had succeeded in transforming the discrete concerns that had emerged about Russian exiles in Europe into a cohesive narrative that portrayed the Russians as terrorists, criminals, and moral reprobates. The ensuing wave of hostility directed at exiles led to the rapid unraveling of émigré rights across the continent.