Is Russia a Refugee Asylum?

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

If rivers of blood were spilled in Russia throughout its long-suffering history, then, perhaps, the Russians, saving their lives, somehow tried to escape from all the horrors? Emigrated to quieter and less violent states?

So, the Russians, indeed, settled. They left the center of the country, and in rather large numbers, but for some reason not to humane Europe, but to uninhabited Siberia, the cold North and the wild, dangerous South. The peasants, I believe, were dark and downtrodden people, they did not understand geography. But more or less enlightened nobility …

Maybe it was breaking into the West, asking for "political asylum", as it was later called? No, somehow not very much. Of course, there were people like Prince Kurbsky, who fled to the Poles, or the clerk of the Ambassadorial Prikaz Grigory Kotoshikhin, who remained in Sweden. But these are political refugees, and there have always been such refugees in all countries. After the English Revolution, tens of thousands of royal supporters lived in France. After the French Revolution of 1789-1793, the number of political emigrants exceeded 200,000.

Rather, one should be surprised that there were almost no political emigrants from Russia until the 20th century.

But political emigrants are very few, rather the exception than the rule. Was there a massive departure from Russia? Did not have…

Was there a movement in the opposite direction?

It was, and still what!

From Europe to Russia

When people think of Russian serfdom, they often say that slavery is "in the blood" of Russians. Every time a European journalist writes about Ivan the Terrible, they imply that cruelty is also inherent in us from time immemorial.

But most of its history, Russia has lived at least in relative peace. In the sense that, of course, wars were fought, but on the periphery of the country or outside of it. And for the most part of the territory of Russia, enemy armies did not go. Even the war with Napoleon went on a narrow strip of 200 kilometers from west to east. Outside the "strip", normal daily life continued. Russia waged, as a rule, not aggressive, but defensive wars.

European states were constantly at war with each other. England was at war with its neighbors - France, Ireland, and Scotland. France - with both Spain and England. The German principalities fought among themselves, and the territory of Germany, since the Thirty Years' War, has become the arena of European wars. Moreover, wars were fought throughout France, Spain, Germany.

Intrastate European ethnic conflicts dragged on and smoldered for centuries. For example, in humane and civilized Europe, the Basques and Moriscos were not immigrants to the Iberian Peninsula. They are the same descendants of the Iberian tribes as the Spaniards. But all the Iberians in the Roman Empire switched to Latin, and the Vascon tribe did not want to and retained their language. The events are two thousand years old, and the Roman Empire is long gone. And the conflict continues to this day.

For hundreds of years, the conflicts between the Celts-Irish and the British have continued.

The Irish Republican Army began to disarm only a couple of years ago. The conflict between the Flemings and the Walloons, the Austrians and the Hungarians is smoldering, and these examples can be continued: constant civil and religious wars, the Inquisition.

Refugees to Russia

It is not surprising that from such a Europe engulfed in flames, people fled … to Russia. It turned out to be calmer in Russia.

Surprisingly, Europeans began to move to Russia exactly from the time when foreigners began to show dissatisfaction with its morals. The first settlers appeared in the era of Ivan III. Up to 30 thousand Poles, Germans, Romanians, South Slavs moved to Russia during the time of Ivan the Terrible. Suicides ?! Not at all.

In these "monstrously bloody" times, it was safer in Russia than in the West.

Moreover, we went to the reign of Mikhail Romanov and his son Alexei Mikhailovich. Under these tsars from the Romanov dynasty, Russia not only accepted refugees, moreover, they were provided with benefits. Only in Kukui on the Moskva River lived 20 thousand, and by the time of Peter the Great - even 40 thousand foreigners.

Under Peter I, and then under Catherine the Great, the resettlement of foreigners to Russia was already part of a purposeful migration policy.

The attitude towards immigrants in Russia was more than benevolent: according to Catherine's manifesto of July 22, 1763, they were exempted from taxes and all kinds of duties. Here is an excerpt from this manifesto:

“We allow all foreigners to enter Our Empire to enter and settle, wherever they wish, in all Our Provinces … But so that everyone who wants to settle in Our Empire can see how great there is for good and profit without hindrance … those who arrived from foreign countries to settle in Russia should not, no taxes to pay to Our treasury …"

Not a single emigrant in any European country, either then or now, enjoyed such benefits.

Free choice of place of settlement, freedom of religion, self-government, exemption from taxes, taxes and all kinds of obligations. I repeat, not a single emigrant in Europe, either 250 years ago or today, used such opportunities.

Of course, many came to Russia, guided, first of all, by economic considerations, “to catch happiness and ranks,” but there were enough of those who saved their necks from the good old British gallows (this is how Lermontov's ancestors, the Scots Lermonts, came to Russia) or from a young but equally kind guillotine (among these French emigrants - one of the founders of Odessa, Duke de Richelieu).

For the Greeks fleeing the Ottoman Empire, a whole city was built - Mariupol.

By the end of the 18th century, there were already 505 foreign colonies in Russia, the overwhelming majority of them German. The Germans occupied different social positions in the state: courtiers, senior generals, ministers, owners of factories and plants, scientists, writers, artists, workers and farmers.

These people and their descendants - courtiers and farmers, generals and doctors, entrepreneurs and scientists - have left a fond memory of themselves in the history of Russia. In addition to the Germans, Greeks, Swedes, Bulgarians, Dutch, immigrants from Switzerland and from about. Mallorca, and so on and so forth …

Little-known fact: out of 100 thousand French prisoners of Napoleon's army in 1812, half (!) Did not return to their homeland. In barbaric and terrible Russia, it turned out to be both safer and more satisfying.

There were few Russian prisoners - about 5 thousand people. But they all returned. Until the last person. Is this not suggestive?