After the Russian Empires collapse, the USSR hemorrhaged aristocrats, artists, and intellectuals. The first refugee wave came during the Russian Civil War. These exiles became known as White migrs due to their association with the White armies that fought the Red Army. As refugees from the Revolution overran Europe, 400,000 stateless people arrived in France. Fifty thousand settled in Paris. Most migrs worked in service or entertainment jobs as drivers, door attendants, ticket-sellers, singers, or dancers. Others made lasting contributions to art, music, literature, ballet, and film.1. ArtParis by Konstantin Korovin, 1933; with Paris Boulevard by Konstantin Korovin, 1939. Source: WikiArtParis reigned as a global art center while the Bolshevik Revolution splintered Russian society. Russian migr artists such as Konstantin Korovin (1861-1939) found a home in Paris among the French Impressionists and abstract artists there.Known for his bold brushstrokes, vibrant color use, and evocative landscapes, Korovin became one of the greatest twentieth-century Russian Impressionists.Born into a ruined merchant family, Konstantin Alekseevich Korovin forged his own way in life. As a member of the Abramstvo Circle, a rural artists colony, Korovin joined the Imperial Academy of Arts and later worked as the Bolshoi Theaters chief set designer. During World War I, he supported the Imperial Army as a camouflage security specialist.At home, a small wooden house built on a rural wasteland, Korovin preferred a simple country life. He welcomed other artists there, worked at his easel, and spent hours talking to peasants, hunters, and fishermen in the village. Inspired by his surroundings, Korovins paintings reflect a deep love for humans and nature.Konstantin Korovin (seated), the singer Fyodor Chaliapin, and Korovins son, Aleksey, and daughter Irina at Okhotino, 1900s. Source: Tretyakov Gallery Magazine; with Autumn by Konstantin Korovin, 1888. Source: WikiArtBy 1918, the Soviet government confiscated Okhotino, Korovins beloved estate, along with the land, house, and even its contents. Now homeless and listed as a non-working user, Korovin developed a migrant lifestyle characterized by deep poverty. During the 1921-1922 Russian famine, which killed an estimated five million people, Korovin survived on little food and fewer art supplies. During this time, he taught painting at the State Free Art Workshops. In 1922, Korovin, who had a heart condition, a sick wife, and an invalid son, devised a plan to escape the country.Under the guise of organizing an exhibition and seeking medical treatment, Korovin received approval from Anatoly Lunacharsky, the Soviet Commissar of Enlightenment, to leave the country on a temporary trip.Korovin never returned.In Paris, he scraped a living together with work that paiddesigning one-time costumes and sets for private theaters and ballets. With the rise of film, commissions dwindled. By the 1930s, poverty closed in on Korovin. Reduced to painting on cardboard with watercolor and oils, the artist felt consumed with nostalgia for his homeland.Russian Impressionist migr artist Konstantin Korovin. Source: I. I. Mashkov Volgograd Museum of Fine Arts; with Winter Landscape by Konstantin Korovin, 1930. Source: WikiArtIn one of his last letters, Korovin admitted, I keep remembering Okhotino. Such nature, woods, and the river. . . Was it not paradise? . . . I do not really know or understand what I was guilty of. I worked a lot and have not sinned towards the people. I cannot understand people living in our beautiful and mysterious land.Nevertheless, Korovin found inspiration everywhere. There is nothing that is not beautiful in nature, he once said.He died as he livedon the moveand after a fall, as bombs exploding on the streets of Paris announced the start of the Second World War.Today, Korovins paintings exist in museum collections worldwide, from Londons National Gallery to the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.Fishing Village, Capri, by Georgy Lapshin, 1920s. Source: The Museum of Russian ImpressionismKorovins legacy lived on in the work of his student, Georgy Lapshin (1885-1950). Lapshin, who owned a Moscow art studio before the Revolution, emigrated to France in 1924. As a member of the Society of French Artists, Lapshins work appeared in exhibitions across Europe.Serge Poliakov, another Russian painter associated with the New School of Paris, made his way to France due to the war. His abstract structure and luminous colors inspired Yves Saint-Laurent, who designed a Poliakov-style dress in 1965.Ballet les sylphides by Zinaida Serebriakova, 1924. Source: The Moscow TimesAfter the end of the Russian Civil War, Zinaida Serebriakova, a student of Ilya Repin and a fan of Edgar Degas, left Leningrad in 1924 to complete a quick mural commission. When she tried to return, the Soviets blocked her. Separated from her children, Serebriakova struggled to create in exile.Despite this, Serebriakova became a popular portrait painter in her adopted country and the first Russian woman to gain recognition as a major painter.2. LiteratureThe Alfred Nobel Prize for Literature, awarded 116 times to 120 laureates, was given to Ivan Bunin in 1933 for his strict artistry in the Russian prose tradition. Source: Leeds UniversityWith Tsarist Russias collapse, everything Russian briefly went into vogue in Europe, from Russian literature and cuisine to Cossacks and impoverished Russian nobles. A pervasive image exists of Russian poets wasting away in poverty-stricken Parisian boarding houses or languishing in smoke-filled cafs reeking with melancholy.This trope is rooted in the harsh realities that many White migrs faced.Overwhelmed with the sheer number of refugees, many nations, including France, capped the number of Russian immigrants allowed into the country. Many refugees experienced prejudice and struggled to survive.In 1922, Vladimir Lenin ordered the Cheka to arrest and deport 220 irreconcilable anti-Bolshevik intellectuals aboard philosophers ships. The regime countered this humanitarian act by warning them that they would be shot if they returned home.Ivan Alekseevich Bunin (1870-1953), whose prose grappled with life after Russia, became an internationally acclaimed author.Ivan Bunin, winner of the Nobel Prize, pictured in 1901. Source: Wikimedia CommonsBorn in rural Russia to an impoverished noble family, Bunin became addicted to reading from a young age. After joining the Sreda Circle literary group, Bunin won the Pushkin Prize twice. Bunin is best known for Falling Leaves, Cursed Days, The Life of Arseniev, and Dark Avenues.A social democrat who never identified as a blueblood, Bunin condemned the Bolshevik Revolution as a human and cultural catastrophe. From 1919 to 1920, Bunin edited an anti-Soviet Volunteer Army newspaper. In January 1920, the couple boarded an evacuation ship for Constantinople.Bunins novel Cursed Days, based on his revolutionary diary, presaged the anti-utopian ideas later popularized by Aldous Huxley and George Orwell.The Sreda Circle, a Moscow literary group in pre-revolutionary Russia, which included Maksim Gorky (bottom left), Leonid Andreyev (second from bottom left), and Ivan Bunin (bottom second from the right). Source: The Moscow TimesBunins first book published in exile was Scream. In 1933, Bunin became the first Russian writer to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature. Afterward, Bunin gave away 120,000 francs from his Nobel Prize money to other struggling migrs.When World War II broke out, Bunin refused to collaborate with publications operating in occupied territories, and his income dwindled. Bunin and his wife retreated to a mountain villa outside Grasse. There, they sheltered Jewish friends under the noses of the occupying German forces. Without any money to live on, Bunin contacted the Union of Writers in Russia for help in the winter of 1946. Until then, Bunins new work could not be published in the Soviet Union, and he received no royalties for previously published novels.That year, Novaya Zemlya published Dark Avenues. Bunin received $300.City of love and war. Source: The Irish TimesWhen the war ended, the Bunins returned to Paris. During his final years, the writer received a monthly pension from Jewish-American philanthropist Frank Atran. Bunin died in a Paris attic room from heart issues in 1953.He had survived Lenin, Hitler, and Stalin.Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977) became one of Frances most famous Russian migr writers, known for novels such as Pale Fire, Lolita, and Invitation to a Beheading. In 1919, Nabokov fled from Soviet-occupied Crimea under a burst of machine gun fire.Paris was the place where Nabokov had a love affair, struggled with poverty and bureaucracy, and held court with other White migr writers from a Montparnasse caf. Nabokovs breakout success novel, Pnin, centers on a Russian refugee who at first seems like a humorous figure but whose story reveals layers of tragedy.Nadezhda Lokhvitskaya, known by her pen name, Teffi; with Vladimir Nabokov. Source: The Paris ReviewThis circle of impoverished but important literary refugees included Aleksandr Kuprin, Ivan Shmelyov, and Marina Tsvetaeva. Georgy Ivanov (1894-1958), another poet of Russias Silver Age, is remembered for his prose poem, Disintegration of the Atom, a brilliant, haunting exploration of migr despair.Nadezhda Lokhvitskaya (1872-1952), known as Teffi, created vivid, humorous, and nostalgic fiction from her Paris perch. Teffi escaped the Red Army during the Civil War, buried in fur coats like her compatriots, on a ship navigating frigid waters into the unknown.By the time the refugees found their way to Greece, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, or France, these coats became threadbare symbols of another life.Yuri Felsen. Source: The Guardian; with Marina Ivanovna Tsvetaeva. Source: Boston UniversityYuri Felsen (1894-1943), known as the Russian Proust, wrote gripping psychological works such as Deceit, infused with rich imagery and wicked humor. The Russian-Jewish writer opposed the Soviets and joined the White forces before emigrating in 1920. Felsen wrote three novels in Paris by the outbreak of World War II.In German-occupied Paris, he was arrested, released, and hidden by friends. When the Resistance attempted to smuggle Felsen across the Swiss border, the Nazis arrested him again. He was sent to the gas chamber on arrival in Auschwitz in 1943.With most of his manuscripts lost or destroyed, this anti-totalitarian writer remains little-known today.The bisexual poet Marina Tsvetaeva (1892-1941) became the lioness of the Russian migr poets. After the Civil War, Tsvetaeva was reunited in Paris with her husband Sergei Efron, an ex-White Army officer. In exile, she published a collection of poems, After Russia. In 1939, Tsvetaeva followed Efron back to Russia when the NKVD recruited him. He was executed after arrival. Tsvetaevas daughter ended up in a labor camp. Her son died in World War II. Devastated, Tsvetaeva committed suicide in 1941. Later, Russian poet Joseph Brodsky would claim, The greatest poet in the twentieth century was a woman.Many exiled writers scraped together a living by writing for refugee newspapers, while others became famous novelists. Their works explore themes of love, loss, identity, trauma, disassociation, paranoia, and memory. These human elements continue to resonate with readers across time.3. BalletBallet Russes scene from Sadko by the White Studio, New York, 1911. Source: New York Public LibraryThe ballet world did not escape Russian influence. For centuries, France dominated the ballet scene. In 1909, Sergei Diaghilev founded the Ballets Russes in Paris and established a new trend.Diaghilevs unique skill lay in harnessing a potpourri of creative talent. By World War I, these included avant-garde artists, costumiers, and designers like Pablo Picasso and Leon Bakst, dancers like Vaslav Nijinsky and Mikhail Fokine, and musicians like Igor Stravinsky and Sergei Prokofiev. The Ballets Russes debuted groundbreaking works such as Afternoon of a Faun, Apollo, and the Rite of Spring.When the Revolution occurred, Diaghilev remained in France. His company had a strong influence on the evolution of ballet during the 20th century.Group photograph with the Ballet Russes de Monte Carlo and Sergei Diaghilevs Ballet Russes. Source: New York Public LibrarySome of the greatest dancers in the Ballet Russes included Tamara Karsavina, Tamara Toumanova, and Irina Baranova, known as choreographer George Balachines baby ballerinas.At age six, Tamara Toumanova danced for Anna Pavlova. By age 10, she landed a leading role in the Paris Opera. She claimed to have been born in a boxcar in Russia as her mother and tsarist officer father fled the Bolsheviks. In 1931, Balanchine invited her to join the Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo.Known as the Black Pearl of the Russian Ballet, Toumanova gained an international reputation, dancing abroad and appearing on the silver screen.Tamara Toumanova by George Platt Lynes, 1941. Source: New York Public Library; with White Russian migr ballerina Tamara Karsavina by Jacques-Emile Blanche. Source: The Guardian; with Irina Baranova, baby ballerina of the Ballet Russes de Monte Carlo. Source: Texas Public Radio.Like Toumanova, Irina Baronova came to the Ballets Russes as a baby ballerina whose family fled revolutionary Russia. These baby ballerinas toured over 300 days out of the year. Baronova became a prima ballerina, first in France and later in New York.Other migrs who influenced dance culture in France included Cubo-Futurist artist Natalia Goncharova and her husband, Mikhail Larionov. This duo invented the abstract art style known as Rayonism. In exile, they became leading Ballets Russes designers.4. MusicSergei Rachmaninov, 1920. Source: Library of CongressMusic, like the other arts, flourished in exile. One of the most famous White Russian migrs, pianist and composer Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943), fled revolutionary Russia in 1917. For the next few decades, he conducted a demanding cycle of concerts across the United States and Europe. Rachmaninoff also founded TAIR, a Paris publishing house that focused on works by Rachmaninoff and other exiled composers.Rachmaninoffs musical activities in Paris put him at the center of the Russian migr community. Between 1929 and 1931, Rachmaninoff summered in France near Rambouillet, where he socialized with other Russian migrs.For the quarter of a century between leaving Russia and his death, Rachmaninoff only composed six new works. By 1930, he felt the urge to create again and found a retreat where he could compose in solitude.In 1930, he built Villa Senar in French-speaking Lucerne, Switzerland. Here, he composed his famous Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini during the summer of 1934. His Symphony No. 3, also written there, fused a bittersweet echo of the Jazz Age with memories of a lost Russia and the dissonant notes of Europe on the brink of war. During World War II, Rachmaninoff financially helped other Russian exiles and donated benefits from his concerts to the Soviet Unions fight against Nazi Germany.World War II saw the rise of another Russian migr musician who became the voice of the French Resistance.Born to an aristocratic family in Petrograd, Anna Yurievna Betulinskaya (1917-2006) became a famous French singer. Before Annas first birthday, the Bolsheviks shot her father as an enemy of the Revolution. Using the jewels that she had sewn into her clothes, Annas Greek mother fled to France. In 1934, Anna entered the Ballets de Monte Carlo and took music lessons from Sergei Prokofiev.Travel Document issued to Anna Marly by De Gaulles Free French Forces. Source: Wikimedia; with Anna Marly. Source: AljazeeraShe supported herself by playing the guitar and singing in Paris Scheherazade cabaret. Because she felt her Russian surname was too hard to pronounce, Anna chose the name Marly out of a telephone directory. When the Second World War hit France, Anna escaped to London. There, she met General Charles de Gaulle, the leader of the French government in exile.In 1941, Anna read an English newspaper account about the Battle of Smolensk, which stopped the German offensive on the Eastern Front in its tracks.Inspired by the story, she began to pick out a rhythmic tune about anti-Nazi partisans:We will go where the crow does not fly,And the beast cannot make a passage.No force nor person will make us retreat.When Anna sang her new song for a group of friends, French journalist Joseph Kessel exclaimed, This is what France needs!Chant des Partisans, broadcast on the BBC, became the rallying cry of the Resistance. Charles de Gaulle would later tell Marly, You turned your talent into a weapon for France.By the wars end, Anna Marly became a French star, writing 300 songs and performing for Allied troops across Europe. In 1969, Leonard Cohen recorded Anna Marlys song Le complainte du partisan (The Lament of the Partisan) as The Partisan.5. FilmIvan Mozzhukhin (center) as Michel Strogoff in Victor Tourjanskys 1926 French film. Source: Wikimedia CommonsFrom Cossacks to countesses, most migr actors and actresses ended up in Hollywood. Many also worked in the French film industry. While some became actors, others lined up as film extras, their faces memorialized in brief flashes of blinding light. Even novelist Vladimir Nabokov became a film extra, experiencing a sense of alienation working as an anonymous shadow in an electric night.One celebrated actor, Ivan Ilych Mozzhukhin, achieved fame in both France and America. He launched his career as a romantic star of the late Tsarist-era cinema.After the Revolution, Mozzhukhin wound up in France, where he worked as an actor, screenwriter, and director. He joined an artistic migr community in Paris led by Joseph Ermolieff and Aleksandr Kamenka, a Ukrainian-born director who founded Films Albatros. From an old Path studio in Montreuil, they went on to create some of the finest postwar French films.Mozzhukhin also collaborated with Russian filmmaker Lev Kuleshov. The filmmaker famously used the actors face to make an emotional montage of identical sequential shots known as the Kuleshov Effect. This film editing technique is still used today, notably in Game of Thrones.Ivan Mozzhukhin, the Russian Valentino. Source: LA Daily Mirror, courtesy of Mary Mallory; with Actress Olga Baklanova, who defected in 1924 and gained fame as the Russian Tigress, starred in American film Freaks and French films Le Beau Danube, Jeux denfants, and Les Cent Baisers. Source: Wikimedia CommonsFilms Albatros soon advanced in the cinema industry. During the 1920s-1930s, the studio produced almost 50 films. Mozzhukhin acted, wrote, and directed multiple screenplays.In 1921, he launched Child of the Carnival as his first French film credit. The next year, The House of Mystery appeared, followed by The Burning Crucible and Kean, where he played alongside his actress wife Natalya Lisenko. Mozzhukhin also played Michael Strogoff in the 1926 epic. When Rudolph Valentino died, Hollywood snapped up the tall actor with hypnotic eyes as the new Russian Valentino.In 1927, Mozzhukhin starred in the first talkie, The Jazz Singer. When his Hollywood career failed to take off, he returned to Europe. Like many migr stars, Mozzhukhins career declined when the transition from silent screen revealed his Russian accent and pigeonholed him into more limited roles.During his lifetime, Mozzhukhin starred in over 80 films.Still from the 1923 French film Le Brasier Ardent) starring Ivan Mozhukhin. Source: Wikimedia CommonsDuring the Silent Screen era, many migr filmmakers continued to use pre-revolutionary cinematic techniques such as the Russian Ending. In a changing postwar world, the demand for tragedy faded, and happy endings, or at least satisfying conclusions, became the norm. People wanted to laugh. They wanted to forget the war. The Russian Ending, infused with dark realism, did not fit a new generation looking for amusement.Some cinematographers struggled to adapt to changing tastes, which put tragic endings out of style. Others adapted by turning sad scenes into dreams. This allowed filmmakers to blend the Russian Ending with a happy dnouement that pleased audiences during the Roaring Twenties.These Russian films, infused with a French ambiance, inspired a new generation of directors. These included Jean Renoir, who decided to abandon his career in ceramics for the cinema after seeing Le Brasier Ardent. Renoir became known for enduring classics such as the great anti-war film La Grande Illusion.As migr filmmakers evolved with the times, the Russian Ending, along with the White Russian diaspora and its failed fight against the Soviets, faded into history.