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Russian White Guards aboard the Saratov transport ship are leaving Crimea.
After their defeat in the Civil War, the Russian White Guards escaped growing communism. Thousands arrive in Bulgaria, where they are accepted as refugees. This is the story of white emigration to Bulgaria, reports Deutsche Welle.
Russians arrived in Bulgaria after the first revolution in Russia in 1905. The first to arrive after the Great October Revolution in 1917 were wealthy Russian families, most of whom continued westward, and the large influx followed. of the defeat of the White Army when Gen. Wrangel and Gen. Denikin docked with a hundred ships and some 100,000 soldiers. Stamboliiski welcomes them, they are housed in military barracks and schools, initially remaining armed. After riots broke out, their weapons were confiscated and exploded across the country.
Sofia and Varna have the largest communities
With the so-called Nansen passport (an asylum card for refugees), they can travel around the country, but with the written permission of the police. In the 1930s, there were around 20,000 Russians in Bulgaria. Until 1944, they lived in close-knit communities and contributed to the cultural development of the settlements. The most numerous communities are in Sofia and Varna, but in practice there are their representatives throughout the country, both in cities and towns. Many of them are educated and intelligent people. Nostalgia for the homeland is strong, but fear of communist struggles is greater.
World War II, Nazi Germany’s attack on the Soviet Union and the declaration of Bulgaria as an ally of Germany put these people in a very difficult situation. A small detail of its turning point is, for example, the closure in 1944 of the primary school for White Guard boys in Varna. Other educational institutions established by the community have a similar fate.
From the author’s personal archive: certificate of completion of a Russian school class in Varna
White emigration came to the attention of State Security in 1946 after an order from the Union Control Commission, composed of representatives of the USSR, Great Britain and the United States, but dominated by Soviet representatives. With this order, the White Guards, who participated in the occupation force in Yugoslavia, are sought. In 1941, a Russian corps of emigrants from the White Guard from Serbia, Romania, Bulgaria, and other Balkan countries was formed in Yugoslavia, fighting against Tito’s supporters.
It has a total of 17,000 soldiers and the Third Regiment is made up of some 3,000 Bulgarian White Guards, summoned as volunteers by the All-Union Union of Russia. After the war, they returned to Bulgaria; some were arrested by Soviet intelligence and sentenced in Sofia by the Military Tribunal of the Third Ukrainian Front. They were sent to the Gulag. The survivors of the camps were given amnesties and returned to Bulgaria.
The tragedy of the bullfighting Bulgarians
There is another group with roots in the USSR, but with Bulgarian shyness, which comes into the focus of the DS interest: the so-called bullfighting Bulgarians. During the war they were on the side of the Germans, they arrived in Bulgaria with the retreating German units and, as they had Bulgarian names, they stayed in Bulgaria, but with changed documents. State security has been able to identify 60 of these people, 13 of whom have undergone development and two have been recruited successfully. The problem with them is that the Soviet Union does not want them back, even though they lived there, and Bulgaria cannot prosecute them for crimes committed on the territory of the USSR. So, for the most part, these people are scattering across the country and taking cover.
1921: White Guards interned in Western Mongolia after the Russian Civil War.
In 1946, two important events took place: Tito turned against Stalin and deported all the white emigrants from Yugoslavia. More than 700 arrive in Bulgaria. Part of the DS file contains a study of how many of them cooperated with the Department of State Security there. The Soviet Union, on the other hand, allowed white immigrants to acquire Soviet citizenship. More than half of them benefit. Not those of them with Bulgarian citizenship who have raised families and have Bulgarian roots.
Dozens of migrant organizations
The documents, drawn from more than 150 archive units, some of them multi-volume, show the difficulties faced by Bulgarian agents; in many places, this was done by a single person, often with a primary education and no proficiency in Russian. Agents were difficult to find in these circles and not all recruits were trusted. At first, interest was mainly focused on migrant organizations, which in the 1920s numbered 69. The largest of these are ROSV – Russian Military Union, and NTS – Union of People’s Workers. After 1944, however, and when State Security began to monitor them, only the Union of Disabled Russian Soldiers and the Soviet Citizens Club remained.
There were riots among white emigrants in the early 1950s, when Stalin decided to neutralize the strong centers of organizations abroad and return these people to controlled territories. 7,000 of the emigrants already have Soviet citizenship and almost half (3,200) decide to leave. However, they have previously agreed on a code language, so that they can warn others of possible fraud. And the messages are not long in coming: Stalin allows them to return, but not to their homeland, but to the Altai Territory and in extremely bad conditions. Although the perimeter was later expanded with several more territories, many of those who left returned to Bulgaria.
Officer Corbin and Agent “Natasha”
Except for some interesting in-depth analysis
most of the documents in the collection are not very well-written police reports. In this context, interesting images come to life. Like Alexei Arkhipovich Korbin and Agent Natasha.
According to Agent Natasha, Corbin said that he was a native of Kharkov and was the head of the Political Police in pre-revolutionary Russia. He served as an officer in World War I and was awarded the Cross of St. George for his bravery. When the revolution began, its leader was one of the most respected by the Red Army. His parents were massacred before his eyes and he managed to escape to Bulgaria with Gen. Denikin’s army and settled in Gabrovo. There he became the personal car driver of Police Chief Nikola Kilifarev. In fact, she participated on an equal footing with him in all major operations.
Together with Kilifarev, they bought an American Dodge pickup, and when the police chief was assassinated after 1944, Corbin took care of his family until 1950. Then Kilifarev’s wife and daughters moved to Ruse and he settled in Peshtera. There he meets the fatal “Natasha”, described by an operative as “beautiful and cunning”. The young woman from Plovdiv obviously played a double game: she contacted (in no order) all the foreigners who came to Plovdiv and Velingrad, where she often stayed with her aunt. In addition, he set fire to many families in Velingrad.
By the way, Corbyn didn’t stay still. In Peshtera, he approached the Czech Elena Domus, and when his wife threatened to betray him, he threw the gun he kept under the bridge into the river. According to “Natasha”, he spoke about a possible attack on Anton Yugov, who liked to hunt in this area. For the rest of his life, Corbin remained in Peshtera, and who was Natasha, the native of Plovdiv, born in 1922, beautiful, fluent in foreign languages and free to play the services, remained a secret. In Russian archives, Corbin is mentioned as a thrush, the elite part of the General’s Volunteer Army. Denikin and gen. Wrangel during the Civil War. They were characterized by perfect organization, high military spirit, and endurance in the most difficult battles.
