Encounter between compatriots: Soviet Russia and Russia abroad in Yugoslavia in 1944

Abstract

Based on memoirs, diaries, notes, as well as other literature in Serbian and Russian, the article examines the encounter between representatives of the Russian diaspora and their compatriots – Soviet officers and soldiers in Yugoslavia – in the autumn of 1944 upon the arrival of the Red Army in this country. Firstly, the paper examines how the Russian emigrants have perceived the Soviet soldiers, and secondly, it studies how the Red Army fighters, as well as the NKVD and SMERSH, treated their compatriots, who had left their common homeland as a result of the 1917 revolutionary events and the Russian Civil War. On the one hand, the NKVD and SMERSH interrogated, arrested, and sent Russian emigrants to the USSR, where some of them were shot. On the other hand, Russian diaspora representatives provided help to the Soviet soldiers and fought together against the Germans, since upon the arrival of the Red Army in the Yugoslav territories, a certain number of anti-fascist Russian émigrés joined its ranks. The paper is based on memoirs written by Russian emigrants of different profiles and with varying views: professors, clergymen and Yugoslav and Red Army fighters. Despite all the disadvantages of memoirs as a historical source, the analysis of which must take into account the context, their time of origin, ideological and political views, as well as possible motives of the authors, it allows to obtain a general picture of how Soviet military personnel was perceived by their compatriots, who at the time of the encounter had been living in another state for more than 20 years.