Gallipoli to Golgotha: Remembering the Internment of the Russian White Army at Gallipoli, 1920–3

Abstract

On 17 November 1920 the final remnants of the Russian army evacuated the Crimea in the face of the advancing Red army. Over the course of the preceding week, nearly 150,000 people had been loaded onto 126 ships of the line, troop transports, tugboats, barges, yachts — anything that could float — and sent west, to the Bosphorous. Not everyone could be evacuated, and the departing troops and civilians bore witness to tragic scenes of officers shooting themselves on the quays as they watched the overloaded ships cast off.1 The Civil War had been lost, and the Russian army — defeated, demoralized, homeless and unwanted — appeared at the gates of Europe, awaiting its further fate.