The Life of the Russian Refugees in Istanbul During the Period of the Armistice

Abstract

In the aftermath of the occupation, Istanbul became a scene of complex population movements. If one of the factors that led this kind of mobility was the return of discharged soldiers, the other factor was the refugees.

As already seen, in the Armistice Istanbul, on the one side was the occupation and the political and military developments related with it. On the other side, however, existed another world, which the people of Istanbul were only marginally inserted in. In this "other" world, the Russians, who we are interested in, deserve attention not only due to the novel ways of life that they have introduced to the social life of Istanbul. At the same time, the degree of poverty that they came face to face as a result of coming to Istanbul, compared with the wealth they had in Czarist Russia is most noteworthy. Finally, although these refugees were influential in Istanbul during the 1920s and 1930s, they eventually left Turkey and could not settled in the country.