Russian emigration in Paris. From the Romanov dynasty to the Second World War. Rappiport Kh.

The attitude of the Russians towards Paris was always special: the French language was taught, fashion was inspired, and the connections of the two countries - the Russian Empire and France - were always very close. At the end of centuries, Russian aristocrats spent fabulous amounts in Paris on exquisite entertainment, and at the beginning of the 20th century, Paris stunned Diaghilev's Russian Seasons. It is not surprising that Paris became a refuge for tens of thousands of aristocrats, a bourgeois, intelligentsia and the military who fled from the Bolshevik coup, often without a penny in their pockets.

The hereditary princes and glorified generals became taxi drivers and workers at the Sitro and Renault factories , and their wives are models and seamstresses. But, despite all the hardships, Russian culture even bloomed in Paris - the manual embroidery of talented aristocrats found her path to the Chanel fashion house; The names of Mark Shagal, Igor Stravinsky and Ivan Bunin rattled. Some emigrants managed to integrate into a local life, but many fell into a vicious circle of poverty and all -consuming longing for their homeland.

written on the basis of hundreds of archival sources, the book of historian Helen Rappiport is a colorful report from the past, telling the tragic history of Russian emigration with the lips of her eyewitnesses.