Conference: CULTURAL ENCOUNTERS: ISTANBUL AND THE REFUGEES FROM THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE (1919-1923)

CULTURAL ENCOUNTERS:

ISTANBUL AND THE REFUGEES FROM THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE (1919-1923)

 

International Symposium, Pera Museum, Istanbul, Turkey

June 3, 2022

 

One of the panels will be on 

American Elite $$$ and The Constantinople/Istanbul Russians, l920-1929

Edward Kasinec, Visiting Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University; Research Associate, Harriman Institute, Columbia University

     

      The Revolution and Civil War cast adrift hundreds of thousands of inhabitants of the vast, former Russian Empire. Some found refuge in the Balkan kingdoms of Serbia and Bulgaria, while still others made their great exit (velykii iskhod) of Fall, l920 from Crimea, crossing the Black Sea to ancient Constantinople, after 1923 renamed Istanbul. All these displaced peoples were in desperate need of humanitarian aid in all its forms. A major source of aid to those Russians in Turkey and the Balkans came from sympathetic elite philanthropists in America and their on-site and remarkably well-connected representatives in Turkey, Anna (Nan) Van Schaick Mitchell (d.1966) and,  Alma L’Hommedieu Ruggles (d. 1954).

     This presentation will look at the humanitarian efforts of both women and is based on hitherto untapped visual and archival resources at the Hoover Institution Archives and Library, Stanford University (Mitchell papers), the Bryn Mawr College Library (Olivia Stokes Hatch papers), and the Iurii Schidlovsky Papers at the Foundation for Russian History (Jordanville, NY).