RUSSIAN REFUGEE CRISIS

A 1923 passport issued in Belgrade, capital of the new Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, for a pair of young Russian refugees. Following the instability of the Bolshevik Revolution and Russian Civil War an estimated one to three million refugees – many of them the families of anti-communist White officers and intellectuals seen as friendly to the old regime – either crossed the fluctuating borders with the Baltic states and Poland, or across the Black Sea from Ukraine to Turkey. From there they crossed back into south east Europe through Greece and Bulgaria.