Madrid to Novgorod and Back: White Russians in the Spanish Civil War and the “Blue Division,” 1936–44

After 1920, many White Russian exiles joined any conflict they deemed to be ‘the continuation’ of their civil war, spanning from Northern China to Africa to Paraguay, or simply hired themselves and their experience out as mercenaries. The pivotal event came in 1936: some 180 of them volunteered for the Francoist side in the Spanish Civil War. The survivors remained in Spain, and two dozen of them joined as interpreters of the Spanish ‘Blue Division’ to finally return to Russia. Their experiences in their homeland during World War II varied sharply: disappointing for some, once they found out that the Wehrmacht aimed at a war of extermination; for others reaffirming their anti-Soviet convictions, in spite of the new war. Relying upon unpublished egodocuments and rare testimonies, this paper will address the trajectories and individual fates of these transnational anti-Communist volunteers, who ended up in Spain.