A Fissile National Community

Abstract

Chapter 1 explores anti-communist movements of the Russian diaspora, setting the stage for their participation in the Cold War. The anti-communist cause housed four major movements in the postwar years: the Whites, or Russian conservatives who had fled communist rule during the Russian Civil War (1918–22); a cohort of democratic socialists who had opposed the tsars before being driven out by Lenin; the so-called Vlasovites, Soviet citizens who exited their home country during World War II and then attached themselves to a Russian liberation army formed under Nazi auspices; and the National Labor Alliance (NTS), a far-right émigré organization, most of whose members collaborated with Nazi Germany during World War II. As the chapter argues, the different experiences of these groups—in Russia, during displacement, and while in exile—informed their divergent notions of Russia’s past and future.