The New Russians of France

Since the start of the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, more than a million Russians have left their country. Some from the first days of the conflict, others after several weeks or months of preparation for an emigration perceived as inevitable and definitive. A third wave will follow from the end of September 2022, when Putin declares his "partial mobilization".

This project carried out between Russia and France during the first year of the conflict aims to meet these Russians who emigrate from a country, in which they no longer recognize themselves and where the future appears to them as irremediably compromised. Contemporary Russian history is punctuated by these waves of emigration caused by the revolutions, the wars, the successive closures and reopenings of the country. This first wave of massive emigration of the new millennium that we are witnessing today, almost exactly a century after the largest of the last century, has the particularity of not being mainly directed towards Western Europe, but rather towards Turkey and former Soviet bloc republics such as Georgia and Armenia.

The protagonists of this project have chosen France. Some because of privileged relations with the country, its language and its culture, others by necessity and randomly issued visas. Poorly represented and poorly received, while bearing the shame of their government’s behaviour, they are the heirs despite themselves of the white Russians.

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