Pavel Evgenyevich Dobrachev,
Master’s Student, Novosibirsk State University, Novosibirsk, Russia, e-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
The Image of Early Soviet Political Exile in the Representation of the “Socialist Courier” in 1923−1924
DOI: 10.31518/2618-9100-2025-5-11
Political exile was revived by the Bolsheviks in practice already at the end of 1921: former comrades of the Bolsheviks in revolutionary activity − Mensheviks, SRs, and anarchists − returned to their old places of exile. The post-revolutionary period of the functioning of the “anti-Soviet” parties remains a poorly studied topic, especially aspects of everyday life. This study reconstructs at the microhistorical level the life activity of the exiled society in 1923-1924 in the reflection of one of the most informative emigrant publications of the 1920s − “Socialist Courier”. The article defines the main aspects of everyday life of political exiles of the Mensheviks by means of content analysis method. P.A. Sorokin’s “sociology of disasters”, which explains various behavioral strategies under conditions of unfreedom, is used as a methodological basis. The author establishes a number of images that construct the discourse of exile in the space of Russian emigration: the archaic nature of repression; immanence to the tsarist regime; indefinite duration; doom; isolation, coupled with the culturedness and heroism of socialists in exile. The image of exile portrayed by Socialist Emigration was created to discredit the Communist Party by identifying the measures of the tsarist and Bolshevik regimes and demonstrating the brutality of repression (confrontational mobilization). At the same time, the “Socialist Courier“ contained elements of consolidation mobilization, manifested in calls to fight for the freedom of the Mensheviks.
Publishing: 28/10/2025
The article has been received by the editor on 07/07/2025
How to cite: Dobrachev P.E. The Image of Early Soviet Political Exile in the Representation of the “Socialist Courier” in 1923−1924 // Historical Courier, 2025, No. 5 (43), pp. 123–135. [Available online: http://istkurier.ru/data/2025/ISTKURIER-2025-5-11.pdf]
Links: Issue 5 2025
Keywords: “Socialist Courier”; Mensheviks; Social Democracy; exile; discourse; everyday life; mobilization; periodicals; emigration; GPU