Russian Expeditionary Force in memory and commemoration: comparative case-study of Soviet Russia and Russian emigration in France

The interest in Russian memory of the First World War grew significantly in the last ten years. Karen Petrone’s breakthrough book The Great War in Russian Memory has done a remarkable service to the field by examining the war remembrance practices that existed in the Soviet Union, but at the same time, it has opened new perspectives for the following research. By looking closely at the commemoration of the Russian Expeditionary Force in Russia and in France (predominantly by the Russian émigrés) this paper analyses the mechanisms of the memory shaping used to create two strikingly different history narratives of an episode of Russian history. Though a minor military force, the REF was a significant political gesture that later was relatively widely recalled in Russia and in France, thus leaving a substantial amount of various historical sources to conduct a comparative case-study. This research explores different ‘sites of memory’ created within two different narratives of the REF history: cemetery of Russian Soldiers in Champagne, used by the Russian émigrés to underline Russia’s loyalty to the Allied cause; and memoirs of the REF soldiers published in USSR in 1919–1961, focusing on the opposition of the Russian soldiers to the French attempts to send them back to the front. It argues that despite all the differences, both in France and in Soviet Russia the story of the REF was used as an argument in a much broader discussion about Russia’s place in European history. The example of the REF shows that the First World War was perceived within the framework of the broader questions it has posed not only by the Russian émigrés and the former Allies, but by the Bolsheviks as well.