RAGS, RICHES,

RELIGION
Migration from Russia to Australia 1917-2019

Figure 1: Family Photos 1949-1960

By Lisa Joanne Cosham

BRAVE NEW WORLD
Establishment of Russo-Aussie Relations
‘Identity is portable’i states David Malouf, and it reigns
true in both the past and present day. Russians have been
immigrating from their home country to Australia for many
years, with relations hailing all the way back to 1807,
when the Russian warship Neva arrived in Sydney. Since
then, around 190 Russians leave the country for Australia
annually. There were influxes in history during times of
war and political tension, forcing many Russians to fulfil
their governmental order of exile, or to simply seek
asylum. This was particularly true when it came to
religious families and applies to my own family history.

My family, after the Russian Revolution in 1917, were

exiled to Siberia for their religious status. My great-
great-great grandfather was an Archbishop of the Russian
Orthodox Church, which gave my family, the Korsounskiye,
an aristocratic status. However, because of the 1918
Revolution, Russia
had begun to follow
Marx’s teaching of
“religion is the
opium of the masses”
my family were forced
to leave. It was only
in 1935, when my
great-great
grandfather, Vanya
emigrated from
Russia to Shahrtuz,
Tajikistan, only
just escaping the Figure 2: Great-Great Dedushka Vanya (right),
onslaught of with his friend in Shahrtuz, 1935
massacres carried out under Stalin’s totalitarian regime.
For many Russians, this was the case and is evident in
Australia’s migration history, even going as far back the
Crimean War in 1853, to 1856.
 Even so, my family did not stay rooted in Tajikistan
for long, my mother moving to Southern England in 1996, and
my grandmother moving to Moscow in 2007. It seems to be
that there is a struggle to find a rooted identity for the
people of Russia, with a history of change still so recent,
and a culture of oppression, it is unsurprising that so
many have immigrated and continue to immigrate. I wonder,
will Russian people ever find a home? They are an ousted
population, with restrictions and stigmas continuing to
suppress them, and there are of course the ‘messy problems
of identity inherent in transnational enterprise’ii For
example, I recently discovered that Russians in Australia
are not allowed on military bases because of the political
tension and assumed security risks that have been
cultivated from stereotypes of Russian ideas and culture.

‘Migration itself becomes a source of sustenance and

a self-reproducing goal, above and beyond the send and
receiving societies’iii. But Russians are a displaced
people, and they continue to be so because of past and
present stigmas, or even fears. At times, they find their
feet in new countries, but are still always greeted with
apprehension and immediate assumption, whether it is a joke
or not, that they are involved with the Russian government.
Due to stereotypes being perpetuated by the media and
historical propaganda, it is hard to tell whether Russian
people will ever find a true acceptance in the world.

Figure 3: (from left) Great

Baba Valya, her brother
Nikolai, Babushka Elizaveta
and Great-Great Baba Tonya,
1947

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 KNOW THY ENEMY
Adversary Attitudes towards Russians
‘We have a many-stranded mix’iv Malouf states, and this
shows in current society, with much of Australia made up
of a variety of nationalities, and especially if we are to
consider the stereotype that many white Australians are
simply descendants of England’s convicts, with others
coming from Aboriginal families. Australia is indeed a
mixed bag of ethnicities, nationalities, and identities.
Why, then, are there still so many issues surrounding race?
Only in recent history has there been discussion around the
ownership of land, and of atrocities committed, between the
Aboriginal and white population. But the issue extends
further back, with Anti-Semitism a prevalent feature of
twentieth century Australian society, alongside a culture
of Russophobia and Russophilia during the active years of
the USSR.

But why was there such tension? As mentioned, Russia-

Australia relations date all the way back to the beginning
of the nineteenth century, and the first imperial Russian
Consulate to the Australian colonies was established in
Melbourne in 1893. Many Russians came to Australia seeking
safety from war, conflicts, and revolutions, and they were
often well-
educated and
wealthy. Those
that emigrated
could only do so
because of their
economic position,
as many peasants
in the USSR were
trapped in their
hometowns, or
Figure 4: Russian Consulate Commemorative Plaque, communes, in the
photographed by author on 28/09/2019, Market later years.
Street, Melbourne

However, there was a rise in what has been deemed

as ‘Russophobia’ and ‘Russophilia’. It began during the

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gold rush in Australia of the eighteen-forties to fifties,
paranoia of Russian invasion swept the country, and
Russophobia increased. This was only inflamed by the
increasing flow of both Russians and Russian-speaking
immigrants. However, in the political sphere, friendly
Russo-Aussie relations increased at the same time, and in
1857, two Russian honorary consuls were appointed: James
Damyon in Melbourne, and E.M. Paul in Sydney. Pictured
below is a propaganda cartoon, titled ‘More desirable
colonists’, drawn in 1891, that expressed fears about the
arrival of Russian Jews, stereotyped as bookmakers. Even
in the late nineteenth century, Russian Jews were fleeing
persecution by their government, twenty-six years before
the Russian Revolution that ultimately triggered the purge
of religion from Russia. Prior to this image, and during
the Crimean War, many immigrants were Jews and Russian
intelligentsia, escaping disadvantage and the riots and
violence of the anti-Jewish pogroms. They mostly settled
in Melbourne and Sydney. The Russia-born population of
Melbourne almost quadrupled in the 1880s, to 1,172 by 1891.
v

Figure 5: Immigration Museum documentation of Russian-Jewish migration, image

photographed by author on 28/09/2019

Much of Russian migration was curtailed in 1925 due to the

concern of Russian agents in Australia. In 1931, it was
believed that emigration from Soviet Russia would not
likely be heavyvi. But, after WWII, many Russians arrived
on assisted passages from Displaced Persons camps in
Europe; their numbers in Victoria increased from 1,401 in
1947 to 13,762 in 1954vii.

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 Even in Tajikistan, where my family lived until as
recently as 2007, and a country that was a member of the
Soviet Union, white Russians experience racism against them
from the local Tajik population. “Natives” would
discriminate against them for their privileged status,
essentially creating a reverse classism, as Tajiks were
show prejudice for their language, culture, appearance and
economic status. Certainly, there is an ignorance of the
majority of humankind, especially of those living in non-
Western culturesviii. Whilst the rest of the world was
stigmatising the Soviet peoples, they were experiencing
their own levels of vilification. The Russian generations
born during the twentieth century were damned from the
beginning.

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 PROMISED LAND
Why did Russians migrate?
Almost one year after the initial Communist Revolution in
Russia, the Bolshevik government enacted the Decree on
Separation of Church from State, and School from Church.
This declared the freedom to
state their religion, or none at
all, but also deprived any
religious organisation the right
to any legal status, or to own
any property, effectively placing
all places of worship in the
hands of an atheist government.
Following this, in the first five
years, twenty-eight bishops and
around 1200 priests were
ix
executed . This may have been the
case for my great-great-great
grandfather, but unfortunately,
we have no physical records or
documentation of my family’s
aristocratic or religious status,
as it would have most likely been
Figure 6: The Telegraph, Brisbane, destroyed after the revolution.
article from 1914 stating 1,187
Russians had arrived in Australia All we know about our family is
from stories passed down through
generations.

Moreover, the likelihood of my family heritage being

preserved decreased even more so towards the end of the
nineteen-twenties. Between 1927 and 1940, Orthodox Church
numbers drastically decreased from 28,584 to less than five
hundred. Prior to this, between 1917 and 1935, arrests of
130,000 Orthodox priests was enacted, and out of these,
95,000 were killed. Luckily for my family, they had moved
to Tajikistan by 1935, and like many Russian migrants, were
intellectual individuals. Many of my family members worked
in the medical profession; my grandfather’s mother ran a
tuberculosis hospital, and my grandmother’s mother owned
her own chemist.

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Much later in the twentieth century, during the mid-
seventies, Russian Jews arrived in Australia under the
sponsorship of the Jewish Community. Since the nineties,
the numbers increased again, following the dissolution of
the Soviet Union and creation of the Russian Federationx.
In November 1987, the Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke
flew to Leningrad
to discuss foreign
policy, trade and
economics with
Mikhail
Gorbachev, the
Soviet leader at
the time. Hawke
gave Gorbachev a
list of names of
Soviet Jews that
wished to leave
Figure 7: White Russian refugee arrivals in Australia for
the USSR and only permanent settlement under the auspices of the
a few days later, Intergovernment Committee for European Migration, 1959
sixty to seventy-
five Jews were given permission to leave the country.

Notably, there were just as many women migrating from

Russia to Australia as men. Albeit, there is not as much
documentation of their movement unless they were married
or travelling with a parent; in the Russian Orthodox
Church, women and men are viewed equally. However, women
are essentially the home reinforcement of the religion,
whereas the men predominantly lead in the churches and the
services. In the USSR, Khrushchev targeted Orthodox women,
as he believed they would pass their religious
understandings on to their children and almost two-thirds
of church attendees were female. However, ‘many female
migrants were wage labourers’xi in Australia but could also
simultaneously ‘remain at home as part of a larger economic
unit’.xii We cannot neglect the role of women. As Joan Scott
states, ‘gender must be redefined with a vision of
political and social equality that includes not only sex,
but class and race’xiii.

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 ORDINARY PEOPLE, OR
CHILDREN OF THE DAMNED?
Continuing Stigmatisations against Russians
In 2016, just over 6,300 were Victorians born in the
Russian Federation, and 23% were Jewish, while 29% were
Russian Orthodoxxiv. Most members of the community in
Victoria today are employed as professionals and speak
Russian at home. Many cultural organisations throughout
Victoria support the Russian community, including the
Russian Ethnic Representative Council of Victoria (RERCV),
which can be found in Fitzroy and Ormond. No broad patterns
of migration and settlement should be taken for grantedxv,
as it shows the sheer diversity of a population, and gives
reason for the rich cultural society much of Australia has,
particularly Melbourne.

To perhaps some people’s surprise, Sidney Myer, a

Russian-speaking Jewish immigrant founded the retail giant
under his surname in 1899 in Melbourne, just after the
height of Victoria’s gold rush. Thus, those in Australia
that may have a dislike for Russians, have spent some of
their money in a
Russian-Jewish founded
business. The first
store was set up as the
‘Myer Emporium’, and
he used his wealth to
support Russian
immigrants moving to
Melbourne for the rest
of his life. The chain
is still clearly
popular and adored in
modern day Australia,
Figure 8: A portion of the cosmetics section of the which contrasts the
pharmacy department of Myer Emporium Ltd. in stereotypes I have
Melbourne, 1956
personally noticed. I
have experienced verbal stigmatisation too and am often
asked many questions that revolve around the Russian mafia,
President Vladimir Putin, and more light-hearted jokes that
reference working as a spy.

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Despite the love and popularity for this brand, which is
clearly depicted in the above image, there was still and
air of paranoia circulating the socio-political sphere in
Australia. Only five years before the image above was
taken, a referendum was held that banned the Communist
Party in 1951, following the Communist Party Dissolution
Act of 1950. Understandably, the ban was created during the
last years of Stalin’s life,
when Communism was paralleled
with totalitarianism and
massacres. As McCarthyism
would grow alongside the fear
of invasion across Europe and
Australia, the Russian
identity would continue to be
synonymous with distrust.

Much of the issue lies in the

themes of citizenship and
nation-state dominate our
xvi
narratives . It is a form of
passive racism, which is only
perpetuated by the continuing
misinformation given by media.
Even in their own country, many
Figure 9: Jane Aarons, active member
Russians struggle to live due of Friends Of the Soviet Union and
to foreign powers imposing subscriber to the Communist Party,
sanctions, and the economic 1932
hierarchy, showing oligarchs far above regular civilians.
Across the world, Russians struggle to find a place in new
cities until they find their own community. So, will
Russians ever find true acceptance? Will Russians, no
matter what background they are from, ever be considered
ordinary people, or are they all, children of the damned?

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 BIBLIOGRAPHY
Texts

• Bunce, R., Clements, P. and Flint, A. (2015). Russia

1917-91: Lenin to Yeltsin in Communist states in the
Twentieth Century. 1st ed. London: Hodder Education,
pp.70-132.
• Chakrabarty, D. (2008). Postcoloniality and the Artifice
of History in Provincializing Europe. 2nd ed. Princeton,
New Jersey: Princeton University Press, pp.27-46.

• Origins.museumsvictoria.com.au.(2019). Russian
Federation Immigration History. [online] Available at:
https://origins.museumsvictoria.com.au/countries/russi
an-federation/ [accessed 28 Aug 19]

• Malouf, David (2003). Made in England: Australia's

British Inheritance [online]. Quarterly Essay, No. 12,
2003: 1-66. Availability:
<https://search.informit.com.au/documentSummary;dn=767
510125844020;res=IELLCC> ISSN: 1832-0953. [accessed 01
Sep 19].

• McKeown, Adam. (2004). Global Migration 1846-1940.

Journal of World History, [online] 15(2), pp.155-189.
Available at:
https://www.jstor.org/stable/20068611?seq=1#metadata_i
nfo_tab_contents [Accessed 28 Aug 19].

• Obolensky-Ossinsky, V. (1931). Emigration from and

Immigration into Russia. In: W. Willcox, ed.,
International Migrations, Volume II: Interpretations.
[online] Massachusetts, USA: NBER, pp.521-580, chapter
27. Available at: http://www.nber.org/chapters/c5118
[Accessed 10 Oct. 2019].

• Scott, J. (1986). Gender: A Useful Category of

Historical Analysis. The American Historical Review,
[online] 91(5), p.1053-1075. Available at: https://www-
jstor-
org.ez.library.latrobe.edu.au/stable/1864376?seq=1#met
adata_info_tab_contents [Accessed 28 Aug. 2019].

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 Images
Title Page
• Figure 1, Top:(left to right) Dedushka Ivan Klemen-
Korsun, Baba Dyusa and friends in Dushanbe, 1960
(personal collection)
• Middle Left:(left to right) Babushka Elizaveta, her
cousin and Baba Tonya 1951-1952 (personal collection)
• Bottom Right: (right to left) Dedushka Peter and Baba
Tonya with Babushka Elizaveta, and Baba Valya, 1949
(personal collection)
Part One, Brave New World:
• Figure 2: (Personal Collection) Dedushka Vanya (right)
in Shahrtuz, 1932
• Figure 3:(from left) Great Baba Valya, her brother
Nikolai, Babushka Elizaveta and Great-Great Baba Tonya,
1947 (personal collection)
Part Two, Know Thy Enemy:
• Figure 4: (Personal Collection) Russian Consulate
Commemorative Plaque, photographed 28 September 2019,
Market Street, Melbourne
• Figure 5: (Personal Collection) Immigration Museum
documentation of Russian-Jewish migration; cartoon sourced
from State Library of Victoria, photographed 28 September
2019
Part Three, Promised Land:
• Figure 6: Author unknown, Immigrants in 1914, The
Telegraph Brisbane Qld., 27 April 1915, in Trove.
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/177022970/1985
1565 [accessed 28 Aug 19]
• Figure 7: Photographer: Don Edwards. White Russian
refugee arrivals in Australia for permanent settlement
under the auspices of the Intergovernment Committee for
European Migration, 1959. National Archives of Australia,
Record Search of NAA, https://recordsearch.naa.gov.au
[accessed 28 Aug 19]
Part Four, Ordinary People…:
• Figure 10: Photographer J Fitzpatrick, a portion of
the cosmetics section of the pharmacy department of Myer
Emporium Ltd. in Melbourne, 1956. National Archives of
Australia https://recordsearch.naa.gov.au [accessed 28
Aug 19]
• Figure 11: Photograph acquired by the Commonwealth
Investigation Branch. Jane Aarons, active member of
Friends of the Soviet Union and subscriber to the
Communist Party, 1932. National Archives of Australia,
Record Search of NAA, https://recordsearch.naa.gov.au
[accessed 28 Aug 19]

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i
David Malouf, Made in England, Quarterly Essay, 2003
ii
Dipesh Chakrabarty, Postcoloniality and the Artifice of History, Provincializing
Europe, 2008
iii
Adam McKeown, Global Migration 1846-1940, Journal of World History, 2004
iv
David Malouf, Made in England, Quarterly Essay, 2003
v
Origins.museumsvictoria.com.au. Russian Federation Immigration History.
[online], 2019
vi
Valerian Obolensky-Ossinsky, Emigration from and Immigration into Russia,
International Migrations, Volume II: Interpretations, 1931
vii
ibid
viii
Dipesh Chakrabarty, Postcoloniality and the Artifice of History, Provincializing
Europe, 2008
ix
Robin Bunce, Peter Clements, Andrew Flint, Russia 1917-91, Communist States
in the Twentieth Century, 2015
x
Origins.museumsvictoria.com.au. Russian Federation Immigration History.
[online], 2019
xi
Adam McKeown, Global Migration 1846-1940, Journal of World History, 2004
xii
ibid
xiii
Joan Wallach-Scott, Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis. The
American Historical Review, 1986
xiv
Origins.museumsvictoria.com.au. Russian Federation Immigration History.
[online], 2019
xv
ibid
xvi
Dipesh Chakrabarty, Postcoloniality and the Artifice of History, Provincializing
Europe, 2008

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