(Author: Boris Gorelik, Vol. 77 * No. 1 * Summer 2022)
Reading on the immigration of Russian Jews to South Africa, you may come across such statements as: ‘The Tsarist government refused to protect their Jewish nationals’.[1]
Other authors go further, declaring that ‘the Russian bureaucracy did not recognise Jewish émigrés as compatriots’.[2] One may conclude from this that the Russian officialdom disclaimed all responsibility for Russian Jewish emigrants once they crossed border.
But the ministerial correspondence preserved in the Russian and the British archives tells a different story. Although the Russian government viewed the Jewish population as a burden rather than an asset, Russian diplomats tried to help Russian countrymen in South Africa. They often succeeded despite the fact that a Russian-speaking consul worked there for less than a year.
In this article, I will focus on a critical period for Russian Jews in the Transvaal and the Orange Free State when they badly needed support from the Russian government.
Legal status of emigrants
Before considering the actions of Russian diplomats, it must be explained what factors influenced them. Obviously, the Russian law discriminated against Jews, but they were not the only ones who emigrated from the Russian Empire. There were legal provisions applying to all emigrants, irrespective of ethnicity. Such provisions along with the government’s attitude towards emigration in general often accounted for officials’ willingness or reluctance to look after the interests of their compatriots abroad.
Starting from 1890, the Russian Ministry of Home Affairs received reports from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and from governors (the highest officials) of the provinces near the western border that Russian subjects increasingly emigrated overseas, especially to the United States and Brazil. The movement, which had reached ‘epidemic proportions’, was deemed harmful. The government’s reasoning was summarised in an undated report which I found among the papers of the Police Department of the Ministry of Home Affairs:
‘The disadvantages of mass emigration for the Empire were thought to be as follows: The departure of peasants and workers directly afflicted the agricultural and factory operations because of the rising cost of labour or sometimes complete absence of manpower. In addition, the emigrants who returned to Russia had become familiar with a completely different political system and accustomed to taking part in the political life of that country. Furthermore, emigrants, who nearly always crossed the border secretly, returned in large numbers from America where they did not find the benefits that they had been promised; moreover, most of them had no passports or other proof of identity and needed material assistance. …. All these people, who had experienced failure overseas, exhausted by poverty, often having contagious diseases and already accustomed to active participation in the political life of the countries beyond the Atlantic, were undesirable and unsuitable for a modest life of hard work in the home country.’[3]
The Ministry of Home Affairs, with encouragement from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, tried hard to reduce emigration of peasants and factory workers. Throughout the 1890s and into the 1900s, the police in the western governorates, including Kovno, Vilno and other regions that provided the bulk of Jewish immigrants to South Africa, conducted inquiries to identify and prosecute those who helped Russian subjects to move abroad.
The authorities based their anti-emigrant campaign on the long-established legal grounds. The Russian law regarded the imperial subjects who permanently settled abroad without authorisation from their government as wrongdoers. According to the Criminal Code of 1885, the Russians who failed to return after the expiry of their permission to travel to foreign countries committed a criminal offence. They were considered missing, and their property in Russia could be seized and retained in custody.
Naturalisation of a Russian subject in another country was seen as ‘a violation of his duty of loyalty’ to the Russian emperor. Perpetrators were divested of the rights of their social class and banished for life. If they returned to the Russian Empire, they were deported from the European part of the realm to Siberia or another remote and poorly developed region.[4]
The business of emigration agents was also illegal in Russia. In the second half of the nineteenth century, those aiding and abetting prolonged or permanent emigration of Russian subjects could be sentenced to banishment to Siberia or imprisonment with hard labour. Their penal servitude could last up to five years, the longer terms being reserved for those who induced Russian servicemen to desert and ‘escape abroad’. This law applied to everybody who succeeded or failed in their efforts to convince, compel or coerce a Russian subject to emigrate. In other words, the coaxing itself could lead to punishment.[5]
By the 1900s, the Russian authorities had understood that instead of trying in vain to curb the mass emigration, it was beneficial to control it. The large remittances received by families in underdeveloped areas of the empire from their relatives abroad had become a major source of foreign currency. Possibly, for this reason, the emigration regulations were relaxed. According to the 1906 version of the law on abetting emigration, which remained in force until the Russian monarchy was overthrown, only the spreading of ‘deliberately misleading rumours’ about advantages of moving to another country was subject to prosecution, particularly if the inducement resulted in financial ruin of a household (up to three years of penal labour).[6] Other forms of encouragement were effectively legalised.
Even so, the government was concerned about the mass emigration of the non-Jewish population throughout the last three decades of Russia’s imperial history. Poles, Latvians, Lithuanians and, particularly, Russians were discouraged from settling abroad. By contrast, the official attitude to the Jewish emigration was more favorable. As noted in the above-quoted report, it was government policy that ‘Jews should be neither prevented from emigrating, nor given assistance to return to the Empire.’[7]
So, the position of Jewish emigrants was ambiguous. On the one hand, the Russian government did not hinder their departure if they crossed the border with valid passports (which most of them did not have). On the other hand, the government had the legal means to prosecute them as criminals if they overstayed their allowed term of absence from Russia.
Russian consulate in Johannesburg
Russia first showed interest in establishing a consulate in Johannesburg and direct trade relations with that country in 1895. According to the Director of the Chancellery of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, it came about because Russian businessmen (presumably Jewish) in the Transvaal appealed to the Russian Ministry of Trade and Industry to forge such links with their adopted country.[8]
On the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ instructions, the honorary Russian consul in Cape Town prepared a report on the economic and demographic situation in the Transvaal, including the statistical data on the growing immigration of Russian subjects into the republic. In 1897, based on this information, the Russian emperor, Nicholas II, sanctioned the opening of a Russian consulate in Pretoria.
Explaining this decision to the Finance Minister, the Minister of Foreign Affairs noted that ‘recent events’, by which he probably meant the repelling of the Jameson Raid and the German Emperor’s telegram to President Kruger with an expression of support for the Transvaal, revealed the regional importance of the republic. The Russian government saw the opening of a consulate in the Transvaal as an attempt ‘to foil the efforts of the British to gain a predominant influence in southern Africa’.[9]
It was a politically motivated move. However, a secondary reason given in the minister’s letter and in the subsequent correspondence on this matter was the presence of thousands of Russian immigrants in the rapidly developing Transvaal.
Diplomatic relations with the South African Republic were established in December 1898. Adolf von Gernet, a Russian engineer and entrepreneur, was appointed vice-consul in Johannesburg, which had the largest concentration of Russian immigrants. In Pretoria, the capital city, there were no Russian diplomatic representatives.
In less than a year, Von Gernet was discharged because of a serious illness. He left for Europe after handing his duties over to the French vice-consul in Johannesburg. On the outbreak of the South African War in October 1899, Russian immigrants in the Transvaal turned to the French consuls for urgent assistance and protection. Throughout this conflict, none of Russia’s representatives in South Africa knew the Russian law, language and bureaucratic procedures.
Russian passports for expatriates
Within two weeks after the hostilities opened, hundreds of Russians had fled from the Transvaal to Lourenço Marques (now Maputo). The Ministry of Foreign Affairs had no Russian-speaking diplomat in Mozambique either. The refugees contacted the honorary consul who looked after Russian interests in the Portuguese colony and telegraphed to the Russian consul in Lisbon assuring him that swift action was needed. The consulate in Lisbon arranged for food and transport for the Russian refugees through the Portuguese Minister of Foreign Affairs.
While the Governor-General of Mozambique organised the passage to Durban and Cape Town for over 400 people, the Russian ministry was alarmed at the prospect of their repatriation. The government department in Saint Petersburg asked for more information on the fugitives because it presumed ‘that these are Jews who emigrated [from Russia] without permission.’[10] The Russian consul in Lourenço Marques confirmed that most Russian refugees were indeed Jewish, but neither he, nor the Russian diplomats in Lisbon could stop the deportation. The refugees had no money to support themselves in Mozambique, staying in abandoned buildings or in tents provided by the police. Their living conditions were unhygienic, and their presence in the city could have serious repercussions for Portugal, which had declared neutrality in that war. That is why the Portuguese government ordered their expulsion and paid for their tickets.
The Russian honorary consul in the Mozambique capital obtained special passes from his British colleague for the refugees to proceed to the British territories. By late November, the remaining 100 Russian Jews had been deported from Lourenço Marques, but Durban refused to admit them, which is why, despite the Russian consulate’s protestations to the Portuguese naval minister, they were sent onwards to Le Havre. [11]
Now that dozens of Russian Jews from the Boer republics, possibly without passports, were heading for Europe, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs inquired of the Police Department what to do when they would ask for assistance from Russian diplomats. In response, the Police Department referred to the Minister of Home Affairs’ instructions of 1893. If people claiming to be Russian subjects and wishing to return to their homeland had no valid Russian passports or other proof of their nationality, they might be supplied with the necessary papers only after their statements were verified by the Ministry of Home Affairs in Saint Petersburg. Destitute emigrants could get a travel allowance from the Russian government only if they were Russian subjects of a Christian denomination.[12] Consequently, the Russian Jewish emigrants returning from the Boer republics were denied financial assistance.
Most emigrants from the western provinces of the Russian Empire left their homeland covertly. Getting a passport was troublesome and expensive or, for men of eligible ages for conscripting, even impossible. It could be easier to pay a guide who would lead the emigrants across the border so that they could board a ship at Hamburg or Bremen and proceed to the Cape via London. Those who left legally had to renew their passport every five years; with an expired passport, they had no proof of their Russian nationality.
In the Transvaal, obtaining a Russian identification document was relatively simple. The acting Russian diplomatic representatives — Victor-Stéphane Aubert, the French consul-general in Pretoria, and Jean-Marie-Louis-Georges Colomiès, the French vice-consul in Johannesburg — were known to issue Russian temporary papers. Those consular passports certified that the bearers were Russian subjects, which was particularly useful during the war because foreigners were not subject to conscription into the commandos.
In November 1899, holders of consular passports from South Africa started arriving in London. They visited the local Russian embassy and consulate, and requested the papers for travelling to their home country. Expecting that many other Russian migrants from the Boer republics would approach the London consulate with the same request in the following months, the consul wrote to his superiors in Saint Petersburg. He pointed out that his colleague in Johannesburg had no right to furnish such passports because most of the applicants had left Russia illegally. By giving them valid identification papers, the diplomat helped them to flout Russian laws.
Responding to the query, the Russian Police Department permitted the Russian consulate in London to supply passports authorising the emigrants’ repatriation in exchange for the papers supplied by the consul in Johannesburg.[13] The London consulate adopted this practice and handed out dozens of passports per month. In January and February 1900, for example, forty-eight Jewish emigrants from the Kovno Governorate, traveling from the Transvaal, exchanged their temporary papers for valid Russian passports in London.[14]
Meanwhile, the police in Russia checked the identity of every recipient and realised that many of them had never had a valid passport. Moreover, some of the emigrants from the Transvaal who were provided with new passports in London did not return to Russia.[15]
By September 1900, it had transpired that the acting Russian consuls in the Transvaal issued temporary passports mostly ‘sur le témoignage’ (according to testimony) of four Russian immigrants that would accompany the applicant to the consulate. The Russian consul in London told the Ministry of Foreign Affairs that Colomiès in Johannesburg had reportedly issued over 4,000 Russian passports since the start of the war. It was an enormous number considering that the latest census had shown 3325 Russian subjects living in that city.[16] Besides, the London consul suggested, it was lucrative business even if Colomiès charged only the official fee.[17]
In a new circular which the Ministry of Foreign Affairs sent out to its representatives in various countries, the diplomats were asked to disregard the temporary papers from the Johannesburg consul and provide passports to applicants from the Transvaal only once their identity was confirmed by the authorities in Russia.[18]
Food in the occupied Transvaal
After the British occupation of Pretoria and Johannesburg, Russian Jews continued to regard the acting Russian consul as a protector of their interests in the former Boer republic. On receiving their complaints, he would draw up a dispatch for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Saint Petersburg, and his recommendations were acted on.
For example, the consul informed the Foreign Minister that, according to the new regulations adopted by the military governor of Johannesburg in December 1900, foreign subjects could no longer buy from government stores, the only reliable source of food in the city. The Russian foreign minister interpreted this measure as an attempt to compel foreigners, including Russians, to leave the city and the Transvaal. He instructed the ambassador in London to protest at the actions of the British military authorities. On his request, the ambassador pointed out to the British foreign secretary that his government reserved the right to demand compensation for the losses incurred by Russian subjects in Johannesburg.[19]
Thanks to these representations by Russian and other diplomats, foreigners were allowed to buy food and other essentials from government warehouses on presenting a letter from their consul. In February 1901, the acting Russian consul in Johannesburg prepared 854 letters enabling 1346 people to purchase goods from the stores.[20]
Compensation for deportees
An even bigger effort to help Russian subjects in South Africa, irrespective of their ethnicity was made by Russian diplomats in 1900–1901.
In July 1900, thirty-nine Russian Jews were arrested in the Transvaal as undesirable persons in the theatre of war and incarcerated in the Johannesburg Fort. After nearly two days in poorly ventilated cells, without knowing what awaited them, the men were escorted to the railway station by soldiers, placed in cattle wagons and taken to an ocean port. Only then did they realise that they were being deported and forced to leave all their possessions behind in Johannesburg. They were on the high seas when they learnt that the ship, the SS Hawarden Castle, was bound for Vlissingen in the Netherlands. On reaching the destination, the captain ordered them to disembark. They were entitled to a free passage to Russia and one pound sterling. The deported refused to leave the ship and proceeded to Britain.
Thirty-five of them petitioned the Russian embassy in London to intercede with the British government on their behalf. The Russian non-Jewish press covered this incident under headlines such as ‘Russian victims of the Anglo-Transvaal War’, characterising the deportation as an act of barbaric violence. ‘It has been revealed that dozens or maybe hundreds of our compatriots, brought by fate to South Africa, were ruined, robbed and beggared by the British authorities’, remarked a Moscow daily.[21]
Possibly, the media attention caused the Russian diplomats to consider the complaints of the Hawarden Castle deportees and other Russian subjects carefully. After the first petition, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs received thirty-one submissions from other Russian subjects who had been expelled by the British military authorities from the former Boer republics. Those petitions were forwarded to the embassy in London and presented to the British government.[22] According to the Ministry of Foreign affairs, the subsequent deportations of Russians subjects were usually not accompanied by cruel or inhumane measures.[23]
To examine the claims to compensation by subjects of friendly powers in consequence of their deportation to Europe during the war, the British government established the South African Compensation Commission. The sittings took place in London from April to November 1901. The Russian government hired a Jewish lawyer to bring forward the claims of Russian deportees who appealed to the commission directly or through the embassy. The lawyer agreed to represent only twenty-eight claimants for the total amount of £10,175. He dismissed the other Russian submissions as unsubstantiated because the applicants were not banished from South Africa.[24]
Instead of investigating each claim in London and then in South Africa, the chairman of the commission proposed a lump-sum settlement for every country. After unofficial negotiations with the Russian embassy, the British Foreign Office offered £4,100 as ‘a mark of friendship and consideration’ to the Russian government. This amount was to be distributed, at the government’s discretion, among the Russian claimants ‘who may have suffered exceptional hardship as the result of their deportation or otherwise’.[25] The offer was accepted. In a despatch to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Russian ambassador called the outcome ‘brilliant’ because the Russians had the highest percentage of awards to claims.[26] However, there were significantly fewer Russian claimants (28) whose applications were approved by both their own government and the compensation commission than the Dutch (1139), the Germans (199) or the Americans (112).[27]
The money was paid to the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and distributed through the chiefs of police in the provinces where the deportees. In the Kovno Governorate, where eighteen of the twenty-eight successful claimants resided, the distribution of the awarded amounts was advertised on the front page of the official newspaper.[28] The ‘Index of names of claimants whose cases have been settled’, prepared for the British Foreign Office, and the receipts signed by the claimants for the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs show that most of the deportees had Jewish surnames. They had left Russia less than five years before their deportation from South Africa.[29] If they emigrated legally, their passports had not expired when they filed their claims, which explains why their rights as Russian subjects were recognised by Russian diplomats.
As for the seven Russian subjects whose claims were rejected by the commission, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs reserved £980 to be paid to them in case their appeals eventually prove to be deserving of compensation. In 1902, the ministry awarded £100 to one of them leaving the other claimants uncompensated. However, the ministry realised that nine of the Hawarden Castle deportees (at least eight of them Jewish) who had appealed to the Russian ambassador in London in 1900 were not recompensed either because they failed to submit individual petitions to the commission on time.
In June 1907, almost six years after the deportation, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs instructed the Russian ambassador in London to ask the British government for permission to pay the remaining amount to the remaining Hawarden Castle deportees. The diplomats in Saint Petersburg attributed the delay to ‘the ignorance of the petitioners, their failure to make their addresses to known to the ministry, the difficulty in establishing their nationality, the dubiousness of their assessment of their losses, and the absence of a proper Russian consulate in South Africa’.[30]
Central Judicial Commission
The South African Compensation Commission considered only losses related to deportation of foreign subjects to Europe. Adjudication of compensation claims for wartime damage to property and requisition of goods in South Africa fell within the competence of the Central Judicial Commission. It was set up by the British authorities in Pretoria in 1903, and its decisions on the claims were final.[31]
The South African Republic had ceased to exist, and so did its diplomatic relations with Russia. The country’s interests in South Africa continued to be represented by foreigners: the honorary consul in the Cape and the French diplomats in the Transvaal. Meanwhile, the press in Russia published and discussed an account by a Russian in Cape Town who wrote about the ‘thousands’ of Russian subjects who had abandoned their property in the Boer republics and fled or were deported to the Cape. At the close of the war, subjects of other countries were permitted to return to the former republics. But Russians, as destitute and anxious as they were, could not do the same, because nobody defended their rights. According to the Cape Town correspondent, ‘English officials and influential persons treat them with disdain, a state of things only rendered possible by the unsympathetic attitude adopted by the so-called Russian consuls in Cape Town and Johannesburg.’[32]
Writing to the finance minister in February 1903, the Russian foreign minister stated that the empire needed a proper consulate in the Transvaal with a competent Russian-speaking staff. The number of Russian immigrants grew again once the war ended. The foreign minister had been informed by his subordinates that most of the immigrants were Jewish, including those who left Russia illegally to evade conscription.[33] Yet, he pointed out, they kept in touch with their homeland and often contacted the consuls representing Russian interests, who, for their ignorance of Russian laws, were unable to protect or support them.
The foreign minister predicted that Russians in South Africa would need consular assistance urgently because their claims would be reviewed by the judicial commission. He added that, ‘from a political point of view, it would be absolutely necessary, in the interests of our prestige, that, in the consideration by the British Government of claims made by foreigners who suffered losses during the Anglo-Boer War, the claims of Russian subjects are adjudicated and upheld on a par with the claims by other foreign subjects, who can rely on the assistance of their consuls.’[34] He warned that, in the absence of a Russian consul in the Transvaal, such claims would be unauthenticated and easily dismissed.
The minister was right. As shown by Richard Mendelsohn in his article for Jewish Affairs, nearly six hundred immigrants from the Russian Empire, mostly Jewish, submitted their claims to the judicial commission.[35] Many of their petitions were invalidated because the British found that the applicants had not observed neutrality during the war. However, the commission soon learnt how to disqualify Russian claims collectively. Most Russian claimants had only passports issued by the acting Russian consuls in the Transvaal to confirm their nationality. The investigators realised that those documents were insufficient proof. The applicants needed a valid passport supplied by the local authorities in Russia to be able to exercise the rights of a Russian subject abroad. Without a proper passport, they were not entitled to a compensation because they were unable to demonstrate their nationality at the time when their wartime losses were incurred. Most applications by Russian Jews were dismissed by the commission on these grounds.[36]
Some Russian Jews in South Africa, seeing that the local consuls were unable to back up their claims, appealed to the Russian embassy in London. Their letters were forwarded to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Saint Petersburg. The petitioners asked Russian diplomats to intercede and persuade the judicial commission to reconsider their applications. The ministry reviewed the complaints and asked the London embassy to communicate with the British government on this question. However, after further discussions, the ministry informed the claimants that their petitions could not be granted unless they provided a valid Russian passport or other documents furnished by the authorities in Russia to confirm their Russian nationality. The applicants had to send such papers through the Johannesburg consul. Apparently, they were unable to do so, and the Russian foreign ministry did not pursue this matter any further.[37]
Repatriation of prisoners of war
In this field, the Russian foreign ministry was more successful. From 1901, Russian diplomats communicated with the War Office in London to secure the release of Russian captives on condition of their repatriation. The Russian government even departed from its policy of refusing financial aid to non-Christian emigrants. Local consulates arranged a free passage to their homeland for Russian subjects, including Jews, who had been deported during the South African War and detained in Ceylon, St Helena and the Bermudas.
Their trip back to the Russian Empire was overseen by the Russian authorities, and help was provided along the way. For instance, in 1902, the prisoner Moses-Gutman Vayner, who was diagnosed as having a mental disorder in the Bermudas, was released and sent to Russia. The Police Department in Saint Petersburg asked the governor in Riga to have Vayner received at the port and put on the train to Kovno. On the last leg of the journey, it was the Kovno governor who had to ensure that Vayner reached his hometown.[38]
Some prisoners did not want to return to Russia for various reasons, including resistance of compulsory military service, although they were willing to use the opportunity of leaving the islands at the Russian government’s expense. In August 1902, the British authorities informed the Russian consul in Colombo that there were thirteen captives in Ceylon who claimed to be his countrymen and wished to be repatriated. Most of them, according to the consul, were Jews who had been banished for trading with Boer troops or guerrillas. When the consul announced that they will be sailing directly to a Russian port, only two people, Reimer and Blöm, still wanted to go.[39] The consul arranged a prompt departure for those two men, who were probably ethnic Germans.
By November 1902, just three prisoners of war had returned to Russia at the government’s cost. Another two were to be repatriated from St Helena. In the Bermudas, a certain Jacobson, after refusing to return to his homeland, said that he changed his mind and was keen on going. But when his London-bound ship reached New York, he went missing.[40]
Two other Russian Jews in the Bermudas, A S Nurok and S V Meyerovich, were allowed to return to Russia by Lord Kitchener, the British commander-in-chief, in September 1901. However, they declined to sign a statement waiving their claims to the British government, as prisoners of war were normally required to do as a condition of their release.[41] They eventually returned to their homeland at their own expense and appealed to the Russian embassy in London in 1903, asserting that they had been deported and imprisoned mistakenly. The embassy contacted the Colonial Office but did not manage to get permission for the petitioners to travel to the Transvaal and present their case to the Central Judicial Commission.[42] Later that year, Nurok and Meyerovich arrived in South Africa, but the outcome of their submission remains unknown.
***
Diplomats and other officials of the Russian Empire often succeeded in helping their compatriots, both Jewish and non-Jewish, during a tragic period of South African history. The Russian government could have achieved more if it had a competent Russian-speaking consul in South Africa. But, given the prejudice against Jews and the illegality of permanent emigration in the tsarist Russia, it is surprising that Russian officialdom did even this much to look after the interests of Jewish immigrants in South Africa.
Boris Gorelik is a Russian writer and researcher and faculty member at the Institute for African Studies – Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow. He has an MA in linguistics from Moscow State University (2001).
NOTES
[1] Berger, N, Chapters from South African History, Jewish and General. Johannesburg: Kayor Publishers, 1982, p 36
[2] Davidson, A; Filatova, I, The Russians and the Anglo-Boer War, 1899-1902. Cape Town: Human & Rousseau, 1998, p 50.
[3] State Archive of the Russian Federation (GARF), fonds 102, series 47, file 104, part 8, letter А, vol II, pp 247–248.
[4] Tagantsev, N S, Ulozheniye o nakazaniyakh ugolovnykh i ispravitelnykh 1885 goda. Ninth edition, Saint Peterburg, 1898, pp 310–312.
[5] Ibid, p 313.
[6] Svod zakonov Rossiyskoy Imperii, vol XV. Petrograd, 1916, pp 79–80.
[7] GARF, fonds 102, series 47, file 104, part 8, letter А, vol II, p 248.
[8] Menovtshikov, R, ‘Rossiya i yuzhno-afrikanskiye respubliki v kontse XIX–nachale XX veka’, Diplomatichesky Vestnik, 1991, no 7, p 61.
[9] GARF, fonds 565, series 8, file 29362, p 4.
[10] Shubin, G V; Voropaeva, N G; Vyatkina, P P; Khritinin V Y; Liebenberg, I (comp and eds), Anglo-burskaya voyna 1899–1902 godov glazami rossiyskih poddannyh, vol 5. Moscow: Izdatel I B Belyi, 2012, p 250.
[11] Shubin et al, Anglo-burskaya voyna 1899–1902 godov…, pp 254–256.
[12] GARF, fonds 102, series 47, file 104, part 8, letter А, vol II, pp 119–123.
[13] Shubin et al, Anglo-burskaya voyna 1899–1902 godov…, pp 253, 256.
[14] GARF, fonds 102, series 56, file 22, part 34, pp 5–8.
[15] Shubin et al, Anglo-burskaya voyna 1899–1902 godov…, p 258–259.
[16] Census, 15th July, 1896. Report of Director of Census. Johannesburg: Standard and Diggers’ News, 1896, p ix.
[17] Shubin et al, Anglo-burskaya voyna 1899–1902 godov…, p 260.
[18] Shubin et al, Anglo-burskaya voyna 1899–1902 godov…, p 257.
[19] Shubin et al, Anglo-burskaya voyna 1899–1902 godov…, p 261–262.
[20] Shubin et al, Anglo-burskaya voyna 1899–1902 godov…, p 263.
[21] Russky Listok, 25 October 1900.
[22] See, for example, ‘Africa: Corres. Claims of Subjects of Friendly Powers. Deportation by British Military Authorities in South Africa’, The National Archives, Kew, FO 881/7710, pp 84, 122, 215, 220–221.
[23] Shubin et al, Anglo-burskaya voyna 1899–1902 godov…, p 272.
[24] ‘South African Compensation Commission’, The Times, 3 September 1901, p 5.
[25] ‘Africa: Corres. Claims of Subjects of Friendly Powers’, p 264.
[26] Shubin et al, Anglo-burskaya voyna 1899–1902 godov…, pp 273–274.
[27] ‘South African Compensation Commission’, The Times, 15 November 1901, p 8.
[28] Kovenskiye Gubernskiye Vedomosti, 27 March 1902, p 1.
[29] ‘Africa: Corres. Claims of Subjects of Friendly Powers’, p 262.; Shubin et al, Anglo-burskaya voyna 1899–1902 godov…, pp 284–285.
[30] Shubin et al, Anglo-burskaya voyna 1899–1902 godov…, pp 272–273, 305–309.
[31] Musa, S, Victim Reparation under the Ius Post Bellum: An Historical and Normative Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019, pp 198-199.
[32] ‘Russian refugees in South Africa’, The Times, 2 September 1902, p 3.
[33] Vyatkina, R R; Davidson, A B; Tsypkin, G V (eds), Rossiya i Afrika: Dokumenty i materialy XVIII v–1960 g, vol 1. Moscow: Institute of World History, Russian Academy of Sciences, 1999, pp 82–83.
[34] Shubin et al, Anglo-burskaya voyna 1899–1902 godov…, pp 301–303.
[35] Mendelsohn, R, ‘Uprooted and uncompensated: the mistreatment of “Russian” Jews by Perfidious Albion during and after the Anglo-Boer War’, Jewish Affairs, 2019, vol 74, no 3, p 7.
[36] Mendelsohn, ‘Uprooted and uncompensated’, pp 12–13.
[37] Kuznetsova, O N, ‘Russkiye poddanniye protiv angliyskogo pravitelstva (dela o vozmetshenii ubytkov posle anglo-burskoy voyny), Issledovano v Rossii, 2002, no 148, pp 1682–1684.
[38] GARF, fonds 102, series 47, file 104, part 14, pp 5–9.
[39] Shubin et al, Anglo-burskaya voyna 1899–1902 godov…, pp 279–280.
[40] Shubin et al, Anglo-burskaya voyna 1899–1902 godov…, pp 286–7.
[41] Shubin et al, Anglo-burskaya voyna 1899–1902 godov…, p 272.
[42] Kuznetsova, ‘Russkiye poddanniye protiv angliyskogo pravitelstva’, p1676.
