ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the atmosphere in which the Prague SRs lived and worked. It also examines their position in debates over the role of the Russian emigration. Most studies of the emigration have focused on how individuals and groups envisaged and played out their role as émigrés.1 The Prague SRs saw the role of the emigration as being to represent Russian interests abroad and produce a free Russian press. The Prague SRs refuted the common view that Russian émigrés had no understanding of the Soviet Union, ‘as though Russians abroad are completely cut off from life, as though they do not see Russia reflected in the international press, or meet with those coming from Russia, or correspond with friends and relations or read Russian books’.2 There were about 130 SR émigrés in Europe who belonged to various local groups.3 SRs usually ended up abroad after 1917 because they had been actively opposing the Bolsheviks or the White dictatorships or because they had been sent there to raise support for the SR cause. The SRs were very active in the emigration. They published 96 books in the interwar period.4 SRs played an important role in the cultural and literary life of the emigration. They founded and edited the two most important émigré journals, Sovremennie Zapiski and Volya Rossii, as well as a series of party publications. They contributed to the international socialist press. They sat on émigré charitable bodies, represented the emigration in the League of Nations, were members of the Socialist International and worked with other European socialist parties. The two main SR centres were Prague and Paris, with smaller groups in Berlin, Belgrade, Warsaw, Tallinn, Belgium, Geneva, Harbin, Shanghai and the USA.
