ABSTRACT
The First World War did not only leave millions of people dead, sick, or wounded. It also created unprecedented streams of refugees. The collapse of the multiethnic Habsburg, Romanov, and Ottoman Empires and the sheer violence of especially the Russian Revolution and the wars in Eastern Europe made massive numbers of people flee their homes. When the European map was redrawn in 1919, many of the countries the refugees had left, had disappeared, and the new nation-states (and the Soviet Union) were not always welcoming them back. Almost 10 million persons lost their citizenship. These stateless refugees became a huge issue on the political agenda. 1
