This is a highly interesting project proposal. To me, it possesses a particularly sharp historiographical edge as an application of transnationalism. Immigration is, of course, a prominent subfield within transnational history, yet political exiles — such as the White Russians in Paris and Shanghai — stand in marked contrast to migration in its conventional sense. Their experiences are distinguished by the immediacy and rapidity of their departure, as well as by the near-total loss of a legitimate existence in their homeland. This, in turn, often produces a heightened sense of displacement and rootlessness. For this reason, I think your chosen subject group addresses a relatively underexplored dimension within transnational studies of cross-border movement. Equally compelling is the concept of “statelessness” that you foreground. It strikes at the heart of common methodological assumptions of nationalism — namely, that people, organisations, and events operate within a clearly defined national framework. By focusing on statelessness, your project demonstrates that individuals were not always anchored to a stable or recognised nationhood, thereby revealing the ambiguity — if not the outright absence — of national identity. In this respect, both your subject and conceptual framework effectively challenge assumptions that are often taken for granted.
While I am not especially familiar with Paris, as someone born and raised in Shanghai I find the potential findings of your research particularly engaging. The legacy of the city’s historical extraterritoriality remains visible today, especially in its central districts, where the streetscape differs markedly — indeed, appears more “Western” — than in suburban residential areas. The period your project examines coincides with the height of privileged foreign presence in Shanghai. Within this context, the case of the White Russians is especially intriguing. Although their foreign background may have spared them the most extreme forms of deprivation, their status as dispossessed political exiles likely placed them below more established communities such as the French, British, and Americans within the city’s hierarchy of power and respectability. This multiplicity of authority makes Shanghai an especially rich setting in which to study stateless communities. In determining their legal status and social treatment, how did White Russians interact and negotiate (perhaps differently )with local Chinese authorities and the various Western powers present in the city? Which authorities did they perceive as most capable of serving their interests? To what extent were they able to exploit tensions between these groups to their advantage? The juxtaposition between the émigrés’ statelessness and the city’s intense cosmopolitanism offers fertile ground for uncovering complex and multilayered transnational connections.
The range of sources you propose to use is impressively broad, encompassing both official archival materials and more grassroots productions generated within the émigré community, as well as records from international organisations and host-state authorities. Together, these promise to build a comprehensive picture of how White Russians abroad navigated their stateless condition and engaged with local structures of power. One possible extension might be to look beyond their interactions with governing authorities and consider their relationships with ordinary residents in their host societies. A small, anecdotal example that I can provide may gesture toward the significance of such interactions: in Shanghai, many locals have long held an affection for a dish known as luó sòng tāng (“Russian soup”), a domesticated version of borscht. While very partial and inconclusive, this hints at the legacy of everyday forms of cultural exchange between Shanghainese and Russian emigrants. Tracing these kinds of popular and social interactions could shed further light on how stateless communities integrated into local environments through personal connections and shared cultural practices. This, in turn, might reveal an additional dimension of their stateless existence — one that complements their more formal efforts to navigate identity and, perhaps, to maintain aspirations of restoring themselves to Russia.