CONGRESS OF RUSSIANS.

Waimate Daily Advertiser, Volume XXIV, 28 June 1926, Page 5

CONGRESS OF RUSSIANS.

LIBERATION OF COUNTRY DESIRED. 400 DELEGATES FROM DISTANT LANDS. PARIS, May 20. A remarkable conference of 400 delegates, representing between 2,000,000 and 3,000,000 refugees of the Russian revolution, who are now scattered in every quarter of the globe, concluded in Paris last month. The conference was called ‘‘Zarubejuy Cogien,” or “The Congress of Russians residing beyond the frontiers. The 400 delegates came from as far as the snow-bound steppes or Siberia, and from Finland, and bitter were the sacrifices which many of them made in order to undetake the long and tedious pilgrimage by France. Men who were high in the social life of Petrograd before the war found their way as delegates from obscure places such as Pernik, in Bulgaria, where today they are reduced to laboring for starvation wages in the mines. Russian refugees in this town alone by a great effort raised from their meagre earnings more than £75, in order that they-might be represented by four of their number.

Delegates came also from Scandinavia, Esthonia, Lithuania, Poland, Germany, Belgium, and Italy; from Turkey, and even from the Far East, where, although members of the former Russian aristocracy, they now toil almost invariably as common laborers on the roadways, in the mines, in the factories, or the workshops. More than 40 delegates represented the exiles in Czecho-Slovakia. They included 15 students , 11 members of the agricultural federation, and 13 members of the National Committee, composed of professors, writers, and engineers.

There were Cossacks from South Russia in their picturesque uniforms —about; 40 of them in all —and even representatives from Persia and Bagdad. One aged delegate, now exiled with his daughter in a remote hamlet lying half-buried in the mountains beyond Plevna, Bulgaria, travelled many miles drawn by oxen to reach the nearestrailway station for the journey. His community of fellow-refugees undertook to care for his daughter in his absence.

Another veteran was the central figure of an enthusiastic official sendoff by the local garrison of Cayarro. in Jugo-Slavia. Officers in full uniform and “ladies in their ball dresses” were summoned for tne occasion because he was going to a congress to help “the resurrection of Russia, great and mighty.” The conference in Paris, the preparations for which had been in progress for more than nine months, was the first serious attempt on the part of Russian exiles scattered’ over the world to assemble for a general survey of the political situation in their own country. One hundred and ten individual groups were ultimatelv represented, the only political, party failing to appear being that with which M. Kerenskv and their chief leader to-day. Professor Milukoff. have been identified.

They may be described as all that remains of the moderate Left of old Russia now passing through the period of adaptation to the new conditions of life. In this section of the Russian populace abroad are preserved deep-rooted fears of a violent reactionary movement if the Bolsheviks are to fall from power. The first normal step of the conference was to read an address to the Grand Duke Nicholas, the Czar’s cousin and commander-in-chief of the Russian armies during the war, hailing him as “the unflinching standard-bearer of the Russian State who shares, in the great hopes which are directed by large masses of the Russian people, inside Russia and beyond her fromtsrers. towards the wisdom of statesmanship and the brilliancy of the military leadership erf your Imperial Highness.”

“The congress firmly believes,” concluded thia remarkable address, ct that at your call all patriotic men of Russia. without hesitation, will give assistance to the great task of the liberation of our native land. 1 "

The reply of the Grand Duke, however, was one counselling moderation. Finally, at the concluding session of the congress a message of greeting and an appeal to the Russian people were unanimously adopted. “For nine years,” read the manifesto, “you have sustained the cruellv unbearable trials of Russia. Our sacred altars are desecrated. Life of tSie Russian family has been undermined, 'the younger generation is being debauched. “With you we are combining with a desire of directing all our forces to the work of saving and regenerating Russia to the active and uncompromising struggle with her oppressors.”

This dramatic resolution marked the end of the convention, and the 400 delegates quickly dispersed', the greatei number to entrain again for lonely exile in distant lands, leaving behind them the glamor and wealth, of a great city which once they enjoyed.