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Negotiating Refugee Futures: Resettlement of Russian Refugees from the Philippines to the United States, 1950‑1951

Négocier l’avenir des réfugiés : réinstallation des réfugiés russes des Philippines aux États-Unis, 1950‑1951
Lena Christoph
p. 183-204

Résumés

Cet article examine le programme américain de réinstallation ouvert en 1950 pour les réfugiés Russes blancs qui ont quitté la Chine communiste en 1949 et se sont retrouvés en transit dans le camp de l’OIR à Tubabao dans les Philippines entre 1949 et 1953. Il montre que les opportunités de réinstallation de ces réfugiés étaient façonnées par les préjugés raciaux, la géopolitique de la guerre froide et les normes sociales diversement mobilisées par les responsables américains, le personnel de l’OIR et les représentants des réfugiés russes eux‑mêmes. À partir des archives institutionnelles et des documents produits par les porte‑parole réfugiés, l’étude met en lumière les rivalités entre acteurs, les dynamiques de pouvoir et les spécificités du régime migratoire de la sortie de la Seconde Guerre mondiale en Asie.

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Texte intégral

I am deeply grateful to Laure Humbert and Célia Keren, two anonymous reviewers, as well as the participants of the workshop “Telling People Apart” (Vienna, 15 November 2024) for their invaluable feedback on earlier drafts of this article. The research that led to this publication has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union´s Horizon Europe Research and Innovation Programme (Grant Agreement no 101053242). Views and opinions expressed are those of the author only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the ERC. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them. Further, this publication has been made possible through a research fellowship by the German Historical Institute, Washington DC.

  • 1 “Guiuan Refugees Hail D‑P Bill”, Special to the Manila Times, 15 April 1950, Archives nationales, P (...)
  • 2 David Nasaw, The Last Million: Europe’s Displaced Persons from World War to Cold War, New York, Pen (...)
  • 3 Ibid. supra, p. 490ff.

1On 15 April 1950, the Philippine newspaper Manila Times reported on the passing of an amendment to the 1948 United States Displaced Persons Act, authorising the admission of an additional “400,000 refugees into the United States”.1 The original act, passed amid pressure on the United States to respond to the postwar refugee crisis, was widely criticised —including by President Harry S. Truman—for largely excluding Jewish refugees.2 The 1950 amendment removed several barriers, expanding eligibility to include Jewish refugees as well as some groups who had fled communism.3 This development was followed closely in the Philippines, as the amendment included a group of Russian refugees who had been living on the island of Tubabao since their evacuation from Shanghai by the International Refugee Organization (IRO) in 1949.

  • 4 On Russians in China: Mara Moustafine, “Russians from China: Migrations and Identity”, Cosmopolitan (...)
  • 5 “Aide Memoire Concerning the Philippine Operation”, no date, AN, AJ/43/580.
  • 6 The terms “refugee” and “displaced persons” are used interchangeably in this text. It should be not (...)
  • 7 “Presentation of Samar Problem to Delegates of Member Nations of IRO”, T. Jamieson, 26 July 1949, A (...)
  • 8 “To Speed up D.P. Resettlement”, Manila Bulletin, 23 August 1950, AN, AJ/43/1076.

2This group was part of a broader Russian exile community in China, displaced since the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution and ensuing civil war, which triggered a mass exodus to cities like Harbin, Tientsin (now Tianjin) and Shanghai. The Chinese exile was marked by constant political upheaval and war, including the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1937, the Pacific War and eventually the communist victory in China. As the Chinese Civil War neared its end in 1948, the anticommunist, or “White”, Russian community feared persecution and turned to the IRO in Shanghai for assistance.4 Most of the 5,500 evacuated displaced persons (DPs) hoped to migrate to the United States. However, while Australia, Paraguay, the Dominican Republic and France offered resettlement schemes, US immigration was limited to individual visa applications.5 By April 1950, 2,500 of the Tubabao DPs had departed, mostly for Australia.6 The remaining 3,000 DPs had either been rejected by selection missions or declined offered resettlement destinations.7 “The dream of a home in the United States is a little nearer realization for 3,000 displaced persons in the Philippines.”8 the Manila Bulletin reported in August 1950, as the US selection mission arrived at the camp.

  • 9 Laura Barnett, “Global Governance and the Evolution of the International Refugee Regime”, Internati (...)
  • 10 Christoph Rass and Frank Wolff, “What Is in a Migration Regime? Genealogical Approach and Methodolo (...)

3This article examines the US resettlement scheme for Russians from China, focusing on the explicit criteria and implicit norms that shaped visa eligibility, and the negotiations between three key actors: US migration officials, IRO welfare workers and Russian representatives. While some scholars define regimes “as explicit rules or implicit norms guiding the actions of states and individuals, together with institutions and organizations expressing these rules or norms”,9 I emphasise the importance of how these rules and norms were implemented, navigated and negotiated. I follow Christoph Rass and Frank Wolff, for whom the refugee regime constitutes itself through the practices and interaction of different actors in an “arena”. This image helps uncover the heterogeneity of actors, their intentions and interactions, while acknowledging the hierarchies within this “conflict‑based contact zone”.10 I argue that three issues dominated the negotiations over who was recognised as a White Russian DP, and thus deemed worthy of a US visa: national, religious and racial belonging; political reliability; and social respectability. These criteria clashed with the lived realities of the long‑displaced Russian community from China, whose identities and complex life histories defied the expectations of US and IRO officers.

  • 11 Polina E. Ilieva, “The Refugee Camp in Tubabao: The First Philippine Experience in International Hu (...)

4More broadly, this article contributes to a global perspective on the post‑Second World War refugee regime by foregrounding an understudied transit site in Asia and the local dynamics of displacement and resettlement. The Tubabao case challenges the Eurocentric focus of DP historiography by demonstrating how racial categorisation, anticommunist allegiance and social respectability were assessed and enforced in an Asian setting, where US officials, international bureaucrats and diasporic actors engaged in complex negotiations over belonging and eligibility. Building on and extending the work of scholars such as Polina Ilieva, Sheila Fitzpatrick, Kinna Kwan, Ria Sunga, Charie Ann Cabides‑Padullo and Jamelyn B. Palattao11 on the Tubabao camp, this article is the first to offer an in‑depth analysis of the US resettlement mission as well as to draw on IRO archival sources —previously used only by Fitzpatrick in the context of Australian resettlement. These materials are placed in dialogue with source material by Russian DP representatives. In doing so, this article reveals how US migration policy, IRO procedures and transnational diasporic advocacy converged to shape the outcomes of refugee resettlement during the early Cold War.

The IRO, US mission and Russian émigré elite on Tubabao

  • 12 S. Deborah Kang, “Sovereign Mercy: The Legalization of the White Russian Refugees and the Politics (...)

5Following the Bolshevik Revolution, the White Russians spread into exile across six continents. This large‑scale refugee crisis prompted a first attempt to create a framework for international refugee management and the establishment of the League of Nations’ High Commission for Refugees, headed by Fridtjof Nansen. When, in 1921, the Bolsheviks revoked citizenship for those who had fled the revolution, most Russians outside of Russia were rendered stateless. The commission reacted by issuing an identification and travel document, the so‑called Nansen passport. The exiles’ legal and political status remained precarious as they built new lives in China over the following decades. While the diaspora elsewhere slowly assimilated, Russians in China expected an imminent collapse of the Soviet Union and their eventual return.12

  • 13 Laurie Manchester, “How Statelessness Can Force Refugees to Redefine Their Ethnicity: What Can Be L (...)
  • 14 Sheila Fitzpatrick, “Russians in the Jungle…”, art. cit., p. 700f.
  • 15 “Memorandum. Possible Improvements of Legal Position of the Russian Emigrants”, Hoover Institution (...)

6The Russian anticommunist diaspora was in China diverse in social background, nationality and religion. It included former aristocrats, peasants, White Army officers and various groups such as Cossacks, Tatars, Ukrainians and Poles, reflecting the various nationalities and ethnicities making up prewar imperial Russia. While most were Russian Orthodox, there was a substantial Jewish population and smaller groups of other denominations. The exiles forged a particular identity rooted in their rejection of communist Russia. As Laurie Manchester has shown, they redefined Russianness after the revolution as part of a nation‑building project from abroad. Despite the need to increase the size of this project, referred to as “Russia Abroad”, exclusivity and exclusion was a core characteristic.13 In Shanghai, the Russian Emigrants Association (REA) played a key role in this nation‑building project, granting membership exclusively based on political reliability, religious and social acceptability. Interestingly, REA membership also served as a ticket into the camp, as the IRO allowed the REA to select most evacuees from Shanghai to Tubabao.14 This arrangement was likely accepted by the IRO because REA members had been vetted by the REA leadership, admitting only staunch anticommunists known to other members.15 Prominent leaders of the White Russian community included REA presidents Gregory K. Bologoff and Valentin V. Fedoulenko as well as Orthodox Archbishop John of Shanghai. All three passed through Tubabao before resettling in San Francisco, where they continued advocating for the remaining DPs in the Philippines, while also excluding others from their lobbying efforts.

  • 16 “Inter‑Office Memorandum”, from E.K. Rahardt to M. Bradford, 15 November 1951, AN, AJ/43/499.
  • 17 Letter from Mollie Rule to IRO Australia, 23 February 1952, AN, AJ/43/382.
  • 18 Letter from Rule to IRO Geneva, 13 June 1950, AN, AJ/43/261.
  • 19 “Hard core” was an IRO category describing DPs who needed institutional care and were particularly (...)
  • 20 Louise W. Holborn, The International Refugee Organization: A Specialized Agency of the United Natio (...)
  • 21 Sheila Fitzpatrick, “Russians in the Jungle…”, art. cit., p. 711.

7Through the IRO’s support, the Russian refugees gained access to the post‑Second World War refugee regime, initially created to deal mainly with the millions of persons displaced by the war in Europe. In its first year, the camp saw a high staff turnover and frequent conflict between IRO personnel and the REA. In January 1950, resettlement officer Mollie Rule arrived at the camp, a British citizen from Southern Rhodesia who had worked in evacuee camps before joining the IRO.16 She remained in the Tubabao camp until the last refugee was resettled, even after the IRO ended its operations in Asia in 1952 and the World Council of Churches (WCC) took over.17 The resettlement work of the Philippine IRO Mission differed from other areas of IRO operations because the Philippine government had agreed to accommodate the refugees only on the condition that none would settle locally. When IRO headquarters issued general instructions to sanction “refugees who exploit the organisation’s resettlement assistance”, Rule pointed out that such measures —like withdrawal of assistance, repatriation or absorption into the local economy—were impossible to implement in the Philippines. As repatriation or local settlement were both unfeasible, the IRO operation had no means to pressure DPs who “unreasonably refused” resettlement options.18 Unlike in Europe, where responsibility for “hard core” refugees19 was negotiated with local authorities and often resulted in permanent settlement,20 the Philippine mission had no such option and instead had to find resettlement solutions abroad for every DP —while also persuading them to accept these outcomes. This was particularly difficult because many of the Tubabao refugees were considered undesirable migrants as a significant number were elderly or had tuberculosis. In 1950, the Australian resettlement mission in Tubabao had selected only young and healthy migrants. As Fitzpatrick noted, “somewhat ironically, […] the US, though preferred destination of the group, to some extent took Australia’s leavings”.21

  • 22 Sheila Fitzpatrick, Lost Souls: Soviet Displaced Persons and the Birth of the Cold War, Princeton, (...)
  • 23 Act to amend the Displaced Persons Act of 1948, Public Law 81‑555, 64 Stat. 219, 16 June 1950.

8The passing of the DP Act amendment was the result of lobbying efforts of national and religious groups in the US. For the White Russians in China, organisations and individuals like Alexandra Tolstoy convinced policymakers to open US doors by stressing that these refugees shared America’s values, including freedom and human rights, and were staunchly anticommunist. Voluntary agencies like the Tolstoy Foundation played an essential role in DP resettlement, as entry into the US required sponsorship through affidavits provided by individuals or organisations.22 Interestingly, eligibility definitions for the group remained vague. The amendment included a maximum of 4,000 migrants, who, first, “resided in China, as displaced persons, or refugees, on July 1, 1948, or on the effective date of this act”; second, who “[were] qualified under the immigration laws of the United States for admission into the United States for permanent residence”; and, finally, who “[were] still in China or, having left China, [had] not subsequently been received for permanent residence by any other country other than the United States”.23 This description left much room for interpretation by US migration officers, as neither nationality nor specific requirements were spelled out.

Race, religion and nationality: Who is a Russian?

  • 24 Harry S. Truman, “Statement by the President Upon Signing Bill Amending the Displaced Persons Act”, (...)
  • 25 The term white is italicised to mark it as a constructed political and social category and highligh (...)
  • 26 Letter from Bologoff to Bogen, 1949, Hoover, Cattell Collection, Box 1, Folder 6; “Statistical Brea (...)
  • 27 Charlotte Brooks, Between Mao and McCarthy: Chinese American Politics in the Cold War Years, Chicag (...)

9One contested eligibility criterion concerned the racial classification of the Russian DPs, which revealed diverging views among US officials, the IRO and the REA. Although the 1950 amendment did not explicitly mention ethnicity, race or nationality, it was clearly intended for the group advocated by Tolstoy and others: Russians who had fled communism in the Soviet Union and were now fleeing it again in China. In his statement on the amendment, President Truman welcomed the inclusion of “4,000 European refugees who fled to the Far East to escape one form of totalitarianism and must now flee before a new tyranny”.24 The quote not only affirms the political persecution but indicates that these Russians were considered European —not only culturally European but also unambiguously white.25 This assumption was challenged when the US resettlement mission arrived in Tubabao and encountered a far more diverse reality. While 85 to 90 percent of the camp population identified as “Orthodox Russian”, at least eighteen other European and Asian nationalities were present, including Armenians, Turk‑Tartars and Iranians.26 Additionally, intimate encounters with Chinese and Japanese individuals had diversified the diaspora, leading the IRO to racially categorise several refugees as “Asiatic”. Given long‑standing discriminatory anti‑Asian migration policies in the US, most notoriously the Chinese Exclusion Act (1882‑1943), both DPs and IRO officials had to carefully navigate persistent anti‑Chinese sentiment and restrictive scrutiny, which continued to hamper migration despite limited legislative reforms.27

  • 28 Catherine Baker, Bogdan C. Iacob, Anikó Imre and James Mark (eds), “Introduction”, in Off White: Ce (...)
  • 29 About the Kalmyks, see Jessica Wehner’s article in this special issue.
  • 30 Memorandum by O.E. Stone to IRO Manila, 28 June 1950, AN, AJ/43/1076.

10Historically, the racial and cultural belonging of Russians had long been contested in the “West”, rooted in 19th‑century Orientalist discourses that ambiguously situated them between Europe and Asia. Popular imaginaries questioned their whiteness and “civility”,28 especially in light of Russia’s ethnic diversity, including Turkic groups, Kalmyks and Buryats.29 As Russians sought resettlement in the West after the revolution, these perceptions, together with anti‑Asian migration restrictions in the US, created significant migration barriers for those seen as not unambiguously white. The IRO, anxious to resettle all the Tubabao refugees but well aware of anti‑Asian migration laws, chose a pragmatic approach. When asked by the IRO leadership about the eligibility of Russians with non‑European appearance, IRO legal officer Oliver E. Stone advised against consulting US officials, warning that “any formal ruling on this question is likely to be negative”.30

  • 31 Yulia Gradskova, “‘With the Help of the Great Russian People’: The (Invisible) Whiteness of Soviet (...)
  • 32 “Draft Manila History,” 22 November 1949, AN, AJ/43/136.

11US officials’ views of Russian DPs as European and white clashed with the Russian émigrés’ own understanding of Russianness, which was not defined by race. In the multiethnic Russian Empire, identity was shaped more by religion and ethnicity than by racial categories like whiteness, which were central to Western racial thinking.31 While ethnicity or nationality did play a role in the camp, with every national group living together and being represented by its own elected leader, race as understood by US officials played no significant role in the Russian leaders’ resettlement lobbyism. Most prominently, Archbishop John and REA representatives went to great lengths to convince US migration authorities to admit nearly 40 children of Asian ancestry. The children, aged seven to eighteen, had lived in the Russian St. Tikhon orphanage in Shanghai, founded by Archbishop John. In 1947, he had successfully relocated around 70 of the orphanage’s children from Shanghai to the US. However, this remaining group was denied entry due to their “mixed race‑Eurasian” heritage and was instead evacuated to Tubabao in 1949.32

12Similarly, the US mission in Tubabao did not consider “the orphans of Asiatic descent” to be admissible under the amendment “as they were not counted as Displaced Persons”.33 The officers, unfamiliar with the children’s background, did not consider them to be White Russians. Consequently, IRO officials were pessimistic about their resettlement chances and explored options of resettling the children individually in Western Europe, in the Philippines and elsewhere.34 As Nina Bogdan pointed out, these suggestions reflected the lack of understanding of the children’s situation, as the orphanage was their primary social and familial environment. Archbishop John insisted they must be resettled together in San Francisco, where he and the St. Tikhon staff could continue to care for them. Meanwhile, the IRO considered them “unaccompanied children” and refused to recognise them as a family unit that should not be separated. The camp’s vicar, also a DP, protested: “It is strange that you decided to disperse the Orphanage, while no doubt, you would not have done that with any other family in the camp.”35 Here, he referred to the IRO principle of preserving family units while challenging the IRO’s narrow understanding of the family, suggesting a more flexible, collective definition. At the same time, the exploration of different resettlement options also reflected the pragmatism the IRO had to adopt in navigating worldwide immigration regulations and restrictions.

  • 36 Nina Bogdan, “Between Dreams and Reality…”, art. cit., p. 629.
  • 37 “Resettlement Division Report for July 1950”, Rule, 26 July 1950, AN, AJ/43/261.
  • 38 Ibid. supra.

13In their resettlement efforts, Russian leaders argued for the St. Tikhon children’s cultural and racial affiliation with the Russian community —despite their uncertain heritage. Rule complained that only one possessed a legally valid birth certificate and that, in some cases, one or both parents were unknown. It was said that Archbishop John himself had roamed Shanghai’s streets to rescue abandoned infants, taking in children of Russian, Chinese and mixed descent.36 To make them eligible under the amendment, the orphanage staff sought to racially tie them to the community by assigning at least one Russian parent to each child. This is exemplified in a story Rule told about “a child who is obviously pure Chinese or 75% Chinese and whose CM/1 Form states that the father and mother are unknown and that the child was picked up in the street, [yet] produces a birth certificate showing that though unknown the father is Russian!”37 This was deemed necessary, although the children were culturally part of the Russian community —baptised, raised as Orthodox Christians and Russian‑speaking—and had no other family to care for them.38

  • 39 “Resettlement Division Report for November 1950”, Rule, 25 November 1950, AN, AJ/43/261.
  • 40 Memorandum by O.E. Stone to IRO Geneva, 28 May 1951, ibid. supra.
  • 41 “Philippines. Residual Cases (Orthodox and Protestant)”, AN, AJ/43/499.
  • 42 Passenger lists, accessed through ancestry.com.
  • 43 At the time, Japanese visa applications to Japan were processed through the US military authorities

14Against all odds, only three months after the mission’s arrival, the State Department cleared the children’s visa applications; only six were rejected for health reasons. Rule reported that “this was a great surprise and a great joy to me”.39 In the end, all Tubabao DPs with Chinese backgrounds appeared to have been admitted under the amendment. However, four refugees were still excluded as “racially ineligible” due to their Japanese descent or a dubious classification as “Asiatic”.40 This included one Russian woman whose two children were officially fathered by the same man, but according to Rule, “the girl is definitely Asiatic and the boy is not”.41 While the 16‑year‑old daughter’s fate remains unclear, the 14‑year‑old boy emigrated to the US on his own, and his mother followed soon after via Brazil.42 Another case involved Tamara B., a young woman with a Russian mother and an unknown Japanese father. The US consul excluded her from the DP Act as being “more than 50 per cent Japanese” (arguing that the father’s genes were decisive), but also denied her visa for Japan, as she was not entirely Japanese43 —an example of arbitrary racial and national categorisation. Tamara, who worked as Rule’s secretary, had an “illegitimate” child with an American sailor, whom she refused to marry, even though this might have secured her a visa. Rule reported that

  • 44 Edgar H.S. Chandler, The High Tower of Refuge: The Inspiring Story of Refugee Relief Throughout the (...)

[…] there was no moving the consul or the military authorities, so we came to the tearful day when Tamara had to wait on the quay‑side at Cebu and wave farewell to her mother and her own daughter, bound for distant America … and unless the law changed, she might never see either of them again.44

  • 45 “Philippines. Residual Cases (Orthodox and Protestant)”, op. cit; Passenger list, accessed through (...)
  • 46 “Philippines. Residual Cases (Lutheran)”, AN, AJ/43/499.
  • 47 “Lists Checked with Consulate”, 6 December 1950, AN, AJ/43/317; IRO ship list, accessed through anc (...)
  • 48 IRO ship lists, accessed through ancestry.com.

15Tamara’s Japanese ancestry became an insurmountable barrier for US migration, while her daughter was deemed white enough to fit the US officer’s migration requirements. Rule continued to fight for her, and two years later, Tamara was able to join her family in San Francisco.45 The other DPs were not as fortunate. One was a Japanese woman married to a Russian with whom she had two children,46 and the other was a Japanese‑born woman, stateless but registered with Latvian nationality.47 After their rejection, they were granted visas for Brazil and Venezuela, respectively.48 The DPs of Japanese descent could not be reconciled with the image of (white) White Russians under the amendment. Even though Cold War concerns increasingly outweighed the former Axis‑Allied division, Japan’s recent enemy status likely contributed to the US’s unwillingness to grant them DP status.

  • 49 Suzanne D. Rutland, “‘Waiting Room Shanghai’: Australian Reactions to the Plight of the Jews in Sha (...)
  • 50 Telegram from Cabot to Secretary of State, 5 February 1949, NARA, DP Subject File, 1944‑1952, Recor (...)
  • 51 Laurie Manchester, “How Statelessness Can Force Refugees to Redefine Their Ethnicity…”, art. cit., (...)
  • 52 Sheila Fitzpatrick, “White Russians, Red Peril”…, op. cit., p. 14.
  • 53 Ibid. supra, p. 107.
  • 54 Marcia R. Ristaino, Port of Last Resort: The Diaspora Communities of Shanghai, Stanford, Stanford U (...)

16While Russian representatives advocated for fellow Russians of Asian heritage, they excluded others. Although Jews had been a substantial part of the Russian diaspora in China, they were strikingly absent from the Tubabao camp. In late 1948, Israel agreed to take in Jewish DPs from Shanghai, and many were evacuated by the IRO between 1949 and 1951.49 Others, however, declined resettlement in Israel, hoping instead to migrate to the United States.50 While Israel as a potential safe haven served as an argument for the REA to exclude Jewish Russians from the evacuation to the Philippines, this was not the only reason. Despite being spared antisemitic laws in China, Russian Jews faced widespread antisemitism within the Russian diaspora,51 where the Russian Fascist Party was a strong political force.52 The Russian Jewish and the White Russian community “led a separate and parallel existence”53 in Shanghai. Since camp admission largely depended on REA membership, this absence must partly be explained by the REA’s exclusive membership and anti‑Jewish discrimination. Although the IRO had encouraged Jewish refugees to evacuate to the Philippines, Jewish leaders in Shanghai declined the offer as they feared antisemitism among the fellow Russians in the camp.54

Political reliability: Who is a “White” Russian?

  • 55 Act to amend the Displaced Persons Act of 1948, op. cit.
  • 56 Sheila Fitzpatrick, Lost Souls…, op. cit., p. 185.

17The IRO evacuated the DPs as anticommunists fleeing communism. The amendment clearly stated: “No visa shall be issued […] to any person who is or has been a member of the Communist Party” or who was a communist sympathiser.55 Yet, heightened Cold War tensions increased anticommunist suspicion and security concerns in the US. In this context, in August 1950, the same month the US mission reached Tubabao, Congress enacted the Internal Security Act, intensifying the screening of displaced persons and other migrants for signs of political subversion. The Act nearly brought overall DP immigration to the United States to a standstill for six months.56

  • 57 “History of Russian Emigration to China”, n.d., AN, AJ/43/580.
  • 58 “Resettlement Division Report for March 1951”, Rule, 30 March 1951, AN, AJ/43/261.

18Amid US fears of communists and Soviet spies, one group in the camp caused particular concern. During the visa processing, resettlement officers found that around 500 DPs had previously held Soviet or Chinese passports. After years of statelessness, some Russians had applied for citizenship to secure consular protection, retain employment or travel freely.57 However for the US migration officers in Tubabao, such ties suggested potential communist sympathies. They forwarded the eligibility decision and security screening to the State Department, which sparked lengthy discussions over the DPs’ political reliability.58

  • 59 Laurie Manchester, “How Statelessness Can Force Refugees to Redefine Their Ethnicity…”, art. cit.,  (...)

19Suspicion of communist allegiance was similarly prevalent within the Russian leadership. For many émigrés, Russianness was primarily defined along political lines, as having fled the Bolshevik Revolution. “The Russian Civil War, a collective trauma […] was the originating event, or founding myth […] for a new concept of Russianness.”59 REA leaders stressed the political reliability of the White Russian DPs in the Philippines and China and saw every concession towards the Soviet Union as an act of treason.

  • 60 “Memorandum. Possible Improvements of Legal Position of the Russian Emigrants”, Bologoff, Hoover, o (...)

20Bologoff argued that it was “wrong to give equal rights to the Russian Emigrants and to non‑political refugee elements. The former are fighting for Justice in the World, the latter are merely adventurers and seekers of personal benefit.”60 He added:

  • 61 Ibid. supra.

To recognize as Russian Emigrants only these who are members of the Russian Emigrants’ Association, while others, though of Russian origin, should be considered “stateless”, since only political sound persons and these without criminal background can enter the membership of the Russian Emigrants’ Association.61

  • 62 “Resettlement Division Report for March 1951”, op. cit.

21This split between REA members and the so‑called “stateless” (albeit all being stateless in legal terms) in the camp was clearly noticeable to the IRO. When US voluntary agencies issued letters of assurances primarily to REA members, Rule suspected interference. “I do not think that I am becoming a prey to the spy complex of this Camp,” she reflected, but “it would appear to me that there might be some discrimination in the names passed for issue of letters of assurance”. Not only did she “definitely [feel] uneasy about the situation,” but “the camp is also worried about this position”62 of the REA favouring its members.

  • 63 “IRO Camp in Samar”, Dencil H. Clarke, Hoover, Cattell Collection, Box 1, Folder 5.
  • 64 Letter O.E. Stone to F. Thompson, 1 February 1951, AN, AJ/43/261.

22The IRO found itself in a political predicament in the case of the resettlement of Russians from China. Principally, it considered itself a non‑political organisation and therefore communists and sympathisers were eligible for DP status. Denzil Clarke, acting chief of the IRO Far East Office, emphasised that “the Organization is entirely non‑political and all those who come under its care are regarded as so many human beings for whom a new start in life must be found”.63 However, the DPs had been evacuated from Shanghai as politically persecuted, and the US amendment stipulated that only those DPs who had fled from “tyranny” twice were eligible. This left the IRO with little room to negotiate, especially given the geopolitical sensitivity over potential communist allegiance. IRO legal officer Stone advised the Philippine Chief of Mission Thompson on negotiations with US authorities regarding the former Soviet and Chinese passport holders: “Inasmuch as this is regarded as a security problem we are unable to pursue it with the aggressiveness appropriate to matters of a less sensitive nature.”64

  • 65 Letter Mollie Rule to P. Jacobson, 9 December 1950, and “Resettlement Division Report for April 195 (...)
  • 66 S. Deborah Kang, “Sovereign Mercy…”, art. cit., p. 27f.
  • 67 Anna Holian and G. Daniel Cohen, “Introduction,” Journal of Refugee Studies, vol. 25, no. 3‑(The Re (...)

23Despite these political and security concerns, the US officials started issuing visas for the ex‑Soviets and ex‑Chinese after almost a year and, eventually, nearly all 500 received clearance to resettle.65 The reason for the State Department’s decision remains unclear, but lobbying efforts likely played a significant role. As Deborah Kang has shown, longstanding advocacy in the US’s for the admission of White Russians had helped create a positive image of Russian immigrants. Subsequently, Russians were prioritised for refugee admission over other refugee groups after the Second World War.66 It is also plausible that the US’ prioritisation of anticommunist migrants over other migrants outweighed security concerns. By the early 1950s, the general image of refugees had shifted from victims of Nazism to victims of communist regimes, a shift reflected in the 1950 UNHCR Statute and 1951 UN Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees.67

Family, gender and social respectability: Who deserves resettlement?

  • 68 “Resettlement Division Report for September 1950”, Rule, 27 September 1950, AN, AJ/43/261.
  • 69 “Resettlement Division Report for July 1950”, op. cit.
  • 70 “Resettlement Division Report for October 1950”, Rule, 28 October 1950, AN, AJ/43/261.

24The lived reality of the Russians often clashed with conservative views on family models, gender roles and social behaviour held by both IRO and US officers. Problems arose when DPs handed in birth certificates, marriage or divorce papers that were not issued by recognised authorities. As residents in China had lived under changing political leadership and jurisdictions, documents were frequently obtained from the authorities within the Russian community: the Orthodox church and the REA.68 This created an administrative mess for Rule. “Life in China was easy, divorce was quick and births did not have to be registered so it is frequently impossible to sort out the family histories,”69 she noted. Rule described a case of a married couple divorced in Shanghai by a priest. Both arrived in Tubabao, and when the wife’s new “common‑law husband” died, she registered for resettlement as a widow while her former husband applied as single. Legally, however, they were still married. Rule complained that this was “one of the least complicated cases” and that “life in the East appears to have done away with all sense of reality”.70 Needless to say, Rule’s notion of “reality” was deeply rooted in Western legal frameworks and civil administration.

  • 71 Ruth Balint, Destination Elsewhere: Displaced Persons and Their Quest to Leave Postwar Europe, Itha (...)
  • 72 “Resettlement Division Report for July 1950”, op. cit.
  • 73 Tara Zahra, “‘The Psychological Marshall Plan’: Displacement, Gender, and Human Rights after World (...)
  • 74 “Resettlement Division Report for October 1950”, op. cit.

25At the same time, Rule’s complaint also reflects the IRO’s preference for heterosexual, nuclear and unambiguously related families for resettlement.71 Yet, family units and resettlement choices often proved more complex than these expectations. Some DP families chose to split up, either due to estrangement or in hopes of reuniting later. While the US mission was willing to accept individuals who wished to migrate without their spouse or children, Rule opposed this practice. “A problem I have not encountered before is this wholesale casting off of wives and husbands,”72 she remarked. On the one hand, IRO policy prioritised keeping families intact. As Tara Zahra has shown, the promotion of familial values was central to postwar reconstruction and the attempt to “return to normalcy”.73 On the other hand, Rule’s stance also reflects the pragmatic concern that once separated, families might never reunite. While the IRO policy was certainly aimed to protect families from being forcibly separated, it also assumed that family members always wished to stay together. Conversely, when people claimed to belong together, their relationships were scrutinised if they did not fit the officers’ expectations of familial or racial belonging. Rule described a case involving a father in the camp with an unmarried daughter, a son, a married daughter and her husband, and a small boy of “obvious Asiatic appearance” without a birth certificate. She suspected he was the “illegitimate son of the married daughter, by a Chinese, prior to the marriage with her present husband”.74 Such cases exemplified how three decades of displacement and adaptation had shaped the refugees’ lives —and showed the difficulties of fitting these complexities into the expectations of an ideal migrant or DP family.

  • 75 Katarzyna Nowak, “A Gloomy Carnival of Freedom: Sex, Gender, and Emotions among Polish Displaced Pe (...)
  • 76 Jayne Persian, “‘The Dirty Vat’…”, art. cit., p. 25.
  • 77 Philippa Lesley Hetherington, Victims of the Social Temperament: Prostitution, Migration and the Tr (...)
  • 78 Marcia Reynders Ristaino, Port of Last Resort…, op. cit., p. 85‑94.
  • 79 Philippa Lesley Hetherington, “Victims of the Social Temperament…”, op. cit., p. 388‑399.
  • 80 “Philippines. Residual Cases (Orthodox and Protestant)”, op. cit.
  • 81 Edgar H.S. Chandler, The High Tower of Refuge…, op. cit., p. 75f.

26The preference for resettling clearly defined family units correlated with postwar anxieties about moral “decay” and the desire to restore conservative prewar family ideals and gender norms.75 In 1930s Shanghai, the Russian community, and particularly its women, had gained a reputation for immorality, marked by sex work, “wild marriages” and the abandoning of children.76 Russian women stood at the centre of these narratives, simultaneously seen as morally suspect and as victims in need of protection by humanitarian organisations.77 Many experienced a drastic social decline in their new country, lacked language skills and were forced into precarious work. Some adapted by marrying men with wealth or foreign passports, while others were forced to work as waitresses, taxi dancers or cabaret girls —jobs that often involved sex work. A 1933 League of Nations report on human trafficking and sexual exploitation of Russian women in the Far East claimed that 22.5% of Russian women in Shanghai engaged in sex work.78 The report sparked a public outcry in the West, driven by racial anxieties about white, formerly aristocratic women being forced into prostitution under Chinese men and women, and a growing stigma against Russian women.79 In Tubabao, four women were rejected by the US mission as “prostitutes” and were among the last ones to be resettled.80 While one seemed to have made her way to Australia, Rule eventually secured a home for two alcoholic sisters in Belgium after lengthy negotiations.81

  • 82 “Resettlement Division Report for April 1951”, op. cit.
  • 83 “Resettlement Division Report for September 1950”, op cit.

27Apart from sex work, DPs were rejected by the US mission for alcoholism and criminal behaviour. While these individuals were officially dismissed on medical or security grounds, they were often rhetorically grouped together as deviant from certain social norms and, therefore, deemed unsuitable for a “healthy” society. These individuals posed a particular challenge for the IRO, as they were even harder to resettle than other “hard core” cases. While the IRO Philippine Mission was able to negotiate the admission of tuberculosis patients for special resettlement in Europe, this specific group struggled to find a country willing to accept them. Rule saw no resettlement options for “prostitutes, young people with criminal tendencies”,82 and DPs with a prison record. “I am astounded at some people who would appear to be sober citizens and who light heartedly inform me they have served prison sentences,” she noted. Although the DPs argued that they should be eligible because they had served their sentences, Rule expressed her disdain: “It would appear to me that such persons should cease to be a burden to the International Refugee Organization or to anyone else.”83 Yet, this did not solve the problem of where these individuals were supposed to go.

  • 84 Edgar H.S. Chandler, The High Tower of Refuge…, op. cit., p. 71ff.
  • 85 “Philippines. Residual Cases (Roman Catholic)”, AN, AJ/43/499.
  • 86 IRO ship lists, op. cit.
  • 87 Sharif Gemie, Laure Humbert, Fiona Reid and Louise Ingram, Outcast Europe: Refugees and Relief Work (...)

28In other instances, Rule took a more lenient view. She spoke in favour of certain DPs rejected on account of alcoholism and went to great lengths to facilitate their resettlement. Edgar Chandler, director of the WCC’s refugee service, recounted in his memoir the case of Ivan L., who was devastated about being rejected as “chronic alcoholic” by the US mission. He promised Rule that he would change and, after he remained sober for several months, she took him to the US consul in Manila. The consul promised to reconsider his case if she could vouch for his sobriety over nine more months. To keep him under close supervision, Rule divided and shared her tent with him for the entire period. Both Ivan L. and the consul stuck to their promises, and, in November 1952, Ivan L. was on his way to his new home in the United States. For many years, Rule received Christmas cards, signed “Ivan the Cossack —still sober”.84 In another case, Rule defended a young DP who had drunkenly stabbed another refugee and had been convicted by a Philippine court. “It is my opinion that this young man has really pulled himself together and stopped drinking, though as a rule I am extremely pessimistic about people stopping drinking once they have become addicted.”85 With her support, he and his mother were able to emigrate to Chile shortly thereafter.86 These examples highlight the influence of resettlement officers. As Sharif Gemie, Fiona Reid and Laure Humbert note, relief workers held a position of authority in which they fluctuated between empathy and critique towards DPs.87 Rule, who lived for three years on Tubabao under similar conditions as the DPs, at times fiercely defended individuals, while also expressing frustration, dislike and criticism. Her personal judgements and sympathies had powerful implications as it was often she who negotiated resettlement pathways.

29Meanwhile, Russian leaders sought to present the overall group of White Russians as morally upright. In a later interview, Fedoulenko attempted to dispel prejudices of immorality while blaming others for Shanghai’s bad reputation.

  • 88 Valentin V. Fedoulenko, Russian emigre Life in Shanghai, interview by Boris Raymond, Berkeley, Univ (...)

The statistics of the police of the French and International Settlements about us Russians were that except for the drunken people our colony was extremely honest and hard‑working. It was only later that there had come professional crooks from Harbin […] The rumours about Russian prostitutes were completely false, certainly not nearly as true as people think.88

  • 89 “Report on Camp Conditions at Tubabao”, Bologoff, 26 August 1949, Hoover, Cattell Collection, Box 1 (...)
  • 90 No title, n.d., Hoover, Cattell Collection, Box 2 Folder 17.
  • 91 Katarzyna Nowak, “‘To Reach the Lands of Freedom’: Petitions of Polish Displaced Persons to America (...)

30In the Tubabao camp, the REA distanced itself from individuals who were perceived as potential threats to the overall resettlement prospects of the White Russian group. In a report on the camp, Bologoff called out people who had been resettled in Australia and Paraguay but, in his view, were Japanese collaborators, criminals, pro‑Soviet or a “thief‑prostitute”.89 Among REA archival documents, there is a list of 26 Russians categorised as “drunkard”, “criminal”, “prostitute”, “Japanese informer”, “ex‑Soviet” and one “non‑recommended”.90 It is unclear who compiled this list and whether it was sent to any IRO or US official, but it underscores the REA’s involvement in this matter. Katarzyna Nowak has shown how Polish DP elites in postwar Germany and Austria similarly engaged in a form of “moral screening” within their community, seeking to exclude those deemed unworthy and to promote for resettlement only those individuals who fitted their image of a valuable, anticommunist Polish migrant.91

  • 92 “Processing for America”, 23 May 1951, AN, AJ/43/261.

31After seven months on Tubabao, the US mission departed in February 1951, though visa processing continued for several months. By 23 May 1951, 2,226 out of 2,465 processed DPs had received US visas. Of the remainder, 161 were rejected on medical grounds, 35 for other reasons, three were not considered DPs under the Act, two were illiterate and four were deemed “racially ineligible”.92 While the 1950 amendment to the US Displaced Persons Act opened a legal pathway for resettlement, the actual implementation of this policy was defined by discretion and negotiation.

32As the gatekeeper to the most desirable destination for the majority of Tubabao DPs, the US mission held significant power over the refugees’ lives and migration routes. The vague eligibility criteria outlined in the amendment left officers grappling with ambiguous cases, such as the St. Tikhon children and former Soviet and Chinese passport holders. In these instances, decision‑making was forwarded to the State Department, where Cold War priorities and anti‑Asian migration restrictions clashed with the complex realities of political loyalty and racial belonging among the Russians from China. This ambiguity created openings for lobbying efforts by Russian leaders and organisations and a way to assert agency in the process. At the same time, the US mission’s decisions were shaped not only by geopolitical concerns but also by social judgments, as individuals deemed criminal, morally corrupt or socially deviant were excluded. These decisions underscored the tension between the United States’ self‑image as a humanitarian haven and its restrictive immigration policies, which were influenced by racial, political, social and moral anxieties.

33The IRO was caught between migration restrictions and its mandate to manage refugee resettlement. Aiming for swift resettlement, it pragmatically navigated these restrictions and pushed for placements, especially given the provision that no DP could remain in the Philippines. While the IRO’s humanitarian efforts were selective from the outset, IRO resettlement officer Mollie Rule spared no effort in finding homes for the Tubabao group. Acting as a mediator between countries and refugees, the IRO also enforced norms of both the organisation and host countries. In an attempt to restore a sense of normalcy, Rule sought to bring order into what she perceived as the “chaotic” lives of the stateless Russians —who, in her eyes, had lost familial structure, bureaucratic consistency and social stability in the three decades of exile in China. Oscillating between empathy, paternalism and critique, she exerted significant control over the lives of the refugees she supported.

34Despite their limited institutional power, DP representatives sought to influence US policymakers, the IRO and public opinion. Through persistent lobbying and involvement in sponsorship programmes, they shaped the resettlement process by advocating for the inclusion or exclusion of fellow refugees. While the REA promoted an image of Russian DPs as anticommunist, morally upright citizens and fought for the inclusion of racially ambiguous DPs, it also actively excluded DPs who were Jewish, deemed politically unreliable or socially unacceptable. This created a group of individuals rejected both by host countries and their community representatives, rendering them particularly vulnerable.

35Moving beyond the Eurocentric lens of postwar displacement, the discussions around the eligibility of the Russians from China under the 1950 amendment reveal key specificities of the refugee regime and IRO work in Asia. The long‑term displacement in China resulted in specific resettlement challenges for the stateless Russians, as their path to the US was complicated by Cold War geopolitics, anti‑Asian discrimination and prevailing moral anxieties. The Tubabao case also illustrates the complexity of refugee lives and how this challenged migration policies and officers’ perceptions of ideal migrants. The interplay of legal frameworks, political priorities and individual agency reveals that the postwar refugee regime was not a static system, but a dynamic process —shaped through practices and negotiations of multiple and unequal protagonists.

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Notes

1 “Guiuan Refugees Hail D‑P Bill”, Special to the Manila Times, 15 April 1950, Archives nationales, Pierrefitte‑sur‑Seine [hereafter AN], AJ/43/1076.

2 David Nasaw, The Last Million: Europe’s Displaced Persons from World War to Cold War, New York, Penguin Press, 2020, p. 427.

3 Ibid. supra, p. 490ff.

4 On Russians in China: Mara Moustafine, “Russians from China: Migrations and Identity”, Cosmopolitan Civil Societies: An Interdisciplinary Journal, vol. 5, no. 2, 2013, p. 143‑158, Doi: 10.5130/ccs.v5i2.3337; Sheila Fitzpatrick, “White Russians, Red Peril”: A Cold War History of Migration to Australia, London, Routledge/Taylor and Francis, 2021; Jayne Persian, “‘The Dirty Vat’: European Migration to Australia from Shanghai, 1946‑47”, Australian Historical Studies, vol. 50, no. 1, 2019, p. 21‑40, Doi: 10.1080/1031461X.2018.1551411; Ruth Balint, “Before Australia: Historicising Russian Migration via China after World War II”, Australian Historical Studies, vol. 50, no. 1, 2019, p. 3‑20, Doi: 10.1080/1031461X.2018.1543333.

5 “Aide Memoire Concerning the Philippine Operation”, no date, AN, AJ/43/580.

6 The terms “refugee” and “displaced persons” are used interchangeably in this text. It should be noted, however, that they are historically specific categories which carried certain meanings and rights in the context of migration regimes. See Sebastian Huhn and Christoph Rass, “Displaced Person(s): The Production of a Powerful Political Category”, Ethnic and Racial Studies, vol. 48, no. 4‑(Contested Categories in the Context of International Migration), 2025, p. 718‑739, Doi: 10.1080/01419870.2024.2404488.

7 “Presentation of Samar Problem to Delegates of Member Nations of IRO”, T. Jamieson, 26 July 1949, AN, AJ/43/580.

8 “To Speed up D.P. Resettlement”, Manila Bulletin, 23 August 1950, AN, AJ/43/1076.

9 Laura Barnett, “Global Governance and the Evolution of the International Refugee Regime”, International Journal of Refugee Law, vol. 14, no. 2‑3, 2002, p. 238, Doi: 10.1093/ijrl/14.2_and_3.238.

10 Christoph Rass and Frank Wolff, “What Is in a Migration Regime? Genealogical Approach and Methodological Proposal”, in Andreas Pott (ed.), Was Ist Ein Migrationsregime? What Is a Migration Regime?, 1st ed., Wiesbaden, Springer, «Migrationsgesellschaften», 2018, p. 45.

11 Polina E. Ilieva, “The Refugee Camp in Tubabao: The First Philippine Experience in International Humanitarian Assistance’”, in Milagros B. Asis Maruja (ed.), The Philippines as Home: Settlers and Sojourners in the Country, Quezon City, PCCS, Philippine Migration Research Network, 2001, p. 135‑166; Sheila Fitzpatrick, “Russians in the Jungle: Tubabao as a Way Station for Refugees from China to Australia, 1949”, History Australia, vol. 16, no. 4, 2019, p. 695‑713, Doi: 10.1080/14490854.2019.1670071; Kinna Mae G. Kwan, “Country of Transit: The White Russian Refugee Camp in Tubabao Island, Guiuan, Samar, Philippines (1949‑1951)”, The Journal of History, vol. 65, no. 1, 2019, p. 269‑301; Therese M. Sunga, The Refugee Archipelago? Political Responses in the Philippines to Forced Migration in the Twentieth Century, PhD Thesis, Peter Gatrell (dir.), Manchester, University of Manchester, 2021; Charie Ann Cabides‑Padullo, “The Experience of Intercultural Communication between Russian Refugees and Filipinos on Tubabao Island, 1948‑1951”, RUDN Journal of Russian History, vol. 20, no. 4, 2021, p. 579‑587, Doi: 10.22363/2312-8674-2021-20-4-579-587; Jamelyn B. Palattao, The Philippines and the Making of a Refugee Policy in the Context of the Cold War (1948‑1986), PhD Thesis, Éric Morier‑Genoud, Emma Reisz and Aglaia De Angeli (dirs), Belfast, Queen’s University Belfast, 2023.

12 S. Deborah Kang, “Sovereign Mercy: The Legalization of the White Russian Refugees and the Politics of Immigration Relief”, Journal of American Ethnic History, vol. 43, no. 1, 2023, p. 13, Doi: 10.5406/19364695.43.1.01; Sheila Fitzpatrick, “White Russians, Red Peril”…, op. cit., p. 27f.

13 Laurie Manchester, “How Statelessness Can Force Refugees to Redefine Their Ethnicity: What Can Be Learned from Russian Émigrés Dispersed to Six Continents in the Inter‑War Period?”, Immigrants & Minorities, vol. 34, no. 1, 2016, p. 70‑91, Doi: 10.1080/02619288.2015.1065738.

14 Sheila Fitzpatrick, “Russians in the Jungle…”, art. cit., p. 700f.

15 “Memorandum. Possible Improvements of Legal Position of the Russian Emigrants”, Hoover Institution Library & Archives [hereafter Hoover], Vera Cattell Collection, Box 1, Folder 15.

16 “Inter‑Office Memorandum”, from E.K. Rahardt to M. Bradford, 15 November 1951, AN, AJ/43/499.

17 Letter from Mollie Rule to IRO Australia, 23 February 1952, AN, AJ/43/382.

18 Letter from Rule to IRO Geneva, 13 June 1950, AN, AJ/43/261.

19 “Hard core” was an IRO category describing DPs who needed institutional care and were particularly difficult to resettle as they did not fit into migration schemes, mainly due to health reasons and old age.

20 Louise W. Holborn, The International Refugee Organization: A Specialized Agency of the United Nations. Its History and Work, 1946‑1952, London/New York, Oxford University Press, 1956, p. 472‑492; for Western Germany: Samantha K. Knapton, Occupiers, Humanitarian Workers, and Polish Displaced Persons in British‑Occupied Germany, London/New York, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2023 [2021], p. 159.

21 Sheila Fitzpatrick, “Russians in the Jungle…”, art. cit., p. 711.

22 Sheila Fitzpatrick, Lost Souls: Soviet Displaced Persons and the Birth of the Cold War, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2024, p. 181‑185.

23 Act to amend the Displaced Persons Act of 1948, Public Law 81‑555, 64 Stat. 219, 16 June 1950.

24 Harry S. Truman, “Statement by the President Upon Signing Bill Amending the Displaced Persons Act”, 16 June 1950, National Archives and Records Administration [hereafter NARA], accessed 11 May 2025: <https://www.trumanlibrary.gov/library/public-papers/167/statement-president-upon-signing-bill-amending-displaced-persons-act>.

25 The term white is italicised to mark it as a constructed political and social category and highlight privileges associated with whiteness.

26 Letter from Bologoff to Bogen, 1949, Hoover, Cattell Collection, Box 1, Folder 6; “Statistical Break‑Down of Camp Residents on Last Day of June 1949”, AN, AJ/43/1129.

27 Charlotte Brooks, Between Mao and McCarthy: Chinese American Politics in the Cold War Years, Chicago/London, University of Chicago Press, 2015, 74f.

28 Catherine Baker, Bogdan C. Iacob, Anikó Imre and James Mark (eds), “Introduction”, in Off White: Central and Eastern Europe and the Global History of Race, Manchester, Manchester University Press, “Racism, resistance and social change”, 2024, p. 10.

29 About the Kalmyks, see Jessica Wehner’s article in this special issue.

30 Memorandum by O.E. Stone to IRO Manila, 28 June 1950, AN, AJ/43/1076.

31 Yulia Gradskova, “‘With the Help of the Great Russian People’: The (Invisible) Whiteness of Soviet Anti‑Colonialism and Gender Emancipation from Central Asia to Khartoum”, in Catherine Baker, Bogdan C. Iacob, Anikó Imre and James Mark (eds), Off White: Central and Eastern Europe and the Global History of Race, Manchester, Manchester University Press, “Racism, resistance and social change”, 2024, p. 198.

32 “Draft Manila History,” 22 November 1949, AN, AJ/43/136.

33 “Resettlement Division Report for August 1950”, Mollie Rule, 31 August 1950, AN, AJ/43/261.

34 Cited in Nina Bogdan, Between Dreams and Reality: The Russian Diaspora in San Francisco, 1917‑1957, PhD Thesis, Katherine G. Morrissey and Juan R. Garcia (dirs), Tucson, The University of Arizona, 2021, p. 591.

35 Letter from Ieromonk Modest to David Karber, 14 July 1950, Hoover, Cattell Collection, Box 3, Folder 20.

36 Nina Bogdan, “Between Dreams and Reality…”, art. cit., p. 629.

37 “Resettlement Division Report for July 1950”, Rule, 26 July 1950, AN, AJ/43/261.

38 Ibid. supra.

39 “Resettlement Division Report for November 1950”, Rule, 25 November 1950, AN, AJ/43/261.

40 Memorandum by O.E. Stone to IRO Geneva, 28 May 1951, ibid. supra.

41 “Philippines. Residual Cases (Orthodox and Protestant)”, AN, AJ/43/499.

42 Passenger lists, accessed through ancestry.com.

43 At the time, Japanese visa applications to Japan were processed through the US military authorities.

44 Edgar H.S. Chandler, The High Tower of Refuge: The Inspiring Story of Refugee Relief Throughout the World, London, Odhams Press, 1959, p. 74.

45 “Philippines. Residual Cases (Orthodox and Protestant)”, op. cit; Passenger list, accessed through ancestry.com.

46 “Philippines. Residual Cases (Lutheran)”, AN, AJ/43/499.

47 “Lists Checked with Consulate”, 6 December 1950, AN, AJ/43/317; IRO ship list, accessed through ancestry.com.

48 IRO ship lists, accessed through ancestry.com.

49 Suzanne D. Rutland, “‘Waiting Room Shanghai’: Australian Reactions to the Plight of the Jews in Shanghai after the Second World War”, The Leo Baeck Institute Year Book, vol. 32, no. 1, 1987, p. 432f, Doi: 10.1093/leobaeck/32.1.407.

50 Telegram from Cabot to Secretary of State, 5 February 1949, NARA, DP Subject File, 1944‑1952, Records Relating to the IRO and DPC, Record Group 59, Box 4.

51 Laurie Manchester, “How Statelessness Can Force Refugees to Redefine Their Ethnicity…”, art. cit., p. 75ff.

52 Sheila Fitzpatrick, “White Russians, Red Peril”…, op. cit., p. 14.

53 Ibid. supra, p. 107.

54 Marcia R. Ristaino, Port of Last Resort: The Diaspora Communities of Shanghai, Stanford, Stanford University Press, 2001, p. 265.

55 Act to amend the Displaced Persons Act of 1948, op. cit.

56 Sheila Fitzpatrick, Lost Souls…, op. cit., p. 185.

57 “History of Russian Emigration to China”, n.d., AN, AJ/43/580.

58 “Resettlement Division Report for March 1951”, Rule, 30 March 1951, AN, AJ/43/261.

59 Laurie Manchester, “How Statelessness Can Force Refugees to Redefine Their Ethnicity…”, art. cit., p. 74.

60 “Memorandum. Possible Improvements of Legal Position of the Russian Emigrants”, Bologoff, Hoover, op. cit.

61 Ibid. supra.

62 “Resettlement Division Report for March 1951”, op. cit.

63 “IRO Camp in Samar”, Dencil H. Clarke, Hoover, Cattell Collection, Box 1, Folder 5.

64 Letter O.E. Stone to F. Thompson, 1 February 1951, AN, AJ/43/261.

65 Letter Mollie Rule to P. Jacobson, 9 December 1950, and “Resettlement Division Report for April 1951”, 28 April 1951, AN, AJ/43/261.

66 S. Deborah Kang, “Sovereign Mercy…”, art. cit., p. 27f.

67 Anna Holian and G. Daniel Cohen, “Introduction,” Journal of Refugee Studies, vol. 25, no. 3‑(The Refugee in the Postwar World, 1945‑1960), 2012, p. 314, Doi : 10.1093/jrs/fes028.

68 “Resettlement Division Report for September 1950”, Rule, 27 September 1950, AN, AJ/43/261.

69 “Resettlement Division Report for July 1950”, op. cit.

70 “Resettlement Division Report for October 1950”, Rule, 28 October 1950, AN, AJ/43/261.

71 Ruth Balint, Destination Elsewhere: Displaced Persons and Their Quest to Leave Postwar Europe, Ithaca/London, Cornell university Press, 2021, p. 13f.

72 “Resettlement Division Report for July 1950”, op. cit.

73 Tara Zahra, “‘The Psychological Marshall Plan’: Displacement, Gender, and Human Rights after World War II,” Central European History, vol. 44, no. 1, 2011, p. 39f, Doi: 10.1017/S0008938910001172.

74 “Resettlement Division Report for October 1950”, op. cit.

75 Katarzyna Nowak, “A Gloomy Carnival of Freedom: Sex, Gender, and Emotions among Polish Displaced Persons in the Aftermath of World War II”, Aspasia, vol. 13, no. 1, 2019, p. 124‑129, Doi: 10.3167/asp.2019.130108.

76 Jayne Persian, “‘The Dirty Vat’…”, art. cit., p. 25.

77 Philippa Lesley Hetherington, Victims of the Social Temperament: Prostitution, Migration and the Traffic in Women from Imperial Russia and the Soviet Union, 1885‑1935, PhD Thesis, Terry Martin (dir.), Cambridge, Harvard University, 2014, chap. 6.

78 Marcia Reynders Ristaino, Port of Last Resort…, op. cit., p. 85‑94.

79 Philippa Lesley Hetherington, “Victims of the Social Temperament…”, op. cit., p. 388‑399.

80 “Philippines. Residual Cases (Orthodox and Protestant)”, op. cit.

81 Edgar H.S. Chandler, The High Tower of Refuge…, op. cit., p. 75f.

82 “Resettlement Division Report for April 1951”, op. cit.

83 “Resettlement Division Report for September 1950”, op cit.

84 Edgar H.S. Chandler, The High Tower of Refuge…, op. cit., p. 71ff.

85 “Philippines. Residual Cases (Roman Catholic)”, AN, AJ/43/499.

86 IRO ship lists, op. cit.

87 Sharif Gemie, Laure Humbert, Fiona Reid and Louise Ingram, Outcast Europe: Refugees and Relief Workers in an Era of Total War, 193648, London/New York, Continuum, 2012, p. 199.

88 Valentin V. Fedoulenko, Russian emigre Life in Shanghai, interview by Boris Raymond, Berkeley, University of California, 1967, p. 54.

89 “Report on Camp Conditions at Tubabao”, Bologoff, 26 August 1949, Hoover, Cattell Collection, Box 1 Folder 19.

90 No title, n.d., Hoover, Cattell Collection, Box 2 Folder 17.

91 Katarzyna Nowak, “‘To Reach the Lands of Freedom’: Petitions of Polish Displaced Persons to American Poles, Moral Screening and the Role of Diaspora in Refugee Resettlement”, Cultural and Social History, vol. 16, no. 5, 2019, p. 636, Doi: 10.1080/14780038.2019.1704348.

92 “Processing for America”, 23 May 1951, AN, AJ/43/261.

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Lena Christoph

Lena Christoph est doctorante au département d’histoire contemporaine de l’Université de Vienne, où elle participe au programme ERC GLORE‑ Global Resettlement Regimes: Ambivalent Lessons Learned from the Postwar (1945‑1951). Sa Thèse, intitulée Entre l’exil et la réinstallation : parcours transnationaux de réfugiés juifs et russes blancs en transit aux Philippines (1945‑1953), examine les trajectoires complexes des réfugiés confrontés au déplacement et à la réinstallation dans l’après‑Seconde Guerre mondiale. Lena Christoph a été accueillie en 2024 par l’Institut historique allemand de Washington et a reçu une bourse du Musée Mémorial de l’Holocauste à Washington (USHMM) en 2025. Lors d’un séjour de deux mois en Australie en 2025, elle a été chercheuse invitée à l’Université Monash de Melbourne.
Lena Christoph is a doctoral researcher at the Department of Contemporary History, University of Vienna, working within the ERC‑funded project GLORE‑ Global Resettlement Regimes: Ambivalent Lessons Learned from the Postwar (1945‑1951). Her dissertation, Between Exile and Resettlement: Transnational Journeys of Jewish and ‘White’ Russian Refugees through the Philippines (1945‑1953), examines the complex trajectories of refugees navigating displacement and resettlement in the postwar era. She was a 2024 fellow at the German Historical Institute, Washington DC, and has been awarded a research fellowship at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum for 2025. During a two‑month research stay in Australia in 2025, she was a visiting scholar at Monash University, Melbourne.

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