Cossack Identities: From Russian Émigrés and Anti-Soviet Collaborators to Displaced Persons*

Abstract

Abstract Cossack displaced persons who were re-settled in Australia as part of the post-war International Refugee Organisation scheme had already survived several turbulent eras. Anti-Bolshevik Cossacks refashioned their identities in the post-Civil War period as Russian émigrés and then, during the Second World War, as anti-Soviet collaborators of the Germany Army. At war’s end these Cossacks were rounded up by the British and handed to the Soviets. This paper traces the traumatic (and opportunistic) migration trajectory of one Cossack family, who escaped forced repatriations to become ‘New Australians’.