Russian ANZACs

[ANZAC]

As ANZAC day approaches tomorrow in what is one of Australia's most defining day's, and I prepare to march wearing my Granfather and Fathers awards, I want to share the following story about Russians enlisting in the Australian Army and fighting for their adopted country.

Many Russians came here in the first decades of the twentieth century—the years just before the First World War were the peak period. Others were seamen who left their ships here. The main centre for Russians was Brisbane, with Stepanoff’s boarding house the focal point of the community, but there were groups also in Melbourne and Perth. They joined up because Russia was fighting in the war and they couldn’t go back to enlist there. But one soldier, after fighting at Gallipoli, tried to find his way home. Others joined up because of nascent Australian identification.

After the war they had divided loyalties. To whom should the Russian Anzacs be loyal? To the current Bolshevik regime? Or to the Russia they had left but which no longer existed? Some supported the Soviet government out of a misguided and romantic loyalty to the land of their birth, in contrast to Russian immigrants who came after the First World War, who were mostly anti-Soviet refugees.

They found it hard to adjust, and some were restless and impoverished. Most married, had families, threw down roots and led stoic, hardworking lives with little material success. Isolated, they got a raw deal not because of prejudice but because of lack of interest. Nobody took up their cause—they were too dispersed and individualised to attract sympathy.

The most tragic case was the journalist Peter Chirvin from Vladivostok, who fought bravely at Gallipoli and on the western front, was twice wounded and won the Military Medal. On the troop ship coming home, he was taunted by his fellow soldiers over his Russian background, developed delusions about Bolshevik conspiracies, and committed suicide.

Peter Komersaroff was in contrast, a success story. Like Chirvin he fought and was wounded on the western front. After the war he set up as an optician in Melbourne, and worked to assist Jewish immigration to Australia in the late 1930s. At a meeting of the Carlton-Fitzroy sub-branch of the RSL in 1943, when a resolution was moved against foreign-born persons conducting business in the area, he tore up his RSL card and never joined again.

A striking case was Basil Greshner. His father, the secret police chief in Nizhny Novgorod, was assassinated by a revolutionary in 1905. Basil jumped ship in Geelong in 1915. By the time he enlisted, he had acquired tattoos with both Russian and Australian insignia, signifying his dual allegiance. On the western front he performed an extraordinary act of bravery and was awarded a DSM. In 1932 Greshner left Australia to visit his mother and relatives in Russia, whom he found living in Moscow in terrible conditions. He was interrogated by the OGPU, imprisoned, and on release, got back to Australia as quickly as possible.

I hope you all found it interesting

Beer and two-up gambling for me tomorrow

Regards

Brendan