In 1917, after the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, thousands of Russian aristocrats, businessmen, landowners, intellectuals and even just plain folks deemed as dangerous counter-revolutionaries by the Communists fled the new USSR. Most fled to France, particularly Paris, because like most of the Russian intelligentsia, they spoke French, and because of the French policy of welcoming refugees from tyranny. These people, the emigres, created a thriving community in Paris, a community primarily dedicated to overthrowing Bolshevism and going back to their home country, and their old lives.

Paris became a hotbed of counter-revolutionary, some would say, reactionary and neofascist activity, constantly politicking, propagandizing, raising money and arms, and doing everything they could to attack their foes in the Kremlin, often to the embarrassment of their hosts, the French. The communist authorities back in the USSR recognized this as a threat, and infiltrated these emigre groups with spies and provocateurs of their own, to gather intelligence on them and to lure them into doomed to failure schemes that would embarrass the French and encourage them to take action against them, as well as to siphon off and misdirect emigre resources into easily thwarted activity and ill-fated covert action. .

In one particular stroke of evil genius, Stalin’s agents created a black, false flag organization called The Trust. The Trust operated in Paris openly as a Anti-Stalinist organization that financed and organized numerous projects against the Reds, including propaganda initiatives and political action, fund raising, an anti-Soviet press, and even sabotage and military actions in Russia itself. The Trust’s cover was so complete, and its security arrangements so perfect that it became a leading emigre organization joined by many in the emigre community, and its membership list was routinely shipped off to Moscow where the Kremlin was able to prepare an accurate and detailed map of the organizations and people working against it. To add insult to injury, the Trust financed its counter-espionage activity with the dues paid to it by White Russians,

I once met a young lady (her fiance was a friend of mine) whose father (a famous Russian artist) had been a Russian emigre in the Paris scene. She was born in Paris and was fluent in English, Russian, French and Spanish, an absolutely stunning young woman–but that’s another story. So I got to learn a bit about the French Russian emigre scene from a member, so to speak. Her fiance was a Cuban emigre himself, whose family had escaped Cuba shortly after Castro took power. I, of course, had many relatives, including my own stepfather and my cousin, who had made the same trek, so I was familiar with the Cuban exiles. I was struck by the similarities. The Paris emigre community was so big they eventually outwore their welcome in Paris, and many moved again to New York, where Tanya and Emilio were now from.

In both cases, You had large communities of talented, educated individuals, many of them intellectuals or businessmen, people of education and former standing in their home countries, now living in a country that offered them shelter and freedom, but really was indifferent to their interests. And both exiles were immediately thrown into a cold war struggle in which they saw themselves playing a vital role, fighting Communism, and engaging in activities considered somewhat extreme by the hosts that offered them asylum, and who had political agendas of their own.

We know now the Cuban exiles in Miami were encouraged and subsidized by the US government as pawns in the Cold War, that they were involved in all sorts of reckless activities in an attempt to bring down Castro, and were eventually enlisted in the Bay of Pigs fiasco, and subsequently betrayed and abandoned when that gallant gesture failed to receive the support it needed to succeed. We also know, (at least, if you live in South Florida and speak Spanish) that the Communists in the old country have infiltrated the emigre community with spies and saboteurs that actively work against the exiles, and against the country that has given them asylum. Cuban nationals posing as refugees are not only working as intelligence agents, against their countrymen and Americans, they are also involved in drug trafficking, welfare fraud, identity theft, and other lucrative crimes to finance their activities and as a source of US currency for the Castro regime.

For some reason this has never been widely publicized in the American press, but there have been arrests and convictions and I can read between the lines. I have no doubt it is much more common than has been admitted publicly, and it is common gossip in the exile community itself. Granted, they have every incentive to be paranoid about this and to exaggerate, but where there’s smoke…

The world is full of emigres, its been a long running theme in European and American society. The Ayatolla Khomeni was a leader of the Iranian emigres in Paris after the overthrow of Mossadegh and the rise of the Shah. The Armenians have scattered exile pockets throughout Asia and Europe. The Irish had an enormous contingent in the USA, one actively involved against the British in Ireland, and later, in Northern Island, with fund raising and arms. And we all know about the Palestinians.

There is another anti-Communist exile community in the USA, the Vietnamese who came here after the fall of Saigon. There are close to a million of them, dispersed throughout the country. I don’t know too much about them, or their political activities, but they certainly share a lot in common with the exiles I have some personal knowledge of.

The exile experience is devastating to those who feel that they were betrayed by their home countries. They miss their good life there, they obsess about it, they can’t let it go. I have personally seen how this affects these people, I can see how it dominates their lives, poisons them, turns them into one-issue fanatics. I have seen how it has manifested itself in the Cuban exile community, and even though I agree with them, and sympathize with them, I was born here and cannot fully appreciate the loss and anger they feel for what they have lost forever: their homeland. The Cubans love America, they are grateful it has taken them in, given them opportunity and freedom, and has left them alone, which is all they really want from us. But this is not their home, they do not feel comfortable here, or fully accepted. I grieve for them. The Cubans were always a happy people, but they are no more. There is a bitterness there that will not go away until that entire generation finally passes.

There’s a lot of talk now about Muslim war refugees, Central American and Mexican economic refugees, but no one seems to be talking much about the more prosperous, middle class refugees now coming here looking for political freedom, economic opportunity or escaping crime in Colombia, Venezuela, Puerto Rico. These people will not be huddles of destitute wretches, they are coming with resources, and a functioning culture, and they will organize as communities, much as the 19th century immigrant wave after the Civil War. And many of them will have a foreign policy agenda that may not necessarily be compatible with ours.

Fortunately, America has experience at dealing with this successfully. Lets hope we haven’t forgotten how.