UNION FOR THE RETURN TO THE MOTHERLAND.
Branches of this émigré organization (sometimes known by its Russian acronym “Sovnarod”) arose among centers of the Russian emigration in the United States, France, and Bulgaria, after the decree of VTsIK of 3 November 1921 (supplemented by the decrees of VTsIK and Sovnarkom of 9 June 1924) offering amnesty to former rank-and-file members of the White armies and their civilian supporters. According to some estimates, the organization (which was encouraged in its activities by the League of Nations and its High Commissioner for Refugees, Fridtjof Nansen) assisted in the return to Russia of some 181,432 émigrés in the decade after 1921 (many of them through Bulgaria, with the encouragement of the government in Sofia), despite the opposition to its activities of ROVS and other leading Russian émigré organizations. The fate of the returnees was frequently tragic: thousands were immediately executed, exiled, or imprisoned, while others fell victim to the Terror of the 1930s. The union itself also found its original mission perverted, as in 1922–1923, in Bulgaria, it became a conduit for Soviet propaganda aimed at encouraging more refugees to return.UNION OF LANDOWNERS, ALL-RUSSIAN.
The Union of Landowners was founded at a Moscow conference on 17–20 November 1905, during the revolution of that year, to defend the interests of landowners, who were under attack not only by socialists and liberals bent on land redistribution, but also, it was feared, by reformist elements among the tsarist bureaucracy (led by future prime minister P. A. Stolypin). Once the revolution had been crushed in 1907, the union became dormant, and many of its member migrated to the United Nobility. However, it was resurrected on 10 November 1916, by S. N. Balashov, on the initiative of the United Nobility, ostensibly to assist in the supply of food to the Russian Army but also to counter what was perceived as creeping state transgressions of the rights of private landholders during the course of the war (including a state monopoly on grain purchases and price fixing). Initially, membership was reserved for owners of 50After the October Revolution
and the closure of the Constituent Assembly (to which it had succeeded in having just two delegates elected on its platform), the organization went underground and began to muster opposition to Soviet rule under the leadership of Gurko and the former tsarist minister of agriculture, A. V. Krivoshein. In March 1918, the union submerged itself within the anti-Bolshevik Right Center, and many of its members went on to play leading roles in the White movement, particularly in South Russia. Branches of the union also operated in emigration in the 1920s, in Paris, Sofia, Belgrade, Berlin, and London.UNITED BALTIC DUCHY.
This short-lived state (the