The Russians in Rotterdam

Golos Rodiny, 1918

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Since 1915, some 5,000 Russians, many of them prisoners of war who had managed to escape from Germany, were settled in cheap boarding houses in Rotterdam and Schiedam. Thereafter, the local police had to deal with many complaints of robbery, drunkenness, and rape.
The Russian colony was torn by political discord following the October Revolution and ensuing civil war in the fatherland. The newspaper Golos Rodiny, published in The Hague, was the voice of the conservative faction.
The one and only Russian Soviet in Holland was established in Rotterdam on 21 May 1918. Its ten members were captured and imprisoned ten days later.
A "Soviet Committee for Russians in Holland", a section of the Dutch Communist Party was established in 1918 and helped about a thousand Red supporters to cross the German border. The others were sent home in 1919 by ship, an operation funded by the Dutch government.

Golos Rodiny, 1918

Building of a special camp, 1918

Title:

- Golos Rodiny [Voice of the Fatherland, bi-weekly].
Den Haag, 1918-1919.
Call number: ZF 22049