Russian Emigrant Varvara Vishnyevska/ Vishnevskaya in Maribor in 1932: German Spy, Soviet Provocator, Communist Activist or Young Adventurer?

Abstract

The author outlines Varvara Vishnyevska’s mental and emotional state that can be deduced from the criminal fi le of the Maribor district court. Having arrived in Maribor in late 1932, this young Russian emigrant shook the provincial city when her actions aroused the suspicion that she was a communist and a spy. This belief stemmed from a tighter control of the communist activities in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia after the introduction of the 6 January Dictatorship. The author argues that the cultural and historical background of the dismissed criminal case that illustrates the Russian emigrants’ broken identity and demonstrates the mindset of the young European post-war generation, a part of whom lost their collective identity footholds after the disintegration of the (Austro-Hungarian and Russian) empires and, with the onset of the global economic crisis, clung to romantic adventurism. As a well-organized and, after the October Revolution, a notorious and persecuted political activity in European states, to the young generation communism appeared as a suitable phantasm, a refuge.