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China: White Russian dancing girls in 1930s Shanghai

The Shanghai Russians were a sizable Russian diaspora that flourished in Shanghai, China between the World Wars. By 1937 it is estimated that there were as many as 25,000 anti-Bolshevik Russians living in the city, the largest European group by far. Most of them had come from the Russian Far East, where, with the support of the Japanese, the Whites had maintained a presence as late as the autumn of 1922.

It was the contribution that Russian women made to the entertainment industry, dancing and otherwise, that helped give Shanghai its exotic reputation, noted in the guidebooks of the day. A fictionalized portrayal of their predicament is presented in the James Ivory film The White Countess (2005). Those who were left became the focus of earnest campaigns by the League of Nations and others to end the 'white slave trade'.