In the French journal Cahiers du monde russe, Marina A. Panova published in 2005 an article called The History of “White Russian” Emigration to Tunisia, unfortunately only an abstract is available in English or French.
Anyone knows about this article or the history the Russian emigration in Tunisia because this an extremely interesting topic ? Also, is Panova's term of colony proper ?
The White Russians controlled much of the former Imperial Russian Black Sea fleet, and when the White Russians were defeated in Ukraine and then in the Crimea in 1920, the Russian fleet and remnants of the white forces of the Ukraine and Crimea, under command of General Wrangel, evacuated, first to Turkey (in November 1920), and then onwards to Bizerte just outside Tunis in Tunisia (in February 1921). The force consisted of some 4 500 civilians and 1 500 sailors and soldiers and included 2 battleships, 2 cruisers, 11 destroyers and torpedo boats as well as numerous smaller and civilian vessels.
Here the fleet was interned by the French and the white emigrees offered asylum, forming a distinct community in Tunisia for a while, which could probably be described as a colony of sorts.
When the French government recognised the Soviet Union in 1924, the fleet was turned over to the Soviet government, which sent a commission to evaluate the state of the ships, which were found to be have been long in disrepair and not worth the money to bring back into condition. Since the Soviets needed foreign currency to buy machine tools and other tools for their industrialisation, the ships were sold and scrapped.