The end of the First World War set in motion new International legal concepts, which were mobilized in the post-war political competition between the former Ottoman Empire and the victorious western powers. The questions of nationality, citizenship, minority groups, and refugee status became especially acute and sensitive in International peace conferences and as a part of renewed nation-building projects. At the same time, the experiments with new categorizations, identities, and regimes created a powerful political tool that affected the lives of many displaced people located in the Ottoman lands. Particularly, the newly coined International definition of a refugee was used by both: by political actors in their competition, as well as by migrants adopting different ways for their survival strategies. Thus, my research traces the process of acquisition of refugee thinking by Russian migrants in Istanbul and the environs in the context of the political and socioeconomic dynamics of the period. Russian expatriates were always present in the Ottoman Empire: entrepreneurs, relatives, pilgrims, prisoners of wars and exiles. The perception about these people varied according to time, place and situation. However, the post-war circumstances and the new influx of Russian migrants to the Middle East led to a significant rethinking of the status and images of Russians in the Ottoman lands. Thus, national interests made the Ottoman and later Republican administration apply refugee status to those Russians not fitting their nation-building projects primarily in order to have a legal reason to expel them from the county. On the other hand, the Allies occupying Istanbul conditioned and limited their humanitarian aid by certain criteria and expectations from the Russian migrants to eliminate the potential threat from a big and organized community, as well as to diminish their responsibility for these migrants. However, the refugee regimes applied toward Russians either by the Allies or by the Ottomans were always challenged by people from below. They could reject the refugee status preferring self-governing communities, adopt it for socioeconomic benefits, or manipulate it otherwise for achieving mobility. The refugeezation process was always characterized by a constant struggle between personal and formal, belonging and exclusion, diversity and homogenization. Nevertheless, whatever the motivations and results of this struggle were, willingly or not, Russian migrants in the Ottoman lands were exposed to a refugee thinking, and thus, their previous identities gradually and inevitably had been transformed. The research utilizes diaries, newspapers, visual materials, and official records.