What can the story of Russian evacuees in interwar Turkey tell us about changing attitudes toward refugees, belonging, and the nation-state after WWI? The arrival of so-called “White Russian” refugees in Turkey after the war is often remembered as a moment of “broad tolerance and historical hospitality.” In fact, Ankara’s policymaking toward incoming refugees from Russia was far more complicated than the “hospitality” narrative allows. Drawing upon materials from the Ottoman and Turkish Republican archives, as well as the archive of the League of Nations, this paper looks at Turkish and League policymaking toward Russian refugees after WWI. It begins with the arrival of more than 150,000 refugees from Russia in 1920, and ends in 1935 with the signing of a final agreement between Ankara and the League of Nations regarding the fates of the last remaining Russian refugees in Turkey. The term “White Russians” was more than just shorthand for Russian refugees. Rather, these words held considerable administrative and legal weight. In practice, the term “White Russians” was used almost exclusively in reference to Christians and Jews, while Muslim immigrants from Russia were provided with a clear path to Turkish citizenship. From the very beginning, the presence of Russian refugees on Turkish territory was a major bone of contention between the Ankara government and the allies during the negotiations surrounding the Treaty of Lausanne. From the mid-1920s onward, the Turkish government took an increasingly hostile stance toward the refugees, periodically threatening them with deportation to the Soviet Union. League of Nations officials, meanwhile, sought to “solve” what they often described as the Russian refugee “problem” through the contracts they signed with various countries seeking cheap labor. These agreements obliged repatriated refugees to work in a specific industrial or agricultural enterprise until their debt to the League, i.e. the cost of their re-settlement, had been repaid. Particularly after the onset of the Great Depression in October of 1929, it became increasingly difficult to find homes for the remaining refugees, who were often living in dire poverty in Istanbul. Following the apparent triumph of the idea of national self-determination and the nation-state, how were these stateless White Russians supposed to fit in internationally? Comparing the approaches of Turkish officials and League of Nations commissioners, I discuss what they tell us more broadly about changing views regarding refugees and belonging during the early years of post-empire.