Following the collapse of the White Guard in the Russian Civil War which followed the Revolution of 1917, the defeated anti-Communist forces under General Piotr Wrangel retreated from the Crimea and set sail for Istanbul. Over 150,000 Russians, including troops as well as civilians from among the pre-revolutionary Russian aristocracy, arrived in the city in 1920, and many remained there for a year or more. There is a dearth of scholarship in English on this topic. Apart from a few mentions in books on Istanbul (for example, by Nur Bilge Criss), or in books on Russian emigration (for instance by Marc Raeff), the experiences of the Russian refugees camped out in Istanbul in 1920-21 have attracted scant attention in the West. Yet, as anyone visiting the Flower Passage in Istanbul or reading about the planned demolition of a Russian church in the city in 2013 will appreciate, the relatively brief but large-scale presence of Russian emigrants left a mark both on Istanbul and on the emigres themselves. Using primary sources such as Russian and Turkish memoirs dealing with the period, as well as contemporary press reports, this paper will discuss the experience of the Russian exiles in Istanbul in the 1920s, and the reception they got from the Turkish inhabitants of the city. How did these erstwhile enemies (Russia and the Ottoman Empire had of course been on opposite sides in the recently concluded First World War) coexist within the confines of the city, particularly given the fact that most of the Russians were military men? How did the Russians take to living in Istanbul (the Constantinople of their dreams) as supplicants rather than conquerors? What did the Turks think of the peaceful Russian army in their midst? Did the Russians want to remain in Istanbul, or were they anxious to leave? These are the question this paper will attempt to investigate.