White Russian émigrés were Russians who emigrated from the territory of the former Russian Empire in the wake of the Russian Revolution (1917) and Russian Civil War (1917–1923), and who were in opposition to the revolutionary Bolshevik communist Russian political climate. Many White Russian émigrés participated in the White movement or supported it. The term is often broadly applied to anyone who may have left the country due to the change in regimes.

Some Russian émigrés, like Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries, were opposed to the Bolsheviks but had not directly supported the White Russian movement; some were apolitical. The term is also applied to the descendants of those who left and who still retain a Russian Orthodox Christian identity while living abroad.^{[citation needed]}

The term "émigré" is most commonly used in France, the United States, and the United Kingdom. A term preferred by the émigrés themselves was first-wave émigré (эмигрантъ первой волны, Russian: эмигрант первой волны, emigrant pervoy volny), "Russian émigrés" (русская эмиграція, русская эмиграция, russkaya emigratsiya) or "Russian military émigrés" (русская военная эмиграція, русская военная эмиграция, russkaya voyennaya emigratsiya) if they participated in the White Russian movement. In the Soviet Union, white émigré (бѣлоэмигрантъ, белоэмигрант, byeloemigrant) generally had negative connotations.

Since the end of the 1980s, the term "first-wave émigré" has become more common in Russia. In East Asia, White Russian (Chinese: 白俄, bái'è; Japanese: 白系ロシア人, Hakkeiroshiajin or 白系露人, Hakkeirojin) is the term most commonly used for such Russian émigrés, although some have been of Ukrainian and other ethnicities, and were not culturally Russians.

Most white émigrés left Russia from 1917 to 1920 (estimates vary between 900,000 and 2 million). Some managed to leave during the 1920s and 1930s, or were expelled by the Soviet government (such as, for example, Pitirim Sorokin and Ivan Ilyin). They spanned all classes and included military soldiers and officers, Cossacks, intellectuals of various professions, dispossessed businessmen and landowners, as well as officials of the Russian Imperial government and of various anti-Bolshevik governments of the Russian Civil War period. Not all of them were ethnic Russians; other ethnic groups were included.

Most émigrés initially fled from Southern Russia and Ukraine to Turkey and then moved to other Slavic countries in Europe (the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, and Poland). A large number also fled to Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Finland, Iran, Germany and France. Some émigrés also fled to Portugal, Spain, Romania, Belgium, Sweden, Switzerland, and Italy. Berlin and Paris developed thriving émigré communities.

Many military and civil officers living, stationed, or fighting the Red Army across Siberia and the Russian Far East moved together with their families to Harbin (see Harbin Russians), to Shanghai (see Shanghai Russians) and to other cities of China, Central Asia, and Western China. After the withdrawal of American and Japanese troops from Siberia, some émigrés traveled to Japan.

During and after World War II, many Russian émigrés moved to the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Peru, Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, South Africa and Australia — where many of their communities still exist in the 21st century. Thousands of emigres, of them 3 to 5 thousand on the Eastern Front, served Germany in the Wehrmacht or in the Waffen-SS, often as interpreters.