Soviet deportations of Chinese people
[6]: 73 [7]: 61 To date, the detailed history of the removal of Chinese diasporas in the region remains to be uncovered and deciphered from the Soviet records.
[7]: 61 Often considered strangers to Soviet society, the Chinese were more prone to political repression, due to their lack of exposure to propaganda machines and their unwillingness to bear the hardship of socialist transformation.
[1] On 30 April 2017, the Last Address set up an inscribed board in memory of Wang Xi Xiang, a Chinese victim of the Great Purge, at the Moscow Office of the International Committee of the Red Cross.
[9]: 17 As V. V. Grave, a Russian diplomatic who explored the region in the 1910s, put,[9]: 17 [14]I have focused a little longer on [the subject of] Chinese trade among natives with the goal of giving a clear presentation of the damage from an economic and political viewpoint and finally from a moral one.
Their exploitation of them and their bondage leads to their extinction... finally, through the economic dependence of the natives, the Chinese strengthen their political influence.
[15]: 53 [9]: 24–25 Even though they were born in Russian soils, ethnic Chinese in Russia, like other diaspora peoples, were still more often considered to be loyal to their ancestral homelands.
Then there is the fact already alluded to, that the yellow men are clever craftsmen... That a Chinese businessman is everywhere the successful rival of a Russian or a European is well known.
[13]: 79 [13]: 234 The attempt to stop Chinese immigration was soon interrupted as the world war caused a severe manpower shortage in Russia.
Although the Soviet government also migrated 66,202 from Europe to the region,[18]: 86 the rising number of Chinese still had a tremendous impact on the local economy.
[20]: 116–117 In 1928, Geitsman, a regional representative of the People's Commissariat of Foreign Affairs in Vladivostok, wrote that the Chinese economic power would undermine the political authority of the Soviet Union.
[26]: 213–214 He further proposed that a Korean could take the place of each deported Chinese worker,[9]: 100 while Vladimir Arsenyev, who participated in the deportation of Chinese in the Tsarist era, submitted a report to Far Eastern Commission, advising that free migration from China and Korea in the areas bordering the countries should be stopped and that the area should be filled with migrants from Siberia and Europe instead.
[27]: 27–28 Thus, after 1926, the Chinese population began to decrease as a result of the Soviet policy to reject foreign labourers, end private business and eliminate crimes in the region.
Thousands of Chinese in Irkutsk, Chita and Ulan-Ude were arrested due to reasons including breach of local orders and tax evasion.
On 12 August, the newspaper stated that there were still 1,600-1,700 Chinese in jail in Vladivostok, and that each of them was provided with a piece of rye bread daily and underwent various tortures.
On 26 August, the newspaper continued that the detained Chinese in Khabarovsk only had a bread soup for meal daily, among which a lot of people had hanged them due to unbearable starvation.
On 21 September, the newspaper said, "the Government in the Russian Far East cheated the arrested Chinese, and forced them to construct the railway between Heihe and Khabarovsk.
[31]: 155 The Soviet Government also began to stop the Chinese from crossing the border after Japan established the client state of Manchukuo in Northeast China.
[33]: 105 The Central Committee of All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) further discussed the liquidation of Millionka on 17 June 1936, with a draft response to Chinese diplomats approved.
[33]: 105 Considering the negative impact of the Mutual Assistance Pact [ja] between the Soviet Union and the Mongolian People's Republic, which China deemed as a separatist government, the Soviet Politburo ordered the local government to avoid leaving the impression that the operation targeted Chinese and to finish the liquidation of Millionka by the end of 1936.
52691 22 December 1937 Khabarovsk NKVD to Lyushkov All Chinese, regardless of their nationality, showing provocative actions or terrorist intent, should be immediately arrested.
[35] On 23 October, Kharbintsy, or Harbin Russians, were further listed as a target of the purge after the Polish, the German and the Koreans, as announced by Order 693 of the NKVD.
[36] On 10 November, the Republic of China Consulate in Chita reported to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs that the Soviet was migrating 30,000 Europeans to Siberia and the Far East monthly to strengthen defence and economic construction in the region.
[5]: 48 On 22 December 1937, Nikolai Yezhov ordered Genrikh Lyushkov, Chair of NKVD in the Far East, to arrest all Chinese with provocation and terrorist aims with no regard to their nationality.
[23] The Soviet government believed that the Japanese Kwantung Army trained many Russian-speaking Chinese to enter Russia for espionage.
[17]: 143 According to Liushkov, it was estimated that 200,000 to 250,000 were repressed in the Russian Far East from August 1937 to June 1938, which accounted for at least 8% of the local population, a proportion much higher than for the Soviet Union as a whole.
From June to July 1937, four trains carrying 7,310 Chinese migrants and their families departed from Vladivostok to Xinjiang via the Kazakh SSR.
Those who had obtained Soviet citizenship or did not want to return to China were carried by one train to areas within Khabarovsk Krai away from international borders.
[5]: 53 In addition, according to the database of victims of state terror in the Soviet Union compiled by Memorial, there were 3,932 Chinese shot, mostly from early August to late November 1938.
[50] In recent years, the neighbourhood was branded as Vladivostok's "Arbat" by the local tourist authorities, where there are upscale restaurants and boutique hotels, although there is no mention of the history of the old Chinatown.
[1] On 30 April 2017, the Last Address set up an inscribed board in memorial of Wang Xi Xiang, a Chinese victim of the Great Purge in the Moscow Office of the International Committee of the Red Cross.
