134 Ë The Caucasus Group and Japan
Despite these moves to contain Japan’s aggression, Moscow was still in a vulner-
able position. Even though the western borderlands were secured for now, a large-
scale famine had struck Ukraine, resulting in millions of deaths, while an even more
devastating one hit Kazakhstan. Meanwhile, in the neighboring Xinjiang, or Chinese
Turkestan, Muslim rebellions threatened Han Chinese rule. In the Mongolian People’s
Republic, hasty socialist transformations (modeled on the Soviet experience) of pre-
capitalist Mongolian society led to widespread rebellions, which Moscow sent armed
forces to crush in 1932. All these developments destabilized the Soviet Union polit-
ically and raised questions about Stalin’s leadership.²⁸Moscow thus could not face
the possibility of a confrontation with Japan. It is symptomatic of its position that in
the spring of 1932, Moscow de facto recognized Manchukuo by allowing it to open
two legations (in Chita and Blagoveshchensk), while Japan allowed Moscow to retain
the already-existing Soviet diplomatic posts in Manchuria. Moscow’s 1935 sale of the
Chinese Eastern Railway to Manchukuo once again signi ed its recognition of Japan’s
puppet government.
Nevertheless, by 1934 Moscow appeared con dent that it was more in control of
Japan’s aggression than in 1931 or 1932, while remaining ever vigilant about Japan’s
seemingly unpredictable behavior. To begin with, Soviet military forces were being
strengthened at an accelerated pace. Washington further appeared to Moscow to be
willing to work together to contain Japan in the Far East. Last, Moscow’s intelligence
operations had penetrated Japan and Manchukuo and their overseas legations quite
successfully. In Moscow itself, Japan’s legation had been repeatedly compromised by
Soviet operations.²⁹One of the most signi cant Soviet disinformation ploys involving
Japan was Operation General, which started by sexually compromising the Japanese
military attaché to Moscow in the late 1920s and continued into the period of the Great
Terror.³⁰As Georges Agabekov, a Soviet secret police o cial who defected to the West,
testi ed, the Japanese embassy in Istanbul, the center of Japan’s links to the Caucasian
groups, was also penetrated by a “night-watchman there”: “Through him we got hold
of many despatches, which we deciphered.” Using “two professional picklocks of the
highest skill,” the Soviet agent opened the Ambassador’s strong-box and stole his ci-
pher.³¹In Tokyo, Soviet military intelligence agent Richard Sorge began working suc-
cessfully from 1933 onward. In Manchukuo, where Japanese authorities found it dif-
cult to control order, let alone the constant migration of people, Soviet intelligence
28 See Hiroaki Kuromiya, “The Soviet Famine of 1932–33 Reconsidered.”Europe-Asia Studies, 60, no.
4 (June 2008), 663–75.
29 See Hiroaki Kuromiya, “The Mystery of Nomonhan, 1939.”The Journal of Slavic Military Studies24,
no. 4 (December 2011), 659–77.
30 See Arekusei [Aleksei] Kirichenko, “Kominterun to Nihon, sono himitsu ch ̄oh ̄osen o abaku.”Seiron
2006, no. 10, 103–5, and “Duel’ razvedok: Rossiia – Iaponiia,” broadcast by Rosteleradio on 2 March
2005.
31 Georges Agabekov,OGPU: The Russian Secret Terror(New York: Brentano’s, 1931), 209.